Last Updated on 2015-11-14.
Scenario
In your LAN, you use a mixture of Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 client workstations. User accounts are configured for roaming profiles combined with folder redirection.
If a user changes e.g. from a Windows 7 to an 8.1 station, the user profile might get destroyed. Windows 8 and 10 by default do not append a string like “.V2” to the user profile directory. However, Vista and Win7 did that.
Solution
As you see here, you can bring Windows 8 and upwards to add a version string. For Windows 8 and 8.1, this is “.V4”, Windows 10 is “.V5”.
For Windows 8, make sure you have installed this update rollup.
Then add a registry key, which is the same for Windows 8, 8.1 and 10:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlset\Services\ProfSvc\Parameters -> DWORD UseProfilePathExtensionVersion, Value 1 (hex).
You can also deploy this setting via GPO to all of your Windows stations.
After you restart the PC, Windows should create new roaming profile folders for each operating system the user logs in from. If you use folder redirection, the user might not even recognize much, as there stays not much information in the profile folder itself, but e.g. things like Outlook config data.