Domain Profile Problem

[Guest]

Hi all,

I recently upgraded a small office from Office 2000 to Office 2003
Professional, and installed Service Pack 2 for Windows XP clients.

I was asked to create roaming profiles for all users, so I:

1) Setup a domain and joined all computers to the domain.
2) Logged in as Administrator on all machines and copied the profiles to a
network share on a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller.
3) Configured full control permissions for all appropriate user profile
folders, and the files within those folders.
4) Pointed the roaming profiles to the appropriate share locations.

The problem is that when I log on as a user from a client machine, the
appearance reverts from "XP style" to "Classic style", the Control Panel
refuses to switch to Classic display mode so that I can configure mail
settings, settings in Folder Options like "Show Hidden Files and Folders" are
not saved (they revert the next time that I start Windows Explorer", Outlook
displays "Microsoft Office Outlook Cannot Start", amongst other problems...

I deleted the roaming profile paths for the users so that they would end up
with local profiles, and replaced their cached roaming profiles with their
original local machine profiles, but the same problems still occur. It
doesn't happen when a user logs on to their local computer, ONLY WHEN THEY
LOGON TO THE DOMAIN.

All Group Policy settings are at their defaults (it is a brand new domain).
I checked for settings related to Profiles, but found nothing significant.

The server is top-notch and the network speed is 100 Mbps full-duplex.

I had to switch all users back to local profiles logging on to their local
computers for now because nobody could get any work done.

Roaming profiles are ESSENTIAL in this scenario.

Has anyone had this problem before? I'm stumped...

Thanks so much!

Ryan

p.s. Do I really have to pay $99 U.S. just to ask Microsoft a support
question? That's what the Help and Support center says.

 

[Steven L Umbach]

I would like to help but don't know the answer offhand and your question is
not really security related. What I do suggest is that you try crossposting
in the setup_deployment and server.general newsgroups. --- Steve

 

[Guest]

Sorry for posting in the wrong category. I did not see the "Setup and
Deployment" area earlier.

Ryan

 

[Guest]

My first thoughts would be whether you do really need roaming profiles; as
you've discovered they are a major source of headaches, therefore I would
only implement them if there is no workable alternative. It isn't just the
setup either, it's the ongoing maintenance-costs owing to problems being much
more difficult to diagnose. Furthermore, I've yet to see a setup where
Outlook (non-express) works acceptably with roaming profiles, UNLESS it's
working in Exchange-client mode as opposed to POP3 mode.

If you don't want to go the Exchange route, then Thunderbird offers an
alternative email platform which is fully network-compatible, that is, a
user's email AND settings can be stored in a home-folder on the server, so a
user sees the right email whichever machine they use. Provided the home
folder is accessed as a drive-mapping, this does not neeed roaming profiles.

Whether you need roaming profiles depends on whether you need users' own
settings and cusomisations to migrate between computers; if not, then you
probably don't. As for the data, if the setup is server-centric then users
should be storing their data on the server anyway, in which case there is no
need for "My Documents" to be downloaded each time a user logs-on.

 

[Guest]

I am using an Exchange server for e-mail, so Outlook should work properly
with the roaming profiles.

I have tried many times to convince the client that roaming profiles are not
worth it for the company, and that they may be used once in a blue moon.
Unfortunately, it's not my decision, so I have continue trying to figure this
out.

Thanks for your input!

Ryan

 

[Steven L Umbach]

I don't know if this will help but you might also want to look at Group
Policy redirected folders instead of roaming profiles [if they will buy into
it] . It has some advantages as explained in the links below including logon
performance. --- Steve

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/ar...e-Folder-Redirection-Windows-Server-2003.html
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/upfrfaq.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/xpusrdat.mspx

 

[Guest]

Thanks...folder redirection through Group Policy was going to be my next
attempt.

I'll take a look at your links and give it a shot...there is still hope...

Thanks again!

Ryan

 

[Guest]

The other point about roaming profiles is that a high degree of uniformity is
needed for them to work well.

The computers should preferably all have the same display resolution and
font-size settings, as these settings do not roam.

Software needs to be uniform too, if computers have different releases of
(for example) MS Office then weird things are pretty-much guaranteed to
happen when a user changes seat.

Big corporates generally don't have an issue with this as they tend to
roll-out hundreds of PCs at once; smaller sites do.