Vista Tutorial - Roaming profile and folder redirection issues

Vistax64 Business
Windows 2003 R2
Our system is set up to use roaming profiles and folder redirection
(scenario 3 in the "Managing Roaming User Data Deployment Guide").
To summarise:
I have checked on the server and the user account has a profile path
set: \\server\share\username. I can see this from the client computer
when logged in as username.
Folder redirection has been set to \\server\user_data\%USERNAME%
\Application Data for My documents etc. Again I can see this and
subdirectories from the client computer.
This has been working fine for some time. Over the weekend I was using
the computer offline and now, having reconnected to the network, the
account seems to have lost most of its settings. Specifically:
- Starting programs is like they are being started for the first time
- Mapped network drives have disappeared. Although they are still
visible in synchronization partnerships
- Recent items list is empty
- Start menu shows nothing on recent programs list
Another symptom is that nothing I do seems to be "saved". For example
if I go into the Start menu properties and uncheck the options under
privacy click OK etc, those settings are not saved.
Another example: There are no recent items shown in Office
applications. But the \\server\User_Data\username\Application Data
\Microsoft\Office\Recent shows lots of files
I have logged off and on and restarted repeatedly.
Obviously I'm very lost so any advice would be greatly appreciated.