Windows Vista and XP, Active Directory, and user profiles

Hi Experts.

I have a problem with Windows Vista. I am using the Business edition of Vista.

We have just bought many new computers with Vista Business on them. Our network is set up with a Windows 2003 Server and Active Directory with Group Policy objects and roaming user profiles. We have Windows XP Pro computers on this network as well, that are being replaced for the most part with Vistas.

The problem is that previously, my users could log in at any computer and the server would load their correct desktop, Start Menu and My Documents folders. But when I log in with Windows Vista, none of the settings show up. Apparently (GRRR) the Vista profiles are *not compatible* with the XP profiles. (This incompatibility business is extremely frustrating).

I tried to follow the cryptic and complicated steps located in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947025 entitled "Support guidelines for migrating roaming user profiles data to Windows Vista" but needless to say it didn't work. It involves setting up folder redirection for the folders you want to appear in your user profile. At the end of the document it states "the data from the original user profile will appear inside the folder in the new Version 2 user profile" but this did not happen. My user 2 profile folder is empty (\\SERVER\Users\<username>.V2). So was my "redirection" folder. (\\SERVER\Folders\<username>)

I tried to manually copy the information from profile version 1 to the redirection folder share, and it caused my Windows Vista computer to get this "Sync Centre" icon in the system tray and all my documents that showed up in the documents folder have little "sync" icons on them. Also when logging on or off it takes forever because now it has to sync. And to boot, manually copying the files into the redirectoin folder share did NOT populate the user profile version 2 folder.

So, I manually copied the files from the redirectionfolder to the user profile version 2. And then erased the redirection folder share (\\SERVER\Folders\<username>) (And removed the folder redirection directive in the GPO) But, all my documents disappeared (i.e. the user profile did not work). And the stupid Sync Centre is still there.

My questions are,
- how do I get my roaming profile to populate with all the files (Desktop, My Documents) on the server?
- Will I still be able to log into an XP computer and use my profile?
- Can I ever get rid of the Sync Centre?

I want everything to work like it did in XP, please help!!.Start Free Trial