Roaming Profile

[Hoober]

Ok, this one's been bugging me for a while --

Have an XP professional machine who's main user also has a laptop she connects to the network. Now, she was on "leave" for about a week traveling to and from work doing most of her business on the laptop. When she got back to work yesterday and started using her workstation the roaming profile came up as corrupt. I asked her to plug the laptop into the network and login there. The laptop pulled down the roaming profile just fine without any corruption errrors. So I sent a tech over there to figure out what was going on. He could log into her workstation and pull down his roaming profile just fine.

The domain is 2000 AD controlled with the profiles stored on the server. She is able to log in anywhere except her workstation just fine. And everyone except her can log into the workstation just fine. I've already wiped her local profile from the workstation. Still the same error message. Any suggestions?

 

[crudas]

Does her laptop also have XP pro? If it doesn't, there is your problem. The workstation would be attempting to download a profile from a different operating system and may be identifying it as corrupt.

If her laptop also has XP, you can backup (copy and leave the existing one in place) her profile to a different location. Then remove the uneccessary parts (internet cache, history, etc) until you can identify which piece is the problem. Then you can copy restore the backup and remove the offending piece. Either way, you may end up having to redefine a new profile for her to fix the problem.

Hope you figure it out. Profiles are a b*tch sometime.

Cru

 

[Hoober]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, they're both XP Pro so I didn't think that was the issue. Its just frustrating that it would work fine on one computer but not on the other. I love networking

Guess the thing to do is to try restoring it from the backup.

 

[stash]

Since she can log on to any other machine except her own, why not just reimage her workstation? Theres no reason to rebuild her profile or use an old backup if she can log on without any problems anywhere else.

I think if you blow a fresh image onto her workstation and have her log in, she'll be fine

 

[Hoober]

Yeah, just gotta take the time to reimage the machine

Might end up doing that. Would be the easiest.

 

[wlee]

You might be encountering a prob similar to this since the Notebook hardware is diff than the desktop.

http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=15680

 

[Saltin]

Before you re-image, go to her machine and check the copy of the profile that is located there.
Erase her NTUSER.dat file and reboot.

 

[JackMDS]

NetSwitcher

 

[Hoober]

Thanks, Jack. But all her setting remain the same. She doesn't have a home network where she needs to switch out IP addresses and DHCP settings and WINS numbers and things. Haven't gotten a chance to fix her workstation yet. Its on schedule for next week.

 

[astroview]

Yea, a week doesn't go by where I don't see this problem at least like5 times (large network). A lot of times its related to permissions issues, but if not that we just reset her profile on the server after backing up favorites and other pertinent information... Its a b!tch, but then again thats why profiles seem to suck IMO.

 

[Saltin]

<< I asked her to plug the laptop into the network and login there. The laptop pulled down the roaming profile just fine without any corruption errrors. >>



Clearly, the problem is not with her roaming profile ( the copy on the network).



<< I sent a tech over there to figure out what was going on. He could log into her workstation and pull down his roaming profile just fine. >>



Clearly, the problem isnt the workstation's ability to pull down a profile.

If you ask me, the problem is her profile on the workstation, perhaps you guessed this already. I've seen this a few times at work. It is pretty easy to fix. Erase the copy of ntuser.dat that is locally cached on the workstation. Reboot.
Roaming profiles depend on the timestamp in ntuser.dat to determine which copy is more "up to date" (i.e the copy on the server, or the copy on the client). When you reboot, the copy on the network will HAVE to be the winner of this election. It will be the only copy.
This is a good thing, as we have determined that there is
1) Nothing wrong with the network copy of the profile
2) Nothing wrong with the workstations ability to pull the profile.

I stated this in an eariler post, just not in so many words. I hope this helps. It has worked for me.

 

[Hoober]

But when the NTuser.dat file is deleted, along with the entire local profile, then rebooted and reloaded from the roaming profile the same error occurs... that's what had/has me stumped.