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We are transitioning from WinXP workstations to Win7.

Our users have home directories set up as drive letter G:, assigned via Active Directory. The server is Windows Server 2008.

We have a user that was using a WinXP laptop. She could get into her home directory fine (log in, my computer, G:)

We gave her a Win7 laptop. She logs in, and first it doesn't run a network-deployed program called Authenticat.exe (used in conjunction with our filtering system to automatically authenticate with her credentials). No error messages, no known reason why it won't run. We run a batch file to execute the file "manually" and her session is fine until she logs off and back in (then we have to re-run the batch file). Maybe this is a hint of what's happening, I'm not sure.

When the user goes to Computer, there is no G: drive.

My supervisor said he's seen where security restrictions above a user's home directory may affect some Win7 systems. I went through and made sure she could navigate manually to her home directory, then had her log off and back in; still no home directory.

The home directory path is set up similar to: \homeserver\home\staff-faculty\division\username

As of right now she can get to her home directory by navigating to \homeserver and stepping through the folders to "username", but it will not map the home directory automatically.

Am I missing something in permissions that the user needs in order to get that to work? Under XP it seems to work fine, and the manual navigating to the folder seems to work for her. Anyone else run into similar issues migrating to win7 with Win2008, active directory 2008?

Note: another user on the site suggested that there is an issue with the hidden desktop.ini file in the directory; he's been fighting an issue where the home dir stays blank when the user looks at the folder contents and seems to happen if the user switches between XP and 7. There is no desktop.ini file in this user's home directory, so I can't, per his workaround, delete it. But thanks for the suggestion if you read this question!

sysadmin1138
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Bart Silverstrim
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1 Answers1

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Have a look here at the section titled "Group Policy Scripts can fail due to User Account Control" and see if it's applicable to your situation:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766208(WS.10).aspx

The article is in reference to Windows Vista but the same scenario is applicable to Windows 7 if I'm not mistaken.

joeqwerty
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  • +1 - I highly suspect that Bart's users have local "Administrator" rights and, as such, the "mapped" "drive" doesn't up in the limited user context that Explorer runs under. See http://serverfault.com/questions/95379/why-wont-my-logon-scripts-map-drives-under-windows-7 and http://serverfault.com/questions/182758/what-does-registry-setting-enablelinkedconnections-do-on-a-technical-level for some background. – Evan Anderson Dec 03 '10 at 19:46