Remote Desktop Server kept creating Temporary Profile

Question

I have Windows 2016 Server which setup to use RDS , when ever a user logs in , they received temp profile. I want setup a gpo that stops this issue.

Answer 1

Hello @NightWing2099

For multiple and often unknown reasons, users are connected to their session on a temporary profile.

The user does not find his settings including the Outlook profile. All that is stored in the folder C:\Users\TEMP is not saved when they log off. If you apply a folder redirection GPO (desktop / documents …), the files and folders modified in it will be saved instead.

The solution is to delete .BAK registry keys in the following location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Profiles are listed using objectSIDs and you will need to identify and delete any objectSIDs that have a .bak suffix. Each objectSID profile has an expandable string value called ProfileImagePath. Use this string value to easily identify individual users, for example:

Value Name: ProfileImagePath
Value Data: C:\Users\BGates

Finally, manually delete any temporary profiles located in c:\users\

You can avoid the issue by creating an automatic script using a scheduled task. Or set GPO policy to log off disconnected sessions after X minutes. This will reduce the likelihood that UPDs will remain connected if the server is restarted or loses power.

Additionally, ensure all user sessions are logged off and do not allow new connections to hosts before performing maintenance and/or restarts.

Hope this helps with your query!

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Answer 2

After having the same issue, despite removing the profile as above on our 2016 RDS server. I have found the following if you're using User Profile Disks, as apart of your RDS Setup. Make sure if you're including files or directories as apart of your RDS User Disks, that such locations or files listed/specified are valid. Referring to the following settings:

One of my above ntuser.dat.log1 files was set as a folder path. When the user profile is being created, it would fail during the process and give a temporary profile every time. Also showing access denied errors in the event viewer (ID Numbers, 1509,1511,1515). After removing the invalid entry from the user profile disk configuration page, it now is writing the user disk to the directory and more importantly, the user profile to the specified location via the RDS Profile Location GPO. Whereas before it would create a temporary folder under C:\Users
Hope that helps someone in the future!  

Answer 3

I had the same issue on a Windows 2016 RDS Server farm with 2 servers which constantly gave a temporary profile on some users.

I discovered that the issue had to do with a corrupt file on the TSProfile of the user which had an extremely long file name, and could not be copied during the login on the Terminal Servers. Until then each day the user logged in with temp profiles. We managed to delete the file (no rename was possible) and then the user logged in fast and without issues. The issue was tracked on the event viewer of the terminal server at the login time of the user. Unfortunately I dont remember the event id but there was a warning (not an error) that the file \extremely long path\extremely long file name could not be copied.

Hope this helps somebody in the future