Troubleshooting Change and Configuration Management

Folders Are Not Redirected

You configure a user managed by a Group Policy object to have his or her My Documents folder redirected to the server share \\ServerName\MyDocs\Username. When the user logs on to the network, his or her My Documents folder is not redirected to this server.

Using Group Policy you can redirect the My Documents, Application Data, Desktop, and Start menu folders from a user's profile to a server-based Universal Naming Convention (UNC) location.

Possible Causes:

The client computer is running Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, or Windows 98.
Group Policy is not applied.
The network share is unavailable, and Offline Files is not enabled.
The user does not have appropriate access rights to the share on which he or she wants to redirect the folder.
There is a disk quota on the target folder.
You use a mapped drive for the target path rather than a UNC path.

Diagnostic Tests:

Confirm that the client computer is running Windows 2000 Professional. Group Policy does not work on earlier versions of the Windows operating system.

Check to see if any Group Policy settings are applied that include Folder Redirection configuration information.

Run Gpresult.exe in verbose mode. You should see a section in the output that starts with the heading:

The user received "Folder Redirection" settings from these Group Policy objects:

If this is not present, check to see why no Folder Redirection Group Policy is applied.

Check to see that the correct Group Policy objects containing Folder Redirection configuration information are applied and that the expected folders are redirected.

Run Gpresult.exe in verbose mode. Refer to the Gpresult.exe documentation to analyze which Group Policy objects contain Folder Redirection information, and their locations.

The following is sample output that contains this type of information:

The user received "Folder Redirection" settings from these Group Policy objects:

    EU-RedirectedDesktop-Marketing

        Revision Number:    16

        Unique Name:    {C19SADC-A8E8-11D2-9BEB-00A024070A22}

        Domain Name:    ntdev.microsoft.com

        Source:        Domain

    EU-FolderRedirection-Building26

        Revision Number:    11

        Unique Name:    {FBEE2508-BCAA-11D2-B3EE-00C04FA3787A}

        Domain Name:    ntdev.microsoft.com

        Source:        Domain

    Desktop is redirected to \\policy1\desktop\%username%

    My Documents is redirected to \\policy1\mydocs1\%username%

    My Pictures is redirected to \\policy1\mydocs1\%username%\My Pictures

To check for network connectivity with the computer holding the redirected folder

Ping this computer with the computer's IP address to test base-level IP connectivity.
Ping this computer with the server name to test Domain Name System (DNS) name resolution.

If the server that contains redirected folders is offline, and Offline Files is disabled, users cannot gain access to their data. To enable Offline Files, see "User Cannot Make Files And Folders Available Offline" earlier in this chapter.

If the server that contains the redirected folders is offline, and Offline Files is enabled, then users should have access to their data as long as those files are accessed when the users were previously online. If these files and folders are not available, see "Files Do Not Synchronize" earlier in this chapter.

Verify that the user has enough file security to access folders to which his or her data is redirected. You should assign a user Full Control security access on the access control lists (ACLs) of the root of the share where he or she will redirect data.

Check to see if there is a disk quota enabled on the volume of the computer that contains the redirected folder. If there is a quota enabled, make sure that this quota is not exceeded. If it is exceeded, increase the quota or have the user delete some files.