Roaming Profiles w/Folder Redirection issues

[PreviousPoster]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forum and am the Network Administrator at a Hospital.

I'm new to the forum and thought I'd toss one out there that's giving me troubles.

I have a Windows 2008 Native Domain. I am testing Roaming Profiles w/Folder Redirection. The issue is that I have several users that use a Laptop also need to login to other computers in the hospital throughout the day. The profiles are stored on a DFS share on the SAN. I've configured offline files on the folder redirection share so that the laptops users can have access to their files while away from the office. The problem is that when one of these users logs onto a desktop within the hospital, it sets up offline files on that desktop and has to do the "one-time" sync. As they move around the hospital, they may login to many computers. Is there a way to just have the laptops use offline files and have all other computers "not set them up"?

BTW - Most of my desktops/laptops are running XP SP3. I do have a couple running Vista SP1.

Thanks!

Philip

[rwalker76]

Hi Philip,

I'm in the process of seperating our laptops and desktops into seperate OUs to do just this. I think using a WMI filter might have been possible but decided seperate OUs was going to be easier.
We have one GPO turning offline files on at the laptop OUs and one GPO turning offline files off at the workstation OUs.
Luckily our computer names were already suffixed with LAP where device is a laptop which makes things much easier for me to sort. If you don't have an easy way of seperating laptops then WMI might be your best bet.

Richard.

[pago]

I have seen solutions using desktops and laptops in the same OU, but disabling ofllines files by default on every machine via GPO.
A 2nd GPO linked to the same OU with special settings for Laptops enables offline file settings.
That GPO is using an apply filter and all laptop account are memeber of that group.
Of course this requires ongoing group management, but could also be automated by integrating some script in the regular machine setup process
(if is laptop then add to AD group).