Windows Server 2003 User Folders

[Chrisjc]

So here is the issue at hand.

I have several domains across a WAN environment and just recently I started noticing something odd between all my Domain Controllers. Every Site in my company has a DC on site for redundancy, each server has a “Users Folder” and in there are all the users that work at that site so something like this.

USERS >

> csmith
> msmith
> lsmith

And so on… There could be anywhere from 25 users to 120 in one site alone. Now when a users logs into their PC I have the U: Drive mapped to their user folder \\servername\Us ers\%user% “I have exact users in the place of %user%”.
The folders are mapped to the U: Drive thru the AD properties on a user "Home Folder" Using the "Connect function"

So when the they log into their system they can access there user folder, now I changed the path of My Documents to the U: Drive which is the above path. Normally everything works just fine a user logs into their PC and they open My Documents and there is all there documents off the server.

However lately every once in a great while I get a phone call with a user complaining that when they open there “My Documents folder” they see the entire “Users” directory and they can navigate to their fold from there. However it shouldn’t be doing this. The path is direct, so why is it doing this in random events? Do I need to put a hold for script loads in GPO’s?

The other thing I noticed it will bring over files from the users local “My Documents” and place them in the “Users” directory… So every now and again I find myself cleaning out the directors on all my server which is becoming a real pain!

Does anyone have any insight on this issue? Maybe something I can fix thru a GPO setting or permissions?

Any brain storming or direct answers will be greatly appreciated. This one has stumped me for awhile now.

Thank you,

Chris

[maxamis4]

I assume they are all trusted DC's since they are able to go site to site to authenticate. When I ran into this problem (526 different sites) the regional DC was not able to contact the trusted DC fast enough to pull the profile for the user. The user profile will automatically try to go back to the last working DC if it can't contact the closest one which will only authenticate and not push down the policies it needs. I believe this is a known bug in windows 2000 and 2003. GPupdate /force a couple times and a log off and logon will fix it.

But yes I do agree it is a pain

[Chrisjc]

Been awhile sense I have followed this, sorry I been so busy with my Exchange roll out... anyways yes all my DC are in the same domain, what you are saying seems to make sense than it has to be a bug... but MS really hasnt come out with a patch... common... I wonder if switching all my servers to 2008 will fix this issue... what a pain...

Thanks Max, I feel bad man 526 sites... hope you have a big team behind you lol I got 2 guys in mine and we are still short, but no auth to hire more guys.

[maxamis4]

No worries. What we ended up doing is creating three sub DNS servers and created different routing host files so that if a machine could not get updated through their principle DC it would look for the DNS server and route back to the Master DC to get the proper updates.

Seems to be working now. I worked with Microsoft and its all network communication problems so check your DNS servers and network settings.