Group Policy Change for Wireless

[storkyIV]

Hello all,

I have a small issue that has been testing me for a bit!

We currently have a number of student laptops with all the usual settings applied: no right click, hidden system tray & control panel etc.

However, 60 of these laptops are now going to be made available for students to take home.
Obviously they are going to have the need to connect the laptops to the home wireless, but obviously we hide the networking icon on the system tray.

I have set group policy to show the networking icon but isn't taking effect.

Does anyone have experience of laptops being used at home and in school that perhaps has set them up in a different manner?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[dan41322]

I think that is because you have the System Tray GPO activated. Deactivate it should come back?

[plexer]

Have you made a gpo that is the opposite of those settings and applied that to the particular laptops?

Ben

[DEvans]

You can play with GPO all day for this to work.

Your system Tray policy will need to be turned off to allow them to see their networking icon.

Or you can allow access to it through the start menu, just put a link on those laptops to the network and connections area in the control panel.

Need to ensure that your control panel restrictions don't affect the wireless settings controls as well. Otherwise you'll have a system tray but no ability to access the actual panel.


Additionally for Proxy Settings you can do either:

1. A Proxy Pac -> Checks the IP address of the machine and sets the proxy accordingly. e.g. If IP address of machine is between the IP range of your schools DHCP, assign your school proxy and if the IP address is in the 192.168 range, its at home assign no proxy.

Benefits

Automatic, no need for anyone to access the internet properties.

Negatives

Proxy pacs can be a little alien to write, so needs to be tested.
Also found that in some odd occasions it doesn't work and needs the user to restart.


2. A Proxy Question on Startup - Everytime the machine starts up, a vbs script runs asking if the user is in school or not. They say Yes and it performs regedits to apply the proxy for the school, they say no and it takes the proxy out.

Benefits

Reliable
Semi-Automatic
No need to give user access to internet properties
Can be pushed out to the startup folders from a server easily

Negatives

Needs User Input - Even a Yes or no can be an issue for people
Registry permissions are normally never a problem, but its an extra check.
They will need to know how to trigger the script manually if they can't answer a simple question correctly, or you can tell them to logoff and log back on.

3. Third Party Proxy Setter - Proxypal is good, though I find them to be a little unreliable.

4. GPO apparently there are ways, but i've never spent too much time to get it to work, plus you need to question reliability.

[dan41322]

Have you made a gpo that is the opposite of those settings and applied that to the particular laptops?

Ben

I usually lock the Laptops down so heavy all they can do is do work and surf the net Oh and open a few programs if they are lucky ;p