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Westops
15 pts.
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Q:
Vista Business (SP1) - logging onto domain and no home folder
Vista, Desktop management, Mapped drives, Login scripts
Here's hoping someone can shed some light on this bizarre problem;

Problem: The users home folder as indicated in AD does not map on Vista Business client with SP1. (e.g. \\server\users$\username)

Description: You can map the 'home folder' manually without any problems it just won't map on login. Everything else appears to be fine, no related errors or warning in the event logs and 'gporesult' indicates all clear.

Details:
- 2003 AD / Native Dom Func lvl = 2003
- No significant events on AD servers
- Client = Vista Business SP1
- No errors related to AD/GPO or network on Vista or XP clients
- XP Clients map 'home folder' on login without problem
- GPO "Wait for network" set to enabled
- No DNS issues or problems
- No replication issues between AD servers

Side note: Some XP clients have been plagued with losing other drive mappings during login periodically as well which are done through an additional vbs script during login. To date this problem has been considered to be a 'ghost in the shell' since it is extremely random and there are numerous clients where it has never happened. Again nothing obvious in the logs anywhere. You can run the vbs script from the client and it will work everytime.

I am well and truly at the end of my sanity so any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
ASKED: Apr 23 2008  11:33 PM GMT
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Last Answered: Apr 23 2008  11:33 PM GMT by Westops   15 pts.
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Akamurph   10 pts.  |   Apr 24 2008  4:24AM GMT

I’ve seen this problem as well… Do you map the Home folder via logon script in AD or under the “Home Folder” section?

We use under the “Home Folder” section i.e. connect P: to: \\server\users\user.name but with Vista SP1 clients it doesn’t map.

I’ve edited the logon scripts with this

net use p: \\server\users\%username%

and seems to be working better with this option

 

Lonewolfbw   265 pts.  |   Apr 24 2008  3:08PM GMT

I’ve also heard about something like this - where logon scripts don’t function properly in Vista. I’ve only just begun to look into it, but what I did find in my earlier study was that it had something to do with User Access Control. That’d be the place I’d recommend starting.

 

Westops   15 pts.  |   Apr 25 2008  2:45AM GMT

Thanks Guys,

Your both make good points.

- Yes there is a problem with Vista - drive mappings and UAC. If UAC is turned on some drive mappings will not work properly. Apparently its to do with how the UAC intercepts the mapping calls. There a couple of good articles on MS Technet about this. I should have mentioned that I do have UAC disabled for the moment until we can sort out the other issue. There are a couple of known workarounds with UAC enabled, however you have to use powershell or vbs scripts and at the moment I’m not quite ready. There is also a suggestion to create separate GPO’s (one for XP clients and another for Vista) which can apparently get around it as well. However the first problem to overcome is this one.

- I do have our home folder mappings in the user account profile under the “Home Folder” section. Interestingly enough I did find an article where the author stated you should really move away from this as it’s really a ‘hang over’ from the old NT days and map your home folder in the login script / bat file. Apparently this does work although I haven’t tried it yet. The article also goes on to mention that MS is pushing the ‘folder redirection’ method and moving away from the mapping aspect. Great concept but not when your still in a mixed environment and where all users are used to using a drive letter for saving work and have been told repeatedly not to use “My Documents”, not to mention the complexity for roaming laptop users.

Looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and move the Home Folder mapping to the login script and see what happens.

Thanks all.

 
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