Roaming Profiles in Offline Mode?

[bombergirl]

I have configure my users desktop settings on a new gpo on my AD. I have personalise the desktop settings and let these users logon to my domain as roaming profiles.

Today I have been asked to configure these settings as offline mode. That is, when the server or network is down. Users are still abled to login as per normal. I have try doing that today, by removing my network cable and logon to my domain, but my user profiles settings goes haywire. My wallpaper is not set, users are seeing the customise start menu instead of the classic menu.

Is there any changes that is needed to be done? Or i have to configure my GPO settings on my local machine instead of at the server. I have application running that ties with this profile. Once the network is down, my application will not start in the startup menu.

 

[gmail2]

I'm open to correction here, but I'm pretty sure that you can't do this. If the roaming profile is unavailable, for whatever reason, the PC will attempt to log you on using the local cached copy - however any changes made will not get replicated back to the server. This could be detremental if the My Documents and Desktop folders are part of the roaming profile.

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to do this? Surely a networked PC isn't much good without any network connection !! Or is this just incase the network goes down, to minimize interruption?

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Get your Irish Poetry Published
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[bombergirl]

What i want to do this is because we have one site that is experiencing power outage quite often. So we need to implement that. If what you said is true, i guess i have to configure my GPO settings on the Windows XP CLients instead.

 

[gmail2]

one site that is experiencing power outage quite often

I still don't quiet understand how this would help. Is the power outage only to your comms room or ... ?

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Get your Irish Poetry Published
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[bombergirl]

I have created domain users with mandatory roaming user profiles. I have GPOs settings push down from my Win 2003 Server to my users's XP Machines.

I need to make sure that these desktop settings are in place if we experience network problems (like switch is down, etc). However this doesn't seems to be the case. When doing my testing for offline mode (by plugging of the network cable), i got the error message that windows cannot locate the server copy of my profiles and is creating a
temporary profile for me. When i see the desktop, all my desktop settings goes haywire, wallpaper is gone, Control panel can be access, etc..etc.


However if i rename the ntuser.man to ntuser.dat and did the above offline settings, all my desktops settings are in place. However the bad point is, my users can create folders on the desktop and this in turn will get upload to the roaming profiles shares when the network is back. I can't allow them to do that as i have about 400 users.


Can ideas that i can overcome this. Many thanks.

 

[gmail2]

OK, I understand what you're saying now. One solution to the users creating folders on the desktop or in My Docs would be to exclude those folders from the roaming profile. You could do this either by re-directing them (only folders that can be re-directed are Desktop, My Documents, Application Data and Start Menu) or by excluding them from the roaming profile - which would mean that the documents would be stored locally - not too sure if this would be an issue for you or not though.

Personally, I would have though that if you lost network connectivity, regardless of whether you had a mandatory profile or not, then group policy settings would not get applied. So I can't honestly explain why this is happening.

However, I think maybe you're concentrating on the wrong area. If the power is cut, how do your PC's stay on? Are they on a UPS? Also, I presume that your server(s) are located in a comms room with your switches. And the comms room has a UPS - which the servers are connected to? Couldn't you plug your switches into the UPS also? Also, without network connectivity there isn't really much users can do is there?

If I had the choice of putting my desktops on UPS or my intrastructure on UPS the infrastrucure would win every time. I know that you want to minimize interruption to users but if your backend devices suffer damage as a result of constant power cuts, then everybody will be affected anyway. If I were you I'd try to get a backup supply for your network devices. Or find out why the power supply is so unstable. In an age where we rely so heavily on technology, I don't think many companies would put up with constant power cuts. What country are you located in?

Anyway, this is just my humble opinion for what it's worth. Sorry I haven't really provided a solution to your problem, but hopefully I've given you some "inspiration"

Irish Poetry - Karen O'Connor
Get your Irish Poetry Published
Garten und Landschaftsbau

 

[bombergirl]

gmail2, thanks for your reply.
For this project, we are only given the rights to upgrade the old Pcs from Win NT to Win XP, and these PCs itself is running applications. The application will go in offline mode when the network is down. After it goes online, the application will upload all those data collected during the offline mode to the server.

Yes, all these PCs have UPS connected, and sad to say, the network connectivity is beyond my control as these are maintain by other vendors.

For folder redirection, what can it do? As these profiles are shared by 200 Users in 2 different sites. I cannot afford to let them have the access to create folders everyday, thats why i make the profiles mandatory.