ROBOCOPY Errors

[itgaz]

Hello Everyone,

 

There is a long, drawn out story behind my issue, but I'll just cut right to it. The network in my organization is running Windows Server 2003 and the workstations are Windows XP SP3. For about two and a half years now we have been having a problem with the application Robocopy. It seems to be corrupting profiles while they are in transit, if that makes any sense. Our system is set up to have a roaming profile, located on the server, that is used to create a local profile on the workstation with the user's "My Documents" folder static in a separate location on the server. When user accounts are created, their NTuser.dat file default size is roughly 712kb, if my memory serves. What happens is somewhere in translation (either when the roaming profile is being copied to the workstation during the login process or when settings and changes are saved during the logout process) the profile information is corrupted and the NTuser.dat file reverts to 256kb, which "technical experts" have said is indicative of a corrupted profile. Symptoms include, but are not limited to, loss of all settings and permissions (including internet/outlook access), inability to open PDF files and-well, too many to list on a forum. Although we have been able to narrow them down to the same issue, no two instances are necessarily the same. Sometimes the user only loses internet access, sometimes just email, sometimes just a few profile settings are lost. It seems as if they are logging in with a temporary profile with even more restricted-usability? A few troubleshooting steps we have tried are adjusting the pagefile size, toggling speed/duplex settings in the switches and workstation NICs, re-imaging all the computers on the network, recreating all user accounts on the network, registry edits on all computers on the network and a lot more that I can't remember off hand. The only fix that we have been able to find for it is temporary, and that is purging the local profile from the workstation and deleting the any NTuser (NTuser.dat, NTuser.ini, etc.) file from their roaming profile. Does anyone have any suggestions? At this point the cost in man-hours is is around 30-40 a week. Since the temporary fix only takes about two to five minutes to do, you can see how much of a headache this has become and I am getting somewhat desperate. I am a novice at best when it comes to networking, so if there is something i need to elaborate on, feel free to ask and i will answer to the best of my ability.

 

ANY advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[SYNACK]

How is robocopy involved? User prfiles are copied across using a standard copy operation. Robocopy is a seporate comand line tool.

[tmcd35]

I saw this earlier and thought the same thing. As for corrupt profiles I've always put them down to being a feature of running a Window network, if anyone knows how to eradicate the problem I'd like to hear it myself.

[SYNACK]

how to eradicate the problem I'd like to hear it myself.

 

Mandatory profiles.

[itgaz]

@ SYNAK

 

My fault; another symptom that we saw when this first became an issue was multiple command line interfaces opening one after the other, then they would all close before you could read anything besides the word "Robocopy" which lead me to believe that Robocopy was the culprit. Then i learned that it was a microsoft application and through other troubleshooting efforts came to the conclusion that Robocopy was the tool used to transfer the profile information and it was being interupted or otherwise trifled with. We only see the command line windows rarely now. I could and would just trump it up to random corrupted profiles as a fact of life if it did not occur so often or happened at every branch of the company, but there are multiple transfers of people from branch to branch and they all say it only occurs here. Do you know if there are any specific and frequent causes?

 

Also, what do you mean by Mandatory Profiles? If nothing else comes of it, thank you anyway. Just knowing that Robocopy shouldn't really be associated with this is helpful.

[SYNACK]

It can be caused by large profiles, congested networks and impatient users. This can help: Download: User Profile Hive Cleanup Service - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

 

Also look into your logon scripts which is probably where the robocopy command line is comming from. Turn off roaming profile caching in GPO and use this Delprof2 – User Profile Deletion Tool | Helge Klein | Home of SetACL on a startup an shutdown script to clean up local copies of the profiles on machines. With all of this in place there should be less issues.

 

Manadatory profiles are locked profiles that can't be configured by the users so you have one template profile that is used for everyone with default settings that they cannot change. This can lead to faster logons and way less hassels in the long run for certain usecases like lots of irritating users trying to break everything and fill up servers with rubbish.

[tmcd35]

It can be caused by large profiles, congested networks and impatient users. This can help: Download: User Profile Hive Cleanup Service - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

 

 

We used to use this and it helped, didn't completely cure the problem but I did see a noticeable improvement. Unfortunately its not compatible with Windows 7.

[itgaz]

Thanks , a lot for the information. I will see what out of that I can use ( I only administer the network, I don't "own" it, so I have to use only "approved" tools). Either way, thanks. I will let you know if it works.