Folder Redirection XP and Vista

[PreviousPoster]

Hmm - is that all? No more info in the error message or other events?

I don't have other clues right now - normally FR problems are due to either corrupt GPOs, bad nameresolution, unstable network connections, or permission problems... But in your case I'm not really sure it's any of these things.

[PreviousPoster]

Well it works great on the XP machines just not the Vista.

[PreviousPoster]

I also have some folders that I manually synced up to the network. But I removed the share on the network where those manually shared folders, on my vista machine, were pointing to. Now every time I try and delete those folders it tells me I have to be connected to the network so I can't delete them and they try and sync to a folder on the network that doesnt exist.

[ksoliz]

I Ran across this post while googling for more info on folder redirection with Vista in a W2K3 domain and since I couldn’t find much out there I thought I'd post to see if I can help...

I actually have redirection working for Vista and XP with one policy redirecting, Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Favorites. I have a single W2K3 DC running 64bit R2 and I’m admining everything from a test Vista SP1 machine in a VM on another server using RSAT. All XP machines are Pro SP2 and all Vista machines are Business SP1.

If you haven’t done so already I highly recommend reading the following articles on windowsecurity.com for details on GP with Vista.

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Managing-Windows-Vista-Group-Policy-Part1.html

Basically the short of the articles are you need to setup a central store for managing all ADM and ADMX template files. The central store will allow you to get to any of the admin templates XP/Vista from anywhere on the domain with a RSAT client. Once the central store is setup you'll need to copy ALL the ADMX files off a Vista machine to this central store. From experience once you introduce Vista machines into the domain I highly recommend you administer all GP tasks from a RSAT machine. I learned this the hard way and actually was forced to do this because W2K3 64bit doesn’t support the 32bit GP management snap-in, but that’s other story…

Another crucial component of successful folder redirection is permissions; see the following article for how to set them up correctly. This link really helped me a lot, even though its 2000, XP terminal server specific the same permission principles apply.

http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Configure-Folder-Redirection.html

Now, after I setup all the following I created a new policy under a custom OU called “Folder Redirection”. For simplicity I didn’t want two folder redirection policies for XP and Vista, I wanted one that would work for Win2000, XP, and Vista machines. Fortunately the new ADMX templates for Vista specific to folder redirection make this possible.

I used the following technet article to configure my folder redirection policy, do a find on page and search for “Create a new Folder Redirection policy”.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/fb3681b2-da39-4944-93ad-dd3b6e8ca4dc1033.mspx

A couple of tips about the article…

- When in the settings tab of the “Documents” section there is a check box you’ll need to check that says “Also apply redirection policy to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems”. This is crucial for getting XP and Vista redirection settings to coexist.

- Also I would recommend unchecking the box that says… "Grant the user exclusive rights to <folder>". If you leave this checked only the user will have full NTFS rights to view the folder meaning as an administrator you won’t be able to browse anything under that user folder.

After setting up the policy the way you want find an XP and Vista machine to test on, login to each do a gpupdate /force /boot and after they come back up login and test them out.

I also turned on one more GP setting for my folder redirection policy… Under User Configuration > Admin templates > System > Folder Redirection “Use localized subfolders names when redirecting Start and My Documents”. I set this to enable. Here is the explanation of this policy…

This policy setting allows the administrator to define whether Folder Redirection should use localized names for the All Programs, Startup, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos subfolders when redirecting the parent Start menu and legacy My Documents folder respectively. If you enable this policy setting, Windows Vista will use localized folder names for these subfolders when redirecting the Start Menu or legacy My Documents folder. If you disable or not configure this policy setting, Windows Vista will use the Standard English names for these subfolders when redirecting the Start Menu or legacy My Documents folder. Note: This policy is valid only on Windows Vista when it processes a legacy redirection policy already deployed for these folders in your existing localized environment.

I hope this helps others out…