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Wes Sayeed
Asked: 2018-12-18 13:46:44 +0800 CST

Folder Redirection: What does the "Also Apply Redirection Policy..." setting do?

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When implementing Folder Redirection via Group Policy, there is a checkbox on the Settings tab that says "Also apply redirection policy to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems."

When I Google this checkbox, all I find are how-to articles on folder redirection in general, support articles saying one bad thing or another is happening because it is or isn't checked, or forums full of advice from people clearly have no idea what they're doing.

I know how folder redirection works. I also know how to read. What I want to know is, what does this setting actually do from a technical standpoint?

Folder Redirection - Documents Properties

We do not have any XP or Server 2003 machines in our environment, so this checkbox is irrelevant to me. But today I found a rogue group policy that is screwing up permissions on a file server, and it's because it had the "Grant the user exclusive rights..." checkbox enabled. I need to disable it, but that policy also has this option set, and I want to know how/if this will affect the terminal server it's being applied to.

windows

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There are two versions of the Group Policy Folder Redirection protocol: Version 0 and Version 1.

    There are therefore two versions of the configuration file used internally to store folder redirection settings.

    Version 0 settings are stored here: Sysvol_path_of_the_gpo\User\Documents & Settings\fdeploy.ini
    Version 1 settings are stored here: Sysvol_path_of_the_gpo\User\Documents & Settings\fdeploy1.ini

    As the protocol has changed, the content of the files is not the same. Below is a screenshot representing the same configuration (Desktop redirection on c:\temp) once in protocol version 0 and once in version 1, respectively.

    GPO Folder Redirection protocol versions

    newer versions of Windows can read both version of the protocol, however, older versions (up to Windows XP) can only use version 0.

    And that's why this checkbox was added: By default, the latest version of the protocol is used (V1), however, you can revert to V0 if you have older clients by enabling the checkbox you specify.

    I suggest not checking this checkbox if you don't absolutely need the Folder Redirection to work on older versions of Windows (so that you use the most recent version of the configuration protocol).

    Here is the technical documentation of the Folder Redirection protocol, if you want more details on this topic.
    Point 2.2 of this documentation is about the Message Syntax and provides details about the protocol version.

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