users losing settings in roaming profiles. 1

[brea]

I have a wierd problem where a small number of users are losing settings out of their profile. We have a Terminal Server farm with about 8-10 servers.

Users login and out all day and a small group of them, at various times, log back in and are missing their outlook and custom app settings. These are the only 2 apps these users use BTW.

We can go in and reconfigure their profile but this is an excalating annoyance that should not be happening.

Thanks for any input.

 

[bjoernf]

How do u handle profiles? Are they redirected? On the AD User Objects, under "Terminal Services Profile", have u set the path to the profiles, e.g. "\\server\share\%username%", or are you just using one terminal server? Are there multiple profile-folders for the user, e.g "user", "user.000", "user.001" etc. in the documents and settings-folder on the terminal server?

Profiles could be corrupted, resulting in all new profiles. Are there several terminal servers without profile redirection, then there will of course be different user profiles on each terminal server. Tell more about your case.

 

[brea]

We use a path like listed above... \\server\share\exactusername

Is there a difference between defining the username and using %username%?

We have multiple Terminal Servers and in most cases there are not multiple profile-folders for the user. In some cases I see a folder named user.pdf as well as their main folder but this is on the server share.

I understand that by keeping a local copy of the profile on each server that you will have different settings. Considering that we use roaming profiles though this should not be the case for 90% of the users. We are kind of still discussing the idea of keeping a locally cached copy of the profile on each TS. If the roaming profile would not be available for any reason then the server could use the locally stored profile. Again this will cause inconsistincies but that is what we are talking about. I would want to know if the roaming profile location is unavailable while others think that having the locally stored copy would allow them access without understanding that this would only mask the real problem and create others down the road by now having local profiles with various settings on each server.

My problem centers around users that log out and when they log back in their settings are gone from their profile. I am not totally sure why this is happening. Maybe the user shuts the computer off before the save is completed, maybe these users have problems with their internet connections.

I am unfortunately tasked with finding an answer and at this point there are too many variables.

I can also show that I am getting userenv errors in my logs stating the following.

Windows cannot unload your registry class file. If you have a roaming profile your settings are not replicated. Contact your Administrator. Detail: Access is denied. Build Number ((2195))

Windows cannot copy the file C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\NTUser.dat to location \\nas-3\profiles\%user%\NTUser.dat. Contact your network Administrator. DETAIL: Cannot create a file when that file already exists.

and then this matches the one above.

Windows cannot update your roaming profile. Contact your network administrator. Detail: cannot create a file when that file already exists.



Windows did not load your roaming proile and is attempting to log you on with your local profile. Changes to the profile will not be copied to the server when you logoff. Windowsn did not load your profile because a server copy of the profile folder already exists that does not have the correct security. Either the current user or the Administrator's group must be the owner of the folder. Contact your network administrator.

and then the following to match

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.

It's pretty clear what is causing the last one and in every case I go in and find that the owner of the folder needs to be changed. Not sure why the owner would change in the first place but I can fix it.

Thanks for the reply. Hope this gives you more information to go on.

 

[sboggs]

Just wondering if you had solved your problem, I am seeing this more frequently now as well.

 

[brea]

well yes and no. What ended up solving the problem on a large majority of the users was that we made the user the owner of the profile directory rather than having the administrator or some other account be the owner.

We would just login as the user, go to the profile path location and make the change.

Also, and at this point some of my problems might be running into one another, I found that some users when they logged off would not unload the profile properly. By going into the registry I found several profiles that had not unloaded. Through regedt32 you could go in and unload the hives. I would then make them the owner and the problem would go away in most cases.

Hope it helps.