Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Additional Enhancements to Roaming User Profiles and Folder Redirection Introduced in Windows 7

Additional enhancements to support corporate roaming have now been introduced in Windows 7, especially concerning RUP. These enhancements, described in the next section, make using RUP together with Folder Redirection a more robust and reliable corporate roaming technology.

Background Registry Roaming

Beginning in Windows 7, users with roaming user profiles will have their current user settings in HKCU (in other words, the entire NTuser.dat from their profile) periodically synchronized back to the server while they are logged on to their computers. This is a change from RUP in Windows Vista and earlier versions, in which roaming user profiles were synchronized back to the server only on logoff.

This change will especially benefit enterprises that have a remote workforce with mobile computers because laptop users typically hibernate or sleep their computers instead of logging off. In previous versions of Windows, this meant that changes to user profiles might never get pushed up to the server, thus putting corporate data at risk. The change will also benefit enterprises that have mobile users who use virtual private network (VPN) connections to connect to their corporate network. VPN connections are typically initiated after the user logs on and before the user logs off, which again can prevent profiles from being properly synchronized to the server.

Note that background synchronization of roaming user profiles takes place in only one direction: from the client to the server. As in previous versions of Windows, synchronization of roaming user profiles from the server to the client still occurs only at logon. Also as in previous versions of Windows, any conflicts that arise roaming user settings are resolved based on timestamp at the file level. For example, when a user logs on using a roaming user profile, Windows checks whether the timestamp of the local version of NTuser.dat is newer than the server copy of NTuser.dat. If this is true, Windows loads the existing local version of NTuser.dat for the user and presents the user with her desktop. If this is false, Windows roams the newer version of NTuser.dat from the server to the local client, loads the new roamed version of NTuser.dat for the user, completes the rest of the load profile operation, and presents the user with her desktop. A similar process occurs during logoff.

Background registry roaming is disabled by default in Windows 7 and can be enabled on targeted computers by using Group Policy. The following Group Policy setting can be used to control this behavior:

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles
\Background Upload Of A Roaming User Profile's Registry File While User Is Logged On

When you enable this policy setting, you can configure background registry roaming to synchronize on either of the following schedules:

• At a set time interval (the default is 12 hours and can range from 1 to 720 hours)
• At a specified time of day (the default is 3 A.M.)

A random offset of up to a one-hour delay is added to both of these scheduling options to avoid overloading the server with simultaneous uploads.

For monitoring and troubleshooting background registry roaming, Windows 7 logs additional events in the following event log:

Applications And Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\User Profile Service\Operational

The additional events logged include:

• Background upload started
• Background upload finished successfully
• Hive not roamed due to a slow link
• Hive not roamed due to the storage server being unavailable

In addition, Windows will log the failure event "Background RUP upload failed, with error details" in the Windows Logs\Application event log.