Windows 7 - I've Given Up

[garethedmondson]

Yes indeed I've given up bothering to get Windows 7 onto our network. I'll just wait until the LEA get things sorted and push it through.

For now I'll stick with XP and getting Office 2007 out there. We will go 2010 eventually but I think I'll wait until Windows 7 for that.

So why have I come to this decision? Simply because I have not the time to mess about with things that don't work. I don't have the time to find workarounds simply because the mapped drives will not appear for admin users or to fix the black background issue. Okay I've done these but my latest bugbear is with a profile...

We've created the profile as per instructions - but for some reason drives do not get mapped to a profile that has already been copied over to the local machine. We use mandatory. When the user logs on for the first time they pick up everything, but when they log on a second time - they get nothing! Delete their profile and it all works again until they log on again...

What else.... security groups. I cannot get my security groups to work for some reason. We have three security groups staff/pupils and admin. I want Background 1 for Admin and Background 2 for staff - do they work? Nope not a chance. If B1 get's set then it doesn't B2 doesn't appear for staff.

I need to spend time on this but fancied a rant. Sorry everyone. Back to normal now, I'll resume my testing tomorrow.

[Edit - are there any schools on the M4 corridor before Bristol (in Wales then) that are running Windows 7 on a 2003 domain that I could come and see?]


Gareth

[Gatt]

Quick thing about your profiles, do the have ".V2" at the end of them?
If not then they wont work

if youa re in a mixed environment of XP and Vista/7 then you need 2 profiles

eg user Joe Bloggs will need a profile like "jbloggs" for XP and "jbloggs.V2" for Vista/7

[jsnetman]

There are lots of things to be tweaked and setup when going to win 7. I had a nightmare with printers and nearly decided to roll back to XP, I did'nt and hung in and am very happy I did. 7 on laptops that staff use back and forth from the school network work seamless. The workstations are very stable and perform well. Lots of tweaking of software also needed, I would hang in there for a little while longer. Often just taking a rest from a problem and then tackling it from a different direction often works for me.

[chrbb]

Just setting up my first staff windows 7 laptop, taken ages so far! But.......... with a fair bit of tweaking (and I mean a fair bit) I've got all our software to work! Backgrounds to do tommorow which will probably make me want to cry, but I'm not going to let it beat me. We had xp on a nt server and that was traumatic to start with, but windows 7, like garlic bread, is the future.

[DaveP]

Backgrounds to do tommorow which will probably make me want to cry, but I'm not going to let it beat me.

Start Menu and Desktop redirection had me stumped. I stopped there until new ideas came along. After all if they can't get their shortcuts why bother?

How do you plan to tackle these 'little niggles?'

[Gatt]

I found Start Menu and Desktop redirection to be very easy - just make sure you remove the Exclusive Access check and if using a mix of XP and Vista/7 to ensure the start menu is available for XP machiens as well

on your server create a folder called "Pupil Start Menu" and share it (eg \\server\pupil_smenu$) then inside that folder create a folder called "Programs" and add your links to that folder
In your GPO redirect the startmenu to \\server\pupil_smenu$

Simples....

For Windows 7 though DO NOT configure the "Remove All Programs list from the Start Menu" otherwise the redirection fails... (i think its that GPO!)

[garethedmondson]

Quick thing about your profiles, do the have ".V2" at the end of them?
If not then they wont work

if youa re in a mixed environment of XP and Vista/7 then you need 2 profiles

eg user Joe Bloggs will need a profile like "jbloggs" for XP and "jbloggs.V2" for Vista/7

HI Gatt,

Yes - that's sorted. I created the profile exactly as was required in all the instructions using System Image Manager and the xml file. It works fine. I've removed everything from the profile as well (as I read somewhere else).

Gareth

[garethedmondson]

There are lots of things to be tweaked and setup when going to win 7. I had a nightmare with printers and nearly decided to roll back to XP, I did'nt and hung in and am very happy I did. 7 on laptops that staff use back and forth from the school network work seamless. The workstations are very stable and perform well. Lots of tweaking of software also needed, I would hang in there for a little while longer. Often just taking a rest from a problem and then tackling it from a different direction often works for me.

Funny thing is - I've got the printer to work using a GPO for my room. I didn't have any issue at all.

Gareth

[garethedmondson]

Just setting up my first staff windows 7 laptop, taken ages so far! But.......... with a fair bit of tweaking (and I mean a fair bit) I've got all our software to work! Backgrounds to do tommorow which will probably make me want to cry, but I'm not going to let it beat me. We had xp on a nt server and that was traumatic to start with, but windows 7, like garlic bread, is the future.

Backgrounds has been a pita. There is a registry fragment missing so I had a GPO to create the registry fragment and populate it with the wallpaper location (stored on a network drive somewhere). This worked but when a user logged in with a different desktop setting it didn't work and the first background stayed there.

Gareth

[garethedmondson]

I found Start Menu and Desktop redirection to be very easy - just make sure you remove the Exclusive Access check and if using a mix of XP and Vista/7 to ensure the start menu is available for XP machiens as well

on your server create a folder called "Pupil Start Menu" and share it (eg \\server\pupil_smenu$) then inside that folder create a folder called "Programs" and add your links to that folder
In your GPO redirect the startmenu to \\server\pupil_smenu$

Simples....

For Windows 7 though DO NOT configure the "Remove All Programs list from the Start Menu" otherwise the redirection fails... (i think its that GPO!)

I've not got this far yet. My main priority for the past two weeks has been to get the mapped drives working and the backgrounds working.

Gareth

[Gatt]

We use BGInfo at logon to sort our backgrounds out - though i do believe thre was another GPO that causes erroneous Background issues with Windows 7...

[DaveP]

Backgrounds has been a pita.

To be honest that is what I find so surprising. My 'XP' backgrounds came down without me having to do any extra work. Did BGInfo help here?

[Gatt]

I've not got this far yet. My main priority for the past two weeks has been to get the mapped drives working and the backgrounds working.

Gareth

If you have 2008, (or is it 2008 R2?) with the GPO Preferences, then you can sort mapped drives out via GPO - no need for logon scripts

[Gatt]

To be honest that is what I find so surprising. My 'XP' backgrounds came down without me having to do any extra work. Did BGInfo help here?

It certainly helps - we deploy it via a kix login script so it gets applied once all the GPO's have been applied...

[edutech4schools]

On our 2003 domain we have most stuff including the drives mapped by kix script and everything works fine on win7, but I have found the folder sync on win7 very flakey so for the moment the teachers are using sync toy.