Users may Experience Profile corruption, slow logons, data loss or unexpected behaviour if using profiles from differing Windows version as Roaming or UPM profiles.

For Profile Management using UPM, the same Operating System restrictions and behaviours would apply. It is therefore recommended that profiles for specific versions are maintained separately and not used across versions. For example, machines running an OS that expects a v4 profile should not receive a v2 profile from UPM and so on. 

It is possible to use the settings covered in the Profile Management Documentation, or a preferred method of your choice, to keep the v2, v3, v4, and v5 profiles separate. 

An example using the settings in the above documentation would be to use the !ctx_profilever! variable as part of the path to the User Store. 
Therefore \\Server\UserStore\#SAMAccountName#\Profile.!ctx_profilever! would resolve as \\Server\UserStore\#SAMAccountName#\Profile.v4 for a Windows 8.1 or \\Server\UserStore\#SAMAccountName#\Profile.v2 for a Windows 7 profile, similar to the Microsoft settings outlined in the KB article 2890783
 

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Problem Cause

According to the Microsoft documentation, the use of Profiles across different versions of Operating Systems is not supported and may cause undesirable behaviour 

Roaming user profiles in Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 are incompatible with roaming user profiles in earlier versions of Windows.

Profiles are compatible only between the following client and server operating system pairs:
•    Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
•    Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
•    Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
•    Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
Note When the client operating system is referenced in this article, the same issue applies to its corresponding server operating system.

For example, if you try to deploy Windows 8.1 in an environment that uses roaming, mandatory, super-mandatory, or domain default profiles in Windows 7, you experience the following: 
•    After you use a user account that has an existing Windows 7 profile to log on to a Windows 8.1-based computer for the first time, the components from Windows 8.1 read and modify the profile state.
•    Certain Windows 8.1 features may not work as expected because the expected profile state is not present. 
•    When you try to use the same user account to log on to a Windows 7-based computer, the user profile modification that was performed in Windows 8.1 may not work as expected in Windows 7.
The issues occur because the profile will contain values that are used differently between the versions of Windows. The user profile will be missing default profile configuration information that is expected by the operating system, and could contain unexpected values that are set by a different operating system version. Therefore, the operating system will not behave as expected. Additionally, the user profile may be corrupted. 


Further documentation is available in TechNet to outline the versions of Windows profiles linked with which Operating System versions.

Profile Versions

When using roaming profiles or Citrix Profile Management, profiles created on Windows 7 or Server 2008 should not be used on Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 10 and vice versa. • Certain Windows 8.x or Windows 10 features may not work as expected because the expected profile state is not present. • When you try to use the same user account to log on to a Windows 7-based computer, the user profile modification that was performed in Windows 8.1 may not work as expected in Windows 7. The issues occur because the profile will contain values that are used differently between the versions of Windows. The user profile will be missing default profile configuration information that is expected by the operating system, and could contain unexpected values that are set by a different operating system version. Therefore, the operating system will not behave as expected. Additionally, the user profile may be corrupted