Terminal Server and Profile Problems

[kethry]

Our NT Terminal Server went down in flames and we were forced to move everyone to 2000 Terminal Server without working out all the bugs first.

Several of our users get this message when trying to log in:

\\profile path\Personal cannot be copied to C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Personal. Access is Denied.

They are then told they will get a temporary profile and all changes will be lost when they log out.

Anyone encountered this before?

The other major problem we are having is with our Outlook. About half our terminal server users cannot even open Outlook. It just says "Cannot start Outlook". There is no pattern to this and it is driving us crazy! Any suggestions will be more than appreciated.

Heather Laidlaw
Seattle Repertory Theatre

 

[CitrixEngineer]

A good place to start would be to use Filemon to track down precisely where access is being denied.

Get it from

http://www.sysinternals.com

- there are full instructions at that site.

TIP: NEVER run Filemon on a busy server - it tracks access to every single file!

Hope this helps

 

[TheOtherKiwi]

I would test both of these problems by:

a) creating a new test user and seeing if they have a problem - the profile path definitley sounds like a rights issue

b) if the test user has a problem then allocate them to the Domain Admins group (or a suitable god-like group) and retest both scenarios

c) if the problems disappear then check the rights asignments carefully and experiment there

d) if they still have problems check the install of Outlook on Terminal Server, specifically regarding the use of the Windows Installer Transform file and any settings made there. Also check the profile settings in the users account details. Do you have a profile set up for the usual login as well as for the terminal server login as this is not necessary (unless you want them to be different!).

 

[SirLee]

For your outlook problem:

what version of MS-Office/Outlook are you running? Don't use Office 97 on a terminal server. it won't work properly. You have to use Office 2K. I suspect that office 97 locks certain files it uses exclusively. If another terminal user starts the same application office is trying to access the locked file and that will generate an error. We had these problem in ms-excel 97. I would suspect the same problems in Outlook 97.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Correction; Office 97 works perfectly on a Terminal Server if it is installed correctly!

These locked file errors stem from the fact that either the app was not installed in change user/install mode, or the application script was not run, or the user profiles were not correctly configured.

Hope this helps!

 

[kethry]

We've discovered the problem is in the profiles of our users. When we were on NT server we had created a temporary virtual drive that things like printing and templates lived in for that session. However, even if we go edit it in regedit it simply reverts back to the old values when the user logs in. Highly frustrating!

 

[CitrixEngineer]

That's because the profile is loaded into the users SID area of the registry - not the HKCU key that you would usually edit!


Hope this helps