Hello, we are testing Windows 7 with roaming profiles and redirected folders. We have a group policy that redirect the Appdata, Favorites, Desktop, MyDocuments, etc. folder to a network share. Everything works fine and fast until the client is online. Our problem are the notebook users who work offline. Windows 7 didn´t have a local copy of the profile. If I logon offline with my cached credentials, I receive an error that the profile can´t load, because the network path is not found. In XP the client logged on with a temporary profile, but this is not possible with Windows 7. In this case, no desktop icons, Favorites, Start Menu, etc. are available and users can´t work. My Documents are available through the offline files, but it´s not possible to make the profile available offline. Does anyone have an idea how to solve this issue? Thank you for your helpDirk

roaming profiles for notebook users? really?

What´s the difference? We want to save the profile on a share that users have their own settings, favourites, etc, if they receive a new one.

i guess i wonder why bother having a roaming user profile for notebook users, when the notebook would go wherever the user goes?but you prob need to consider offline files/sync. re-direct up to the share, and cache it back down again only for notebook users, so they have a copy available when offline.at least, this is for the re-directed content. the profile itself (by default) should not be re-directed and should not be temporary, unless you've done other stuff in GPO to prevent profile propagation or delete stale user profiles.creating temporary profiles is not a typical result from implementing roaming, in my experience.

You´re right, that that the notebook would go where the user goes. But if a notebook is stolen or a disk crashs, then the user has just logon to a new one and he/she has all settings, e.g. printer, favorites, desktop icons and so on. In previos versions the recommendation was to prevent making the profiles available offline, because of sync and owner problems. Has this changed with v2 profiles? It´s easier for the IT staff to have roaming user profiles, because if you have a few hundreds notebooks, it´s much more effort to configure each user settings than load an existing profile from the share. Our experiences in the last years with XP were positive regarding roaming profiles and notebook users.What is best practise in your company regarding notebook users?

for desktops, we use a redirection for non-roaming users. for roaming users, we use redirection plus roaming. for notebook users we dont' use roaming but instead use redirection plus offlines files/sync.we don't use mandatory nor temporary profiles at all.mydocs/favs/desktop are redirected to server (and cached back if a notebook user)profiles (the ntuser.dat component) are available offline for us.we've not had issues with sync/ownership (although that is an issue if you don't redirect the mydocs/desktop as it gets quite large and affects logon/logoff times due to lots of files to sync up/down)we do have very well connected WAN with centralised storage servers.we use AD point & print to serve printer connections which are per-user rather than per-machine.and because we are a technology company most users are local admin on the pc.prior to xpsp2, roaming profile ownership issues did cause us pain.we have just commenced migration to Win7 and ironing the kinks out for roaming users at the moment.we're redirecting mypics/mymusic/myvideos out to d: so that (typically large and non-business) content stays local and doesn't get backed up.

After different tests, we found a good solution. We now make following folders offline available: Desktop, Favorits and Appdata. The problem before was the share with the existing XP profiles. We disabled the "make available offline" on the existing share. That´s why the profile didn´t synchronize. After creating a new share and activating the offline cache the offline profile works fine. Dirk