Drive mapping, home folder problem

No, it needs to be drive letter access

This is the profile tab in AD users & computer. The homefolder section will not let you use just a UNC

sorry, I was thinking user profile.

Hey if you are doing this in AD it seems like it is doing what it should. Try doing it locally:

Click Start,  click Control Panel,                         double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click                         Computer Management.
In the console tree, click Users in                         Local Users and Groups.
Click the user account.
Click the Action menu, and then click                         Properties.
Click the Profile tab, click                         Connect, and then specify a drive letter.
In the To box, type a path. This path can                         be any of the following types:                          Network path, for example: \\server\users\tester
You can substitute username                                for the last subfolder in the path, for example:\\server\users\username

Where server is                                the name of the file server housing the home folders, and where                                users is the shared folder.

Click OK.

That would only work for users who logon to their local profile. All our laptop users logon to a domain, thus bypassing the local profile.

The problem is that when you set the Home folder on the Profile tab in AD users and computer, the drive mapped only appears if the user logs in while attached to our network. If they boot up their laptop while not connected to our network, the home folder is not their. It should be their (in disconnected state) whether they have access to our network or not.  This is affecting about 20% of our laptop fleet. They can be XP or Vista. The OS does not matter. I cannot tell you if the patch level has anything to do with it. I dont have that info currently.

I apologize for not getting back to this question until now. Our subscription  ran out and it took this long to get reinstated.

I have considered the options you speak of and guess I am going to be forced to use the UNC option. This does not address the core problem however. I dont know what best practices are for mapping a home folder, but would think that it should work correctly for all domain pc's. Some pc's retain this drive letter whether they are connected to the network or not. Others, like my pc, do not show the mapped drive unless I am connected to the domain before I logon. The share has the default caching option enabled. It is "Only the files and programs that users specify will be available offline". I do not have my home folder set for offline files, on my local pc.

Update: I changed the cache setting under file sharing on the server to "All files and programs that users open from the share will be automatically available offline" with a tick mark in "optimize for performance" and the home folder (at least for me) appear to stay visible now. I do not have to be connected to the domain before login for the home folder/drive to visible. Does this make sense?  What are the downfalls of using this cache setting on my file shares?

This was a work around and not a fix, but it did lead me in the right direction. Read my final post for what I found the problem to be. I dont understand it, but it seemed to work.

Thanks, sorry I missed your last comments there.  That sounds like the option I meant.  Glad you have it working.

Is that 2008 server btw, I don't remember it having that wording on 2003 -- I haven't looked for somewhile, more involved in other things at the mo.

Steve