WinSuite Help

[ninjabeaver]

Good Morning everyone,

I think the SMT have finally had enough of WinSuite's Interface and want it now removed and just using Policies.

Now, I don't know if anyone else uses WinSuite and has trod the path I'm now going to take. But I'd love some help or pointers if you have.

I think I'm going to go and uninstall WinSuite from the Workstations, and then remove WinSuite from the Primary Server.

I've also got to sort out some Policies to stop the student and staff accessing places they should not be doing.

Where do I start?

Does anyone know if Group Policies and WinSuite run together? I've tried it but seem to get no change. But that might be just me implementing the policies wrong. ops:

Any help will be appreciated.

Cheers,

Simon Anderson

[plexer]

Simon,

When I started at wayland we had winsuite. I then started using bits and pieces of group policy to make some changes.

Then for various reasons we removed winsuite just before an oftsed inspection and it all worked well enough.

To start with all I did was removed the registry entry that points to winsuite own gina so that you get the windows normal one back again.

You're welcome to come over and have a chat in the new year if you want and see how we do things here and I'd certainly be willing to come spend half a day with you or something to see what we can do with your setup?

Let me know.

Ben
Wayland Community High School
Watton

[ninjabeaver]

Does WinSuite and some group policies work together then?

That would make my life a little easier to start with. The students have now found a way to view the whole network through Media Player. I just don't seem to have the control needed in WinSuite anymore.

I'd love a techy day (jolly) over to Watton, so that's a definite in the new year.

I'm looking, in the Summer Holidays, to start our Network again from scratch. Just keeping all the documents to put back into folders again.

[plexer]

Depending on which version of winsuite you have allthough I presume you will have the old version we had which is based on policies ala NT4 and not Group Policy Objects ala Active Directory.

There is no reason why you can make all the changes you want from GPO's instead of the old policies.

I started with the both of them and have since rebuilt the servers to be native plain 2k3 and all the workstations have been rebuild/replaced since then as well.

Ben

[phil_thebeans]

Hello fellas
Just a quick question to plexer, I am using latest version of winsuite and have found out that they don't look as if they are planning to update product for Vista. So same as ninjabeaver i am considering using group policies and starting from scratch with desktop security on our XP 2k3. I would appreciate any "watch outs" that you have relating to GPs not applying (if at all)and what work arounds you used. Cheers.

[plexer]

Hi Phil,

It's well over a year and a half now since I removed winsuite so I'm not sure I can remember any issues anything that we did have was not a major one anyway.

It's quite easy to create a locked down environment to hide stuff from the users using group policy and because any domain user logging on to a pc is just a normal user with few priveleges it makes it easier.

Have a look at any logon scripts that were created via winsuite and also the changes that are made via the admin program itself.

I'd suggest creating a test ou in active directory with a couple of test users i.e student and teacher and then make gpo's applied only to that ou that way you can log on as your test users and see what effects the gpo's have.

Ben