Change drive letter for new user profiles on Windows Server 2008 R2 with RDS role installed

rdswindows-server-2008windows-server-2008-r2

I've recently changed following registry key:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Default=D:\Users

In order to ensure that all new profiles will be created on D drive, I've also successfully re-created some bulky profiles which were already created on C drive (by backing up all data, then deleting profiles through Windows GUI and letting them to be re-created on D).

Shortly afterwards I've noticed that some users whose profiles which already existed on C drive prior to that change start logging on with temp profiles. Just wondering if there any connection between change I made & this. And in general is it safe to just change this setting on Windows Server 2008 R2 with RDS role installed (if all I want is to have new profiles created on D drive) or some other registry changes required? Any negative consequences for existing profiles?

P.S. The server in question is AD DS member server with some corporate customizations (I'm not fully aware about all of them) – that's why I have extra concerns about possible conflicts of my change with some other settings/customizations.

Best Answer

A host with the RDSH role installed will not behave all that differently than one without - at least in this respect.

When the User Profile service is about to load a user's local profile, it first checks HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList for a key named after the logging-on-user's SID. If it is present, the profile storage directory is determined by looking up the ProfileImagePath value inside this key. If you have deleted the storage directory but have left the corresponding key/value in ProfileList in place, you will see profile loading errors in the event log and have users logged on with a temporary profile.

After you have changed the default storage directory, you will not necessarily have to touch all profiles already present on your system and move them over. Leaving "old" profiles in the C:\Users directory and setting new profiles to be created in D:\Users would work quite fine.

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