Minecraft Bloating Profiles

[johnfermor]

Hi all

 

Our students use Minecraft but I find that it is bloating roaming profiles by as much as 2GB! This obviously has implications for logging on.

Minecraft Education Edition appears to save content in the AppData\Roaming\Minecraft Education Edition. Seems madness that Microsoft would save here. Has anyone managed to deploy it and redirect so it doesn't save there?

 

Anyone else using it who has a workaround for this?

 

John

[DavR]

Do you need those files to roam with the user, or can they comfortably be ignored? A lot of times with files like that they'll be either temp files, or updates to the software.

 

You can exclude the files from roaming profiles using a group policy setting - https://serverfault.com/questions/65773/roaming-profile-folder-exclusions

 

As an aside, a lot of people have junked roaming profiles these days for exactly reasons like this. May be worth thinking about. 

[johnfermor]

 

Thanks for the response.

 

The problem is that the laptops they are using have limited space. I've already discussed this with staff and will rebuild and no longer deploy Minecraft on these going forward. Apart from the long logon times, I lately had a student who couldn't save a Word document as it was completely out of space!

 

They also seem quite adept at installing add-ons which I'm also looking at. 

 

Was hoping that this profile content could be redirected to their HOME folder so Minecraft could still be used but not affect them logging on every time.

 

John

 

 

 

[DavR]

Ouch, I see the problem.

 

You can redirect the whole App Data \ Roaming folder, but that's overkill to fix this problem and is generally not recommended. I've not seen anyone successfully redirect just one folder from AppData before.

 

Could you implement a log off script which deletes %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Minecraft at each log off?

 

I'd suggest using some kind of User Profile deletion tool, to delete old profiles and free up space, but to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any reliable ones around any more since changes to how Microsoft manage user profiles. 

[itskdog]

If deleting the folder, it's worth double-checking that it doesn't delete the saved games. I'm not familiar with Education Edition, but I know the regular PC Java version saves there.

[J-14P]

1 minute ago, itskdog said:

If deleting the folder, it's worth double-checking that it doesn't delete the saved games. I'm not familiar with Education Edition, but I know the regular PC Java version saves there.

Education Edition is a modified Bedrock version iirc, so it would make sense it saves the same way. That would explain the 2Gb file sizes, as Minecraft saves can get pretty large the more you explore.

[itskdog]

1 minute ago, J-14P said:

Education Edition is a modified Bedrock version iirc, so it would make sense it saves the same way. That would explain the 2Gb file sizes, as Minecraft saves can get pretty large the more you explore.

 

That's why I specified Java - even Bedrock, as a Store app, might save to WindowsApps, I'm not so familiar.

[J-14P]

1 minute ago, itskdog said:

 

That's why I specified Java - even Bedrock, as a Store app, might save to WindowsApps, I'm not so familiar.

I think it used to save to WindowsApps, but now changed to AppData according to online?

[AlphamaleZed]

Are you still using roaming profiles? we use local ones now and they remove after 24 hours. This way stops all those weird profile issues and also isolates issues to machines not when they are moving.

For teaching staff they remove after 2 weeks and for support staff they remove after 3 months.

[johnfermor]

Thanks for suggestions. 

 

Yes we are still using roaming profiles but are looking to migrate to cloud so this will hopefully be a mute issue.

 

I'm guessing my best route would be a logoff script as suggested which would delete that content. Either this or I create a common 'minecraft' account and students login using this. They will still need to login using their M365 account in order to play Minecraft. Uncertain of the implications of this (or a combination of both delete profile an single account) but it would mean students login as themselves in normal use without a significant delay and login as 'minecraft' when they are wanting to use play it. 

 

It is very popular with students so I would hate to have to remove it. But I cant stand much more of teachers 'our class laptops take the whole lesson to login and we have no time left for the lesson' discussions.

 

John

[AlphamaleZed]

26 minutes ago, johnfermor said:

Thanks for suggestions. 

 

Yes we are still using roaming profiles but are looking to migrate to cloud so this will hopefully be a mute issue.

 

I'm guessing my best route would be a logoff script as suggested which would delete that content. Either this or I create a common 'minecraft' account and students login using this. They will still need to login using their M365 account in order to play Minecraft. Uncertain of the implications of this (or a combination of both delete profile an single account) but it would mean students login as themselves in normal use without a significant delay and login as 'minecraft' when they are wanting to use play it. 

 

It is very popular with students so I would hate to have to remove it. But I cant stand much more of teachers 'our class laptops take the whole lesson to login and we have no time left for the lesson' discussions.

 

John

Literally just this on the PC group OUs and then no roaming profile path on PCs. Make sure you turned off all the roaming profile stuff, folder redirection can stay in place.