My Documents - Redirect to N: instead of "\\nas\Stu_drive\test_student\" on startmenu

[burgemaster]

Hi all,

All student have a homedrive which is their "N" drive. This is all fine..

 

BUT when they goto start/my documents the path in explorer is "\\nas\student_drives\test_student\file.doc"

instead of

"N:file.doc"

 

Does anyone please know how to correct this?

In GP It is currently set to "Redirect to the users home folder", Ive tried %homeshare% etc but with no luck...

[glennda]

You need to set it to %homeshare%%homepath% or the otherway around i can never remember - it won't redirect to N: becuase it does the redirection before mapping the drives so can't map to N: as there is no N: when the redirection is tried.

 

T

[themightymrp]

Based on your path and what we do, I would set it to 'Redirect all users to the following location' and use \\nas\student_drives\%username%

[burgemaster]

Thanks for replies..

 

%homeshare%%homepath% - this still redirects to "\\nas\student_drives\05\00a" when they click My docs

'Redirect all users to the following location' and use \\nas\student_drives\%username% - this when you save seems to change the path and remove the %username%

 

Could anyone please test something for me?

Could they click the "My documents" link on the start menu and then enter any folder.. does the path then change to the full path (eg.\\nas\student_drives\05\00a\test) or does it stay as N:test ?

 

Many thanks

Edited December 17, 2010 by burgemaster

[burgemaster]

no-body want to test there network for me

 

Well anyway, just been playing with in the registry to redirect to N:

 

Dim WSHShell

Set WSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

WSHShell.RegWrite "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal", "N:\"

 

It looks like this works in testing. but it doesnt seem to take effect until Explorer is closed and then opened...

Edited December 17, 2010 by burgemaster

[Bruce123]

We do something like that:

 

My Documents -> H:\system\my documents

Desktop -> H:\system\desktop

 

and on some users accounts we also redirect cookies and application data to H:\system\Cookies and H:\system\application data

 

Where H: is is the user's home drive.

 

I know that MS docs refer to the possibility of a home drive not mapping in time for the redirection to take place, but we've never had a problem (in WinXP and Windows 7).

 

However, as you discovered, Folder Direction in Group Policy doesn't allow you to specify a network drive as the target (only UNCs with/without env variables), so in order to implement this we had to create a custom administrative template and import it into a Group Policy object (which affectively changes the same registry setting you referred to, for whoever it applies to). But this could probably also be achieved equally successfully using the Registry part of the group policy object.

 

Personally, I think it is preferable both in principle and in practice to store all of a users user's data in one location (e.g. in their home folder), rather than storing their roaming profiles within one root share, homedrive another and redirected folders yet another, as I recall being advised in MS documentation I saw a few years back (e.g. \\server\users$, \\server\profiles$, \\server\redirected$).

 

The reason why you have to restart explorer.exe for the shell folder changes to take affect is because the actual shell folders that are used during a session are stored in another registry key:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders.

 

What happens when explorer starts is that it looks in User Shell Folders (which may include env variables e.g. %profilepath%\...) and expands each shell target to an actual physical path (e.g. c:\documents and settings...) and writes these values to \Shell Folders, and these are what are used.

 

So if you attempt to modify User Shell Folders mid-way through a session, then these won't actually take affect until explorer.exe is restarted, e.g. you logoff and back in again, but once that's done, it shouldn't need doing again for that user as the User Shell Folder settings will now be stored in the user's local/roaming profile. But... if you use mandatory profiles and attempt to change these values in the logon script then you may have a problem as explorer.exe will probably start before the logon script is complete, resulting in your values being completely ignored. If this is the case you may find that putting these changes in the Registry section of the of the Group Policy may resolve this particular issue, but we got around by using the custom admin template.

 

It might sound like I know a lot about area, and that because I did a lot of research into how it all works around 3-4 years ago, before implementing system I referred to at the start of my reply....

 

If you'd like a copy of our custom admin template just let me know, but to be honest, they are pretty simple to create.

 

Good luck with it

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce.

 

Leeds, UK

Edited December 19, 2010 by Bruce123