What is Desktop Redirection? Please

[James_Reed]

Hi all,

 

Recently i have been viewing threads on this website i notice that lot of people are having trouble with Desktop (Appdata) redirection. Can someone please tell me:

 

1) what is Desktop (Appdata) redirection?

2) How can i get access to these files?

3) How can i stop redirecting Appdata?

 

I'm sorry i do not know information about Desktop Redirection because i am a trainee ICT Tech and i want to learn this kind of information.

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

James

[mb2k01]

Folder redirection is a useful feature which is often used within a domain enviroment via Group Policies.

 

The administrator specifies a folder (shared on the network) where users who have the GPO applied to them will have their standard folders redirected to.

 

You can redirect My Documents, App Data, Desktop and Start Menu with different paths

[Crispin]

A good example for this in our case is that we redirect appdata to the local machines which have CS3 installed, since the adobe appdata can become rather large, especially when students save 500MB photos in the folders

[elsiegee40]

Every user in Windows has a profile which tells Windows about how you use the computer. Think of your PC at home... in your profile, you have folders containing, your desktop, application data, documents, favorites, start menu, etc

 

Every user on your network needs this profile too. These profiles are Mandatory or Roaming. They are stored on the server and, when a user logs on, are copied to his PC. When he logs off Roaming profiles are copied back to the server with any changes. Mandatory profiles are not copied back to the server.

 

So, Mandatory profiles never change... meaning that if a folder like 'My Documents' was part of it, the user would lose everything he saved at logoff!

 

Roaming profiles containing 'My Documents' would grow and grow until you needed a calendar to measure logon/off times instead of a stopwatch!

 

User logons are created in Active Directory. When they are created, we can specify where 'My Documents' folder will be saved, because we don't want it in the profile. This 'My Documents' folder is redirected - i.e. we're telling the network to look somewhere else for it.

 

Through Group Policy we can redirect many of the troublesome folders that grow in size... and ones that you want to manage (for example the Start Menu)

 

At my school (primary age children), the pupils all have their own logons using a mandatory profile with 'My Documents' redirected. This way if they do change anything (for example their desktop background), the system does not save the change. It will be exactly the same every time a pupil logs on. Their work however is safe in their 'My Documents' folder.

 

The teachers at my school use Roaming profiles, so they can customise things to their needs. Their 'My Documents' folder is still redirected so it doesn't slow down their logon times.

 

This is a simplistic explanation, but hopefully covers enough for what you need at the moment!

 

James: Where do you live? I can recommend a free 2 day training course that covers all this and more if you are in the South East. I'm sure others can recommend training near you. Don't be afraid to ask the other IT Tech(s) you work with either. We all had to start somewhere.

Edited March 12, 2009 by elsiegee40

[somabc]

Hi all,

 

Recently i have been viewing threads on this website i notice that lot of people are having trouble with Desktop (Appdata) redirection. Can someone please tell me:

 

1) what is Desktop (Appdata) redirection?

2) How can i get access to these files?

3) How can i stop redirecting Appdata?

 

I'm sorry i do not know information about Desktop Redirection because i am a trainee ICT Tech and i want to learn this kind of information.

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

James

 

1) has been explained in thread already

2) On the file server, if you do not have access ask the domain admin

3) Why do you want to stop redirecting Appdata, I would not make any changes until you are more confident how these settings work.

[BBrian]

I don't redirect Appdata because if the same user is logged on twice, i.e. teacher using laptop and classroom PC, then OpenOffice.org gives an error when it tries to access its settings.

 

Can roaming profile settings be done in a GPO? It makes sense to put it in the folder redirection one.

 

What's the correct way to set permissions on redirected folders? I ended up giving administrators ownership, then full control, then giving the user full control and then handing ownership back to the user. Took a while because xcacls.vbs wouldn't work for me!

 

With offline files, after the wireless network drops (not really a problem anymore), is there any way of making it auto-sync without prompting the user? I'm not very familiar with it because it never happens to me, but teachers sometimes complain about their folders being empty.

Is there any way to specify folder that are not to be synchronised? My DC crashed so I rebuilt it and rejoined the PCs, now some of them still try to sync a folder that was part of the old domain.

Is there any way to hide the sync window on logout?

 

Anything else related to this would be great, I really just figure it out as I go along.

[SYNACK]

Can roaming profile settings be done in a GPO? It makes sense to put it in the folder redirection one.

 

You can configure lots of settings for roaming profiles through GPOs, for Vista you can even specify their location but for XP this is done in AD users and computers > User > Properties.

 

What's the correct way to set permissions on redirected folders? I ended up giving administrators ownership, then full control, then giving the user full control and then handing ownership back to the user. Took a while because xcacls.vbs wouldn't work for me!

 

xcalcs didn't work propperly for me so I used SetACL which worked fine and did the job perfectly

 

With offline files, after the wireless network drops (not really a problem anymore), is there any way of making it auto-sync without prompting the user? I'm not very familiar with it because it never happens to me, but teachers sometimes complain about their folders being empty.

Is there any way to specify folder that are not to be synchronised? My DC crashed so I rebuilt it and rejoined the PCs, now some of them still try to sync a folder that was part of the old domain.

Is there any way to hide the sync window on logout?

 

Anything else related to this would be great, I really just figure it out as I go along.

 

The settings for Offline files can be found in GPO under both Machine and user configuration under:

 

Administrative Templates > Network > Offline files

 

The setting you are after for the blank folder on disconnect are:

 

Action on server disconnect : Work Offline

 

You can administratively assign user documents to be offline by adding the path like \\server\share\%username% to the machine config of the laptops ou which makes them only avalible offline on the laptops. You can also set the machine to sync all of the files on logoff in the same location.

[James_Reed]

Thank You everyone for your help things are much clear now. I really appreciate it.

 

James

[James_Reed]

Every user in Windows has a profile which tells Windows about how you use the computer. Think of your PC at home... in your profile, you have folders containing, your desktop, application data, documents, favorites, start menu, etc

 

James: Where do you live? I can recommend a free 2 day training course that covers all this and more if you are in the South East. I'm sure others can recommend training near you. Don't be afraid to ask the other IT Tech(s) you work with either. We all had to start somewhere.

 

Hi Elsiegee40, thank you for your post. I live in Birmingham. I would really appreciate it if you can recommend a free training course.

 

Thanks,

James

[elsiegee40]

Hi Elsiegee40, thank you for your post. I live in Birmingham. I would really appreciate it if you can recommend a free training course.

 

Thanks,

James

 

 

The one I can recommend is in Reigate, Surrey so the travel may be a bit much. It would probably be cheaper to for you to do a local 'paid for' course unless you have relatives in the area where you can bag a bed for the night. Will PM you anyway.

 

Not sure if I'm allowed to advertise the course by posting details in this thread. Although, I have nothing to do with the company other than having trained there.

Edited March 12, 2009 by elsiegee40