So, back in the Windows 7/ Server 2008 era if you had a roaming profile it was always suffixed with a .v2
extension. So if you username was “rakhesh” and your profile path in AD was “\\someservers\profiles
“, the actual path created there would be “\\someservers\profiles\rakhesh.v2
“. This is because Windows 7/ Server 2008 had a different profile format to Windows XP/ Server 2003 and prior, so Microsoft decided to tack on this extension so there’s no corruption. Neat idea!
But with Windows 8/ Server 2012 and Windows 8.1/ Server 2012 R2 there was no similar extension. So if you started using roaming profiles with these OSes, and you had a mixed environment, you were in for some trouble. Everything would write to the .v2
profile.
Turns out you can apply a hotfix for Windows 8/ Server 2012 and Windows 8.1/ Server 2012 R2, and then create a new registry value UseProfilePathExtensionVersion
(of data 1) under HKLM\System\CurrentControlset\Services\ProfSvc\Parameters
and this will cause these two OSes to append a .v3
and .v4
suffix respectively to the roaming profiles. Nice!
With Windows 10/ Server 2016 though, the OS goes back to the old behavior of adding a .v5
extension. So no need for any hotfix or registry key changes. Nice!
As an FYI to myself here’s two alternative approaches to Windows 8/ Server 2012 and Windows 8.1/ Server 2012 R2 profile handling if one didn’t want to go the hotfix + registry key change route: this one’s from Microsoft, and this one’s something I found while Googling. I prefer the latter.
Update: To keep things interesting (via) –
- Windows 10 build 1511 and older use v5 profiles. (These are builds 1507 and 1511 – aka Threshold 1 and Threshold 2).
- Windows 10 build 1607 and newer use v6 profiles. (Build 1607 is also known as Redstone 1. The next one, build 1703 is known as Redstone 2, and so on).
- Windows Server 2016 uses a v6 profile.