I have come across what I believe to be a major flaw in folder redirection on Windows 7 computers. I have a couple of users on a separate network that use VPNs to connect to outside entities and were losing connection to their My Documents and Desktops that are redirected to the 2008 server when the VPN was connected. The server names are already added to their "host" file, which in most cases resolves the problem. I decided to change the path for folder redirection from the server name to the IP address of the same server. The path is exactly the same as before except for IP address versus server name. Well guess what happened to all Windows 7 clients? All My Documents and Desktops were deleted (gone) when they rebooted. Not redirected somewhere else, gone, deleted. This happened only to Windows 7 users not WinXP. I have never had this happen with any other operating system. I had to restore all effected users documents from backup (luckly backups were current).

I had to try this scenario and already had a GPO with folder redirection in place in my lab environment. I basically verified some content in the my documents (which pointed to \\servername\share) and then changed the GPO to point to the IP address of the server, making it \\192.168.0.229\share and after applying that updated GPO my content remains the same and I can tell that the path has been changed to the IP adress instead of the hostname. Can you tell us any more about the problem? If you can reproduce the problem again that might be worth looking into. Also, something I think you have learned now but still worth noting: Always test things like this at all times when user data is involved :)Blogging about Windows for IT pros at www.theexperienceblog.com

The group policy is set to redirect to the local profile if the policy changes versus leave on the server and as such, this may be the issue. Strange how it only effects Windows 7 machines (no Vista in our environment, so don't know if effected). I watched on the server as a redirected My Documents and Desktop folder contents were deleting as a client was logging in and they were not moved to their local profile. The path updated on the clients My Documents to the IP address of the server (as did yours) but all contents were empty. FR of My Documents and Desktop folders were also deleted. Perhaps if group policy was set to "Leave on server" if policy changes, this would not occur? Luckily this occurred within our own company and not with the school districts (several) that we manage, although we have not yet deployed Windows 7 to the school districts. We are, however, planning to.

Hi, Thanks for posting in Microsoft TechNet Forum. You should configure your GPO correctly, if every step is right, it would work. so you could refer to the following link: How to Configure Folder Redirection Hope it helps. Regards, Alex Zhao TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi, Thanks for posting in Microsoft TechNet forums. As this thread has been quiet for a while, we assume the issue have been resolved. If you meet other problems, you could post a new thread, and we are willing to help you. BTW, we’d love to hear your feedback about the solution. By sharing your experience you can help other community members facing similar problems. Thanks for your understanding and efforts. Regards, Alex Zhao TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.