I think there is a good running thread on Windows 7 networks going now - I think Ive added to it a few times. If its not stickied... can we? For the most part, when running on its own, it works very well. If you are doing any kind of co-existance; then you will have to have comprimises. The way I handled this before was loopback GPOs for XP, making sure that my 7 settings which were quite specific in the end didnt muddy the water on XP.
You can also use WMI filters for GPO's as well. I do this for stuff that I only want installing on XP, i.e the user hive profile cleanup service that is already installed by default on Windows 7
Still trying to see the benefits of W7.. oh except for the wonderful libraries function. I will be sticking with XP for a while yet unless I have to. I've just bought some little N109 notebooks which have W7 on which I am still undecided what to do with.
Libraries are fine...
Run it for a while on some stations and watch the technical time spent on them reduce, Vista doubled my free time and 7 is better.Originally Posted by Simcfc73
i would actually go as far to say are they are a huge improvement. I can easilly dump certain stuff off my main fully backed up servers to a less well specced server with a lower level of backup so thinks like th music golder instead of being in \\fileserver\users$\staff\%username%\my music i can shove it to \\dump\staff\%username%\my music same with pics. I can also more easily set these folders to not sync so nobodys y-tunes collection is on my server and my backup tapes and 3 laptops and . . . same goes with staffs holiday snaps. it is also a more logical structure separating things out more so they are easier to find. Granted this is only 100% true for 100% win7 environments but i will be rearranging staff user areas as soon as in any school the last xp machine goes away.
as to policies i used to create a separate ou for my win7 boxes then copy my pc policy and make ammendments now ive founf very little that dosent work on both (i do usually have a wmi filtered user policy but thats mainly little odds and sods)
Isn't that just a feature of the finer-grained folder structure rather than Libraries though?
Some of the issues people have been having just strike me as dumb design not tailored for a corporate network. All MS had to do was add an extra GPO to disable the libraries, local user profile name folder etc then it would run much more smoothly. Instead we have registry hacks and various bodges to avoid confusion for users and files ending up in the wrong place.
They don't really need disabling. The only thing that I wish I could disable is the ability for a user to add or delete folders from a library. It makes no sense to me why you can't disable that.
But I've yet to come across any students/staff here doing that and we've been running Windows 7 for nearly a year now.
In which case what advantage is gained from them being there? Just seems to add another layer of confusion for users who are used to just having a folder where all their data is kept. Might be OK for home users but doesn't seem to make much sense on a network with folder redirection.
The users don't notice any difference, to them documents still goes to their home directories. As I said, no user has ever added or deleted a folder here.
I wouldn't touch any unofficial registry fixes with a bargepole as it will be totally unsupported by Microsoft. The ones i've seen kicking around don't remove the references to libraries in all places either and could end up breaking something else so it's much more hassle than it's worth.
Very good point about the support, have your users never clicked their name in the Start Menu and ended up in the local profile folder? That drives me crackers on a daily basis, can't remember if the option to hide it was an official GPO or one of the homebrew ones.
It's an official GPO option "Remove User folder link from Start menu"
(Administrative templates\start menu and taskbar)
gshaw (5th July 2011)
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