Re: user settings not being saved

Thanks for the info. I am doing some research on terminal services and admit
I am confused about quite a few things. Happen to have a good link that goes
into detail of how to set everything up correctly?

I posted this question over in the TS group, does the server need to be a
dedicated server or could it host another application as long as it's not a
file server.

I am somewhat confused that you need to use a different path for the TS
profile? You don't use the same profile folder to logon through TS? I have
TS installed on a test server and haven't seen any options that indicates a
profile path.

A good article, link or book would be helpful to understand some of these
things.

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]" wrote:

pete0085 <pete0085@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There are not any servers on that side.

If you don't even have a domain controller there, in its own AD site/subnet,
then this is all just going to pretty much suck overall, I'm afraid. I
would use a terminal server.

Even if there was, the
difficulty would be not all the same users work at that location. It
varies on a week by week basis.

That would help with the slow logon time, but there are other issues,
mainly accessing resources /applications over the network which can
be very slow.

We do use folder redirection which greatly helps logon times.

Sure, but if you have your users' folders redirected to a server located on
the other side of a slow WAN link, I can't imagine what the performance must
be like. You wouldn't be able to get away with that for Application Data,
certainly.


We are a smaller company with a smaller budget. I have looked into a
terminal server.

That's the only way to go here, in my opinion. If you've got Exchange
2003/2007, your users can still use their local Outlook (RPC over HTTP).

Estimated the max of 12 users would access it at
any one time with a total of 20 different users. I will talk to my
supervisor regarding this as it may be a better solution to accessing
applications and resources over the network.

Great. Try posting in m.p.windows.terminal_services for help spec'ing out
your hardware. You'll want to mention what applications your users need to
use. Note that this server should be a member server in the domain, and have
no other roles (no data should be stored on it, etc). Lock it down tightly
via group policy, too.

Can you have folder redirection without roaming profiles?

Sure. A lot of companies don't use roaming profiles.

It was my
understanding you need a folder in the roaming profile to redirect
from.

Nope. You would never redirect anything *to* the folder holding the roaming
profile anyway....it would defeat the purpose of redirection.

If you set a policy to redirect the desktop, app data, etc, if
there is no folder in the profile folder, how does this work?

Ah, but there is a folder in the profile folder - each user will still have
a local profile on the Windows workstation.

In the example below, if you have a folder called users, shared as users$
(the $ makes it hidden...) you could use:

\\server\users$\%username%\My Documents,
\\server\users$\%username%\Desktop,
\\server\users$\%username%\Application Data.

You would absolutely want to use the same folder redirection when you use a
terminal server, note.

Since you have roaming profile paths defined in each user's ADUC properties,
you must use a *different* path for their TS profiles:

If you use \\server\profiles$\%username% for your regular roaming profiles,
you would want to use something like \\server\tsprofiles$\%username% for the
same user's terminal services profile.

Never mix and match them, ever. Since you'll be redirecting the important
folders anyway, they shouldn't not notice much of a difference.


"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]" wrote:

pete0085 <pete0085@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's a different computer in a different building over a T1 link.

Then forget using a roaming profile for these users unless you
specify a path
to a server on *that* side.

The
network is slow, but there isnt' anything we can do for the other 2
branches. I admit the logon times can take up to 10 minutes for some
and that's not much fun.

In your situation, I would simply ditch the roaming profiles!
They're great sometimes, but they are not always suitable. DFS is
another option, but I'm not sure how well that's going to work nor
what your budget & current hardware allocationare.

Instead of roaming profileds, use folder redirection (to local
servers whenever possible....) for My Documents, Desktop,
Application Data. If you use Outlook 2007 against Exchange server,
it will autoconfigure the Outlook profile (or you can look into
profile generation utilities so your login script does this).


There haven't been any errors in event log. That's the first thing
I checked. Sometimes the uphclean tool gives me a message in event
viewer that the profile was remapped.

Our users often move between 3 diff locations and don't work at the
same computer, so we need to use roaming profiles.

Have you thought about implementing Terminal Services in the main
office instead?

The
administrative overhead of logging on as each user and creating
their desktop everytime for every pc they would be working at was
too much and too often they would logon somewhere and not have any
applications they needed and their outlook was not setup.

If you know of a better way to do this over a T1 link I would like
to hear your ideas. Roaming profiles makes everything easier,
excpet the logon time can be ridiculous for some users.

I can't see how they put up with it.

I don't know if this is why the settings are resetting, but they
don't do it for anyone else.

You're just lucky, honestly.

If I were to recreate their ntuser files, would I need to delete
those files off all the workstations or would the server copy over
the update ntuser files to the cached copy on the workstation.

The latter, but there's no "recreate" here.....

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]" wrote:

pete0085 <pete0085@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is a somewhat weird issue with one user where the settings
are not being saved when roaming between locations

When you say "locations" what do you mean? Different computers on
the same LAN, or a computer in an entirely different
building/location/WAN-connected network? If the latter, roaming
profiles will not be fun and I'd avoid using them.

using roaming profiles.

Normally the folder view will revert back to icons instead of by
list and the outlook signature will not be saved. They have to
add the signature everytime they go to a different location and
also add it when they move back to their normal location.

As far as I know that's the 2 things being affected, there are
probably more.

Event log errors?
RSOP.msc errors?

I know the user doesn't have a man. profile.

Any ideas to what is causing this and how to fix it??

You might try posting in m.p.windows.server.active_directory as
this likely isn't a group policy issue per se. However, here's my
boilerplate on roaming profiles.

General tips:

1. Set up a share on the server. For example - d:\profiles, shared
as profiles$ to make it hidden from browsing. Make sure this share
is *not* set to allow offline files/caching! (that's on by default
- disable it)

2. Make sure the share permissions on profiles$ indicate
everyone=full control. Set the NTFS security to administrators,
system, and users=full control.

3. In the users' ADUC properties, specify
\\server\profiles$\%username% in the profiles field

4. Have each user log into the domain once from their usual
workstation (where their existing profile lives) and log out. The
profile is now roaming.

5. If you want the administrators group to automatically have
permissions to the profiles folders, you'll need to make the
appropriate change in group policy. Look in computer
configuration/administrative templates/system/user profiles -
there's an option to add administrators group to the roaming
profiles permissions.

Notes:

* Make sure users understand that they should not log into multiple
computers at the same time when they have roaming profiles (unless
you make the profiles mandatory by renaming ntuser.dat to
ntuser.man so they can't change them). Explain that the
last one out wins,
when it comes to uploading the final, changed copy of the profile.

* Keep your profiles TINY. Via group policy, redirect My Documents
at the very least - to a subfolder of the user's home directory or
user folder. Also consider redirecting Desktop & Application Data
similarly..... so the user will have:

\\server\home$\%username%\My Documents
\\server\home$\%username%\Desktop,
\\server\home$\%username%\Application Data.

Alternatively, just manually re-target My Documents to
\\server\home$\%username% (this is not optimal, however.)

If you aren't going to also redirect the desktop using policies,
tell users that
they are not to store any files on the desktop or you will beat
them with a stick. Big profile=slow login/logout, and possible
profile corruption.

* Note that user profiles are not compatible between different OS
versions, even between W2k/XP. Keep all your computers. Keep your
workstations as identical as possible - meaning, OS version is the
same, SP level is the same, app load is (as much as possible) the
same.

* Do not let people store any data locally - all data belongs on
the server.

* The User Profile Hive Cleanup Utility should be running on all
your computers. You can download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1B286E6D-8912-4E18-B570-42470E2F3582&displaylang=en




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