Restore roaming profiles on Server 2008

Question

Awhile back our Windows server 2008 Domain Controller crashed. It was restored by an outside IT company, but they did not restore everything they should have like roaming profiles.

Clients still have the the Roaming folder in USERNAME\App Data directory. If I fill in the profile field for the user in the active directory information on the server will the Roaming profile be pulled back to the server or will the Roaming folder be overwritten with a blank roaming profile?

Answer 1

My experience Roaming profiles is that if the shared profile folder is non-existent or empty, on the second logoff after setting the roaming folder path in AD the local user profile will be copied over to the server.

So yes your profiles should be pushed to the server and the folder should be automatically created if you mass edit user properties in the AD user and computers. Just make sure to use %username% and also end the path with a \. I've seen some problems with paths without trailing backslash since there are now 2 version or the roaming profile folder - one for XP and one for Vista and up.