Default roaming profiles never forget?

[PiqueABoo]

Sorry bit of a long involved story, but am I missing something?

 

For the default roaming profile I made a local account X, logged-on & configured a couple of things, logged-on as an admin and copied X's local profile (usable by \Everyone) to a netlogon share then cleared the obvious junk files out of it. That seems to work fine but...

 

I'm using GPO redirected My Documents with various sub-folders set to follow it. I also wanted to put a user's Favorites[sic] inside My Documents and the only way to do that appeared to be using User Shell Folders. I want to set the USF regval to something universal with an environment variable or two in it, but there aren't any I can use. So Plan B[tm] was to give accounts ye olde Home Folder in AD which then gives me %homedrive% (or %homeshare%) to use in the USF regval. That seems to work fine but...

 

I logged on as domain user Y and at some point explored the unavoidable mapped Home Folder drive and everything in it had the original local profiles name on it e.g. "X's My Music", "X's My Pictures". Now I don't care about that too much because I don't want users to see that mapped Home Folder drive in any case (via NoDrives), but all of this does make me wonder whether there's:

 

a) More I can or should be doing to 'cleanse' that default roaming profile?

 

b) A less convoluted way of getting Favorites in a redirected My Documents folder.

Edited November 15, 2008 by PiqueABoo

[FN-GM]

For A im lost from what you are saying, sorry.

 

For B if you use Server 2008 there is a group policy for this. If it is an older version you will need to use a logon script. it can be found here - Re-direct favourites to home drive

 

Remember to make changes to suite your environment.

 

Hope that helps

 

Z

[PiqueABoo]

For B if you use Server 2008 there is a group policy for this

 

The Favorites folder redirect? That's less about 2K8 and more about what policies Vista understands.. I'm targeting XP and it's a bit dim, hence the faffing about tatooing USF.

 

For A im lost

 

You probably need to have made Default Users profiles (local or roaming) to get it. There might still be other things to tweak, but I found the answer to to "X's My Music" etc.. you have to strip the "Owner=" line out of all desktop.ini files in your Default User profile.

 

If it is an older version you will need to use a logon script

 

I'm essentially doing the same thing, but have a Preferences CSE registry item setting the regval to:

 

%homedrive%\My Documents\My Favourites

 

It creates the My Favourites folder (although thanks to that desktop.ini it appears as the usual "Favorites" in explorer).

Edited November 16, 2008 by PiqueABoo
regval

[Quackers]

Do you not have a Home Drive? We set ours to

 

N:\Favorites , as N: is always their home drive.

[SYNACK]

The easiest way to redirect the favorites would be by adding the custom ADM file from the link below and doing it through GPO:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/guyt/archive/2006/11/18/Redirecting-IE-Favorites-via-GPO.aspx

Edited November 16, 2008 by SYNACK

[FN-GM]

You probably need to have made Default Users profiles (local or roaming) to get it. There might still be other things to tweak, but I found the answer to to "X's My Music" etc.. you have to strip the "Owner=" line out of all desktop.ini files in your Default User profile.

 

We do use them, but im lost by your explanation

 

The Favorites folder redirect? That's less about 2K8 and more about what policies Vista understands.. I'm targeting XP and it's a bit dim, hence the faffing about tatooing USF.

 

Also works with XP

[PiqueABoo]

Do you not have a Home Drive?

 

Nope.. well I do to make this favourites redirection work, but the user doesn't get to see the drive. I'm into "less is more" for pretty much everything and think it's easier for people to understand having one way to get to their work, rather than two. It's also one less AD account attribute to configure or reconfigure in future.

 

The easiest way.. doing it through GPO

 

I am doing that but I'm using a GPO Preference which are easier and given the targeting features etc., is much nicer than making ADMs.

 

im lost by your explanation

 

Attempt #2... you make a default roaming profile by copying one that you've typically set up for a local account to a Default User folder in the netlogon share. That profile will have some desktop.ini files for it's special folders (My Documents etc.) that contain the source account name i.e. a line. "Owner=Alice".

 

When a new user Bob logs on, their new profile inherits those desktop.ini files together with everything else . That means when anyone looks at Bob's My Documents via Explorer it still shows up as Alice's My Documents which is confusing.

 

The solution to that is to eliminate the "Owner=" lines from desktop.ini files in the Default User profile. I also spent some time zapping unnecessary files from the Default Profile, but there may be other generally good things to do.

 

Also works with XP

 

Not for me. If I go to the folder redirection policy then Favorites in the list of folders I can redirect, but on the second tab "Also apply redirection policy to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems" is greyed out and empty. I definitely had to tick that box to make folder redirection work for other folders e.g. My Documents.