setting up group policy from scratch

[projector1]

hi
having arrived at the school a couple of years ago, and worked on a system that had set gpos already setup, i am know confident enough to create some new policies for our laptops.
I would like some advice on where to start, set up a stations policy and one for users or implement one for both.
My users are going to be
pupils
staff
admins

[ChrisH]

You could just set up new OUs and attach your new policies to them. That way you can experiment with a few and sling em back to their old OUs should you have problems

[kiran]

I would start from the very beginning with a new OU - and sub OU. So my structure for Group Policy is:

Domains:

+Default Domain Policy

+School Name
==Internet GPO
==FolderRedirectionGPO

++StaffOU
===StaffLoginGPO
===StaffLockDownGPO
+++English Faculty
+++Maths ...etc

++StudentsOU
===StudentLockDownGPO
+++Intake2006
===Intake2006LoginGPO

++Community
===StudentLockDownGPO
+++AdultEd
===AdultEdGPO

++Workstations
+++Room Name N3C
+++Room name... etc..

[projector1]

where would you set your proxy?
i thought i would add the proxy settings to the workstation policy so that if it ever changed or needed re configuring then i would only have to change one policy.
However when i addes the proxy settings to the policy for workstations i did not get it to apply. I tried gpupdate /force. I tried restarting.
I then remove the entries and then applied them to users policy and it worked.
The pc i used is in the ou that has the workstation policy applied

[NetworkGeezer]

Loopback?

[klawd]

You will want to be using as few GPO's as possible. The more you have, the longer it will take to process and logon. If you can get away with just one policy with all your settings, then do it.

If you are only setting user settings in a policy, make sure to disable computer processing for that GPO (and vice versa). I have found this to make a big difference to logon times.

Those are the actual Microsoft guidelines for configuring GPO's.

[john]

Its all good saying have 1 big GPO, but then testing and GPO fault finding is much harder. I am not saying have 1000's of them but you do need a few to do it. I have about 10 on the last system I setup and that works well, logons are about 30 seconds which is not bad at all.

[contink]

where would you set your proxy?
i thought i would add the proxy settings to the workstation policy so that if it ever changed or needed re configuring then i would only have to change one policy.
However when i addes the proxy settings to the policy for workstations i did not get it to apply. I tried gpupdate /force. I tried restarting.
I then remove the entries and then applied them to users policy and it worked.
The pc i used is in the ou that has the workstation policy applied

You want to take a look at this thread...

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?nam...er=asc&start=0


The key problem you're most likely hitting is the lack of the hotfix...

[contink]

Its all good saying have 1 big GPO, but then testing and GPO fault finding is much harder. I am not saying have 1000's of them but you do need a few to do it. I have about 10 on the last system I setup and that works well, logons are about 30 seconds which is not bad at all.

Have to agree... it helps to have more rather than fewer when you're starting out as you can track problems much easier.

Right now I have about erm... well 40 GPO's but in the main they're handling managed installs so the key settings ones number just 4... Login times are a bit slow but then I haven't really compared with policies on or off as yet.

[projector1]

i am just setting up the hide drives and prevent access

i have been told you should not edit the system.adm file. I have experimented by copying the adm file and then renaming it, making my changes. However what do set the save as type and the encoding. Is it type = txt doc and encoding is unicode?
How have you folks setup the hide drives/ prevent access
I have been looking at GPDriveOptions.exe but i want to set ip up myself so that i can start learning about adms

thanks