active-directorywindows-server-2003
In my domain I have the Desktop and My Documents redirected to the file server. I found out that when someone deletes a file from the Desktop it doesn't go to the recycle bin. If you delete a file from My documents it does go to the recycle bin.
They are both redirected using Group policy. Permissions look the same on both folders. My only thought is that because the My documents is redirected to the home folder Windows is acting like it's a local folder and not a network folder.
Thanks
Here's a rundown of what I did:
Spun up a W2K3 R2 Std. Edition x86 SP2 VM with an Active Directory domain.
Created a "Profiles" shared folder on the server VM. Shared with "Everyone / Full Control" share permissions, and set the NTFS to "Administrators - Full Control", "SYSTEM - Full Control", and "Authenticated Users - Read and Execute - This folder only".
Created a "Sales" subfolder of that "Profiles" folder.
Created a domain local group called "Sales (Local)" and a global group called "Sales (Global)".
Created two user accounts - "John" and "Mary". Left their default "Domain Users" group membership intact and added them as members to the "Sales (Global)" group.
Logged-on to a Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 VM as "john" and created a new local profile. Set the desktop color to red (for quick visual indication of the loading of that profile) and logged-off.
Logged-on to the WinXP machine as the domain Administrator account and used the "User Profiles" functionality in the properties of "My Computer" to copy the newly-created "john" user profile to the "Profiles" share on the server computer, granting "Sales (Local)" the "Permitted to use" permission.
Back on the server computer I modified the security of the "Sales" subfolder of the "Profiles" folder to inherit permission from the parent folder and added "Sales (Local) - Read and Execute". I re-applied that permission to all subfolders.
I renamed the "NTUSER.DAT" file in the "\Profiles\Sales" folder to "NTUSER.MAN".
I modified the properties of the "John" and "Mary" user accounts to specify a roaming user profile at "\SERVER\Profiles\Sales".
I logged-on to the Windows XP machine as "Mary" (who had never been logged-on before) and verified that I received the red desktop background. I modified the desktop background color, logged-off, logged-on again, and verified that the red desktop color persisted (meaning that the mandatory user profile was applying).
I logged-on as "John" and performed the same verification steps as with "Mary".
Everything worked as I expected by specifying "Sales (Local)" in all permissions. I'm at a loss as to tell you what might be different about what you did. What do you see that I did differently?
The folder redirection GPO settings include an option to remove the redirection or not when the group policy setting no longer applies. By default, this setting is set to leave the redirection in place after the GPO is removed. So that's probably what happened here. You removed the GPO, but it was set to keep the redirection in place anyway.
You'll need to go back to your folder redirection GPO and set it redirect back to you local user profile location, instead of just setting folder redirection back to Not Configured. See Image below.
Best Answer
This is the expected behavior when deleting files on network shares, including redirected My Documents / Desktop etc.
However, if you have Volume Shadow Copies enabled on the volume where the share resides, the deleted files can be recovered from the last snapshot. Of course if the file was created or modified since the last snapshot was taken, then it won't be possible to recover the version of the file that was deleted.
Take a look here for some info on setting up Shadow Copies.
Working with the Windows Server 2003 Volume Shadow Copy Service.