We’ve been using Advanced Group Policy Management here for a couple of years now. I don’t find it to be helpful most of the time, but in a case like this, as long as the GPO in question is a “controlled” one, you would know who did it (if anyone). Better, someone like you probably would have had to approve their actions first.
It’s part of MDOP, which I think is only available to Software Assurance customers. If it is available to you, you may want to look into it. You would at least be able to tell management that you have something in place to catch it next time. If it’s not already available to you, it’s probably not worth sinking the money into, to be honest. If you back up your GPOs regularly as we do, you may be able to pinpoint the time this changed at least. May be a bit tedious though. *From:* [email protected] [mailto: [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Poppy Lochridge *Sent:* Tuesday, August 23, 2016 2:41 PM *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* [NTSysADM] Folder Redirection Group Policy Resetting itself? Something very weird has happened with one of my clients’ servers. In June, I configured group policy for redirected folders to store Desktop, Documents, and Downloads in \\SERVERNAME\folderredirections$\users$\USERNAME <file://SERVERNAME/folderredirections$/users$/USERNAME> for about 50 users on the network. It’s not a big network, but they are cautious with resources, so rather than fix the FOLDER of user data that the previous IT person named “users$” – he was trying to make a hidden share and didn’t know how – I left it as it was. The Folder Redirections folder is in C:\Users on the server, so I closed down the share on Users and fixed permissions so each user controlled their own folder, but no-one else could access their files. Things were quiet-ish for the end of June and through July, redirected folders were working, no files disappearing, no odd permissions problems. Until yesterday. Yesterday, we were notified that users were getting permissions problems trying to delete files from their desktop. Some people reported that they’d restarted and logging back in took, in some cases, hours. On a hunch, I looked at Group Policy. Redirected folders policy had been changed – to something that looked like a vanilla, out-of-the-box setting produced by a wizard. Desktop and Documents were now pointing at \\SERVERNAME\Users\Folder <file://SERVERNAME/Users/Folder> Redirections\USERNAME. Downloads had no policy configuration set. We’re running Server 2012 R2 on this system. They’ve asked me to do what I can to prevent this from happening again – it’s been rather disruptive – but this is a strange situation, and I’m at a loss to understand HOW this happened. Hit me with suggestions – have you encountered a situation where group policy changed unexpectedly? What’s your best guess for how something like this happens? --Poppy Poppy Lochridge Technology Consultant NetCorps 1385-B Oak Street Eugene, OR 97401 541-465-1127 x4 [email protected] http://www.netcorps.org
