Networking issue - group policy settings not always applied

[sjb]

My school is running Active Directory on a Windows 2003 server. Our pupils have a group poicy applied that redirects to a shared desktop and start menu programs for each yeargroup. Under our old Win XP system all was fine, but since installing new Win 7 PCs in our suite a year ago we have been having ongoing issues with these settings not being applied consistently on login. It works sometimes and not others - sometimes logging out and bac in with the same credentials fixes it, sometimes it won't work at all. If it doesn't work pupils just get a blank desktop and no programs in their start menu, but no other error message.

 

I am not a networking expert and am at my wit's end trying to fix it. I have deleted profiles from the registry, deleted user profiles from the computer, set up each machine with a fixed IP, but nothing seems to work.

 

Is this a WIn 7 issue? Would upgrading to Win 8.1 fix it? Any suggestions very gratefully received!

 

Thanks,

 

Sue

[FN-GM]

I would be more inclined to say its more of a Server issue. I would dump server 2003 and upgrade it to 2008 R2 minimum. Its probably having trouble applying old group policies to modern versions of Windows.

[cullingsh]

Seconded on that idea!

[m25man]

Server 2003 doesn't have nor does it understand Win 7 admx policy files.

It can host them in the sysvol and allow Win7 clients to read and apply them but the server cannot edit or manage them.

You have to do this on a Win 7 machine with the Server Tools installed.

 

This makes it a PIA so as otters have said you need to upgrade your server to do this properly.

 

IF the policies are correctly setup and stored in the correct place in the Sysvol they will apply fine, the most common cause of failure is the existence of duplicated and incorrect client details in your DNS Zones.

 

If you have a Reverse Zone set up and there are multiple entries for the same IP eg. 10.0.1.100 = pc1.local AND pc2.local then RDNS may return the wrong information and the policy will fail.

 

Carefully check your DNS zones for stale records, these cause chaos with anything that utilises RDNS including GP Updates and Sophos!