Group policy to redirect desktop

[srochford]

Yes, I know it's easy - except it isn't :-)

 

We have 3 sites; students get a home folder on a server at the site where they do their main qualification - this is created by a script when the user is created.

 

What I'd like to do is redirect the desktop to either \desktop or \\\\username but I can't see how to do this.

 

It looks easy - you should just be able to redirect to %homeshare%\desktop - except you can't; group policy for redirection doesn't have access to this environment variable so redirection fails.

 

For now, I've just added a couple of lines to the login script:

oShell.regwrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Desktop","%homeshare%\desktop","REG_EXPAND_SZ"

if not ofso.folderexists("n:\desktop") then ofso.createfolder("n:\desktop")

 

- this works but it feels kludgy :-)

 

Is there a better way?

[fooby]

Instead of using the environment variable - maybe try using just the letter?

 

For example where you write %homeshare% write U:\

 

then again - if your system works already :-D

 

fooby

[netadmin]

Here is the complete method I use to redirect the desktop:

1. Edit user GPO

2. Go to user config

3. Go to folder redirection

4. Right click folder redirection and click properties.

5. My first setting is: redirect all to same location

6. My second setting is: create folder for each user.

7. My path is: \\servernamehere\Staff Private\{username} for staff and

\\servernamehere\Student Private\{username} (students and staff are different OUs).

 

It works very nicely for me. Let me know if this is any help at all.

[srochford]

Thanks both.

 

Drive letter doesn't work - it gets changed to the sharename of the user setting things up (help says this is because drive letters may not be mapped at redirection time which is fair enough but life would be so much easier if they mapped the drives earlier!!)

 

OU idea is good - we do separate students into OUs on basis of site. Unfortunately it's not 100%. What happens sometimes is that a student will enrol on a course based at Wembley and their home folder gets created there; their account is put in the Wembley OU. They later transfer to a course at Willesden; if no changes are made everything will still work. What sometimes happens, though, is that a student will report problems accessing files and someone on the helpdesk will move their home folder. This is fine but they never remember to move the student to the right OU so the desktop redirection would fail!

 

It does give me an idea; I could run a script each night to check if a user had got the "wrong" OU/home folder combination and fix it

[Geoff]

You might also want to look at using DFS to consolidate your share name space. eg, what I end up with is

 

\\carrhill\shares\profiles$\%USERNAME%\desktop

 

despite the fact I have two servers (one for staff, one for pupils).

[fooby]

@Geoff how do you do that? I had a DFS with 3 servers with the same data on shared as \\domain\shared (and below this had \desktop for a single one desktop for many users) but from what you have written in your post you can have different folders / different servers with data in the same DFS namespace?

 

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit :S but a link to what you might have done would be appreciated

 

fooby

[Geoff]

You can't, you have to hack round the problem with NTFS junctions and Hard Links.

[fooby]

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Implementing-DFS-Namespaces.html

 

After some googling it appears Windows Server 2003 R2 has such a feature called Namespaces.

 

I think this is where I might be playing next

 

fooby

[contink]

Given that you can assign a homeshare as part of the AD account profile surely you could utilise that to set the homeshare to specific drive and then use the drive letter.

[djm968]

Following the implementation of a terminal server in a RM CC3 network, I configured separate TS profiles and needed a way to redirect the Terminal Server desktop to the desktop folder located in the RM profile for various groups.

 

Staff at the school had been allowed to save to their desktop even though the school had been advised that this was not best practice and now staff were now asking if they could have access within the TS environment to documents that were saved on their desktop.

 

This presented a challenge, as the staff user profiles were all over the place and there was no consistency so redirection using Folder Redirection via GPO was going to be difficult to implement.

 

I wrote this logon script to extract the profile path from active directory and set the desktop shell folder registry key for various groups.

 

Not sure if it will help in your situation.

rm_desktop_redirection.vbs

[doktajimmy]

Hmmm,

All I am trying to do is make a folder with shortcuts and redirect all pupil desktops to that folder......easy yeh.....NO

 

I have redirected Start Menu in GPMC no problem. As a test I just redirected the desktop to the same folder as the start menu......nothing happens. Just My Docs and IE.

 

How much more simple can it get, Start menu redirect works, Desktop redirect to the same folder doesn't!! Aaagghh.

 

Has anyone else had similar issues?

[zag]

Hmmm,

All I am trying to do is make a folder with shortcuts and redirect all pupil desktops to that folder......easy yeh.....NO

 

I have redirected Start Menu in GPMC no problem. As a test I just redirected the desktop to the same folder as the start menu......nothing happens. Just My Docs and IE.

 

How much more simple can it get, Start menu redirect works, Desktop redirect to the same folder doesn't!! Aaagghh.

 

Has anyone else had similar issues?

 

tried different folders?

[doktajimmy]

tried different folders?

 

Yup, first off I tried SYSVOL\......\scripts\pupil desktop

 

then tried redirecting to the working SYSVOL\......\scripts\pupil menu

 

just tried \\users\pupils\pupil desktop

 

no joy....clearly permissions are not an issue either, as the Pupil Menu folder redirect works