- Roaming Profile Version Numbers
- Roaming Profile Versions Free
- Roaming Profiles Best Practices
- How To Setup Roaming Profile
- Roaming Profile Problems
The roaming user profiles sit on a Windows 2012 R2 server. Currently those that were using Windows 7 have a.V2 folder holding all of their roaming profiles. After imaging a computer with Windows 10 and then having a user log in a.V5 folder is created, but the files that are in the.V2 folder are not moving over to the.V5 folder.
Roaming Profiles Overview
Roaming Profiles allow users of an Active Directory Domain to access their desktop and documents from any PC of the domain. It’s a powerful feature that can improve the productivity of the employees and make their lives easier. The best thing about Roaming Profiles is how they are easy to set up. Before configuring a Roaming Profile, we need to create a Share. Mar 17, 2016 Roaming profiles have also always been restricted to particular versions for particular OS combinations, although some later operating systems have been slightly backward compatible with “v2” profiles. Mainly, it is recommended that a roaming profile be restricted to the combinations of operating systems that match the defined versions.
What is a Roaming Profile
A roaming user profile is a concept in the Windows Operating systems that allows users with a domain-joined computer that allows the user to log on to any computer on the same network and access their documents and have a consistent desktop experience, such as applications remembering toolbar positions and preferences, or the desktop appearance staying the same.
Advantages
Roaming profiles copy the data from the c:users<username> folder onto the server on user logoff and back to the client computer on logon. This allows the user to logon to any computer and have a consistent desktop experience no matter which computer they logon to. This also allows the network administrators to back up the user’s data since it is stored in a central location. This makes for easier backups and allows the user to use multiple computers during their logon period without folder redirection as well the user is restricted to logon to only one computer (any computer in the domain at any one time or inconsistent behavior may surface.
Disadvantages
In Windows 2000 and later versions, the profile location is set using the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in. Windows NT 4.0 and earlier used the User Manager for Domains program. When a user logs into a computer joined to a domain, the roaming user profile is downloaded from the server onto the local computer and applied. Solution: But that is a roaming profile.The Vx versions is added to the folder based on the connecting OS version.If you see that in the profile path, then.
Downsides are since roaming profiles are a merge not a move process client machines can accumulate large numbers of old profiles. Server file transfer speed is optimized for the movement of large files. However, user profiles may contain lots of small files (cookies/favorites, recent items, etc. These files may not take up large amounts of space but in terms of performance opening/creating a file is one of the costliest of file operations.The time required to open/create a file may vastly outweigh the time to transfer the file thus slowing the merge by 90% or more. In a business or a school environment where large numbers of users logon or logoff at the same time you will experience network congestion (AKA a boot storm)
Profile Versioning
Client operating system Server operating system profile Version
Windows 10 Windows Server Technical Preview v5
Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012 R2 v4
Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 v3
Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 R2 v2
Windows Vista Windows Server 2008 v1
Profile compatibility
Profiles are compatible only between the following client and server operating system pairs: The issues occur because the profile will contain values that are used differently between the versions of Windows. The user profile will be missing default profile configuration information that is expected by the operating system, and could contain unexpected values that are set by a different operating system version. Therefore, the operating system will not behave as expected. Additionally, profile corruption may occur.
This also applies to server operating systems as well.
For example, if you try to deploy Windows 10 in an environment that uses roaming, mandatory, super-mandatory, or domain default profiles in Windows 7, you experience the following behavior:
After you use a user account that has an existing Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 profile to log on to a Windows 10-based computer for the first time, a 'v5' version of the profile is created.
By default, this feature is enabled in Windows 10 clients and uses a .V5 profile folder extension unless the feature is specially disabled. On older operating systems, the default was 'v2' unless the hotfixes that are described in the following articles are applied and the steps that are mentioned in the articles are followed.
What applies to Roaming Profiles also is applicable to mandatory, super-mandatory and domain default user profiles
Mitigations
- Use Folder Redirection in addition to roaming profiles to avoid the transfer of small files (favorites/cookies) and the larger files (video/music)
- Keep separate versions of the roaming data for each operating version i.e.
serverprofiles$%username%profileWin8
serverprofiles$%username%profileWin8.1
serverprofiles$%username%ProfileWin10
You do this by using WMI Filtering
Windows 7 Client
Windows 8 Client
Windows 8.1 Client
Roaming Profile Version Numbers
Windows 10 Client
You create a gpo for each operating system version i.e. Windows 7
2 sections to edit
Under Environment create an environment variable with
- Action: Create
- System Variable
- Name: OSVer
- Value: Win7
serverprofiles$%username%%osver%
If you use the following registry fix for client computers
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlsetServicesProfSvcParameters
new Dwdord
UserProfilePathExtensionVersion value 1
Or get the hotfix from Incompatibility between Windows 8 roaming user profiles and roaming profiles in other versions of Windows
Restart is required. Some people have stated that ending the userprofile with a will create the .v2/.v3,… automatically i.e. serverprofiles%username%profile
Sources:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2887239
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2013/07/31/roaming-profile-compatibility-the-windows-7-to-windows-8-challenge.aspx
Windows 10 and roaming user profiles don’t harmonize well. In this post, you will learn about the various traps you might fall into if you’re working with roaming profiles in Windows 10 in your network.
James Rankin
James is a consultant from the UK, specializing mainly in end-user computing, Active Directory and client-side monitoring. When not implementing projects for his company HTG, he can often be found blogging, writing technical articles and speaking at conferences and user groups.
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Microsoft touts Windows 10 as the mobile and cloud platform of the future. However, it is interesting to see how the operating system performs in traditional environments – that is, environments that you choose to deploy and manage using time-honored technologies most of us have been relying on for years.
Roaming profiles are a case in point. Microsoft was the first entrant into the market that grew up around user mobility, allowing network-based profiles to persist across multiple desktop sessions. It rapidly became a crowded space, with other vendors – such as RES, AppSense, Liquidware Labs, Scense and many others – extending, augmenting, or even outright replacing the traditional roaming profile functionality.
A roaming profile basically allows you to copy the user-based filesystem and HKEY_CURRENT_USER Registry hive to a defined network location at logoff (usually a user’s home drive area or a dedicated profiles share). This data is then copied back to the user’s %USERPROFILE% area at logon to ensure a consistent user experience across sessions and devices. To avoid problems with large files or large numbers of files, the roaming profile is often combined with Folder Redirection, allowing certain pertinent folders within the profile (usually My Documents, Pictures, and Videos) to be “redirected” permanently onto the network, avoiding the need for copying these particular folders at logon and logoff.
Setting roaming profile path in Active Directory Users and Computers
Traditional roaming profile traps ^
Traditional roaming profiles have occasionally suffered from issues regarding profile failures and have always been susceptible to “last writer wins” issues when multiple sessions are in use. When Windows writes a locally cached profile back to the file server during logoff, it compares each file pair’s timestamps and overwrites only older files.
This approach works well in the file system, but it fails miserably with the registry, because the registry is a file system within a single file. A user’s hive (mounted to HKEY_CURRENT_USER during a session) is stored in the file NTUSER.DAT in the profile. Since the registry is modified in every session, NTUSER.DAT is always written back and will be written back when any “odd man out” session is closed; the “last writer wins” (hence the name of the issue), potentially overwriting registry-based settings changes made in other sessions.
Roaming profiles have also always been restricted to particular versions for particular OS combinations, although some later operating systems have been slightly backward compatible with “v2” profiles. Mainly, it is recommended that a roaming profile be restricted to the combinations of operating systems that match the defined versions:
- Server 2003/Windows XP – v1
- Server 2008/Server 2008 R2/Windows Vista/Windows 7 – v2
- Server 2012/Windows 8 – v3
- Server 2012 R2/Windows 8.1 – v4
- Server 2016/Windows 10 – v5
Windows 10 roaming profile traps ^
When defining a roaming profile for Windows 10, everything seems to behave normally. You create a “username.v5” profile in the nominated user share and it is populated accordingly. However, you will notice a number of issues as soon as your roaming user logs in to a different machine.
Profile unload fails
It is common in roaming profile environments to remove cached client-side copies of the roaming profiles to avoid filling up local hard drives with multiple user profiles copies – especially in environments where open-access machines are in use. Typically this is done by defining the “Delete cached copies of roaming profiles” GPO and setting it to Enabled. In Windows 10, though, a hook from a process (called the State Repository Service) will more often than not prevent the profile from being unloaded.
Start Tiles fail to persist
One of the most visually obvious aspects of the Windows 10 experience is the new Start Menu and the attached Start Tiles. At first logon, most users customize this to their own preferences. However, the data for these Tiles is stored in the %LOCALAPPDATA% folder, meaning that it simply does not exist within a roaming profile. Only %APPDATA%Roaming is copied to the roaming profile store – and you can only specify exclusions, not inclusions, to this data.
Modern Apps fail to persist
Roaming Profile Versions Free
Microsoft’s new apps also do not persist in any settings within the roaming profile store. Again, these are written to %LOCALAPPDATA%Packages, which is beyond the scope of a roaming profile’s mandate. For certain modern apps – particularly Microsoft Edge (popular among Windows 10 users) – this adds to a frustrating experience when roaming settings are expected and it simply does not happen.
Corruption of the profile is common
Roaming Profiles Best Practices
When a Windows 10 user logs in, a database is created that deals with the Start Tiles, modern apps, and various visual aspects of the Start Menu (there’s also a separate database created for the Notification Center). When using a roaming profile, this database can become corrupted, resulting in problems, such as Cortana crashing, icons disappearing from the Start Tiles, or, in the worst-case scenario, the left-click Start Menu simply does not function at all.
Example of Cortana load failure whilst using a roaming profile
Conclusion ^
With all of this in mind, it seems that there are serious bugs in the Windows 10 implementation of roaming profiles that need to be addressed before the product is enterprise-ready. Optimistically speaking, it would appear that Microsoft is probably going to address these issues in the June 2016 Redstone update – when, with Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) being available, roaming would be a much more relevant subject.
How To Setup Roaming Profile
However, with a more cynical train of thought, it could be said that it is in Microsoft’s interests to intentionally hobble the roaming capabilities of Windows 10. Making it so much more difficult for those using traditional methods or those using third-party vendor tools to successfully roam the user state would mean that Microsoft has an opportunity to fill this gap with a tool of its own creation and fuel its larger goal of widespread cloud adoption. In fact, there is a tool already in beta, called Enterprise Settings Sync, which appears to do precisely that, saving the user state into an Azure Active Directory (AD). Is this the wider play and the reason that Windows 10 appears to be incompatible with traditional forms of roaming?
Roaming Profile Problems
Whichever it is, Microsoft must tread carefully. Already enterprises are holding back in some areas because of concerns about how their traditional management and deployment methods will function on Windows 10 and how much adaptation is required. Windows 10 has immense promise – but it would not take an awful lot to end up with customers hanging onto Windows 7 in the same way they did with Windows XP.