Folder Direction - make it go away! can't get it to turn off
julia di Biasi
network. unfortunately, he also had the folders redirecting to drive C: in
our RAID config, which only had 80Gbytes. So...SBS2008, all the programs, and
all the redirected files sucked up all the disk space and many problems
ensued.
i then asked him to move the folder redirection to our data drive, E:. I
eventually did what i thought i needed to do to turn it off altogether (SBS
Console > Shared Folders and Web Sites > and under Shared Folders Tasks,
clicked on "Redirect folders for user accounts to the server". I unchecked
the 3 folders that were checked so none of them would redirect, and i
deselected all the users so FRD would not be running for any of them.
At this point on the server:
1. The C: Drive still has the following folders:
C:\Users\FolderRedirections, and a folder for each user underneath. I can
tell these are still getting created here because there are new users and new
files there that were added AFTER i turned 'off' the above settings.
2. The E: drive has a FolderRedirections folder at the root. The new users
are NOT in the list of folders.
My laptop, in particular, was the one sucking up all the disk space. I had
originally turned mine off and went back later to turn everyone else's off.
At this point on my laptop:
1. I've had to move all the files from my Desktop into various other folders
multiple times because my laptop continues to synchronize with various
'Desktop' folders all over the network. That is, if i sign in at one
workstation and move all the desktop files somewhere on that E: drive to
store them, the desktop files just end up reappearing when i log in somewhere
else. then they eventually make it back down to my laptop's desktop again. my
laptop is so messed up at this point, with multiple copies of the files all
over the place, because i was afraid to delete any of the files that appeared
on the desktop of the workstation i was logging into - not knowing if there
were any there that i hadn't already backed up elsewhere. (see 2.)
2. i'm pretty sure i've completely lost large numbers of files, because i go
into windows photo gallery on my laptop, and it brings up all the thumbnails,
and when i try to open one of the photos it tells me it can't access
\\SERVER\FolderRedirections... searching for the files on the server and my
laptop found nothing. i thought the client got the files when you turned FRD
off? well, at this point, i don't think it's off anyway - it's just hanging
out making me crazy.
3. Offline, a lot of the files i double click on give me the same message in
2. - it can't access SERVER\FolderRedirections... to open the file. a lot of
my local folders are now empty, where they previously had lots of files in
them.
4. All the icons on my desktop, except for ones i've added since i left the
office the last time, have that little ActiveSync icon on them. I have no
idea how to make that go away, along with all the FRD stuff.
5. I tried going in through the Group Policy manager and turning FRD off
wherever i saw it, but the problems continue. (why are there so many places
to turn it off? why didn't it turn off from the first thing i did?)
At this point, I just really want to know how to make this all go away. I
hate it. I don't need to backup my laptop on the server so I don't care about
that benefit. Just please, if there is anybody that is out there that can
help me make this go away, I'll love you forever.
P.S. clearly i'm not the right person to be dealing with SBS 2008 server
issues and managing our network. i've been searching for IT help in the Marin
County area for several months. if there's anybody out there with a tech
support type consulting company, could you let me know? geek squad wasn't up
on SBS 2008, unfortunately, when we migrated - so we have quite a few other
issues with our server that need to be fixed/cleaned up by somebody who is
knowledgeable abou that operating system.
xo julia
Anthony [MVP]
It can all be sorted, but backing out these changes requires more care and
work than setting them up. The steps you will need to take are:
- Use Group Policy to set folder redirection back to the default location,
which is your profile folder on the PC. You can't just remove the policy,
because the folders will stay where they are. You need to redirect them back
to where they were.
- Re-initialize the offline cache. Redirected folders by default are
synchronized to be available offline. That's the little arrow in the corner
of the icon. Unfortunately Offline files in XP is a bit heavy handed. It
will keep synchonizing until you re-initialize
Make a good backup of the server and the PC first.
Actually even for your laptop roaming profiles and redirected folders are a
good idea. and if they are implemented properly they work fine. But at the
moment you are in a mess and just need to back it out first.
Anthony
http://www.airdesk.com
"julia di Biasi" <juliad...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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