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Using Roaming Profiles On Laptops When Offline

Answered Using Roaming Profiles On Laptops When Offline

  • Tuesday, May 01, 2012 3:35 PM
     
     
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    We are setting up Windows 7 in our environment and would like to use Roaming Profiles on laptops to ensure that user preferences are backed up (we will be using this in conjunction with Desktop and Documents Folder Redirection).  I've noticed that on laptops, the user is presented with an error message when they are offline:

    "User Profile Service
    There was a problem with your roaming profile. You have been logged on with your previously saved local profile. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator."

    I understand that this happens since the computer cannot connect to the server.  However, clients will see this and think that it is an error condition and call in about it.  I also don't want to numb clients to error messages since I do want them to contact us if there is a real/legitimate problem - but this is not a real problem since it is simply warning the user since it is offline.

    How do others deal with this in their environment?  

    Thanks!
     

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  • Tuesday, May 01, 2012 2:26 AM
     
     
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    We are setting up Windows 7 in our environment and would like to use Roaming Profiles on laptops to ensure that user preferences are backed up (we will be using this in conjunction with Desktop and Documents Folder Redirection).  I've noticed that on laptops, the user is presented with an error message when they are offline:

    "User Profile Service
    There was a problem with your roaming profile. You have been logged on with your previously saved local profile. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator."

    I understand that this happens since the computer cannot connect to the server.  However, clients will see this and think that it is an error condition and call in about it.  I also don't want to numb clients to error messages since I do want them to contact us if there is a real/legitimate problem - but this is not a real problem since it is simply warning the user since it is offline.

    How do others deal with this in their environment?  

    Thanks!

     
  • Tuesday, May 01, 2012 8:15 AM
     
     
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    Below article might provide you insight.

    http://www.grouppolicy.biz/tag/roaming-profile/

    Awinish Vishwakarma - MVP - Directory Services

    My Blog: awinish.wordpress.com

    Disclaimer This posting is provided AS-IS with no warranties/guarantees and confers no rights.

    • Proposed As Answer by Mr XMVP Tuesday, May 01, 2012 10:31 AM
    • Unproposed As Answer by Aakash Shah Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:47 PM
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  • Tuesday, May 01, 2012 10:00 AM
     
     
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    Hello,

    for GPO questions better ask in http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverGP/threads

    And if you have problems with roaming profiles that can also happen if you delete them without also deleting the belonging registry keys. But can easy be done with http://helgeklein.com/free-tools/delprof2-user-profile-deletion-tool/, of course this is not supported from Microsoft.

    Best regards

    Meinolf Weber
    MVP, MCP, MCTS
    Microsoft MVP - Directory Services
    My Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/mweber/

    Disclaimer: This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties or guarantees and confers no rights.

    • Proposed As Answer by Mr XMVP Tuesday, May 01, 2012 10:31 AM
    • Unproposed As Answer by Aakash Shah Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:47 PM
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  • Tuesday, May 01, 2012 1:47 PM
     
     
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    Below article might provide you insight.

    http://www.grouppolicy.biz/tag/roaming-profile/

    Awinish Vishwakarma - MVP - Directory Services

    My Blog: awinish.wordpress.com

    Disclaimer This posting is provided AS-IS with no warranties/guarantees and confers no rights.

    Awinish: I did not find a relevant article on the page you linked to.  Can you please elaborate?
     
  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 2:28 AM
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    Hi,

    This is expected. It seems like that there is no settings that would allow you to disable this notification.

    You might want to consider keeping it in place anyway, since it might be beneficial to know when you run into a legitimate profile issue (i.e. you are online but you are still receiving the same error message)...

    Why not tell your users about the message and keep it there?

    In addition, I have conclude the below two thread similar for you to refer to:

    Logon offline with roaming profile

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/1b8cc838-4878-40d5-87ed-577180b75dfc

    Plain roaming profiles, vs folder redirection and offline files?

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverDS/thread/2673bc34-8d73-42fc-80fd-720472aed5d1

    Regards,

    Yan Li

    TechNet Subscriber Support

    If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here.

    Yan Li

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 4:35 AM
     
     
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    Hello Yan!  We are concerned about numbing our clients to notifications that their computer continuously shows them since they may then potentially not report a problem when a notification that does require our attention appears.

    It appears that we may need to reconsider using roaming profiles on laptops.

    Thanks!
    • Edited by Aakash Shah Wednesday, May 02, 2012 4:47 AM
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  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 6:35 AM
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    Hi,

    As we can see that for laptops, roaming profiles could not meet your requirement. Maybe folder redirection is the right choice.

    Please refer to the below links for more about folder redirection and offline files:

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/smallbusinessserver/thread/f0ebb296-4455-4f99-a6c5-bf7c442b42cd

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverGP/thread/88ac65bd-3aff-48fc-8479-370d78cd0b1b

    Regards,

    Yan Li

    TechNet Subscriber Support

    If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here.

    Yan Li

    TechNet Community Support


     
  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 7:33 AM
     
     
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    Hi Yan!  I do plan to use Folder Redirection with Offline Files for the Desktop and Documents folder.  However, I was looking for a good way to back up other preferences and settings too (I am looking to avoid FR on the AppData folder).

    Thanks.

     
  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 8:38 AM
     
     
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    My earlier link was to point you best practices for roaming profile in the Alan's blog.Secondly, there is no way this notification can be disabled and the way i can think of is educating users to ignore when they see such warning.

    Awinish Vishwakarma - MVP - Directory Services

    My Blog: awinish.wordpress.com

    Disclaimer This posting is provided AS-IS with no warranties/guarantees and confers no rights.

     
  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 11:00 AM
     
     
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    > How do others deal with this in their environment?
     
    We use local profiles and folder redirection, so all "user critical"
    data is stored on servers and made available offline.
     
    regards, Martin
     
    NO THEY ARE NOT EVIL, if you know what you are doing: Good or bad GPOs?
    Wenn meine Antwort hilfreich war, freue ich mich über eine Bewertung! If my answer was helpful, I'm glad about a rating!
     
  • Thursday, May 03, 2012 3:02 AM
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    Hi,

    If you don't want to educate users to ignore when they see such warning, and try to use folder redirection, then we could suggest on how to redirect folders.

    For Windows 7 and Windows 2008 and R2, there are 13 folders that could be redirect, and appdata folder is an independent folder that could be redirect, so don't worry about this folder.

    For more details I would like suggest you refer to the below link:

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732275.aspx

    Redirect folders will be offline available by default.

    Regards,

    Yan Li

    TechNet Subscriber Support

    If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here.

    Yan Li

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Thursday, May 03, 2012 3:15 AM
     
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    Hello Yan!  I am familiar with setting up Folder Redirection. However, I've stayed away from redirecting the AppData folder since I've heard problems with it. 

    We are currently considering not using roaming profiles and using a backup script to backup a few other user setting areas (the Desktop and Documents will be redirected and handled with Offline Files).