User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

Brief Description

A service to help with slow log off and unreconciled profile problems.

Overview

The User Profile Hive Cleanup service helps to ensure user sessions are completely terminated when a user logs off. System processes and applications occasionally maintain connections to registry keys in the user profile after a user logs off. In those cases the user session is prevented from completely ending. This can result in problems when using Roaming User Profiles in a server environment or when using locked profiles as implemented through the Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.

On Windows 2000 you can benefit from this service if the application event log shows event id 1000 where the message text indicates that the profile is not unloading and that the error is "Access is denied". On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 either event ids 1517 and 1524 indicate the same profile unload problem.

To accomplish this the service monitors for logged off users that still have registry hives loaded. When that happens the service determines which application have handles opened to the hives and releases them. It logs the application name and what registry keys were left open. After this the system finishes unloading the profile.

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System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP

Windows Installer: To use the MSI installation package you must have Windows Installer version 2.0 installed. Otherwise you can follow the manual installation instructions from the readme provided below. Windows Installer 2.0 is included with Windows 2000 SP3 and later, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. You can install Windows Installer 2.0 using this link Windows Installer 2.0 Redistributable for Windows NT & 2000.

NOTE: The service has not been localized but is expected to run properly on localized version of Windows. The event log messages will be shown in English.

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Instructions

Below you will find the readme.txt so you can read more about the service before using it. The readme discusses what causes these problems and how to tell whether the service will help and how it does what it does.

It is easiest to install using the MSI package -- you only need UPHClean-setup.msi for this. If you do not have Windows Installer 2.0 you may find the manual installation instructions from the readme to be more convenient. You can get the UPHClean executable from an existing installation.

To download a file from the list below do one of the following:

To start the installation immediately, click Open or Run this program from its current location.
To copy the download to your computer for installation at a later time, click Save or Save this program to disk.

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Additional Information

You can get more information about UPHClean through our blog: http://blogs.technet.com/uphclean

Please uninstall UPHClean v1.6d before upgrading to Windows Vista. To uninstall UPHClean after an upgrade to Windows Vista make the following changes:

1. Using Explorer navigate to C:\Program Files\UPHClean
2. Right click UPHClean.exe and select Properties…
3. Select the Compatibility tab
4. Click the “Show settings for all users” button – click Continue when prompted to continue
5. Check “Run this program in compatibility mode for:”
6. Insure that “Windows XP (Service Pack 2) is selected under Compatibility mode
7. Click OK to close both copies of the uphclean Properties dialog boxes

You can now uninstall UPHClean v1.6d from Windows Vista.

UPHClean v1.6d does not function under Windows XP x64 Edition or Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition. A future version of UPHClean may be supported under those operating systems.

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