Comments on: All about Drive mapping in Group Policy Preferences

By: Jasen Webster

Jasen Webster — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:04:44 +0000

You can also place the NoBackgroundPolicy DWORD value under the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Group Policy\{5794DAFD-BE60-433f-88A2-1A31939AC01F}] key and it works, overriding the other registry setting mentioned in this article.

This leaves me wondering why MS left this option out of the Drive Maps Policy Processing policy, since the other 3 options exist under this policy key as well.

By: Sitaram Pamarthi

Sitaram Pamarthi — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:54:26 +0000

Breeze, are you seeing the logon scripts in RSOP output when ran from any windows 2008 server?

By: Breeze

Breeze — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:32:20 +0000

Deploy registry settings through GPO/Preferences/Windows Settings/Registry , it works.

By: Breeze

Breeze — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:30:40 +0000

Dear Sitaram,
thanks for sharing knowledge, deployment through GPO/Preferences/Windows Settings/Registry works fine, its ok, i have tested & implemented it. Further only this registry change have also solved my 1st problem (re-connect network drive after log on/log off).

One more thing required your kind attention that on Server 2k3 my log-on scripts (in *.bat format) works fine, but when I put them in server 2k8-R2/User-Properties/Profile/Logon scripts they don’t run. These *.bat files are in \sysvol\domain-name\scripts folder and are also visible in \netlogon\ & are accessable on each client and even I can run them manually.

Thanks in advance & best regards.

By: Sitaram Pamarthi

Sitaram Pamarthi — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:47:46 +0000

Fred,

Yes, relogin will work. There are two more options available to make explorer recognize the drives without re-login.

1) Restart the explorer process — I know it is a bad option but works.
2) Implement the Explorer Refresh Script that JD mentioned in the comments section. — Looks like is has some compatibility issues with Windows 7 but can be figure out.

Hope this help..!!

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:30:59 +0000

Works like a charm… Only problem and for now there’s no viable resolution is Explorer.exe does not refresh but the map shows up using Net use command. So a quick logoff login as the workarround. thanks

By: Sitaram Pamarthi

Sitaram Pamarthi — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:23:16 +0000

I guess you can deploy it with group policies as GPOs processing will be done with SYSTEM account which has FULL access on the registry key that we are referring here.

Let us know if you face any trouble in doing that.

By: Fred

Fred — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:51:05 +0000

Regarding the fix ti edit the reg key 1.Go to regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogonGPExtensions{5794DAFD-BE60-433f-88A2-1A31939AC01F}

This works fine but local admin has to take ownership first then change permission to give the hability to set the value to “0″

Now, do you have an idea to deploy this to 4000+ workstation????? Pushing the value with GPO I’m ok but what about taking Ownership prior…..???

Thanks!!!

By: JD

JD — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:51:55 +0000

Good idea on the API and a quick Google found this, which … doesn’t work http://powershell.com/cs/media/p/8322.aspx. Interesting that explorer.exe updates in XP and not 7 though.

By: Sitaram Pamarthi

Sitaram Pamarthi — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:11:36 +0000

JD, AFAIK, explorer will have some refresh interval after which it might show the drives in explorer. And like you said, the explorer restart also works — but not a viable solution.

While I was working on GPP, I explored too much about this. Looks like some Windows API has function to refresh explorer which may reload the mapped drives. You may want to continue your research in that direction to find a workaround to your problem.