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I have a user that was using Windows XP until yesterday. The computer ended up getting a virus (again) and so I replaced it with a spare Windows 7 machine we were preparing for somewhere else. The Windows 7 machine is freshly installed and fully updated. When the user signs in with their domain profile the Windows 7 machine just loads a temporary profile each time. Restarting and logging off and back on does not fix it. Also there's no registry key or folder created for the user.

I doubt this makes a difference, but I have Offline Files disabled. Oh, and the server hosting Active Directory is a Windows Server 2003 R2 x64.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get the machine to load the user's profile?

Gup3rSuR4c
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  • are you using roaming profiles? or any other type of profile manager? – Split71 Apr 27 '12 at 19:00
  • Yes, the profile is configured for roaming. – Gup3rSuR4c Apr 27 '12 at 19:06
  • The user's profile on the server is 7.8GB, if that makes a difference? Although, I doubt it should since Offline Files is disabled it shouldn't try to grab any of the files. Right? – Gup3rSuR4c Apr 27 '12 at 19:08
  • Maybe this will help too, the virus that the computer got was the kind that hides all files and folders. I ran Unhide and it recovered a lot of files, but somehow managed to miss all the user's files on the old machine. Browsing through the user's folder on the server shows all files and folders as hidden as well, but I'm not sure if that's the default setting anyway? – Gup3rSuR4c Apr 27 '12 at 19:12
  • Are you using mandatory profiles? What are the Share and NTFS permissions on the profile share? Windows 7 is trying to create a new user profile (because XP and 7 profiles are incompatible and not interoperable) so I would look at these items; whether or not the profiles are mandatory and whether or not the Share and NTFS permissions are correct. – joeqwerty Apr 27 '12 at 19:37
  • _The_ server hosting active directory? You might want to consider adding another! – Bryan Apr 30 '12 at 18:38
  • Well, this server is on it's "death bed" and will be replaced soon by two new 2k8 R2 domain controllers. – Gup3rSuR4c Apr 30 '12 at 19:07

3 Answers3

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Vista / 2008 introduced a different profile, so you wouldn't be looking at issues with the original profile as the Win 7 client will create a new profile and put that to the server (appending .V2 to the path).

In my experience, the Event Viewer has told me everything I need to know about profile-related issues (or at least given me enough to Google the issue). The problem is that the number of potential causes is vast, but most likely related to permissions. Today, for me, it was a full disk on the client OS.

With the detail you have provided, all that can be suggested is to check the event viewer for "User Profile Service" related events and see what the OS is complaining about.

john
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  • I did see that the server now has a .V2 folder for the user, so it's trying to do something. I did look at the event log, but under the wrong group, so, I'll have to double check it when I get to the computer again. – Gup3rSuR4c Apr 27 '12 at 21:30
  • Those events should be in the Applications group. Seems odd that it has created a temp profile, yet still created something on the server. Have you tried logging on as different users, with and without roaming profiles? – john Apr 28 '12 at 06:13
  • Also, does the user have permission to their v2 profile on the server? – john Apr 28 '12 at 08:11
  • The user did have permissions to the profile and was also the owner. Logging in as other users worked fine. I think the user's profile might have been just way to old, corrupted, etc... – Gup3rSuR4c Apr 30 '12 at 18:35
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You might try as a troubleshooting step to rename the Terminal Services (Remote Desktop {if newer version of AD}) path to something slightly different like changing it from userbobsmith to userbobsmithA, and creating a new empty profile folder I often do this, and it confirms for me that there's no server issue or permissions issue with the user, also if the user is able to successfully login using the new folder, the most common cause I see with the similar scenario is ridiculously long file names in a temp folder, like appdata.

Matt Hamende
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Well, in the end the issue was resolved with a new profile. The employee in question recently got married so she asked me to change her last name. I just made a new profile and everything worked like magic.

Gup3rSuR4c
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