Logging onto the network after logging on locally

[Guest frankybaloney]

I have been meaning to research this problem further for the past year but have never got round to doing so...until now...

 

The issue is that we allow staff to use laptops via our wireless network in college, however they logon locally to their laptops and not onto the network.

 

However, when they want to connect to their areas, network shares or print work they need to connect to the network, they are prompted for a windows logon dialogue box to connect to that specific server.

 

I would like to bypass these multiple logons by having one logon procedure to access all network resources

 

Hope I have made some sense

 

Any ideas anyone?

[mattx]

Sounds like you want to go down the Single User Logon route.

Google that and you get quite a few results.....

 

Will be interesting to find out if any other members have this up and running in their schools / colleges etc...

[User3204]

We have a similar scenario.

 

We found that when student usable laptops were attempting to logon over the wireless network, it took ages.

So we dropped all the machines out of the domain, created a couple of users on the domain, so that the machines could authenticate onto the wireless network. This of course meant students couldn't access their own work etc.

 

So one of the technicians wrote some software for us that:

1. asked for username and password;

2. logged them onto our internet proxy (inty exoserver, so just a telnet session);

3. mapped their home drive, based upon \\servername\%username%, and passed the username and password when mapping it.

 

We don't allow them to print from these machines... so this wasn't an issue.

But we have already got a page on our intranet site that allows staff (and students if they knew how), to map a printer. This page does require them to type a user/pass combo, which we tell them to cache.

 

 

I'm sure there is a good reason why the staff logon to their laptops locally and not via the domain, but you may want to rethink this.

[NorbertBroadsword]

When we configure a laptop for a member of staff they are made a local administrator on that machine. We also add a number of network shares (using their domain username and password) for them which map to our shared, secure share and public areas and we also use offline files on their personal work area so anything they do at home can be kept in sync with school. Making them local admins means that they can install their own broadband at home which means they can use their laptops to come into the school system via a VPN and Terminal Services setup that we have. It seems to work and we get very, very few problems. Our AV software has both network and standalone versions so that is no problem.

 

We used to make them log onto the domain but we found that offline files didn't work properly. It works like a dream now.

[Gatt]

Why not connect laptop to network / Domain then get %teacher% to logon to the domain so that they get a cached local profile on their laptop, this SHOULD allow them to then logon to their laptop offline with their domain account - which, so long as passwords are the same, will allow them to then authenticate against the domain at will without any password prompts...

[MkII]

That's how we do it Gatt. Works very well.

[Guest frankybaloney]

Sounds like you want to go down the Single User Logon route.

Google that and you get quite a few results.....

 

Will be interesting to find out if any other members have this up and running in their schools / colleges etc...

 

Yes, cheers mattx, that is what I am currently looking at, though I was wondering if others have found alternatives.

 

Why not connect laptop to network / Domain then get %teacher% to logon to the domain so that they get a cached local profile on their laptop, this SHOULD allow them to then logon to their laptop offline with their domain account - which, so long as passwords are the same, will allow them to then authenticate against the domain at will without any password prompts...

 

 

 

This will still force them to log into the domain if they bring their laptops into the college as they will access the wireless network. They cannot access their network/domain profile without having to logon to the domain (if the wireless network is availabe

[bossman]

We don't build laptops onto the network/domain at all but allow them to gain access to the internet via the proxy when in the school.

 

Outside of the school we have setup TS so they can access Sims, any office packages, shared folders on the network/domain and any mapped drives authenticated with their usual account username and password.

 

This is very quick and causes us no probs at all plus allowing the teachers to install software for eval purposes.

[Guest frankybaloney]

We don't build laptops onto the network/domain at all but allow them to gain access to the internet via the proxy when in the school.

 

Outside of the school we have setup TS so they can access Sims, any office packages, shared folders on the network/domain and any mapped drives authenticated with their usual account username and password.

 

This is very quick and causes us no probs at all plus allowing the teachers to install software for eval purposes.

 

We have the same setup here too.

 

The issue is authenticating to the specific server using domain credentials after having logged on locally to the laptop.

[steveconnolly]

testtt