Real World Computing

Now, at this point, you'll probably be wondering what happens to the XP redirection folders - I know I was. I was also wondering what would happen on a mixed-mode server network. Not everybody is running just one type of Windows server. The answer lies in the next checkbox, and it's one that you'll only see if you're doing the setting up from a Vista box. The checkbox label reads: "Also apply redirection policy to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems". Opt for this and your redirection group policy will now be understood by those operating systems, as opposed to a group policy that only works with Vista. One of the noticeable changes will be that the redirected Documents folder will become named My Documents to bring it into line with the older operating systems (obviously, you can choose any name you like, but it's easier to go with the defaults). One thing this will affect is that if you deploy this setting you won't be able to redirect the music and video folders to specific locations; they'll follow the Documents folder as they did under XP. The Pictures folder can still be redirected to a different location.

Last month, I pointed out that user profiles under XP and Vista use totally different formats. User profiles in Vista are identifiable because they have a .v2 appended to the end of the username. This creates a space issue. The user will basically be moving more data about and will require more storage space than previously to house the two OS profiles.

Folder redirection is the key to letting users see all of their data in each profile, as you can redirect Documents and My Documents to the same folder. When you do so, you must make use of the "Also apply redirection policy to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems" checkbox when you set up the folder redirection using your Vista box. You must use the same setting for Desktop, but don't enable that setting for Application Data and Start Menu redirection.

However, once you start using a Vista system to work on your group policies, you must carry on using a Vista system to manage those policies. If you switch to an earlier operating system and try to work on group policies there, you'll find you won't be able to. You'll get a ton of error messages and everything will appear broken, and that's because it is broken as far as the earlier operating systems are concerned - they just can't read what Vista has done, so once you go down the Vista route, at least as far as group policy configuration is concerned, you're pretty much stuck with it unless you fancy a lot of hard work recreating all your policies by hand.

So far, we've looked at roaming profiles and folder redirection, but there's another technology that's interlinked in my opinion; namely, file synchronisation. It's an area that looks simple and sometimes isn't. In fact, it's an area that can drive you to distraction, especially when you're trying to get rid of old synchronisation settings that just won't go away when you want them to. But I'll talk about that next month.

David Moss

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