samba - Apr 2004 - SOLVED: Roaming profiles not updating XP

After almost 40 hours of work and testing over 6 computers I have finally 
figured out the answer to my problem of Roaming profiles not updating.  This 
has occurred with SAMBA versions 2.2.* and later up through and including 
3.0.2a (completely clean install in each case, including rebuilding domain, 
users and groups and smb.conf from scratch).  It does not appear to be a SAMBA 
issue but one with 3rd party products at least in my case.  I am posting only 
to the SAMBA list because I found countless unanswered posts asking this exact 
question so I hope that at least one person finds this answer helpful. 

The problem appears to be in the NVIDIA reference drivers at least (perhaps 
earlier, haven't checked) version 56.64 and later (to 56.72 at least) win2k
and
XP versions and an NT service installed: NVIDIA Display Driver Service.  It is 
used to assist in issues related to macrovision and other auxiliary helper 
display functions.

I can reliably reproduce this result on a FRESHLY installed XP machine with 
only the reference driver installed immediately after first start up on the 
domain.  The profile is properly copied from the SAMBA server to the client, 
but on subsequent logouts the profile is not updated on the server, though the 
client will update their profile as the server copy changes as expected.  I 
have found this to occur on at least 3 cards with NVIDIA chipsets as of yet: 
Hercules GeForce2 GTS 64MB, Leadtek Geforce3 64MB, and MSI Geforce 5900XT 128MB.

Short side of the story: if the service is enabled ON BOOT, the profiles do 
not update correctly, if disabled ON BOOT the profiles update correctly.  If 
you change it, you MUST RESTART to see the effect.  Also, even if the problem 
of not updating occurs because of this it APPEARS that just changing this 
option and rebooting fixes the issue.  

As a note, this installation is completely fresh.  I joined the domain during 
the installation and did not even change the options in the Local Group Policy 
editor (mmc / gpedit.mmc).  Also, this is pre SP1 so this is not affected by 
the "check profiles for ..." fix (which I did not do).

If you have any questions, or a more suitable location for this post please 
let me know!  Hopefully this helps someone.

Sincerely,
Brandon Franzke
franzke@usc.edu

Hi all,

	This is (nearly) a follow-up to Brandon Franzke's posting about
XP profiles not saving.

The original post is at

http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-April/084023.html
and
http://www.spinics.net/lists/samba/msg19018.html

We've just hit this exact same problem and confirm Brandon's findings.

We're using Brand New (unpacked from the box on Monday) Dell Optiplex
GX270 computers with Win PX Pro Version 2002 SP 1 factory installed.

They work perfectly, including Roaming Profiles saving back and forth.

If we upgrade the drivers for the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 to the latest
current dirvers (5.6.7.2) then a Roaming Profile is not saved back to
the profile server.

This occured with a Windows 2003 server as well as Samba 3.0.2a and
3.0.3rc1.

When we roll the driver back (to 4.5.0.2) the problem disappears, and
the profile is then written back perfectly (including any changes that
have been made whilst the drivers were at 5.6.7.2)


We're currently trying to interest Dell, NVIDIA and Microsoft in this
problem, but Dell simply say "we've not tested anything about
4.5.0.2"
and NVIDIA's website says "we don't do support".


So, we can confirm Brandon Franzke's findings, and we came to this
conclusion independently.  We can also confirm that a re-boot is needed
for changes to take effect (specifically, installing the 5.6.7.2 driver,
but _not_ rebooting does _not_ cause the profile saving failure).

Also since we've used exclusively XP SP1 we believe it's unlikely to be
a
Microsoft problem (Brandon's testing was all pre-SP1).


	I hope we've added a bit to the pool of knwoledge here.


If anyone has any suggestions on how we can contact NVIDIA to ask
them to fix a netwokring bug, we'd very much like to hear them.

Also if you have hit this problem, then please let me know.  Maybe we can get
them to listen to weight of numbers?




                               Mac
          Assistant Systems Adminstrator @nibsc.ac.uk
                        dmccann@nibsc.ac.uk
   Work: +44 1707 641565          Everything else: +44 7956 237670 (anytime)

This solved my problem.  Thanks very much for sharing.