We are having an issue with a handful of Vista PCs that just seemed to all of a sudden not allow doamin users from certain Organizational Units to load their profile. When they log in they get a black background and incorrect start menu. We believe it is something with the folder redirection that we have in place through GPO, but this is fine for the same user on all other computer.It seems that users that are under the same building Ou that the problem computer is under are experiencing this profile issue. All other users from other buidlings load fine and the problem users can log into any other computers (even within the same building OU) and also have no issues. We have tried blowing away all profiles and making sure their ProfileList registry key was clearing out but even with a clean profile load the same result occurrs. We cannot do a system restore because we have that disabled. We know that reimaging the machine will take care of this but the problem pops up every other month and we currently have 5 PCs that are experiencing this.Please let me know if you need any more information.Thanks,Derek

Hi Derek, Thank you for posting,. Firstly, please let me know the following: 1. Are the user profiles roaming profiles? 2. Which operating system do the non-problematic computers us, Windows Vista or some other version? At this time, lets try the following to narrow down the issue: 1. Please check the both the server side and clients to see if there are some specific configurations of the user accounts, the problematic OU and the problematic computer. 2. This may be related to GPO settings linked to that OU. Please also check the GPO settings. 3. Please move a user in the problematic OU to another OU which has no issues and then use the account logon the problematic Windows Vista computer to see how it works. 4. Please disjoin and then re-join the problematic computer to the domain and then try to logon. 5. Join a cleanly-installed Windows Vista computer to the domain to see if the profiles are proper loaded on it. Please let us know the results. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT

Nicholas,Thank you for replying quickly. As for your first two questions: they are not roaming profiles and the non-problematic computers are also using Vista.In regards to your suggestions we have already tried all. 1.)User accounts are domain users so they will be the same no matter where they log in, as far as profile from GPO. They have no issue with any other computer, even in the same OU as problematic computer. All computers in the same OU are pulling same GPO and are imaged the same. 2.)It is not an issue with the GPO settings because we can take the same user and another computer with the very same configuration and in the same OU as the problematic PC and they can log in fine.3.)The user will pull the correct profile when they are changed to another OU and removed from their group.4.)We have disjoined one of the problematic computers, blew the computer AD account away, and then rejoined the computer to the domain with the same results.5.)As listed before, the same user can log into any other computer, newly joined or existing in the domain, without any issues with their profiles loading.One difference that we have noticed is that in the registry of the problematic computers, the problematic users are not pulling any settings under the fdeploy key in theHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\SID\ location. non-problematic users seem to have values listed under fdeploy and tend to have a data value of9000 (0x00009000).Thank you again for all of your help. I hope to hear from you soon.Derek

Hi, Thank you for your update. After checking the detailed information, I conclude the issue is not related to roaming profile and where the computers locate. Instead, it seems it is only related to where the user accounts locate. Therefore, I still think the issue should be related to GPO or the group in which the users are member. (The fdeploy key is affected by the Folder Redirection policy.) To confirm whether the issue is related to GPOs, perform the following tests: 1) Create a new user account and put it in the problematic OU. The expected behavior should be: the problem occurs. 2) Create a new OU (lets call it OUTest) and move the user to this new OUTest OU. Try again. The expected behavior should be: the problem disappears. 3) Then, we can also link the GPOs (which are created for the previous problematic OU) to OUTest. Note: Please do not change anything on the previous problematic OU. Also, please link these GPO one by one if there are multiple GPOs for the problematic OU. After linking each GPO, please test the user logon operation to see the if problem occurs. After identifying the problematic GPO, we can check the settings in that GPO (under the "User Configuration" part). Please try this and let us know the results. Hope the issue can be resolved soon. Thanks.Nicholas Li - MSFT