User-Specific Settings

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- I am running Win2003 Std Server in the Terminal Services mode.
- I have several applications that lose track of individual user settings
whenever they terminate their session. These lost settings include screen
settings, signatures, etc.
- Because multiple applications are involved, I suspect there is some
problem with my terminal services configuration. Please tell me if someone
has seen a similar problem and how it was solved, or where I can find general
guidance on this problem.
Thanks!
 
Did you put the Terminal Server into install mode before installing
the applications (with "change user / install"?)
What type of user profiles do you have? Did you configure TS-
specific profiles for the users?
Is there anything in the EventLog on the Terminal Server? Maybe
about profile load / unload errors?

248340 - Installing and Using Programs in Windows 2000 Terminal
Services
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=248340

320185 - HOW TO: Use the CHANGE USER Command to Switch to Install
Mode in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320185

_________________________________________________________
Vera Noest
MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://hem.fyristorg.com/vera/IT
___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
 
Vera,
- Re install mode, yes (I am sure on some apps, others were installed by
someone very familiar with TS...BUT, is there some way to confirm this
post-install, or should I just us/re-install to be sure.
- Re: profiles. I don't know where to find this answer. How do I check this?

Thanks - Dave
 
Dave, I don't want to sound rude, but if you don't know where to
find which type of profile your users have, you should not have an
Administrative account, especially not on a Terminal Server.
There's too much that you could do wrong, without knowing it.
That's *not* a funny thing to find out, afterwards, so it's in your
own interest not to have more permissions than you have knowledge.

That said, profiles are usually configured on the account
properties. There's a setting for the normal user profile (used
when you logon to your client desktop), and there's a separate tab
for the TS-specific user profile (used when you logon to a Terminal
Server). TS profiles can also be defined in a Group Policy.

If you configure the users profile, but not the TS user profile,
then the same profile is used for both local desktop sessions and
TS sessions. That's *not* recommended, and could lead to the
situation which you describe, where TS settings disappear. Since
the last change in the profile is from the local desktop, changes
to the TS settings are overwritten again.

_________________________________________________________
Vera Noest
MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://hem.fyristorg.com/vera/IT
___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
 
Vera - thanks for being direct, and I aplogize for my lack of knowledge on
this issue. I've had a hard time finding a reliable IT shop...that's why I'm
in this mess. I also appreciate you staying with me while I'm crawling my
way along.
- That said, I believe that we don't have TS user profiles configured. I
looked at each of our users (Computer Management\Local Users and Groups\Users
and displayed properties for each user). On the Terminal Services Profile
tab, each user has
1. A blank entry under Profile Path
2. Under Terminal Service Home Folder, Local Path is selected but the
adjacent field is blank
3. Allow logon to Terminal Server is checked.
- On the Member Of tab, every user is a member of the following groups:
Users, Remote Desktop Users, then either Administrators or Power Users. (and
I have some other groups assigned to control access to shared folders)

- I looked at policies (through Local Security Policy) and found some
settings that allowed certain groups to logon to terminal services, but
didn't find anything that assigned profiles.

- So, am I correct in assuming that I should define a path to a profile on
the Terminal Services Profile tab? Can you tell me if there is a specific
folder that these profiles are normally stored in?

Thanks.
 
OK, let me verify one more thing:

you describe how you checked the local user accounts on the server.
Can I conclude that you have a single server, which is both the
Terminal Server and stores the user accounts? And you do not run
Active Directory? Maybe this server is a standalone server in a
workgroup?

Anyway, profiles can be rather complex, but let me try to explain
some basics:
* all users always have a profile. It stores their personal
settings (desktop colour, network connections, application settings
and so on).
* if you do *not* define a specific profile path (all entries are
blank), then you are implicitly using "local profiles". That means
that the profile is created on the computer where you logon (either
the workstation or the Terminal Server), and when you log off, it
is saved there (in the standard folder \Documents and Settings
\<your_username>)
* local profiles are usually OK on workstations, but the
disadvantage is that your settings will not follow you when you log
on to another workstation. You will create a whole new profile
there, which will be unrelated to the first one. Now that *can*
also be an advantage, if you have very different applications
installed on the second workstation, but normally, you want your
settings to follow you from one place to another. It's also more
difficult to make backups of locally stored profiles.
* this is where "roaming profiles" come in: by defining a location
on a shared network drive as the profile path, your settings are
saved there everytime you log of, and copied from there everytime
you log on, which makes that you have the same settings,
irrespective of the workstation you log on to. This applies also to
Terminal Server profiles: if you have more than one Terminal
Server, defining a roaming TS profile means that you can load-
balance the servers, and users will always have their personal
settings follow them.

When you run a Terminal Server, it is important that all users have
a different profile on the server than on their workstation,
because the settings are not always compatible, and you can loose
settings as well.
This can either be local profiles on both the workstation and the
TS, or roaming profiles to 2 different network shares, or a
combination of a local profile on the workstation and a roaming
profile on the server.
But not: the same roaming profile on both, and not: a roaming
profile as the normal profile, and nothing defined as the TS
profile, because then the normal roaming profile is also used as
the TS profile.
To understand what this can cause, imagine the following:
you log on to your workstation and load your desktop roaming
profile. From there, you log on to the terminal server. If you use
the same profile, you load again the same settings. Now you make a
change to a setting. You log off from the Terminal Server, and the
roaming profile is saved back to its central location on the
network share, including the new setting. You are now back at you
workstation, but there you have the profile *without* the new
setting. If you now log off from the workstation, your current
profile is saved again to the network location, thereby overwriting
the version with the new setting.

So I've one more question about your profiles:
what is the setting for the normal user profile (not on the TS
Profile tab, but on the Profile tab)? Is it also blank?

If the normal profile entry is also blank, then you are using local
profiles, both on the workstations and the Terminal Server, and it
should not give you any problems with overwritten profiles.

But if there *is* an entry for the normal profile, and the TS
profile path is blank, then by default the normal roaming profile
is also used as the TS profile. That's not good, as described
above.

Can you check this before we go into the details of how to create
roaming profiles? It you are running with local profiles in all
situations, then there's no real need to change it, because it is
not what is causing your current problems.

_________________________________________________________
Vera Noest
MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://hem.fyristorg.com/vera/IT
___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
 
Vera - Thanks again for being so generous with your time. FYI, most of my
experience is with NT, so I'm not exceptionally conversant about active
directory.
- Before I answer your questions I feel that I need to explain my
configuration:
- My server is in a datacenter that I can't enter. Unless I ask the
support staff to do something (and even then maybe not), no one is logging in
to the server locally. There are definitely no workstations attached locally
to this box.
- All of our users, including me, use Windows Remote Desktop Connection to
access this server. I understand that there is also a Remote Desktop for
Administration; I've not used that.
- My server has Win2003 Std Server as the O/S, and also has MS SQL2000
Server and .Net 1.1 installed. The server roles configured are File,
Application, Mail, Terminal, and DNS. This box is the standalone server in a
workgroup. We initially tried to configure as a Domain Controller, but
killed that while trying to get one application (Act 2005 Premium) to work.

- Re: your question - all of the entries are blank on the Profile tab for
all of our users. 'Local Path' is selected under Home Folder, but no path is
specified.

- Thanks again!
 
OK, thanks for the info, that makes it a bit easier to know what
can be done.

Since all users are using local profiles, I would suggest not to
change that, at least not now. It can't be the reason that settings
are not preserved, and I am a strong believer in the rule not to
introduce change B when you have problem A.

Let's try to focus on some changed settings that aren't preserved
from one session to the next. Could you give an example, with some
more detail as in your first post?
The screen settings you wrote about, is that inside an application,
or the screen settings of the TS session?
Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about Exchange (if that's
what you use for email). But there are others here who do, so you
could elaborate about the signatures as well (is the server acting
as the mail server, with the mail client running on the
workstations, or are you running the mail client on the Terminal
Server, contacting an external email server?)

I'm worried about all of the users being Administrators or Power
Users. Even if we forget the security implications for now, it
could well mean that their changes are having a global effect on
the server, not just inside their own session. Could that explain
what you see, user A changes a setting, and next time user B logs
on, he gets the new setting as well?

_________________________________________________________
Vera Noest
MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://hem.fyristorg.com/vera/IT
___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
 
Vera,
- The windows desktop appears to be preserved for each user between
sessions, but here are some settings that aren't saved:
1. Windows Explorer - views are not saved (list vs details), although
'remember each folder's view settings' is checked.
2. Act2005 - the columns displayed on different views, the width and order
of columns, and email signatures are not saved. Note: according to the
manufacturer these preferences are saved in a couple of .xml files in each
user's section under Documents & Settings. Although I see that these files
are updated when each user makes changes to his settings, it appears that the
files are not used to reload the preferences when the user starts Act.
3. Control Panel - views are not saved (list vs tiles)
4. Final biggie that may not be related: Word 2003. Whenever a user first
uses Word, and sometimes on subsequent uses, after logging in, the
autorecover feature displays two files for recovery. These files both have
the same name, but an attempt to recover either results in 'file cannot be
found'. I deleted the original file and followed (several times) a procedure
I found in one of these discussion groups to remove all remnants of the file,
but these ghosts are still there.

- Email: we use MS Outlook 2003 connecting to a POP3 server (not ours).
Outlook and all of our applications run on our server and are accessed thru
terminal services.

- User types: Our users are now Admins or Power Users because of some
problems with Act2005. We initially tried to run Act2005 with our server
configured as a domain controller. There are certain folders that require
all users to have Full Control; when we were having problems my IT shop said
that just granting Full Control in permissions didn't necessarily give rights
the same as assigning another user type. Since we didn't want to make
everyone an Admin, we changed the server config to a Workgroup, so that the
Power User type was available. This has not solved our Act problems, and I
will have to see what happens if different users change settings.

Thanks again.
 
OK, let me try to answer what I can, hopefully others will jump in if
they have more information:

* about ACT2005: I've no experience with it myself, but there's a
clear statement from the vendor that running ACT! on a Terminal
Server is *not* supported. That could explain why the preferences are
not loaded when the user starts ACT
http://itdomino.act.com/act.nsf/docid/20031010112629

* about the Administrator / Power Users issue: there are usually 2
types of eleveated permissions that users might need to be able to
run certain software: file system permissions and registry
permissions.

In stead of making users Power User, you could download FileMon and
RegMon from http://www.sysinternals.com/. Run them as administrator
(when no user is connected) on the server, start a TS session as a
normal user and run ACT.
FileMon and RegMon will show you all "access denied" errors that
occur, so that you can give your users the necessary permissions on a
file-to file or Registry subkey basis.
FileMon will also show you if ACT is loading the xml file with the
user preferences, or if it maybe is looking for this file in a
different location. I can imagine that ACT is using the preference
file from the user that initially installed the application, that's
typically something that a non-TS compatible application can do.
If so, it would explain why changes in settings are not preserved.

* about the view settings in explorer and Control Panel (that's
really one and the same problem, I believe): I've seen some reports
of this before, and I've actually experienced the problem myself on
my XP client. Check if this helps:
813711 - Your view settings or customizations for a folder are lost
or incorrect
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=813711
Try this for one user who has the problem. If it solves the issue,
then you can export the registy keys to a reg file and import them
for all users in a logon script (depending on how many users you
have).

If the above doesn't help, you could work around the problem by
creating different shortcuts for Explorer, starting with different
command line switches, as descibed here:
152457 - Windows Explorer Command-Line Options
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=152457

_________________________________________________________
Vera Noest
MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://hem.fyristorg.com/vera/IT
___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
 
Vera,
- Thanks; you've been very helpfull and generous with your time.
- I have lots of homework now, so I'll see what I can find.
 
OK Dave, take your time! Feel free to come back here if you have
more questions.

_________________________________________________________
Vera Noest
MCSE, CCEA, Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://hem.fyristorg.com/vera/IT
___ please respond in newsgroup, NOT by private email ___
 
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