Late last week we started getting reports from users that their home directories (H:) are not getting mapped. A restart would sometimes correct the problem, sometimes not. Today we are having much more complaints on this. I found that, if after a restart, they dont have their H drive, they can logout immediately log back in and it will map. A restart may or may not have the same affect. Digging further into this, the HomePath variable is not getting set when H drive fails to map. On logon where H has failed: HOMEDRIVE=C:HOMEPATH=\Users\testuser On a login where H is successful: HOMEDRIVE=H:HOMEPATH=\HOMESHARE=\\domain.local\Users\Students\2012\testuser I have the drive and path set on the user objects in ADUC. Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon" is Enabled as has been. I have searched around for information but anything that I find is from WinNT/2000 era. I have 2008 R2 SP1 DCs and Win7 SP1 Pro clients. I would appreciate any help. Thanks.

From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/101507/en-us NOTE: HOMESHARE could contain a local drive instead of a server and share. If no home directory is specified, Windows NT uses the following values by default: HOMEDRIVE=<drive where Windows NT is installed> HOMEPATH=\users\default HOMESHARE= Do you see any error in your eventlog, and when that happen does the user is authentified againt anoter DC ? (like the second on it's NIC, or a backup controller in the same zone) I wonder if another DC might be in a replication problem and does not hold that information (homeshare) MCP | MCTS 70-236: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring Twitter - @yagmoth555 () Blog: http://www.jabea.net | http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/

There are no errors in relation to this w/ the Event Logs - workstation, DC or file servers. I did see something once where the Computer GP threw an error, but doing a GP Results shows the policy wholely applied (besides the Folder Redirection). I have watched the logon server and the home directory has failed to map when auth'd to different DCs. -Rob

Have you checked the health of your DC's and checked that they are replicating as Yagmoth mentioned? I does sound like if it is very random that it could well be that one of your DC's does not have the information. As this has only just started happening has there been another changes to your system e.g. windows updates? 8B17

Thanks for the help, everyone. I have checked the health of the 4 RWDCs and all are well. I also verified replication by making a change on a user and connecting to each DC and everything is replicating fine. The setting on the profile tab is correct for everyone that I have checked. There is indications of problems from DCDiag as well. I can get it to fail to map after a restart 90% of the time. A user that did not get the mapping can immediately logout and log back in and the drive mapping will appear. However, a subsequent restart of the computer may result in another failure. This points me to a delay in communication, but I cannot pinpoint it. Especially when sometimes it works after a restart. This initially started on Friday (4/26) morning - after Windows Updates were applied to servers and workstations early that morning. Only one site reported it that day and the rest reported the issue on Monday 4/29. However, I use two different sites to test the updates with and did so earlier in the week on Monday 4/22. Those sites did not report the problem until Friday. The only difference there is that they only have RODCs at those sites. I looked into all of the patches for workstations and servers and nothing completely relates to this.

is it always the same workstations or does it change?8B17

I have never seen this when the values are properly assigned on the "Profile" tab of ADUC. I wonder if the user is logging on with cached credentials, because the client cannot locate a domain controller. Richard Mueller - MVP Directory Services

would that not show in the event log at logon as it would be unable to load gpo's and locate a dc?8B17

I would maybe try that; Windows 7 Clients intermittently fail to apply group policy at startup - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2421599 or there http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/393e6042-dea0-4285-9aeb-2ddf50434f6b/ MCP | MCTS 70-236: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring Twitter - @yagmoth555 () Blog: http://www.jabea.net | http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Sorry I didnt get back yesterday...left sick. Anyways, its random computers...sometimes it happens sometimes not. Never occurs after a logout/login....only occurs (sometimes) immediately following a restart/shutdown. We got less calls on it yesterday and I had the techs check with people and there havent been much reports of it. Today seems to be even less and they techs are checking with them again. So Im not sure if something worked itself out or whatever, but its strange. Also, before yesterday I could get my test system to fail the mapping 90% of the time. Though now I haven't been able to get it to fail. When the H drive fails to map, other network drives do map - its only the home directory that fails. I dont think they are using cached cred because they usually get a black background when that occurs, which they do not, and, they also get other drive mappings. Also, on a session where the home dir fails on my test system I made a simple script that will check DFS and DNS and everything checks fine. I already had the "Startup Policy Processing Wait Time" enabled and set to 60 on my test system when it was consistently failing. I thought this would be an early fix, but didnt seem to affect.

We spoke with a bunch of users at different locations. The problem seems to be non-existent now. I cannot reproduce on my test system either. I dunno... perplexed. Nothing was changed.... -Rob