Win 10 - user profile sync offline - pronto help needed

opethdisciple · 28 Jul 2016 at 15:39

Need some help pronto here.

I am trying to get users profiles to sync offline on windows 10 laptops.

I created a new GPO that enables offiline files, but how do I get the profile now to sync offline?

opethdisciple · 28 Jul 2016 at 15:52

I can login to the user account.

If I turn off the WiFi to simulate the user being out of the office, it doesn't display the user profile when I login.

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Is this what I'm trying to do?

opethdisciple · 29 Jul 2016 at 14:39

Really need to get this to work.

All I'm trying to do is get the users roaming profile to sync offline when the user is not connected to the domain.

Any ideas?

opethdisciple · 29 Jul 2016 at 14:59

Yep domain. We basically have laptops which the end user will use whilst in the office and then when they are out of the office their last profile will load etc... an then they come back in to the office it will then go and do a sync.

opethdisciple · 29 Jul 2016 at 16:20

Banzai_Joe said:
any reason you have it that way?
We're on a domain, but use local profiles.
Our userdocs are redirected to a network share by GPO. If using offline files then they will copy across to the laptops local profile.
If you work on the docs from home, then next time you come onto the network they will resync and usually notify you that there are different versions of the same doc and offers you choice on how to proceed.

Again, roaming profiles are a ball-ache mate, so unless you have compelling reasons to use them, i really wouldn't bother.

Hmm yep sounds like it. I'm trying to convince our CEO this is a bad idea as it's his idea.

I've spoken to him but the problem is he doesn't understand the technicalities and doesn't care either. I'm gonna make an executive decision and set up local profiles only.

Thanks

opethdisciple · 29 Jul 2016 at 20:51

Banzai_Joe said:
Lol, good man.
The domain profile installs locally anyway, so there is zero need for a roaming profile, especially if you don't get users hopping onto numerous different computers.

Hmm this is where I am confused. When I speak of a local profile I mean setting up the laptop, not on the domain and create a local user account on the laptop as if this was a personal laptop.

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Now I get the impression your referring to the local profile that windows creates on the machine when a user logs in using their domain credentials. You can see the 'local' profile in the 'Users' folder on the local PC. However when the user logs in when not connected to the domain the profile doesn't load.

Whats the way to solve this issue?

I was just going to go with creating a local account on the laptops and not connecting them to the domain.

opethdisciple · 30 Jul 2016 at 14:28

Caged said:
Roaming profiles are pointless on 1:1 deployments, which is pretty much all deployments these days. For genuine multiple users to a machine deployments use VDI.

The local profile should work fine on the laptop and the domain login details should absolutely be cached so that it works when not on the network - it sounds like a GPO is actively preventing that from happening.

This is a possibility. To be honest everything is a huge mess at this company. I've only been here 3 months. They had outsourced their IT support prior to this and the guy was coming in once a week to do a few hours work. So everything from processes to hardware to the state of their active directory is an absolute mess.

There where about 4 offline files GPO in AD. I disabled them all and created my own but couldn't get it to work. Or rather.... I did get offline files turned on, but it didn't solve the issue I was having that when not connected to the domain the profile wasn't loading.

So I must be looking at the wrong GPO.

Plus all my experience prior to this was in a Linux/LDAP environments so Windows server and GPO are mostly new to me.

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The other thing to note is, this company does not have the same sort of spending power as my previous company. Where my previous company would spend 750k on new servers we have spent 13k on upgrading our network. My previous company would chomp through ipads, iphones and macbooks like sweets and throw out perfectly good PC's because they had the smallest of faults.

Here they are clinging on to old hardware and I am doing my best on a budget to rejuvenate the network.

We don't have a big need for expensive solutions and the money wouldn't be approved anyway. Plus if I can avoid setting up VPN's and VDI desktop environments that would be great as I primarily was brought in to help out the Linux admin not spend all my time providing support to end users.

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So just so we are on the same page, your saying by attaching the laptop to the domian and logging in to the laptop for the first time, if the user then went out of the office and tried to login to the laptop again it will load the users profile (desktop files/folders etc...) using the locally cached profile?

Because this is the thing that isn't working.

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My solution at present is going to be creating a local profile on the laptop not attach the laptop to the domain and then the user can transfer stuff they need to the laptop manually and use the laptop as if it is not part of our domain at all.

They only really need it for web based stuff anyway, but the CEO is a different story.

opethdisciple · 1 Aug 2016 at 17:11

I got it to work!!!

However I just had a thought. If the user has the laptop and a desktop.

Aren't the two profiles going to get out of sync?

More importantly think of this scenario, the user uses their PC daily and then uses their laptop for travel.

They edit files on the laptop whilst traveling. They come back from traveling and login to their PC.

Now the profile they are logging in to is no longer the most uptodate.

The most uptodate one exists on the laptop.....

:confused:

Am I right?

opethdisciple · 1 Aug 2016 at 21:05

OK cool. Looks like we have two choices then. Either they use the laptops and we take the desktops away or we go with the local profile on the laptop and they can keep the desktop PC.

Q. Lets say we go with the first option of just using a laptop. If a user has been travelling and working on their profile offline what takes precedence. The profile on the laptop or that on the server?

I.e when they came back from travelling and login to their profile connected to the domain does the laptop profile overwrite the profile on the server?