Windows 7 is deleting users home directories

[TYO]

I need help with a very strange problem! We have replaced 7 of our Admin machines over to new HP's running windows 7.

 

Friday afternoon 1 user reports all of their files on their home directory are gone. Could have been user error??

 

Monday morning another 4 staff have the same problem. Going through the backups we can see 2 users did not have any files when the Friday night backup was done. Meaning 2 users lost their data late Friday afternoon and 2 must have lost their data first thing Monday morning because there data was there for the Friday night backup.

 

We did not have time to the test image as much as I would have liked to but it was pretty plain image with only office 2007 installed all patches and Symantec endpoint.

 

We have found two issues but I can’t see how they would delete home directories.

 

First one was drive mapping conflicting during the log on script because the H drive was used by a memory card reader. remapping the memory card reader and drive mapping worked fine.

 

Second one was home directories just displaying as "documents" in \\*file server*\*share*\ rather than the login name before, however if you opened the documents folder, it is showing as \\*file server*\*share*\*user* and same within command prompt. Not sure if this just how windows 7 works but obviously we would like to see the login in the share and not just "Documents" for everyone.

 

Any help would be appreciated! I need to replace 8 more of these machines ASAP so I can use the old admin machines for a new primary IT area.

[Crispin]

I imagine it has something to do with this:

 

When you redirect the Documents folder on a Windows Vista-based computer to a network share, the folder name unexpectedly changes back to Documents

 

Take a read of that, try the method which alters security prividges for the desktop.ini file.

 

That's what has helped us through a similar issue.

[mrbios]

Ah i've not even read your post and im going to suggest my fix to this, luckily it was found out pretty quickly and before it caused any major damage:

 

Group policy > Folder redirection > Documents > Untick "Grant the user exclusive rights to documents" and "move the contents of documents to the new location"

 

Let me knowif that fixes it, or if you've already tried it

 

(Mine is set to "leave the folder in the new location when policy is removed" and also has "also apply to windows 2000....etc" ticked, with the target to "redirected evertions folder to the same location" and "redirect to the user's home directory")

[joe90bass]

Ah i've not even read your post and im going to suggest my fix to this, luckily it was found out pretty quickly and before it caused any major damage:

 

Group policy > Folder redirection > Documents > Untick "Grant the user exclusive rights to documents" and "move the contents of documents to the new location"

 

Let me knowif that fixes it, or if you've already tried it

 

(Mine is set to "leave the folder in the new location when policy is removed" and also has "also apply to windows 2000....etc" ticked, with the target to "redirected evertions folder to the same location" and "redirect to the user's home directory")

 

We're having the same issue with staff user areas vanishing on our 2008R2 terminal servers, and I haven't yet got to the bottom of it, I suspect it has something to with folder redirection and mandatory profiles. I do know when I unticked "grant user exclusive rights to documents" for our pupils (to fix another issue) it deleted their user areas. I haven't tried unticking both as suggested above though. I'm on leave now for tow weeks, but if I get chance I will remote in and try with a test account. At the moment pupils are okay and I have removed permission for staff to use the terminal servers.

[macdaddy]

I need help with a very strange problem! We have replaced 7 of our Admin machines over to new HP's running windows 7.

 

Friday afternoon 1 user reports all of their files on their home directory are gone. Could have been user error??

 

Monday morning another 4 staff have the same problem. Going through the backups we can see 2 users did not have any files when the Friday night backup was done. Meaning 2 users lost their data late Friday afternoon and 2 must have lost their data first thing Monday morning because there data was there for the Friday night backup.

 

We did not have time to the test image as much as I would have liked to but it was pretty plain image with only office 2007 installed all patches and Symantec endpoint.

 

We have found two issues but I can’t see how they would delete home directories.

 

First one was drive mapping conflicting during the log on script because the H drive was used by a memory card reader. remapping the memory card reader and drive mapping worked fine.

 

Second one was home directories just displaying as "documents" in \\*file server*\*share*\ rather than the login name before, however if you opened the documents folder, it is showing as \\*file server*\*share*\*user* and same within command prompt. Not sure if this just how windows 7 works but obviously we would like to see the login in the share and not just "Documents" for everyone.

 

Any help would be appreciated! I need to replace 8 more of these machines ASAP so I can use the old admin machines for a new primary IT area.

 

We are also experiencing deleted home directories. One school which has received a couple windows 7 machines about once a week we have now seen a total of 4 students whose home folders are completely empty of all files and folders. The odd part to this is the user account has also been removed from the home folder. This is no longer a random (could be) user. This is a serious problem which we may have to stop all windows 7 deployments till resolved. Home folders are on a Windows 2003 R2 server.

[Earthling]

We are also experiencing deleted home directories. One school which has received a couple windows 7 machines about once a week we have now seen a total of 4 students whose home folders are completely empty of all files and folders. The odd part to this is the user account has also been removed from the home folder. This is no longer a random (could be) user. This is a serious problem which we may have to stop all windows 7 deployments till resolved. Home folders are on a Windows 2003 R2 server.

 

I've been testing Win 7 on a 2003 domain and on a TS/RDP Win2008 server, always with a test user. While testing it today, I found that the home folder hadn't been mapped, so I looked at the home folder share and, sure enough, the test user folder was missing. I took no notice other than to think that I might have deleted it myself during a test (highly unlikely, but you never know) so I recreated the folder. When I checked the permissions on this newly-created folder, there was an 'Unknown Account' entry, which I assume was the test account I'd been using. I manually added the correct user account, with Full Control, and the N: drive subsequently mapped to this folder.

 

After reading macdaddy's post, I'm delaying what I'd planned as a September roll-out of Windows 7 until I've ascertained the cause of the folder deletion, recreated the conditions under which it gets deleted and found a fix for it. Or Microsoft have.

 

To Be Continued.......as they say.

[stuartp44]

We have been experiencing a similar issue to this, if a user drags or attempts to delete the Documents file it deletes everything off the server. Fortunatly this has happend once, let hope nothing else goes wrong.

[pritchardavid]

anyone igured out what to do about this?

 

I moved all over folders to a 2008r2 (i know 100% every folder)

 

seems some are missing now, gusse some got deleted somehow, any idea?

 

I chhecked when I finished, all folders had something in it

[TYO]

made no changes but the problem seems to have resolved itself. We have a few more members of staff using desktops with the same image and no problem at all. also about 20 members of staff using laptops (a seperate image) and we have not had any problems at all. but now very hesitant in rolling out to student machines.

[nonsparker]

Has anyone figured out the cause of the home Dir deletion? We re imaged our whole district with windows 7 and are have these issues with the few users that are coming back early. I can't seem to reproduce the issue in a test environment.

[joe90bass]

Has anyone figured out the cause of the home Dir deletion? We re imaged our whole district with windows 7 and are have these issues with the few users that are coming back early. I can't seem to reproduce the issue in a test environment.

 

On my 2008r2 terminal server it was down to profiles and folder redirection. I'm on leave now and can't remember the specifics though, sorry.....

[john]

Had one user come today and say that some of her files have mysteriously vanished and they have been missing since we moved to W7, very strange its not whole folders and she is not the type to just delete them as she's very conciousness. We have roaming profiles here for staff and redirected documents.

[joe90bass]

Had one user come today and say that some of her files have mysteriously vanished and they have been missing since we moved to W7, very strange its not whole folders and she is not the type to just delete them as she's very conciousness. We have roaming profiles here for staff and redirected documents.

 

We had some very odd issues with whole home dirs going, and in some cases just folders/files. Not a pleasant place to be for us or the users!

[john]

We had some very odd issues with whole home dirs going, and in some cases just folders/files. Not a pleasant place to be for us or the users!

 

Any solutions other than better than ever backups (may have to increase snapshots on the SAN.....)

[mrbios]

I'm sure in another thread (perhaps im thinking of another forum) we came to the conclusion that it was just to do with the settings of the my documents redirection. the settings of "grant user exclusive rights" and "move contents to new location" need to be unticked, then it shouldn't randomly delete entire home directories

 

The situation i found with them was that if either or both of these were ticked and the user had a quota set on their folders but that quota was fairly full it wouldn't delete, but as soon as considerable space became available it would then delete the entire contents of a home directory. It would also delete the entire contents if no quota was set at all. Personally don't have a problem any more, hopefully you guys aren't having a problem any more complicated than that?

[joe90bass]

@john, I can't remember exactly what. but mrbios is right with the tick boxes, I know I had to look at profiles and folder redirection as well. I ended up creating a new policy in a test OU and once happy then going live.

[RabbieBurns]

I just came here to post about this issue and found this thread.

 

We are having the issue of the staff user folders disappearing too. The policy I have set is to map their Documents/etc/etc folder to the the D: partition of their laptop HDD, so that nothing is on the C drive so it makes it easier for us to reimage the C: partition.

 

However, for about 7 out of our 30 windows 7 testing group, we have found that their user folder has Vanished from the server.

 

Further investigation has found that what has happened is the contents of their user folder, has been brought across to their laptop, and now resides in the Documents folder on the d: drive on their laptop...

 

I cant figure out what is doing this, and why its only effected 1/3 of the users...

 

Any ideas?

[keatho]

I need help with a very strange problem! We have replaced 7 of our Admin machines over to new HP's running windows 7.

 

Friday afternoon 1 user reports all of their files on their home directory are gone. Could have been user error??

 

Monday morning another 4 staff have the same problem. Going through the backups we can see 2 users did not have any files when the Friday night backup was done. Meaning 2 users lost their data late Friday afternoon and 2 must have lost their data first thing Monday morning because there data was there for the Friday night backup.

 

Hi,

I have a very similar issue with users files and folders disappearing. I am using folder redirection with Win 7 / Server 2008.

Can you tell me if your file server is accessing shared storage via hardware iSCSI initiator and also local storage via software iSCSI initiator?

I have this setup and have just come across vmware kb article 1012279 saying it is not supported.

I have also moved the local storage connected via software iSCSI onto a different File Server and the disappearing folder problem went away.

 

 

Let me know if you had a similar storage setup.

[mrbios]

Seems what i thought fixed this hasn't getting random things cleared from teachers folders, only seems to apply to teachers though!! Students aren't having the problem

 

Both storage is in the same place, located on an iSCSI volume connected to the file server, the server is a single physical box, no vmware. Server is also running server 2008R2

 

Kids and teachers are both running mandatory profiles, teachers just have slightly more access than the kids.

 

The major difference, the bit that could be the cruncher, is that the kids all have quotas set while the teachers do not, i'm now going to set quotas on the teachers and see what happens (mwuahaha) but in the mean time if anyone gets any better suggestions please fire away!

[irsprint84]

Offline files caused me a similar issue

[keatho]

Offline files caused me a similar issue

 

Can you go into a bit more detail about the Offline files.

 

Thanks

[mijenk]

We are having the same issue here, we are having to restore upto 15 students a day, no staff members as yet.

 

It started off as one or two, and is now increasing. Where will it end...

 

_________________________________________________________________________

Favourite Quote: - It will be easy, we have 6 weeks to do that. . .

[_techie_]

I think this is something to do with a combination of folder redirection, libraries and the fact that documents is now a master directory to incorporate my music, pictures etc as with xp. As has been mentioned, it appears that you can sort it using group policy. I have noticed that my area became a documents share on the server, and i also lost all the files in my area as well....the folders remained, however, just empty :-(.

 

Yet to address the issue as of yet, as i havent got my 2003 servers configured to accept the admx templates using the central store.

[keatho]

A bit more info on what i have been experiencing.....

 

So far it is only Students that are having thier Home folders or Files deleted and not Teachers.

Both GPO's have the same setting EXCEPT for the 'Target folder location'.

Here are the folder re-direction settings on each of the GPO's.

 

Students

Setting: Basic - Re-direct everyone's folder to the same location

Target folder location: Redirect to the user's home directory

Unticked both 'Grant the user exclusive rights to My Documents' and 'Move the contents on My Documents to the new location.

Policy Removal - Leave the folder in the new location when policy is removed.

 

Teachers

Same as above except for,

Target folder Location: Redirect to the local userprofile location

 

I only just picked up on the two different settings for target folder location.

Does anyone know if this may be why the teachers have not experienced any problems yet but the user's have?

 

Thanks in advance for the response!

[mrbios]

Quotas definately impact this in some way, since setting quotas on the teachers home folders i've not had any problems with them getting deleted. Students have never been a problem and they have always had quotas.