Windows 7 Folder Redirection (GPO)

Question

I have been fighting this issue for a day or two now, so I am looking for some insight. I am taking over admin duties in a domain of 800 users, and the previous admins really did not employ much of any GPO settings for the clients of the Domain.

In each site, there is a location on the file server where "Home" folders were manually created. EX: \server\home\enduser

Whenever a user got a machine, the admin would manually right-click on the "My Documents" folder and manually enter the path to the home folder.

We are planning to start putting Windows 7 machines on the Network, and I am wanting to automate as much as I can, everything that was not done in the past.

Since everyone has exising "Home" folders I have been fighting and trying to get Folder Redirection to work with a new Windows 7 machine (In a Test OU). I am getting all kinds of errors and I can't get the Windows 7 "Documents" folder to redirect to the users EXISTING home folders.

As I stated earlier, all of the Home folders were (and still are) manually created on the File Server and are set with the following Security permissions -

Domain Admins - Full Control euser (end user) - Modify (Everything but Full)

Can someone point me in the right direction on the proper setting to put in the Folder Redirection GPO to get this to work with the Existing Home folders.

Answer 1

When I was looking into something similar, when migrating from XP to 7, I found that we needed 2 policies with WMI filtering in them to identify 7/XP machines.

Maybe you can look into that a bit more as an alternative due to the profile directory changes from XP -> Vista/7

More info

Answer 2

I started testing this folder redirection and basically, Microsoft wants you to use Server 2008 for your Windows 7 clients. The only way through is to manually map the folders for the users because Windows 7 uses "documents", "Music" and other names that Windows Server 2003 does not understand... I ran my gpo policy results wizard and found the following error message on the component status:

"Folder Redirection did not complete policy processing because the user needs to log on again for the settings to be applied. Group Policy will attempt to apply the settings at the user's next logon.

Additional information may have been logged. Review the Policy Events tab in the console or the application event log for events between 3/8/2010 4:27:23 PM and 3/8/2010 4:27:24 PM"

If I look at the User configuration/windows settings/folder redirection, i see an error:

An unknown error occurred while data was gathered for this extension. Details: Unexpected folder name Music

That tells it all....

Answer 3

Does using basic redirection and pointing towards \server\home\ not work? If not, what errors do you see?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771969.aspx