[Samba] SOLVED: Roaming profiles not updating XP

[brandon franzke]

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 at usc.edu