Hey folks!
I administrate a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Domain with about 40 users onWindows 7 SP1 clients. Because the users often switch between the many PCs, I am using Roaming Profiles which tend to produce errors with different application-specific paths and files inside the users profiles.
As one of many example, our standard mail application Thunderbird produces paths and files according to folders/subfolders and mails in a user's mailbox. Another one is Microsoft Office's Auto Recovery files which reside in a user's profile and can get very long.
These paths and filenames often extend the allowed max. path of about 256 characters, when (on log on or off) the synchronization process between the client and the server takes place, leading to errors in the event log and a notification to the user about the conflict:
"Event ID 1509 - Windows cannot copy file \\server\share\users\user123.v2\AppData\Roaming\looooong to location C:\Users\user123\AppData\Roaming\looooong. DETAIL - The filename or extension is too long."
In the long run this leads to different file versions on different clients which - in the case of Thunderbird - leads to missing mails.
After extensive searches and lectures of forums - including this - I haven't found a solution for this problem.
So my question is if there's a way to use the extended max path with roaming profiles and if so how do I get it to work?
I tried changing the profile path of a test user in the Active Directory user preferences from "\\server\share\profiles\test_user" to something like "\\?\UNC\server\share\profiles\test_user" without any changes in the system's behavior. Also I think that because this is such a fundamental problem somebody must have come up with a solution for it...
Thanks in advance,
Nico