This post discusses an interesting feature I learned about in Windows 7. Many Microsoft customers deploy Roaming User Profiles. In fact, many combine Roaming User profiles and Folder Redirection to get the best experience possible. However, one of the drawbacks with Roaming User profiles is the user must logoff before their settings are uploaded to the server. Folder redirection solves this problem for any of the known folders within the user profile namespace, such as Documents, Music, or Downloads—the data is highly available without requiring a user logoff. Now, if this could only occur with user’s registry settings.

Windows 7 solves this problem by allowing the User Profile service to upload the user’s registry settings of a Roaming User profile while the user remains logged on to the computer, or terminal services session (provided the session is hosted on Windows Server 2008 R2).

You enabled this feature using Group Policy. The policy setting Background upload of a roaming user profile’s registry file while user is logged on, is located under Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles. The policy setting offers two configuration settings: scheduled or interval. The scheduled method allows you to configure a time of day (represented on 24 hour time) at which to upload the user’s registry settings. The interval method allow you to choose a specific interval (represented in hours) at which to upload the user’s registry settings. This method accepts an interval range between 1 and 720 inclusively. Both settings include a random delay that does not exceed one hour.

Background uploading only occurs with Roaming User profile. Also, background uploading does not alter uploading the entire profile when the user logs off. It is important to remember that background uploading only uploads the user’s registry settings (ntuser.dat).

Now those subtle changes made in the registry can be uploaded to the server while the user remains logged on. Pretty cool.

–Mike Stephens