Automatic Configuration Script - Proxy Pac File

[Liam86]

Good evening all,

First of all, may I say what a great resource this site is. I've found many a resolution on here, it's usually my first port of call for any technical problems.

Onto the problem;

As a School I have configured a Proxy .Pac file for staff laptop users so they don't have to go through the mundane tasks of turning the proxy on and off depending which location they are - home or school.

I have tested this on numerous laptops which seems to work great, apart from a few Windows 7 machines, specifically HP Probooks 6560b. I have the Pac file running from the local drive, currently set to file://C:\Support\Proxy.pac - as I said this works brilliantly for the majority, and does work for all staff in school. As soon as the users with Probooks take their laptops home it doesn's seem to work; I did a bit of research on this and found if you enter in a full stop after the file:// protocol (file://.C:\Support\Proxy.Pac) then it will work from home.

This kind of defeats the object of the Pac file if they have to enter in a full stop to make it work at home. I'm just wondering if someone has come across this problem before, or if anyone has any suggestions as to why this is?

May I also point out that all staff laptops receive the same GPOs.

I look forward to a response, and hopefully contributing to resolutions for others.

[FN-GM]

Good evening all,

First of all, may I say what a great resource this site is. I've found many a resolution on here, it's usually my first port of call for any technical problems.

Onto the problem;

As a School I have configured a Proxy .Pac file for staff laptop users so they don't have to go through the mundane tasks of turning the proxy on and off depending which location they are - home or school.

I have tested this on numerous laptops which seems to work great, apart from a few Windows 7 machines, specifically HP Probooks 6560b. I have the Pac file running from the local drive, currently set to file://C:\Support\Proxy.pac - as I said this works brilliantly for the majority, and does work for all staff in school. As soon as the users with Probooks take their laptops home it doesn's seem to work; I did a bit of research on this and found if you enter in a full stop after the file:// protocol (file://.C:\Support\Proxy.Pac) then it will work from home.

This kind of defeats the object of the Pac file if they have to enter in a full stop to make it work at home. I'm just wondering if someone has come across this problem before, or if anyone has any suggestions as to why this is?

May I also point out that all staff laptops receive the same GPOs.

I look forward to a response, and hopefully contributing to resolutions for others.

Not really a solution but if all else fails maybe you could host it on an internal web server?

[Liam86]

There is always that solution, it's more a point of trying to get to the bottom of why these couple of laptops don't seem to want to work consistently like the others.

[FN-GM]

There is always that solution, it's more a point of trying to get to the bottom of why these couple of laptops don't seem to want to work consistently like the others.

Exactly, thats why i said all else fails

[k-strider]

cant you use the Autodetect setting in ie and host the pac file as a wpad.dat on a webserver and make a dns entery for wpad that way at home the dns looup fails and it defaults to direct connection, where as at work it works.

a side note have you tried rebuilding the image on the affected machiens its not related but i took a win7 pro machien that was a one off and just added it to the domain but make avalible off line wasnt on the context menu and i couldnt get offline files to work at all after a day i gave up and resintalled it from scratch and it was there..

[jinnantonnixx]

Don't put the PAC file on the local drive, place it on a server share. This way it would work when on-network, but when they were home it would not find the PAC file and so auto-detect the network settings.

[Liam86]

Just an update on this fellas, it appears that it works just fine in IE8, but not IE9. The only way I could get it to work in IE9 was to remove my virtual adapters.