Problem on our AD: deactivation of Roaming Profiles

Question

We have a problem on our AD: the deactivation of Roaming Profiles

These are the roaming profiles that we activated via a GPO: • Some users, the GPO has no effect, my roaming profile was not created at all • Some users have their roaming profile created, but no synchronization is taking place • Some users have inherited it: all their data is synchronized on the personal roaming profile directory dedicated to each user  The big problem is that restarting the session sometimes takes more than 30 minutes! especially if there are a lot of things on the PC to sync  Some users lost all their data when restarting on temporary sessions! (luckily we have all the backups of the roaming profiles)  When traveling, there is a risk that these users no longer have access to anything

In short, we want to deactivate the GPO to abandon roaming profiles and create a dedicated space for each user on the server where they can place data they wish to save. The problem is that we fear making all user workstation data disappear at once by deactivating the GPO!

We are looking for an AD expert to help us resolve this issue while following best practices.

Thanks you very much

Answer 1

Hello Florence BAUQUEREY,

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

Before you deactivate of Roaming Profiles, you should make sure all the user profile data are stored on user local computers or are backed up.

Then you can deactivate of Roaming Profiles via GPO computer configuration:

**Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > User Profiles >
Set roaming profile path for all users logging onto this computer

And/ or if you configured roaming user profile via AD domain user Properties, you can clear the shared path that stored user profile data.**

To deactivate the GPO that enables roaming profiles, you can follow these steps:

1. Open the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) on your domain controller.
2. Navigate to the Group Policy Object that contains the roaming profile settings you want to disable.
3. Right-click on the GPO and select Edit.
4. In the Group Policy Management Editor, navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > User Profiles.
5. Locate the policy setting named "Delete cached copies of roaming profiles" and double-click on it.
6. Select the "Disabled" option and click OK.
7. Close the Group Policy Management Editor and exit the GPMC.

This will disable the GPO that enables roaming profiles and prevent users from using them. Keep in mind that this change will only affect new logins, and existing roaming profiles will still be available until they are manually deleted.

Deploy roaming user profiles

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/folder-redirection/deploy-roaming-user-profiles

I hope the information above is helpful.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,

Daisy Zhou

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