users home folders is not showing

See if they have ownership and full permissions of their folder. Also they need permissions to the share location.

I would start by looking at the user's applied group policy settings.  Make sure they are in the correct OU and that the policy settings are being applied.  Run gpresult /v and look for groups membership and applied policies.  Also, did you map the home folder through AD users and computers?

They have full permissions as well as owner of that folder.

been over this 100 times, they user is in the correct OU. I have not ever had to manually map their drive to their home folder in the past. It has always worked in the past. I even have gone as far as deleting the user renaming their profile and home directories,  and still their home directory is hidden in explorer. I did notice when I rename their folder, to say old.name, I will then appear. I can add the UNC to their login.

Have you checked the event log?  Also... I have seen this happen before with network connection latency.  
For example:  I had been planning on switching from static IP's to DHCP, and started configuring computers with "Alternate addresses" instead of just straight up static.  Because the computer would start up and look for a DHCP address first, some computer policies were not getting applied.  I ended up switching the machines back to static addresses.  This is likely not the same issue you are having, but I wonder if there's some kind of latency from the logon server or the network connection at logon.  

Also, worst case scenario, there may be a trust issue.  Try unjoining and rejoining the workstation to the domain?

event logs show nothing out of the normal. I have made changes to the OU and the workstation follows the policy set down.  The workstation is brand new, just added to the domain last week. A windows 7 box. I could unjoin it so see if that works. Never seen this issue before? I can see the folder rom my workstation, maybe it's not that big of a deal? the user is able to loin access her files, do her work. is there a filer option on the servicer side explorer?

If you just want to put the issue to bed for this one workstation, I'm pretty sure if you map it with persistent flag, It should stay connected.

net use e: \\uncpath-to-home\ /persistent:yes

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Do you as a administrator have permissions to view there folder?
Is access-based enumeration setup?
Have you tried to back up the users profile and tried to recreate it?

Yes, I have right to the folder, but the user is the owner of the folder. I have tried recreating the folder, still same folder is hidden on the server, but it can be viewed in command line. User had no issue in accessing her home directory with folder redirection. I can also view the folder from another server. Doing a attrib on the folder show -R thoughts?

On the NTFS permissions for the user's folder, do you have a deny permission on any of the folders?
From your workstation are you able to view this user's directory?
Has another admin user tried to log onto the server to see if they can view the folder?

On the NTFS permissions for the user's folder, do you have a deny permission on any of the folders?  no all allow
 From your workstation are you able to view this user's directory? yes
 Has another admin user tried to log onto the server to see if they can view the folder?  yes, folder is still hidden from the admin. still able to view folder in CMD prompt.

thoughts on why attib -r on that persons folder now shows up in explorer?

just out of curiosity, you don't happen to have another folder map from that server using different credentials at the same time do you?

Specifically, I'm wondering if there's an existing network connection to the profiles folder using different credentials at login

Specifically, I'm wondering if there's an existing network connection to the profiles folder using different credentials at login

give an example of what you are talking about?

Ok, so say your computer is attaching to a folder on the file share prior to user logon.  You said profiles was on that machine as well as home.  If there's an existing network connection to \\fileshare\profiles as the system account or any account other than the one that is being logged on, then ANY connections to \\fileshare using different credentials will fail until the system account connection is disconnected.  It's kind of a long-shot, not likely, but You seem to have a mystery here.

On you WInodows 2003 server open Computer Management  Shared Folder and select share / sessions and see if you see any open connections to the users folder...

This may not be an option but are you able to view the folder on the server in safe mode?

Yes, I see all sorts of activity under both, open sessions and sessions. Not sure why but some of the home files are showing a R under attributes  thoughts?

Do you see in "Sessions" a connection under the computer (or ip address) on the workstation in question?  Is it the same user account that you're trying to log on or a different account?  

For example.  If a computer account is connected to the share It will look like COMPUTERNAME$ whereas if it's a user, it will have username instead.  Windows only allows one user to be attached to shares on a file server at a time.

does the logon script fail if you map the share using that?  If so, and just out of curiosity, I wonder if we did a logon script to disconnect all shares first then connect to home, if it would work that way.

net use * /delete
net use H: \\unc-path-to-share\home

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