folder redirection not working correctly

[justalfe]

Hey guys i have a sbs server 2011 running for a client and for some reason i cant get folder redirection to work correctly, from my understanding once you have all the folders, desktop,documents,music.etc set to relocate everything under the gpo to a share..it should allow you to log on to any computer and the users folders should come over,and currently this is not the case!

Is there anything that you guys might think that im missing thats causing this not to happen ?

do i need to also do roaming profiles?

 

[deutschnaftula]

no you dont need also roaming profile. whats the OS?

 

[MobileTechie]

Hey guys i have a sbs server 2011 running for a client and for some reason i cant get folder redirection to work correctly, from my understanding once you have all the folders, desktop,documents,music.etc set to relocate everything under the gpo to a share..it should allow you to log on to any computer and the users folders should come over,and currently this is not the case!

Is there anything that you guys might think that im missing thats causing this not to happen ?

do i need to also do roaming profiles?

Well being pedandic, the files don't "come over". They're just centrally stored but linked to.

Like just about everything in SBS land, you're supposed to set it in the console not manually using GPOs.

Things to check are:

1. On the desktops, fire up a command prompt as a network admin, do gpupdate /force and reboot them. Log in as network admin. Log off and then log on as the user. This ensures the GPO gets applied. You should need to do this but I've found it helps. Check the results of gpupdate if it doesn't work for clues.

2. Look at the permissions on the redirected folders (Users\Redirected Folders). The user in question has to have Full Access (and be the Owner I think).

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What version of client OS?
Does it work on the initial computer you set them up on?
What folders have you specified?
Agree...flip the switch in the server manager, don't go creating a home made GPO, SBS comes with lots of pre-defined ones. You can customize folders from there on the existing GPO.


What does GPRESULT get you from the client side?

 

[Upnorth]

Agree with what's been said earlier.

If you haven't already create a test login account with admin rights and make sure this account is clean from group policy objects.
Then I would redirect just the Documents folder and nothing else and test.
If no joy then create a new shared folder to redirect to and test again.

Basically start with the minimum needed and work up, it's amazing sometimes how very minor things can stop GPO from working properly.
Usually with trial and error procedures and checking logs you get to where the problem is.

 

[pceinc]

Look at your workstation application event logs for GPO errors.

 

[RicChapman]

I run quite a few of these SBS 2011 servers, typically these problems crop up if someone has been moving accounts out of the predefined OUs in Active Directory or have been playing with the permissions on the server folders and not set them back.

Even admins can't just start digging through the user directories, they need to take ownership and grant themseves access. This usually results in quite a mess and can be painstaking to put right if someone has got carried away.

Is this happening with all accounts or just the odd one or two?

There was one particular user for me which would simply would not work regardless of what I tried and resulted in deleting his AD account and starting over. Extreme but it didn't take long to have him up and running again.

 

[pceinc]

I have a script somewhere that will reset all user permissions on a folder to explicit for the user(owner). It basically takes ownership of the folder for the user and clears all other permissions that would allow access by another user. It was designed for home folders but I don't see why it wouldn't work for redirected folders. The folder name must match the username for it to work.
I can dig it up if your interested.

 

[drjones]

Just my experience, if it saves even one persons' sanity;

Did a big migration for a client; new file server AND migrated from hosted to in-house exchange.

They had redirected folders setup.

Went to connect workstations to the new server and the files in the users' docs, pics, etc. were all several months old. Lots and lots of missing files & folders.

Long story short, the redirected folder/offline sync totally stopped working without any notice at all; docs were only getting cached locally on the workstation and NOT syncing to the server, even though the workstation said all was in sync, no errors were obvious on the server.

Did a ton of research to see WTF was happening and from what I recall reading, it's a known issue with Win7 where the offline file function combined with redirected folders doesn't always work very well.

That same redirected folder GPO also has caused a lot of very long boots for me & some clients.

Anyhow, we resolved it by joining the workstations back to the old server/domain and manually copying the files & folders over....because of course there's no way we could find to access that offline cache unless you were logged on as the user, joined to that old domain.

Just my experience, but I'm staying far away from redirected folders.

I'd much prefer my users to just keep everything on the server or set workstations to backup to the server.