Error Loading Roaming Profile

Warning: This post deals with editing the registry. If you don’t know what that is stop right here & ask someone else to help you. Using the registry editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall Windows. Use the registry editor at your own risk.

Description – When a user with a roaming profile logs on to a Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server they receive an error that says, “Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator.”

Once the user logs in they are able to function somewhat normally. But if you look in C:\Users you see a folder called TEMP instead of one for their username. And of course like the error said, any changes will not be saved when they log off.

Cause – There are several reasons this can happen but it is most likely caused by a corrupt Profile.

Solution – With the user logged off verify that the TEMP folder in C:\Users is gone. Open the registry & browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Look through each sub-key until you locate the key for the user in question (look at the ProfileImagePath value). Delete the key (it will start with S-1-5). Close Regedit. No reboot needed. Have the user log in & it should pull their roaming profile correctly.

Excel Title Bar Doesn’t say “Microsoft Excel – Book 1″

I had a user report that every time she opened any spreadsheet in Excel 2000 when logged in to the Terminal Server it said “Simulation Template – filename.xls” instead of “Microsoft Excel – filename.xls“. Even if she just opened the Excel program first it still said “Simulation Template – Book 1″. It didn’t seem to affect anything negatively but it was still strange that it was showing up like this.

My first thought was she had saved a file in her XLStart folder (C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART) but there was nothing in there. Maybe somehow someone saved a file to the system XLStart folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\XLStart). Nope, nothing there either.

OK, maybe there’s something in her user profile that’s messed up. I had her log off the Terminal Server. I verified that her profile had been deleted from the server & then rename her roaming profile & redirected folders so that when she logged in it created everything from scratch. When she logged back in everything appeared as expected as if she was logging in for the first time. When she launched Excel it still said, ”Simulation Template – Book 1″.

Well maybe it’s more server related than user related. So I logged into the server, launched Excel & wouldn’t you know it, it said “Simulation Template – Book 1″. At this point I’m a little stumped. Like any stumped administrator…when in doubt, run Process Monitor.

I started ProcMon, launched Excel then stopped the capture. I filtered to only show excel.exe. Then I did a search for the word simulation. I got several hits but as I was going through them one jumped out at me. It was querying a value called LoadBehavior in  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\SimulationClientAddIN.Connect.  I right clicked the entry to jump to that spot in the registry. LoadBehavior was set to 3.

Not knowing what a valid value is for this I did a little searching & came across this site. Apparently 3 mean the add-in’s status is “Loaded” & its load behavior is “Load at startup”. Looking through the list 2, 8, or 9 also looked like viable options as well. So I changed the value to 2. I opened up Excel & sure enough the title bar now says, “Microsoft Excel – Book 1″!!!

According to the chart on that website leaving it on 2 leave opens the possibility that LoadBehavior could change back to 3 if the application successfully loads the add-in. But for now I’m going to leave it at 2. If the issue arrises again I may just change it to 9.

Remove the Default Wallpaper from Dell Servers

Warning: This post deals with editing the registry. If you don’t know what that is stop right here & ask someone else to help you. Using the registry editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall Windows. Use the registry editor at your own risk.

If you use the default Windows installation with a new Dell server (which I do not recommend) you might notice that they set a horrible image as the default wallpaper for all users. To undo this do the following:

• Open regedit & browse to HKU\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop.
• Right click the Wallpaper value & select Delete.
• Close regedit.
• Reboot the server.

No more default image.