How to add vanilla Windows XP latops to a CC3 network

I have been asked a school I work with to add a batch of new laptops they have bought to their network - but they don't want CC3 loading onto them (as they are planning to move away from RM and don't want to buy anymore licenses).

All they want to be able to do is get to their home directory on the server and get access to the internet.

Is this easy to do?

Providing you have a default gateway and a working DHCP server, this should be as simple as connecting the laptops physically to the network.

The UNC path \\SCH-SVR-001\username$ will get the home directory for username and the default gateway IP (provided by DHCP) should provide internet access.

Be careful with authentication on home directories if the laptops are shared!

Thanks for the quick reply :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by karlieb

(as they are planning to move away from RM and don't want to buy anymore licenses)

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Oh dear.. rusdev will not be at all happy about that :)

Oh well, their loss! :P

Could you not just join each one manually to the domain?

Put mine in a workgroup and mapped drives to the areas wanted. Put proxy in for internet access

create a OU outside of the site location, use plain active directory tools.
block inheritence under the group policy tab on the OU. place the desktops or laptops inside the newly created OU.
This will now stop most but not all of the cc3 gpos being applied.
Now find out which gpos are being applied to the OU, use gpresult or something like it.
Once you know which policies are still being applied to the OU you need to deny the computers access to those policies.
The way I would do it is to create a security group called "vanilla desktops" and make all non cc3 pcs a member of this group, then deny this group the ability to read and apply the policies that are still being applied.

it sounds complex but its a five minute job

we just create a new computer on AD, build machine to vanilla, create an admin log in for us, make the user an admin user so they can get updates automatically and join the domain checking that the log in scripts for the mapped drives. I must state we do this only for out SMT, Office & Bursar staff :)