Roaming Profile Problem

[jawajones]

I am running two Metaframe 1.8 servers on TSE 4.0. I am implementing roaming profiles stored on a separate file server and user policies that control what desktop settings the users see when they log on depending on their job function.

My understanding is that when logging into the Metaframe servers (into the remote desktop) the profile is copied from there profile directory as specified in UMFD to the profile directory on the Metaframe server in %systemroot%\profiles\%username%. Then when the user logs off the network the profile is copied back from %systemroot%\profiles\%username% to the profile directory on the file server. What I see occuring often times is that the users profile remains dormant on the metaframe server.

Most of the time this is not an issue, but from time to time it causes a problem, when the user has logged in and because of this, that, and the other thing has not received their correct profile and/or policy. When the user logs on later sometimes it seems to prefer to use the locally cached profile over the one on the network. Has anyone used any method that could either delete any of the unused profiles on %systemroot%\profiles\%username% on the Metaframe server, or force the users profile to be deleted when they log out? (JJ)Jawa Jones

 

[CitrixEngineer]

This is quite a common issue, and I have seen many potential "fixes".

The most effective one I know of is to simply incorporate a del %systemroot%\profiles\*.* line into the nightly reboot script - on NT4 TSE a periodical reboot is essential.

Hope this helps

 

[jawajones]

Thanks that makes sense. The only thing I was concerned about in doing that is that my Default User profile that the user receives seems to reside in %systemroot%\profiles on the Metaframe boxes. I had thought it got pulled from the centralized roaming profile location but I was wrong. I accidentally deleted this recently when clearing all the dormant profiles New users then received an error stating that a profile could not be located and were disconnected.

Is there a way to write the script to exclude certain directories? I'm not very affluent in scripting. I get the jist of it but I don't know the syntax too well. (JJ)Jawa Jones

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I tend to put in slightly bodgy fixes, like copying the administrator, All Users and Default profile folders to \temp, deleting everything else, then copying the folders back again. This is dead easy to do in a script - just use the DOS commands.

There are much better, slicker ways of doing this, but at least it works (after the server has rebooted, and IF there are no "stuck" profiles, in which case the SID has to be removed first).

Most admins I know use delprof, from the res kit. Here's a little info

http://is-it-true.org/nt/atips/atips299.shtml

The major issue with it is covered here;

http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBE/Tip2400/rh2401.htm

And there's a reg key you can change - but I've never actually got this to work properly (I don't believe it does!) HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Winlogon\DeleteRoamingCache: REG_DWORD: 0x1

Hope this helps