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Question
Monday, March 12, 2018 4:44 PM | 3 votes
Hi I'm trying to package up Visual Studio 2017 Community edition for deployment in an FE College environment and have run into a bit of a snag. Managed desktops using folder redirection and UEV for settings, no roaming profiles.
It's been fed back to me by the ICT Teachers testing the deployment package that there is one little problem they want fixed. The default new project save location is C:\users\username%\source... when they are used to it being %userprofile%\Documents\VisualStudio20xx... This new location is a bit of a problem as it's outside of redirected folders so is lost when the students move between computers unless they remember to save the project elsewhere. Bit of a dangerous data loss potential if great care is not taken to save in the correct location.
Now I've read on stackoverflow this location is now controlled by a private reg hive and no longer as a key I can control in HKLM by group policy. I've no idea how to administrative modify it in the new location via install wrapper script or with group policy.
I know I'm not the only person that want's to deploy visual studio to students in a managed classroom environment where local user profiles are not persisted so I hope somebody at microsoft or in the community has a solution to this they can share.
Regards
Angus Carson
All replies (10)
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 8:05 AM | 2 votes
Hi Angus Carson,
Welcome to the MSDN forum.
Are your Visual Studio connected Team Explorer?
Based on my test with Visual Studio 2017 Community edition, before I connect Team Explorer, the default project location is “C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects”. But, once I have connected to the Team Explorer, even I unlink it, the default project location still is “C:\Users\Admin\source\repos”, because the VS save the last modified path by default.
So, if you want to use “C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Visual Studio 2017\Projects” as the default path, please make sure you are not connected Team Explorer, and click Tools ->Options ->Projects and Solutions ->Locations, change the Projects locations.
>>This new location is a bit of a problem as it's outside of redirected folders so is lost when the students move between computers unless they remember to save the project elsewhere.
Based on my test, I can use same account to view the saved projects located under path “C:\Users\Admin\source\repos”, they are not lost.
Thanks for your understanding.
Regards,
Judyzh
MSDN Community Support
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Wednesday, March 14, 2018 9:57 AM
Hi RobitArora
Thanks for replying.
Unfortunately your suggestion does not deal with the problem which is about how to administratively control this setting for all users logging into the software in our environment. It is a classroom environment with students logging into many different computers with this software installed. Redirection of folders and the use of UEV for settings is the primary solution providing a data and settings follow me experience.
This visual studio configuration issue prevents that and results in a data loss opportunity for student work if they do not manually change the setting themselves. It is not a sensible default configuration for a shared computer environment.
Thursday, March 15, 2018 8:02 AM
Hi Angus Carson,
>> This visual studio configuration issue prevents that and results in a data loss opportunity for student work if they do not manually change the setting themselves.
Do you mean that students cannot save their projects to a shared folder you specify?
I suggest you create a new share folder with a different name, specify “C:\Users\Admin\source\repos” as the default path, and deploying this new Share via Group Policy in student being able to open files from Windows Search, save files through MS Project and the Share being accessible through browsing SMB, then check that can students save their project in it?
Based on my understanding, if the project could save to the share folder correctly, the data will not be lost. I suspect this issue may be related to the UEV environment, I suggest you could go to following forum to get more information support on UEV with share folder.
Thanks for your understanding.
Regards,
Judyzh
MSDN Community Support
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Thursday, August 16, 2018 2:25 AM
This answer misses the aim of the problem. This is not a security or rights problems, it is about setting a default location for all users of the PC, including future users who have never used the PC before.
e.g. Class 1 has 30 students who all sit at different PCs every lesson
Class 2 has another 30 students regularly changing PCs.
All these students Documents and Desktops are redirected using Group Policy to their network share, however VS creates a new folder in C:\Users\user>\source\repo that is outside the scope of folder redirection. This is then used as a default save location unless each student goes in and changes it every time they log onto a new computer.
We want to be able to set this location automatically for every user that logs onto that PC.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 12:01 PM | 2 votes
I completely agree with this statement as Im looking at the same thing now for a school.
When a student logs in their redirected documents it may look similar to this:
\myserver\students\billybloggs\Documents
However VS saves the projects in C:\Users\BillyBloggs\source\repo as RuddJ suggests. This just isn't acceptable to ask students to change this each time especially as it should be an easily configurable admin task. If the user does forget to save change the folder when they logout and move PCs their project is no longer with them. Also most schools will implement some method for flushing local profiles after say 24 hours to prevent disks from filling. If this happens (At the weekend for example) then all the work is gone.
Administering VS is an absolute nightmare as the school also employs AppLocker and file screens to ensure application security across the site.... But that's a different part of the story....
Im still on the hunt for a suitable solution to this one.
Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:51 AM
Hi Shaun Jennison，
One idea is that you could use certain version control tools like TFS or Azure DevOps which could really control the project's progress, and student could upload their project to the servers using the VS IDE after the class is over very day.
Even if the project was not saved to the pc of the school, they could clone them to they machine again next time. Actually I often used the same machine in our school when I learned the .NET before, and my teachers often clean up all data after the class is over, so we need to take a backup for our project in every class. But I agree with you, it would be not convenient:)
Best Regards,
Jack
MSDN Community Support
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Thursday, January 17, 2019 3:23 PM | 1 vote
I can confirm that this is also an issue for us in a classroom environment. We have 30+ students wanting to be able to open existing projects on their network shares (which were saved in previous, versions of vs community 2017 without issue). However, since an update and the addition of other VS modules, they are now presented with dialogue box stating it cannot write to C:\users..... - (saving to the c:\users\username\ folder is restricted so that we can ensure they're saving in the correct locations). We would like for visual studio's project location to default to the 'W:' drive for all users that log on to the computers.
Is this possible to achieve using a registry key change or an installer command?
Thursday, September 12, 2019 7:02 PM
Has Microsoft made any progress on this? I'm facing the same issue.
Thursday, January 30, 2020 12:35 PM
Any updates on this issue? We have exactly the same scenario at our Schools.
Thursday, July 9, 2020 10:06 AM
Has there been any further progress with this? Trying to use vsregedit to force default settings but the settings don't seem to stick.
Again this is for a school setting where the local profile will get deleted on log off so if they save there they lose their work.