Server 2008: Profile reset query

[GreenMint]

Hey guys, just for anyone who is an administrator on a Windows 2008 server, how do you go about resetting profile if anyone has problems, ie: the "group policy cannot be loaded" etc.. error that prevents users logging in.

Our network manager is insistant on just taking over ownership of their profile folder and deletinng it, which while it does work, makes me think something isn't right, spoken to a friend who is an ICT Tech another school, they do this maybe 10-15 times a year, here it is 20+ a day and something just isn't right.

Could anyone please shed any light on why our Student's profiles may be corrupting so so easily?

 

[Hulkster]

Are the clients XP or Windows 7? Are you getting any temporary profile errors?

There are quite a free possible causes. Have you examined the event logs?

On an affected user where you get message about group policy failing, have you tried a gpupdate /force, or gpresult /Z to see if it is loading at all?

Sometimes issues are fixed just by deleting the local copy, other times I change the profile path in AD. Other times I need to look to the registry (when it's a temporary profile error)

 

[ecksmen]

Hey guys, just for anyone who is an administrator on a Windows 2008 server, how do you go about resetting profile if anyone has problems, ie: the "group policy cannot be loaded" etc.. error that prevents users logging in.

Our network manager is insistant on just taking over ownership of their profile folder and deletinng it, which while it does work, makes me think something isn't right, spoken to a friend who is an ICT Tech another school, they do this maybe 10-15 times a year, here it is 20+ a day and something just isn't right.

Could anyone please shed any light on why our Student's profiles may be corrupting so so easily?

The correct way of removing local profiles is to go into system properties, Advanced Tab > Settings and then select the profile to remove and click delete.

If you want to remove stale local copies delprof command line tool (useful for shared computers & schedule task) http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5405

User profiles on 2008 can be caused by .bak files in the registry and is fairly simple to fix..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947242

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows
To resolve this problem, follow these steps:
Log on to the system by using an administrative user account other than the user account that is experiencing the problem.
Back up all data in the current user's profile folder if the profile folder still exists, and then delete the profile folder. By default, the profile resides in the following location:
%SystemDrive%\Users\UserName
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type your password, or click Continue.
Locate the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Under the ProfileList subkey, delete the subkey that is named SID.bak.

Note SID is a placeholder for the security identifier (SID) of the user account that is experiencing the problem. The SID.bak subkey should contain a ProfileImagePath registry entry that points to the original profile folder of the user account that is experiencing the problem.
Exit Registry Editor.
Log off the system.

Another common cause of profiles corruption / slow login is incorrectly configured AV and incorrectly configured Active Directory (Sites & Services) & global catalogue placement.