Environment
Novell
ZENworks 7 Desktop Management Support Pack 1 - ZDM7 SP1 Application
Launcher (NAL)
Situation
NAL icons copied to desktop disappear after refresh
Steps to
reproduce:
1. Open NAL
Window
2. Copy NAL
icon to desktop
3. Refresh
the desktop screen and the NAL icons disappear
Resolution
NAL icons
that are copied to the desktop disappear after refreshing
desktop.
Icons disappearing
from the desktop is caused by the desktop path value in
the workstation registry (specifically the
ShGetSpecialFOlderLocation() and SHGetPathFromIDList()
calls), being changed to a lower case "c" as in"c:\Documents and Settings\user\Desktop". When
the drive letter is changed to lower case it is stored as
such in the registry in [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\user
sid]"ProfileImagePath"
The NAL shortcuts on the Desktop, FindFirstFile()/FindNextFile()returns the drive letter in upper case. When the path is validated by NAL, a case sensitive string compare occurs and since the Desktop path that comes from Windows has a lower case drive letter the compare fails. The icon location in the registry then causes the removal of the NAL shortcut from the desktop.
Solution:
When a
machine is configured to autologin with a cached domain
account. Only one of the (cached) domain user accounts
has theProfileImagePath set to
a path with a lower case driver letter. All other
ProfileImagePaths, including the local accounts are using the
SystemDrive environment variable. The SystemDrive environment
variable itself is set to an upper case "C:". By manually changing
the registry data to an upper case C or by using %SystemDrive%, NAL
works correctly and the NAL icon does not get removed from the
Desktop.
If the ProfileImagePath is changed from the default value, NAL will fail.
The solution
for this issue is to not change the ProfileImagePath registry
value, or if a change is required for some reason, change it
to an upper case "C:".