Saving to Desktop

[Netwacky87]

Hiya!

 

Got a problem wth students saving work/files to there desktop and then coming to us complaining that it takes them ages to logon!

 

Is there anyway to restrict them putting things onto there desktop?

 

Cheers

[Dos_Box]

Yes. Use group policies to prevent anyone saving work there and create another policy to make either My Documents (if their user area is mapped there) or their mapped drive as the default save location.

Desktops should be out of bounds, period, especially as I suspect you have horrible roaming profiles enabled*

 

 

*sparks flame war.

[webman]

To fan the lames of the fire you started, I will say the roaming profiles on our CC3 network have worked fine for us for the past 4.5 years.

 

Oh, and users can't save aything to their desktops either

[Dos_Box]

*sigh* How many times do I have to say it...

Roaming profiles give excessive network overheads, create extra work and are EVIL!!

[webman]

Where is this "extra work" you speak of? :?

[plock]

Where is this "extra work" you speak of? :?

 

Profiles I have found for one!

[john]

Roaming profiles are ok, so long as the software is all known about by the people in the know before use to stop it dumping crap into them, Desktops are banned substances and documents are re-directed

[FN-GM]

You should redirect the desktops to a shared folder, and then you decide what they have on the desktop.

[timbo343]

dont have roaming profiles and use Group policy to disable the file son desktop. Thats what we do and kids can logon in seconds.

[Kyle]

Could you let staff have roaming profiles and stop them saving to the dektop?

 

If so how would you do it with GPO settings?

[plock]

You would setup roaming profiles in AD and so forth, then using GPO redirect the 'Desktop' to a shared folder, and restrict permissions to change anything, using NTFS permissions.

[john]

I would personally have Mandatory profiles for students, roaming for staff without desktops. Best mix IMHO

[plock]

I would personally have Mandatory profiles for students, roaming for staff without desktops. Best mix IMHO

 

I concur!

[Ric_]

The best argument for re-directing desktops and not allowing lusers to save there is that it prevents you from having a consistent user interface. In an educational environment, this is key and aids with teaching because everybodys' desktop should look the same.

 

As has been said, a simple GPO re-directing the desktop to a share is all that is needed and then NTFS permissions can do the rest of the job to stop saving there. The only 'problem' is offline files but using GPOs to force the default save poition to My Diocuments will prevent most people saving to the desktop.

[Kyle]

I think i need to read up more on this before i implement anything.

[ZeroHour]

*sigh* How many times do I have to say it...

Roaming profiles give excessive network overheads, create extra work and are EVIL!!

We have roaming profiles for all here, does that make me evil? :twisted:

We just used GP to redirect the desktop as well. That with Access Based Enumeration means we can customise it quite a lot.

[srochford]

The problem with "banning" saving to desktop is that some software wants to do it and defaults to "desktop" and some users are just used to it and "default" to it.

 

We now redirect desktop to a network folder (homedrive\desktop) for all users. This has saved quite a lot of work when people manage to lose stuff (because if it's not in n:\ then it's probably in n:\desktop)

 

We're looking at redirecting application data as well - this removes another component of roaming profiles which can be huge and moves us to a situation where staff can easily roam between machines.

[daveyboy]

My 2 pence worth....

 

No roaming profiles, re-directed My Docs, Pics, Music, Videos and Favorites.

 

No Desktops for anyone - Not even me!

 

All apps have there preferences set in the Default User Profile (this includes toolbars, open/save dialog boxes, addin's for excel and no setups for office, etc, etc.

 

Logon times - between 10 and 15 seconds.

 

Dynamic Local User - creates profile on login and destroys it on logout.

 

Nice and clean..........

 

And a consistant user interface across the board.

 

 

[chrbb]

No Desktops for anyone - Not even me!

 

Do you mean set in gp 'hide desktop'?