Duplicate user profiles in Windows 2000

[godfathercj69]

I seem to have a unique issue and i'm unsure of the cause or solution. A majority of our systems are on windows 2000 machines with Novell logins. A handful of the systems, after the user logs in to novell, comes up to a blank or generic windows 2000 desktop missing all their icons and files. After investigating in the documents and settings folder we discover a new profile has been created. If the users profile name is "user123" , the new profile is "user123.user123" . We end up copying the original profile "user123" into the newly created "user123.user123" profile as a work around and the user is able to access the data again. The funny thing is if you go into the users folder in computer management there is no user name "user123.user123" , but "user123" is listed as its supposed to be. Is this a security flaw, virus, or Novell issue? The computers are virus free to the best of our knowledge, but you can never be sure. Does anyone have any ideas as to what causes this to happen?

Thanks!!

[califsp484]

What the issue could be, and what it sounds like is the duplicate user is being created due to the domain. Now, I'm not too familiar with Novell, but I have worked a little in Windows domains.

If I create a user "user123" and have documents BEFORE I have joined a domain, and then sign onto a domain with the same "user123" username, Windows will create a duplicate account, and it will only show the one username in Computer Management. Can you always be signed in with Novell? If you can, you can use that profile to have your documents. Or you could just have a shortcut on their Novell account to point to their old account. Windows is weird like that, and sometimes it just doesn't make your life easy.

This may not have been the insight you were looking for, but hopefully this helps to point you in the right direction.

Good luck!

[JiveMasterT]

This sounds like the result of the user logging in remotely before they hit the network. What are your deployment steps? What version of Novell Netware are these people running?

[Steffan]

Parts of the registry are not closing out correctly, which leads to the duplicate profile. What you need to do is install the User Hive Profile Cleaner from Microsoft. That will save a lot of headaches. My work uses Novell as well. I have run into the issue many times. Its part of our standard install for any client install.