Application Data Redirection - Recovery Files opening for other users

[stu1892]

Evenin' all.

 

We now redirect application data as it was slowing log ons drastically.

 

We are using one mandatory profile for a group of users.

 

This group log on anywhere on site and get a start menu, desktop and application data from a redirection GPO.

 

We have both MS Office and Open Office on our system.

 

I've had two similar problems. With MS Office, students using Publisher were opening the software and getting each others work 'recovered'.

 

Now with Open Office they're gettings omething similar, where it says that you're opening someone elses document.

 

Surely someone else has had similar issues implementing a similar system?

 

I opened the profile and stopped autorecovery for publisher. Haven't had any confirmation if that has fixed the problem yet.

 

Any help apreciated.

 

Cheers

Stu

[Stephen041085]

Hi All,

 

we have recently done the same as the above post and have the same issue occuring. Using Server 2008 and Publisher 2007.

 

Has anyone come across a solution for this?

 

Thanks!

[Bruce123]

Each user will need to have their own seperate application data redirected location.

 

Re-directing the Desktop/Startmenu to a shared location is OK (but should be read-only to all the users)... redirecting application data to one shared location is a definite no no... the folder is used to store all sorts of personal information/app customisation relating to the particular user.

 

To resolve this you could use GP to redirect Application data for this group of users to a new folder structure e.g. \\server\redirected$\%username%\application data.

 

But it's a bit odd that using a mandatory profile results in slow logon times. With a brand new profile that has been converted to mandatory, the amount of data in the application data folder (and indead the whole profile) should be minimal (less than 2MB).

 

With roaming profiles, reducing the size and number of files that build up in the application data folder(s) can really improve logon times (lots of tiny files is just as bad as several large files), so it can be worth investigating where all the files are and whether they are necessary.

 

There is a GP setting that allows you to excluded certain folders from the roaming profile (deletes them from the server copy at logoff). We have excluded several key folders (which tend to hold a lot of unnecessary data) from all users profiles. From memory, these include "app data\GoogleEarth" and "app data\Sun" and a couple of others.

 

On the broader subject of redirecting the application data folder, we have been trialing this for a number of years now (for some users). We found that it works well overall, but have come across a minority of problems and some applications don't work well with it (e.g. versions of Office prior to 2007 and I recently discovered an online testing system that didn't like it).

 

Now that our network peformance issues have largely been resolved, we don't have any need for it, so we are planning to move anyone who still has their application data folder redirected, back to their roaming profiles.

 

Regards,

 

Bruce.

 

Leeds, UK.

[Bruce123]

By default, the autorecover files for MS Office apps are automatically saved into the <%USERPROFILE%>\Application Data\Microsoft\" (then Office or Word, I can't recall exactly). So if a user's computer crashes, the auto recover files get left in there, but since the location is shared with the other users, when the other users start the Office app they will get the option to recover these files, even though it wasn't there's to recover. Other than disabling autorecover feature, I don't think there is a lot you can do about it...

 

Bruce.