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New Users have 2 User Folders

Steel Contributor

Occasionally when I setup new users on my domain controller, it will create 2 user folders; one is just hte username which is normal and correct and then there sometimes is a second user folder with username.domain. Does anyone know what would cause this to happen randomly on users? Or how to fix it? Here is a screenshot. Thanks!

 

userfolders1.png

11 Replies

It's normal expected behavior.

If you first logged on to pc then later to domain you'll end up with two profiles

%username%
%username%.%userdomain%

If you first logged on to domain then later to pc you'll end up with two profiles

%username%
%username%.%computername%
 

(please don't forget to mark helpful replies)

 

 

@Dave Patrick 

 

So how is it that this has only happened a couple time to random users. Usually, when I setup a new user, I only get the one user folder as you can see in the previous screenshot. Thanks!

The users that have two profiles have logged on at least once to both local machine and domain on the pc. 

 

 

@Dave Patrick 

 

The users only log in one way; via RDP onto a Windows Server 2016 machine. So how do they get logged in twice? Sorry I am slightly confused how 2 logins get created with a single RDP session. Thank you.

One is a local logon

pcname\username

 

the other is a domain logon

domainname\username

 

 

@Dave Patrick 

 

Yes, I understand the difference between the 2 profiles. I am just trying to understand why this has only happened on a few new users that I setup and not all the users; if this is normal. Thanks!

More than likely confusion on the part of user, but you may have to ask them.

 

 

@Dave Patrick 

 

So I setup a new user and then to test, I logged in via RDP to one of Windows Server 2016 machines, once I was logged in it showed 2 user folders and I had only signed in that one time with this new user.

 

Under the Home Folder in Active Directory, instead of Local Path, we use Connect to a custom location. Would this have any affect on 2 user folders?

 

userfolders2.png

 

I'd suggest asking here for help with an RDS configuration.

 

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/home?forum=winserverTS

 

 

 

@Dave Patrick

 

Okay, thanks!

 

So I used that same user and logged in via RDP to my other Server 2016 machine and it only created the user folder with the username and not he username.domain folder? Strange.... 

Ok, well what I described is how this happens under normal circumstances. In your case there may be configuration issues or possibly something now broken on the problematic server.