Windows cannot find the local profile...

[gloriousglenn]

Hi guys and gals,

 

I'm sure that this is a common error and I have searched both on here and Google and I still can't get a straight answer!

 

All of our instructors here have Roaming Profiles. All of a sudden this morning one of the instructors complained that his profile wouldn't load. When I went to see 'exactly' what the error message was it came up with:

 

Windows cannot copy file \\Server Name\profile\Profile Name\Desktop to location C:\Documents and Settings\Profile Name\Desktop. Possible causes of this error include network problems or insufficient security rights. If this problem persists, contact your network administrator.

 

A second dialogue box then appears stating:

 

Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.

 

I have pingged the server from the client PC and all is fine there. I have asked the instructor to try and log on with a different client PC, still the same result.

 

Apart from deleting his profile and starting again...Does anybody know a fix for this?

 

Cheers

Glenn

[solitaire89]

If you scroll down in that first dialogue box you will get something that says:

 

DETAIL:..................................

 

What did it say there?

[sted]

is the pc in question a win xp sp3 box and is it one he uses frequently?

 

if so have a look in c:\docs and settings\. I bet there are lots of folders like

user.domain

user.domain.001

user.domain.002

user.domain.003

...

 

if you manually delete them it should be ok but will probably happen again at some point

[Danlewis3]

have you checked that the files are still there on the remote profile?

[gloriousglenn]

Oh yeah...Missed that bit!!

 

It says:

 

Detail: Access is denied.

 

Yes...the files all seem to be there on the remote profile.

 

I have already cleared out the C:\Documents and Settings folder.

Edited January 14, 2010 by gloriousglenn

[Danlewis3]

Denied on the remote profile desktop?

 

If so take ownership of it and then add the permissions for that user. That user hasnt got rights to copy the desktop from the server to a local computer.

[Michael]

Make sure Everyone has Full Control of the Profile share on the server. If it's already there, right click the Profile share, Security tab, Advanced, then tick 'Replace permission entries on all child objects...' then click Apply.

[gloriousglenn]

Nothing seemed to work...I ended up creating a different profile and copying the contents of his old 'Desktop', 'Favourites' etc etc into the new folders. That seemed to do the trick.

 

I think I'm going to have to put it down to just being one of those 'Microsoft Quirks'!!!

 

Thanks for your help guys.

 

Glenn

[elsiegee40]

Regrettably this is a niggle that occurs from time to time - the roaming profile becomes corrupted. It happens here. The trick is to train your users to look for the symptoms of it happening.

 

It seems to happen here to people who use more than one PC around the school (including me) - not often, but every few months, I'll get one or two.

 

My users have learned to call me as soon as they get an unusual logon.

 

Power the local machine down by leaning on the power button, the corrupted profile is not saved back to the server. (Some of my users do that for me now!)

 

I then logon with admin privileges to that machine, clear 'Documents & Settings' and reboot.

 

Assuming that the user has called you on the first occasion this happens, they'll be fine logging on again.

 

Otherwise, I'm afraid, you'll be clearing documents & settings, renaming the profile on the server, letting a new profile be created and finally copying back their Favorites (I never do desktop stuff, it should be in 'My Documents )

[DMcCoy]

Make sure Everyone has Full Control of the Profile share on the server. If it's already there, right click the Profile share, Security tab, Advanced, then tick 'Replace permission entries on all child objects...' then click Apply.

 

This is a bad idea. Users will only need to be in a group that has full control over "this folder only" over the root of the folder their profile is in. Choosing to replace all the child permissions will remove the correct existing permissions that were used to limit access to administrators and the user when windows created it. You don't want the everyone group anywhere near profiles as they contrain quite a lot of information that can be confidential (the contents of Recent and the contained file names etc).

 

All that is normally needed to fix this issue (if the files and access remain correct) is restoring the ntuser.dat file to a point in time when it was working.

[KK20]

serif is a monkey for killing our profiles. Heavy users of drawplus (x2) seem to have the most profile corruption. Sometimes simply deleting the application data of a users profile fixes it (looking at the serif errors it seems to get into a recursive loop looking for something in the application data until the filepath exceeds the maximum)

 

Dont assume that it is always ntuser.dat (as we use ntuser.man for our pupils)

 

simply delete and copy as appropriate.