Hi
how do people redirect there start menus. Do you have a server share with them on? Or do you have a startup script that copies them to the local drive? Or a different way.
Do you have a global one or one per room/ou?
Hi
how do people redirect there start menus. Do you have a server share with them on? Or do you have a startup script that copies them to the local drive? Or a different way.
Do you have a global one or one per room/ou?

We redirect students start menu and desktop to read only shares on one of our servers. We have 2 of each, 1 for 64bit and 1 for 32 bit and use WMI filters on the two GPO's to direct the appropriate computers to the correct version.
ful56_uk (23rd April 2010)
Do you find any slow down when everyone is using the start menus across the network?
Online computer startup differentially robocopys from a server and constructs a bunch of menus (each one aimed at a different domain group) on the local drive, including evaluating and deleting LNKs that aren't relevant to that computer.
I specifically wanted it like this so I had the same menus to play with both online (to the domain) and offline, but it apparently has some performance advantages over redirecting to a server share. This is insignificant for me, but the downside is that you've got to restart the computer to pick up start menu changes.
[Read-only desktops are done the same]
Last edited by PiqueABoo; 23rd April 2010 at 08:52 PM.

Can't say I've really noticed. There's the odd occation when the menu takes a couple of secs more than expected to draw but it's rare and so far nobodys complained.
Me neither coz my off-domain requirement precluded ever trying it. I recall seeing threads here from folk with issues, but that may well have been related to some specific quirks of their systems. I'm a pragmatist so if it works for you...Can't say I've really noticed.
If I had done that I would have *tried* access based enumeration to control which domain groups get to see which start menu folders. Does anyone do this?
It needs a bit of script or code to chew through your copied start menu folders. With script you can open existing LNKs with the "WScript.Shell" CreateShortcut() function, then get their target path, check if the target exists out and delete the LNK if it doesn't. In reality you also need to worry about [link] how you make shortcuts to network resources which eventually came along and bit me, and perhaps you have to accommodate a "special" where the shortcuts points an OS app at something e.g: "cscript.exe c:\myapp\myscript.vbs" (cscript.exe is always there, the vbs file might not be), but most of it is fairly mundane scripting.That sounds interesting.
DFS Share \\domain.local\Menus\*Name of start menu folder*, as each building is on a different DC so they get all get them from their local DCs, used to do the printers the same way but we've gone back to a single print server again now

How do you deal with laptop users when using this method? Have you still got it setup in the same way as before?
Edit. Just found this which explains what to do for laptop users.
http://blog.stealthpuppy.com/windows...nus-to-laptops
Last edited by Arthur; 27th April 2010 at 12:34 AM.
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