Windows Explorer Displays Redirected Folders as a Different Name

Question

Hi Guys,
Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 has this new feature where it displays folders in which you have ownership of as "Documents" or "Start Menu" for Folder Redirection.
This only renames it when browsing it through Windows Explorer (explorer.exe).  If you browse the folders through a command prompt using DIR, it will display the correct name... %username%.
I think Microsoft did this to make it more user friendly, but HOW DO I TURN IT OFF its annoying!
I wrote this program in visual basic that takes ownership of a folder, Grants Administrators, SYSTEM and %username% full control.  It grabs %username% from the folder name as ususally with redirection the folder in which the data is redirected to =
%username%.  After setting the permissions correctly the program then gives ownership BACK to the user.
Anyway upon running my little application... look what explorer did.  I had Ownership of the folder for a split second before the application gave ownership back.  Because of this when I opened up the folder Explorer populated many of the
folders as "Application Data" when they should be displayed as %username%.
Even though the user now has ownership of the folders now, it still displays them as Application Data!  If I log into the file server as another user account, it displays them correctly.  Explorer is caching this meta data under the users
profile somewhere.
There is NO information on this on the internet.  Can someone at Microsoft give me some information to turn this functionality of explorer.exe off or tell me where this meta data is stored so I can blow it away without having to re-create the entire
profile?
Clint Boessen MCSE, MCITP: Messaging
Perth, Western Australia
Blog: http://clintboessen.blogspot.com/

Answer 1

All,
We have numerous customers running W2K8 SP & R2 environments, none of which have reported this issue. Oddly enough though we have recently provisioned a W2K8 R2 remote desktop
host farm for a custom who has a w2k3 R2 environment.
We performed all the pre requisites to host the farm in the W2K3 R2 domain, and added the GPO structure to one of the W2K8 R2 servers as you cannot make remote desktop GPO’s
with W2K3 R2 GPO’s.
User do not have profile or home directory paths defined in AD
Profile and home folder paths are defined in the GPO
Folder redirection is enabled for Documents and Application Data
BEHAVIOR:
To start with when users logged onto the RD Farm they had their home folder path correctly set and the folder names in the root of the share was correct.
\\server\share\username1\ect
Then after 3 months we noticed that users home folder path was no longer being created with the %username% structure and looked like this
\\server\share\my documents\ect
The profile and application data folder redirection is working 
as expected by creating a folder with the username.
The document folder redirection is not working correctly.
CONFIGURATION:
Set path for Remote Desktop Services Roaming User Profile
Enabled
Profile path
\\SERVER\profileshare\
Specify the path in the form,
\\Computername\Sharename
Set Remote Desktop Services User Home Directory
Enabled
Location:
On the Network
Home Dir Root Path:
\\SERVER\homeshare\
If home path is on the network, specify drive letter for the mapped drive.
Drive Letter
U:
Current GPO Settings:
AppData(Roaming)hide
Setting: Basic (Redirect everyone's folder to the same location)hide
Path:
\\SERVER\SHARE1\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming
Documentshide
Setting: Basic (Redirect everyone's folder to the same location)hide
Path: %HOMESHARE%%HOMEPATH%
ISSUE:
When enumerating via windows explorer on the Windows 2003 R2 or Windows 2008 R2 servers you see some document folders with
the correct %username% name, but mostly they are all enumerating as My Documents.
If you open a command prompt on the W2K3 R2 server and perform a DIR you will see a list of %username% folders correctly.
CONCLUTION:
I am going to dig deeper into file/folder level attribute flags set by default when creating folders by windows 2008, as I feel there is a problem with windows 2008 Server creating
data in a windows 2003 R2 server ntfs folder structure. I am aware NTFS has been upgraded and the version used in 2003 is not the same as 2008 and above.
If I find a solution I will update this ticket