Roaming Profiles

[Tezdread]

Hi, I am trying to setup roaming profiles on my windows 2000 network and am a little stuck.

I was trying to follow this infomation from the microsoft site.

"In Active Directory Users and Computers, add the user profile path location in the User Environment Profile dialog box. This part I am not understanding? Where is the User Environment Profile dialog box to be found? Do I have to go into the properties of one (and each of the users) or is it somewhere else?
Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[brontosaurus]

in the Profile tab of the User's account properties. I believe you can import/export user accounts (and edit some of their properties) with the LDIFDE and/or CSVDE tools on the DC.

 

[Tezdread]

Sorry but that makes less sense to me than the info on Microsft's site.

What I have tried is make a shared folder c:\winnt\profiles
I have then added this to the profile path. When i logon useing the account that points to this profile, I get a message saying something about being unable to load the proile and i will have to use the local one?

I'm not at home now, but when I am i will post the exact messages that I get.

If anyone has found or can explain in lay mans terms what I need to do it would be much appriciated.
Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[pdyson]

I'm a newbie to win2k also, but do know where to find this.. on the properties of each user under profile..you determine the path to there profile and to there home directory...hopefully someone can tell us how to do this without doing it individually. You don't need to type the person's name ex: \\servername\foldername\%user%..so you can just copy and paste into each users profile tab.

This there a shortcut anyone??

 

[brontosaurus]

Do you have a Domain or a Workgroup?

 

[JayKarabin]

I believe what Brontosaurus is moving towards, if you have a domain network, you can do this by implementing GPOs. Group Policy Objects to take care of your tasks, rather then doing it manually on each account.

 

[Tezdread]

Hi

I do have a domain and after a few other problems I can connect to the domain ok.

I have tried the above suggestion pdyson but for some reason it is not working.

This is where I'm at so far.

I have created a share folder c:\winnt\profiles at the moment the permissions are set to everyone with full control and also I have entered in permissions for user1 full control.

I then went into the properties of user1 in active directory and then to the Profile tab, I entered the Profile path: \\myserver\WINNT\profiles\%username% when I click apply the %username% is converted to user1, then I click Ok.

When I logon as user1 I get the following two messages.

Windows cannot create profile directory \\myserver\WINNT\profiles\user1.pds. You will be logged on with a local profile only. Changes to the profile will not be propagated to the server. Contact your network administrator. Ok, then.

Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.

I have tried using the full path to the profile and that doesn't work either. \\myserver\C:\WINNT\profiles\user1)

I am totally stuck with it?!?! all the info I can find on the web suggests that I am doing it right but obviously I am missing something.

Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[CitrixEngineer]

There's definitely a permissions problem somewhere (please excuse me for stating the obvious!).

It looks like you've setup the profiles correctly - did you set the profile path on the Terminal Server as a Terminal server profile, or did you just fill in the profile path? (the two are very distinct - hope this is clear).

Try using Filemon from

http://www.sysinternals.com

(do this out of hours, because Filemon logs ALL file activity on the server!). You can export the log to a *.csv file which can be opened and sorted in Excel. Weed out all "ACCESS DENIED" or "FAILURE" messages and take it from there.

I hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[hads]

Hi,

Not sure if I am on the right track here (late, few beers) but if I understood you correctly you shared C:/WINNT/profiles but then specified "\\myserver\WINNT\profiles\%username%"

If you shared C:/WINNT/profiles as "profiles" then shouldn't it read \\myserver\profiles\%username%

Just something to check.


01101000011000010110010001110011

 

[Tezdread]

Thanks for your input guys....

I am still no closer to getting it sorted! well doin my head in now.

I have tweaked all the security settings on the folder and the drive and even moved it to another drive set the permissions on the drive so that every group and user has full control and I am still getting the same error messages when I try and logon??

I have opened the share folder from the computer that I am trying to get the profiles working on and I can copy/move create and delete any of the contents so for sure it can't be a case of permissions....

What else can I try?? Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[ChrisHirst]

Point 1 DO NOT Use c:\winnt as your profiles folder, winnt permissions are assigned and secured by Active Directory. What you need to do is to set up a folder on another drive or path on your server and share this as 'profiles' and set the share permissions to suit the groups used for the users
eg: If all users are in 'Domain Users' then give Full Control to that group, Also give give Administrators and Domain Admins full control. For NTFS permissions set them the same and allow propogation of permissions down the folder structure.
Then on the User Properties profile tab enter the UNC path to this folder (\\server\sharename) and add \%username% to it
eg: \\server\share\%username%
A folder with the users name will then be created as soon as the user logs on for the first time and the permissions set appropriately.
If you are using Terminal Services the easiest solution is to add a folder called TSC to the profiles share and add the UNC path to the Terminal Services Profile|User Profile box. It should look like;
\\server\share\TSC\%username%

Chris.

 

[Tezdread]

This is what I've tried doing....

I have a 40gig HD and it's partitioned, on one partition I have created a folder called 'profiles'

I've set the permissions so that 'everyone' (all users & groups) have full access.

When I look in 'Shares' in Computer Management I can see both the shared partition and the folder 'profiles' The path of the folder is: E:\profiles

When I go into Active, I right click on user1 and then go to 'profiles' and enter the following address.
\\myserver\E:\profiles\%username%

When I logon as 'user1' I still get the same message
"Windows cannot create profile directory \\myserver\E:\profiles\user1.pds. You will be logged on with a local profile only. Changes to the profile will not be propagated to the server. Contact your network administrator"


What else can I do?
Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[brontosaurus]

what you're doing won't work. E: is a relative drive mapping that AD doesn't understand. If you haven't already done so, set the share directly on the profiles directory with the appropriate permissions. Then, in AD, enter the address as follows \\MYSERVER\PROFILES\%USERNAME% . That should take care of it.

 

[Tezdread]

Hi brontosaurous, I had tried the same method on the root of C drive but still had the same problems.

I have found out what I was doing wrong however, and I knew it probably would be something simple.

This was what I was entering \\myserver\C:\profiles\%username%

The problem was that the C Drive was not shared as C: it had a shared name of main drive!

so the profile path should have read \\myserver\main drive\profiles\%username%

This works fine I have been able to to move the profiles folder into the WINNT folder and this works fine!!!

Thanks for all your help! Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"