Profiles extending to multiple profiles on computers

[Guest]

Afternoon, I am running a native windows 2003 with xp clients environment. I
am using roaming profiles for the users and have set group policy to delete
the profiles form the local computer when logged of.

The problem I am having is it is saving the profiles to the local computer
and then changing the name and creating 2 then 3 and on some computers 15+
profiles for the same user. They look like this

username (normal)
username.domain (not sure if this is normal or not)
username.domain.001 (then it keeps going up and creating them like below)
username.domain.002
username.domain.003
username.domain.004
username.domain.005
username.domain.006

Can anyone tell me why or how this is happening? It's not all users, maybe
100 though.

Thanks

p.s. I'm posting this in the 2003 serv gen as well as I don't knwo where
best to sit it.

 

[Richard M.]

Mike,

Unless somebody logged on with an homonym local account or an account with
the same name
but from another domain (to which the computer belonged formerly), you
shouldn't see a
"username.domain" profile.

Actually, when Windows can not use an existing profile (for instance broken
registry) it creates a new one. And add .domain in order to lift the
ambiguity with the existing one. When ".domain" already exists, it starts
counting...

Did you took a glance at the event log ?
It should list event 1517 and 1524 at the time of the user's logoff.

Usually this is caused by applications which have problem to close upon
logoff.
Thus they cause the user registry to stay busy and therefore the profile can
not be deleted.

You can try to determine which is(are) the offending(s) application(s).
(Look at which applications the users use, if they get any error at logoff,
etc)

Or you can try to use the "User profile Hive Cleanup Service"
(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1B286E6D-8912-4E18
-B570-42470E2F3582&displaylang=en)
It should even tell you the offending registry keys.

Another thing to investigate : are all the files left in the "previous"
profiles ? If not, perhaps something prevent the profile to be completly
deleted.

A last ressort could be to enable user environment debugging and take a look
at the logs...
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;221833)

Please post your findings !

--Richard.

"Mike D"