ConnectComputer and “The following user settings are private”

I keep managing to run into this scenario at just about every site I’ve worked with in the past 6 months, and there’s just enough time that passes between each setup that I can be prone to forgetting the issues I ran into on the previous pass. Today was no exception.

I was setting up a workstation for a client and there were two profiles that they needed “kept” as part of the ConnectComputer wizard process. No problem, handles that like a dream. Except both came back with the dreaded “The following user settings are private” error. There is a Microsoft KB article ( KB886210) on this error, but buried at the bottom is the real meat of the resolution – how to find the actual file/folder that’s tripping up the wizard.

Fortunately, you can look in the SBSNetSetup.log file (stored by default in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Small Business Server\Clients folder on the workstation) and scroll down to the end of the file to find the file or folder that’s tripping up the wizard. Usually (I recall this now, mind you) it’s a file somewhere in the Temporary Internet Files that can be deleted to fix the issue, but the log file will tell you specifically which file it is.

What the KB doesn’t mention, however, is that there may be more than one file that will interrupt the wizard, and you won’t know what it is until you hit the next run of the wizard. Don’t panic, though, as you simply check the SBSNetSetup.log file after each failure of the wizard to find the next file that is causing problems. Once you clear all the files, the wizard will complete as expected.

I wish I knew what was causing this to happen (at least in my world) much more frequently of late, but now that I remember the issue enough to blog it, it should cause less constarnation in the future.