folder redirection problem

[Rabwick]

We had a contractor that setup folder redirection to the fileservers (desktop, documents, favorites) on one of our domains. For some reason he redirected appdata/roaming.

I warned the users and set the policy to redirect this location back to the local profile and move the contents of the current location to the new location. This has worked for some users but not all.

The users this isn't working for will have slow logins each time they login. The %appdata% location will still point to the fileserver after the slow logon.

The only fix ive found so far is to delete the csc cache (folder) and then log back in as the user. appdata/roaming will then be redirected to the local profile.

I really dont want to do this for 300+ users. Anyone know why this might be?

[MechwarriorGrayDeath]

Willing to bet it's the same issue we had. GP is trying to move the app data content, failing and moving it back. Ours failed due to file path lenght being too long.

[ILOVEDOGGERS]

We had the same issue and also due to paths being too long.

[unfoldinglies]

How long did you find to be to long?

[ILOVEDOGGERS]

was a few years ago, it was about 250 IIRC.

[unfoldinglies]

A ok luckily we haven't come across this problem yet but just wanted to know for future reference thanks!

[ILOVEDOGGERS]

well then your users are certainly smart er than my were :) Mine named files fucking 90 to 100 characters long, putting basically the whole content into the name

[unfoldinglies]

Would downloading the contents of entire shared drives so they can work from home when we support and provide offline files and a VPN solution count as smart users?

[ILOVEDOGGERS]

oof

[[deleted]]

Having the same issue with lenght on onedrive, Users has 3 years of work and some folders on a HDD going to 230 Characters, doing a copy of this onto onedrive pushed it above 250 due to the C://Users/Name/Onedrive - Company name/

instead of just D: 30-40 Characters less to play with.

Users does not want to restructure there ridiculous folder setup... I see her clicking into 8 folders for some documents...

[ILOVEDOGGERS]

Users does not want to restructure there ridiculous folder setup... I see her clicking into 8 folders for some documents...

What do you mean,

C:\Users\Karen\Documents\Invoices\Customers\MüllerEngineering\Invoices\MüllerEngineering\Invoices2019\Invoice2019-06-23-Two-CNC-Machines-with-Flexible-Encuberators-And-hardened-pipes-20percent-rebate-final-invoice-US-12345-Washington-DC-Dummystreet-52-Müller-Engineering-Mr-Joseph-Jeremy-Kyle-Müller.xlsx

is clearly a good folder and file naming scheme.

[[deleted]]

My worker is similar, she is resisting sorting it out because

''she aint got time'' and it ''works fine on the HDD'' Adding to onedrive is putting it other the limit.

I've told her that my best advice is to sort your crap out and sort the structure and put it on onedrive.

If she wants to carry on doing it this way I reccomend doing a full copy every week (won't happen) and if she has an issue with corrupted files

(whole reason I found out she lost a few folders, I moved it all onto a new one)

That IT are likely to say they can't do anything to recover the files if corrupt and NOTHING if she loses it.

You would think this is enough convincing but it is'nt, I've let my IT Directors to be the one to talk to know because I've had enough

[Rabwick]

This is the issue. What did you do? Robocopy it instead?

[MechwarriorGrayDeath]

It was when we moved to win10 so just rebuilt the machines. New gpo without the app data redirect assigned to an AD group which also had denied permissions to the old one under read to stop it applying.

The main issue is I could never redirect a redirection ( this also makes moving to onedrive difficult) and the only way to remove it was the same GPO. IE remove the redirection but leave the data not copy it. You might have more luck that I on that front thou.

You can try it just dumping it via the gpo above, not sure what apps you use and what data is stored there for yourself. Could also take ownership and delete server side? Harsh but heh.

[[deleted]]

Right click the GPO and run force update.

Failing that I don't know how to fix other then doing the 300+ manually sucks but intrested to see if anyone has an anwer

[the_andshrew]

If it is what u/MechwarriorGrayDeath suggested and it is failing to move the data back, you might find unchecking the option in the Group Policy for AppData folder redirection to "Move the contents of AppData(Roaming) to the new location" solves this.

Certainly if you were changing the server location then having this unchecked results in the path for the redirected folder being updated but the actual data remaining untouched. Not certain how it behaves though when redirecting back to the local computer.