Windows 7 delete/hide Local Documents Folders

[thatley]

Hi all,

 

At the moment I'm testing 2008 R2 with Windows7 Pro for use in our schools (hopefully ready for Summer 2010!)

 

Has anyone found a solution/workaround for when a Windows 7 PC is on a domain and folder redirection is in place (with Videos, Music, Pictures folders following the Documents folder) that you can either hide/disable or delete the remaining "local" folders of the same name?

 

I don't want our end users clicking on their "user folder" on the desktop and accidently saving to the local "c:\users\*username*\documents or videos or pictures" which still show when folder redirection is in place.

 

I've searched around for this, but nobody is mentioning it, only hiding the Libraries!

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for any solutions & Happy New Year!!

Edited December 31, 2009 by thatley

[Michael]

You can hide access to the local C:\ as you can with Windows 2000 and later -

 

User Config > Admin Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer

 

Hide these specified drives in My Computer

Prevent access to drives from My Computer

 

You should also look at Folder Redirection too

[DrCheese]

I'd like to know this to, I couldn't find any way of managing the libraries feature in group policy and by default a library includes the redirected folder AND the local one. There is nothing to stop students/staff from saving to local by accident, nor removing/adding folders

[Michael]

Have you both updated the policies on your 2008 R2 Servers from a Windows 7 client? ADM and ADMX files are time stamped so Windows Server knows whether to update them.

[pritchardavid]

donest server 2008 r2 delete the ADM files?

 

When I have been creating new policy's from my 2008r2 temp policy machine

 

It does not create the adm files, but still somehow works on xp, how does it work? or does the xp manchines read the adm files that are stored in the windows folder?

[Michael]

Windows 2000/XP still use ADM files and Vista/7 use ADMX files. Windows Server processes both types.

[pritchardavid]

yep I know that

 

What i was saying I was that that old policies I had were made from server 2003, so in the sysvol, where the policies are kept, they had the ADM files.

 

When I made the new policys from 2008R2 there was no ADM files, so how does xp work without these files?

 

Or was these ADM files was only there to be able read the policys when configuring it in group policy console?

 

Or does now xp read the ADM from the windows folder on the client hard drive?

[Nick_Parker]

Did anybody anybody find a solution to this?

I'm experiencing the same problem, when a user logs in and goes to their "User Folder" on the desktop, they see 2x My Documents, 2x My Pictures, 2x My Videos and 2x My Music.

[Kitkatninja]

I believe that I have a script somewhere at work that should delete the libraries, if I remember I'll post it up here tomorrow. However haven't fully tested the script...

 

-Ken

[DrCheese]

Deleting libraries isn't really a solution, it will leave you in a totally unsupported state and who knows what it'll break down the road.

[craigw]

Hi Guys

Gettting same problem here but only seeing it with user that are coming across from XP profile.

If I create a clean Windows 7 logon (not using roaming profiles - ONLY folder redirection) the user only sees 1 copy of the My Documents which has been redirected to the server. If I logon as an exisiting XP user - they see both.

Obviously we could rename logon and move items back using a simple script - but this will only work if we move ALL users to Windows 7 at once - with 1300 machines this is not really an option. We need to find a way for Windows XP and 7 folder redirection to work together...will keep trying - but has anyone found a way to do this?

[ricki]

HI

 

I am getting the same problem. We are just moving onto windows 7 and on the top right is an icon with the user name and it takes them to a folder with

Contacts

Documents

Downloads

Favourites

Links

Music

Pictures

Saved Games

Searches

Videos

Non of which work as the users are restricted and cannot access the c drive

 

Plus all the My Documents, My Pictures, My Videos,etc which all work as they are on the server because they are redirected

 

Has anyone come up with a way to get rid of the local links. It appears to look into the c:\Users\(username)

 

Thanks for all your help.

 

Richard

[Quackers]

We just run the following as a logon script to get rid of the duplicate entrys. Was annoying have a Redirect My Documents and a Local My Documents when clicking the username

 

cd %userprofile%

rmdir Favorites /s /q

rmdir Desktop /s /q

rmdir Contacts /s /q

rmdir Downloads /s /q

rmdir Links /s /q

rmdir "My Documents" /s /q

rmdir "My Music" /s /q

rmdir "My Videos" /s /q

rmdir "My Pictures" /s /q

rmdir "Saved Games" /s /q

rmdir "Searches" /s /q

rmdir Documents /s /q

rmdir Music /s /q

rmdir Videos /s /q

rmdir Pictures /s /q

[craigw]

After much to-ing and fro-ing we ended up doing the same thing - just deleted the extra folders (or in some cases hid them if not possible to delete) - but we do it with GP preferences rather than a logon script.

Looks like a lot of what we used to do with kixtart logon scripts we are now doing with Group Policy preferences and works well.

Only issue is that the delete happens on the second logon as at the time of processing the policy the folders are not yet created. On second logon they are then cleaned up.

Craig

[ricki]

HI

 

I have tried the script on a test user and it works great but will this break anything.

 

Richard

[Minkus]

An easier way to do this that we found was to run the following commands on each system BEFORE the first user logon:

 

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Desktop"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Documents"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Downloads"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Favorites"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Links"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Music"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Pictures"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Saved Games"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Videos"

 

This hides all of the relevant folders in the Default User profile before they are copied over into each new profile. If the folders are redirected by Windows, they will remain hidden - if they are not, it appears that Windows removes the Hidden attribute itself as part of the profile setup - so this is the perfect solution whether you are using Folder Redirection on all folders or not.

 

It seems to work fine on our system - shame that Microsoft don't recommend this as it is much easier than all the other solutions we've found such as deleting the folders or enabling 'Move the contents' as in KB2533930.