Monday, December 16, 2013

Repairing User Shell Folders, Windows 7/8/8.1

Most organizations will use Group Policy to redirect user shell folders to a server in order to stream line backups of client workstations.  User shell folders are the 'profile' folders: Desktop, Documents, Favorites, Pictures, etc.  After migrating the redirected server to another server I have a single client whom simply won't take the new folder redirection:

The Shell Folders, should contain the redirected Desktop, Documents, etc.
Lets head into the registry to see what it says about the user shell folders, browse to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders


The blurred text is the location of the OLD server, not good, Group policy is not working on this machine.  Easy fix, what we are going to do is change the old redirected keys back to the default %USERPROFILE% location:


Close regedit and log off and log back on as the user.  As soon as I logged on the shell folders pulled the group policy correctly and pointed to the new server location.  If it doesn't point to the new location, do another gpupdate /force to refresh the policies.  This was an isolated indecent on a single client, if you are still having issues make sure your group policy and active directory OU is properly configured: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787386