Windows XP Favourites Redirection – ADMX files

One of the major disadvantages of still running XP in production is its lack of Internet Explorer Favourites directory redirection. If your users frequently roam between computers, the usual workaround is to enable Roaming Profiles to have the favourites roam with them. This usually works, until Windows Vista or 7 is introduced into the environment.

The newer Microsoft operating systems from Vista onwards do not support the old, legacy format of the XP profile. Instead, users logging on to a modern OS for the first time will be given a new roaming profile with “.V2″ appended to their username in the roaming profile share. This is the version 2 profile, used by Vista up and totally isolated from the XP profile, including total isolation of the data it contains. In a phased roll-out of the newer Microsoft operating systems, you must follow best practices by using folder redirection to redirect user data on all systems to a common network location. This removes the data from the profiles, maintains consistency and ensures the user experience is the same on all network stations, without concerns over which OS is installed and therefore which profile and data the user will have access to. Plus, roaming profiles are just too slow for storing lots of user data anyway.

Unfortunately, Windows XP does not support redirection of the Favourites directory; this support was added in Windows Vista. One workaround I have seen is the built-in Vista redirection configured to redirect user favourites folders on newer systems to the legacy XP roaming profile share. This works, but it’s not particularly clean; redirecting data to a profile share rather than a user (home folder) share just isn’t right. It also causes data loss issues if a user’s profile must be reset; I work by the principle that only disposable data – stuff the users could live without – should be put into a user’s profile for precisely this reason.

Implementing Favourites redirection in Windows XP is a logical alternative; it isn’t particularly difficult either. I developed the following ADMX files to supplement the older ADM solutions which are available through a search on a popular web search engine. With 2008 or 2008 R2 Domain Controllers, the ADMX format is available for your use and I would highly suggest you make use of it. ADMX is XML-based and much, much easier to use than the legacy ADM language.

XPFavouritesRedirect.admx

<policyDefinitions revision="1.0" schemaVersion="1.0">
  <policyNamespaces>
    <target prefix="customFavorites" namespace="Microsoft.Policies.Favorites" />
    <using prefix="inetres" namespace="Microsoft.Policies.InternetExplorer" />
  </policyNamespaces>
  <resources minRequiredRevision="1.0" />
  <supportedOn>
    <definitions>
      <definition name="SUPPORTED_IE5" displayName="$(string.SUPPORTED_IE5)" />
    </definitions>
  </supportedOn>
  <policies>
    <policy name="IE_Favorites" class="User" displayName="$(string.IE_Favorites)" explainText="$(string.IE_Favorites_Location_Explain)" presentation="$(presentation.IE_Favorites)" key="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders">
      <parentCategory ref="inetres:InternetExplorer" />
      <supportedOn ref="SUPPORTED_IE5" />
      <elements>
        <text id="IE_Favorites_Location" key="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" valueName="Favorites" required="true" expandable="true" />
      </elements>
    </policy>
  </policies>
</policyDefinitions>

XPFavouritesRedirect.adml (name this the same as the ADMX file and dump it in the language folder in your PolicyDefinitions directory)

<policyDefinitionResources revision="1.0" schemaVersion="1.0">
  <displayName>
  </displayName>
  <description>
  </description>
  <resources>
    <stringTable>
      <string id="IE_Favorites">Location of Internet Explorer Favorites</string>
      <string id="IE_Favorites_Location">The path to the favorites folder</string>
      <string id="IE_Favorites_Location_Explain">Specify the path to the location of your Favorites folder. This is stored in an expandable registry string value, so you can use environment variables, such as %HomeDrive%%HomePath%.</string>
      <string id="IE_Favorites_Location_Tip1">Specify the UNC path to the favorites location</string>
      <string id="InternetExplorer">Internet Explorer</string>
      <string id="SUPPORTED_IE5">at least Internet Explorer v5.01</string>
    </stringTable>
    <presentationTable>
      <presentation id="IE_Favorites">
        <textBox refId="IE_Favorites_Location">
          <label>Path:</label>
          <defaultValue>
          </defaultValue>
        </textBox>
      </presentation>
    </presentationTable>
  </resources>
</policyDefinitionResources>

The above is standard ADMX/ADML format which can be dumped in the correct locations of your Central Store (if you don’t have one, why not? Set one up, otherwise you will need to store them in the local store on each DC). In the GP Editor, it will appear as a policy in the standard Internet Explorer area under the User Configuration / Windows Components node.

The Favourites registry value in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders is of type REG_EXPAND_SZ. The ADMX implements this with the expandable=”true” syntax, meaning from your perspective, you can specify environment variables in the GPO and these will be properly expanded by the system to their full paths. I personally use %HomeDrive%%HomePath%\Favourites to direct them to a subfolder of the user’s defined home folder location in their Active Directory user account properties.

This does not move any existing Favourites out of the profile and into the redirected location. However; this is fairly easy to script in a logon script or one-time operation. For new users, the Favourites directory will be created automatically, assuming the home drive exists, the user has permissions, quota is not fully used and so on.

It is a good idea to set the XP Favourites redirection policy in its own GPO object, then apply a WMI condition to filter the policy to XP/2003 and older systems only. Windows Vista and above support native redirection of Favourites, so you should use a separate, WMI filtered policy for Vista+ computers to redirect their Favourites to the same location as defined for XP clients.

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