Desktop.ini and My Documents

[TechSupp]

System almost ready for next week and just looking at home folder and notice that user folders are now My Documents. I know of this problem and when setting it up a powershell script to deny users access to the desktop.ini to stop this and it seemed to be working, however now users are logging on I seem to have My Documents again? We use redirected folders etc and local profiles and did read that this goes away after first creation of that local profile? Anyone confirm that?

 

Whats the best way to stop this happening or can I just do a massive search and delete of all the desktop.ini files in the folders of the users in the home directory?

I have for the moment just added the Filename column to the explorer view to see whats what but not ideal as I need to run a file dialogue box which shows up the folder names as displayed and I cant see which one to select as it stands only in a windows explorer view.

Edited September 1, 2012 by TechSupp

[FN-GM]

Dont deny permissions this will slow your login process. We did this and it added 30 - 45 seconds onto the login times.

 

There are lots of solutions on here for it. We put all our home folders in a sub folder.

 

For example

 

-JohnSmith

--Documents

[TechSupp]

Dont deny permissions this will slow your login process. We did this and it added 30 - 45 seconds onto the login times.

 

There are lots of solutions on here for it. We put all our home folders in a sub folder.

 

For example

 

-JohnSmith

--Documents

 

Thanks, but that was one of the options given on here somewhere. Dont want to go messing with the folder structure now as everyone back in on Monday and not risking doing it remotely.

What about the quick and dirty fix of just deleting all the desktop.ini files found? Have got a routine that will do that as each user logs off but dont know if that would work.

[oxide54]

have you read this

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-server-2008/53755-home-folders-renames-my-documents.html

[morganw]

Dont deny permissions this will slow your login process. We did this and it added 30 - 45 seconds onto the login times.

 

I also had the same issue, but you can work around it by doing folder redirection manually (e.g. use a login script to set registry keys) instead of using folder redirection through group policy.

[edutech4schools]

Leave the my docs as is but add a new column to show the user name.

[TechSupp]

Yep, done that so can see names but cant see that column when using a file selection dialogue box, thatz half my problem.

[CommodoreS]

Best solution I found was to add a Logoff Script to the GPO for the users.

 

Save this as anything.vbs and then add it to:

User Config>Policies>Windows Settings>Scripts>Logoff

 

When users logoff it deletes the desktop.ini file solving this problem.

 

On Error Resume Next
Set WSHShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

DocsPath = WSHShell.SpecialFolders("MyDocuments")

If FSO.FileExists (DocsPath & "\desktop.ini") Then
 FSO.DeleteFile (DocsPath & "\desktop.ini")
End If

[FN-GM]

Best solution I found was to add a Logoff Script to the GPO for the users.

 

Save this as anything.vbs and then add it to:

User Config>Policies>Windows Settings>Scripts>Logoff

 

When users logoff it deletes the desktop.ini file solving this problem.

 

On Error Resume Next
Set WSHShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

DocsPath = WSHShell.SpecialFolders("MyDocuments")

If FSO.FileExists (DocsPath & "\desktop.ini") Then
 FSO.DeleteFile (DocsPath & "\desktop.ini")
End If

 

 

 

No good if they dont log off properly or they are still logged on when finding the home area.

[zag]

Thanks for that script.

 

This has been driving me nuts for years now.

[detjo]

As suggested in the linked thread, I use FSRM for this.

 

Docs folders are redirected to \\Server\Doc$\Staff\%username% I had an 'executable' policy in FSRM anyway (for \\Server\Doc$ to cover students as well) so i added 'desktop.ini' to that as it was only one file.

It's been working great for about a year or so

[oxide54]

As suggested in the linked thread, I use FSRM for this.

 

Docs folders are redirected to \\Server\Doc$\Staff\%username% I had an 'executable' policy in FSRM anyway (for \\Server\Doc$ to cover students as well) so i added 'desktop.ini' to that as it was only one file.

It's been working great for about a year or so

 

 

that answer was the reason i subscribed to this thread!