How do you redirect a users desktop into the their home folder?

[morganw]

I've got a 2008r2 domain with Windows XP clients. If I look at folder redirection in a GPO I have options to redirect the desktop, but not into the home folder. Is there a variable that I can use to do this?

 

I've tried %homeshare%%homepath%/Desktop but that didn't work. What's the best way to do this?

[maniac]

I use the UNC path e.g \\SERVER\SHARE$\%username%\DESKTOP that seems to work for me.

 

Mike.

[djm968]

Try using just %homepath%\desktop

[morganw]

Does the desktop folder already need to exist?

I was hoping it would be created if required...

[Gatt]

Personally, I wouldn't recommend redirecting the desktop to the home folder...

 

But if you must, then you would need to create a "Desktop" folder in each users home area, then use the full UNC (\\server\home_share$\%username%\Desktop)

[morganw]

Thanks.

Got it to work now (\\server\%username%$\Desktop), it does create the folder for you if it isn't there which is a bonus.

 

I've been back and forth on whether to do this or not, i'm taking away admin rights for staff and roaming profiles so i'm trying to give the freedom back where I can.

[Bruce123]

We redirect Desktop to a folder within each user's home drive, and it seems to work quite well (been doing this the last 3 years). You have to redirect it somewhere (telling users not to save on the desktop is a none starter), and I think that it's much better to store them within their home drive rather than a different structure entirely. Thereby keeping all of their files within the same top level %username% folder. The idea of having a seperate structure for redirected folders (as MS used to recommend, I don't know what they say now) seems a bit mad to me.

 

All users have a folder within their H: drive called system (H:\system)

 

And within there we have all of the redirected folders e.g. H:\system\my documents, H:\system\desktop, H:\system\cookies, H:\system\application data

 

Within group policy you cannot include a network drive within the redirection path (e.g. H:\) and I had conflicting information on whether %homepath%\system would work, so in the end we created our own Group Policy admin template, which by-passed the folder redirection section and allowed us to change the appropriate registry values directly (Current User/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Currentversion/Explorer/Shellfolders or similar), and this allowed us to specify any string for the path.

 

One potential issue was that H:\ obviously needed to map early on in the logon process as Windows needed to look there for the physical location of the shell folders, but as it transpired this was never a problem, it must map very early on.

 

NB: We are in the process of "undirecting" Application Data and Cookies, just leaving My Documents and Desktop redirected. We had issues with redirecting both, which weren't immediately apparent.

 

Regards,

 

Bruce.

 

Leeds, UK.

Edited July 28, 2010 by Bruce123

[Bruce123]

One problem with this is that if a user deletes a file, it does actually delete it rather than sending it to the recycle bin, and I think that this because this is the standard bahviour when deleting from a network drive, rather than from a UNC.

 

Summary:

 

My Documents -> H:\system\my documents + ACTION Delete from My documents = File Deleted after confirmation.

My Documents -> \\servers\user$\my documents + ACTION Delete from My documents = File sent to recycle bin!

 

I would prefere the latter...

[srochford]

I thought recycle bin was normally on by default for redirected folders like this?

 

Folder Redirection & Recycle Bin might help - it's actually about turning off the bin but you ought to be able to reverse the process.

 

The key word is NukeOnDelete which is one of the better registry names :-)

[Bruce123]

Ordinarily it would because folder redirection would normally be to UNCs, but this isn't the case when folder redirection is to a network drive. I think the logic is that a drive letter could be mapped to one location one day and another another day, so it wouldn't have a clear idea of where to locate the recycled files.

 

If you do recycle a file from a UNC or directed folder to a UNC, where does it move the file to? I'd always assumed that it was to the recycle bin on the PC, but from the thread that you referred to it implies it moves it to the server somewhere?

[burgemaster]

Personally, I wouldn't recommend redirecting the desktop to the home folder...

 

But if you must, then you would need to create a "Desktop" folder in each users home area, then use the full UNC (\\server\home_share$\%username%\Desktop)

 

Hi Gatt,

 

We are currently looking into desktop redirection. Could you please give reasons for not recommending the above? What would you recommend?

Edited June 13, 2013 by burgemaster