Disable folder redirection on XP

December 21, 2007 6:41 AM

How do I completely disable folder redirection and offline files in Windows XP? More details inside.

I'm on a domain which has a group policy to redirect My Documents which is causing all sorts of problems when I'm off my work network.

Basically there is a 4-5 minute delay on any application each time it needs to bring up a file open/save dialog.

Is it possible to just turn all of this off without being a network administrator?

posted by gfroese to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

I wouldnt mess with this. When you disable offline files youre deleting them. So if you do this off network youre just going to be unable to access them until you get back in. At that point if the domain policy isnt refreshed youre going to walk away without synchronizing. This sounds like a problem to bring up with your support people.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:09 AM on December 21, 2007

Do you have local administrative rights to the machine?
posted by JaredSeth at 7:09 AM on December 21, 2007

I think only a domain administrator can disable a roaming profile. I know, there very, very slow for any account that has existed for at least a month. I would tell the network admin that your profile is too big, and consuming too much bandwidth. He may relate to that.
posted by Wismi at 7:36 AM on December 21, 2007

the're not there, sorry.
posted by Wismi at 7:37 AM on December 21, 2007

the're?
posted by Doohickie at 7:43 AM on December 21, 2007

Response by poster: @JaredSeth: Yes I do have local admin rights.

As for losing files if i turn off offline files, i'm not concerned at all, it's a brand new machine and my files are stored someplace else anyway, not a fan of My Documents to start with.
posted by gfroese at 8:12 AM on December 21, 2007

I guess what I was thinking is that if you have local admin, why not create a local version of your user account and use that when you're off the network. You could set up a folder on the hard drive somewhere, give both your domain and local accounts rights to it and just drop documents you need to share between home and work in there.

Would that work?
posted by JaredSeth at 8:24 AM on December 21, 2007

Response by poster: @JaredSeth: great idea, I'll try it.
posted by gfroese at 8:29 AM on December 21, 2007

Response by poster: The local account is working out great, thanks for the idea.
posted by gfroese at 10:01 AM on December 21, 2007

Glad to hear it. You could possibly even set the local account up to use the domain users profile path (after assigning it rights to the appropriate folders) but I don't know that I'd recommend it. Probably better off keeping them separate.
posted by JaredSeth at 11:10 AM on December 21, 2007