Windows Vista and XP, Active Directory, and user profiles

1. You are completely correct in saying Vista profiles aren't backwards compatible with their XP counterparts. It's a bit like most of the new Vista / 2008 Server setup - things like ADMX files are replacing ADM files, Office 2007 now has DOCX, XLSX and other weird formats - and none of them are backwards compatible! In Vista, the only effective method I have found of having two profiles is to let Vista create a second profile - the version 2 - and sort itself out. Unfortunately this means your user settings and everything else stored in your XP roaming user registry does NOT migrate to the Vista station, so your background picture and other preferences are managed separately for Vista and XP stations. Unfortunately we just have to live with this.

As for the My Documents and Desktop problem, you certainly need to use folder redirection - but configure it server side on the 2003 server to ensure it is still compatible with the XP and 2003 server client stations. On any network you should always enable folder redirection anyway, since it gets all the user data (my documents and desktop being the main culprits) out of the roaming user profile, allowing it to be read straight from the server each time the user logs in. With all the user data in the roaming profile, profiles can become huge and you end up seeing very lengthy logon times for all that data to copy across. With folder redirection, changes are saved back to the server instantly (since everything works from the network share), which gives many benefits once you start using it.

I would give folder redirection another try. Configure it in a GPO object which will apply to user objects in AD. You'll need a separate share which users can create folders for themselves in (let the system do this for you), then I normally define CREATOR OWNER permissions on the main folder, to apply to subfolders and files, as full control (this allows the users access to the data). Using the default settings, after a gpupdate /force and two to three logon / logoff cycles the system will move user data to the share itself (the logon process will take some time to move the data). Once this is done and you log off, the Vista stations should then see the Documents and be able to access it just like XP.

2. Yes you can still use your profile on XP but you will have two totally different profiles for Vista and XP / Server 2003 and you will therefore have to make things such as wallpaper changes on both your XP and Vista profiles.

3. I've not found a way to get rid of Sync Centre yet and I'm sticking with it for the time being. I'd have thought it would be classed as Offline Files (like in XP) and be disabled automatically by my GPO handling that, but it would appear not. I'm still searching in the vista GPMC for a setting but haven't had chance to look over it properly. At the moment though it doesn't seem to be causing me too many issues.

Any more questions let me know.

It would be expected that the initial few logons after configuration of folder redirection would take quite a while. This is because at login time the system will sit there and say "Applying your personal settings" (on an XP station anyway) while it creates the user's redirected folder at the new folder redirection share and then it copies ALL the data across to the new share.

Assuming all the My Documents data has been moved across onto the redirected data share, and you are happy when users view the My Documents folder on a workstation that it is working straight back to their share on the server (not to the local profile) then I would say you could remove the My Documents folder from the profile. However, this may confuse things further since there is two profiles (XP and Vista), in which case the best way to set things up would be to delete both profiles and have the system recreate them. I know it's not the easiest action for some people to take (personally I love deleting profiles and clearing out all that rubbish, but that's another story...!) but it is the only solution which will work 100% of the time assuming there are no others underlying problems.

Make sure you have a backup of everything (or you do the changes on a test account's profile and redirected documents folder) before you start.

Any more questions?

It shouldn't create a Documents folder in the profile at all - everything is configured so it works direct from the share on the server where the data is redirected to.