necunlock Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Hi guys, I've recently deployed Chrome across the network to replace IE11... and i'm desperately regretting my decision. It's dog-slow for starters, and user areas are growing to a ridiculous size because Chrome likes to download EVERYTHING. I know that there is an option on Chrome to "Open all files of this type" - but I don't see that option in the GPO. There's no point asking uses to regularly empty their Downloads folder... because they won't. The only option I can think of is to write a script that empties the Downloads folder on logoff. What do you guys do? I have quotas in place, but with over 250 staff and 2000 students, our more novice users are going to be moaning at us every 5 minutes. With regards to speed issues, will the fact we have redirected AppData to a network share be making the difference? I know Chrome used to rely on that folder quite heavily... Suggestions appreciated! Thanks very much!
RichCowell Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 We've been running Chrome as an additional browser network wide for a couple of years now and I've not noticed any problems, the students all prefer it, as do most of the staff... I wasn't aware of an issue with the downloads folder, but I'll look into it now... If you're considering scripts to delete the contents, would deleting files older than XX days or last accessed XX days ago be safer?
necunlock Posted January 6, 2015 Author Posted January 6, 2015 We've had it as an additional browser in the past, but we've made it default. The main problem (and the reason we switched to Chrome!) is Frog. We use the VLE all day, every day. And now every time somebody opens a video, PDF, word doc, ppt etc. it downloads it! To be honest I think deleting files last accessed or older than would be less safe for us, as people use their downloads folder as a filing system! If I can give users a couple of weeks to get everything out of their Downloads folder they want to keep, and let them know that anything in there WILL be deleted every time they log off, we should be fine. I'm astounded that Chrome doesn't have such a basic feature to be honest!
RichCowell Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 I've not looked into addons for Chrome (don't have the GPO ADM installed or anything), but is there a setting that could be changed to force users to prompt to save with the usual save as / file browser window rather than downloading automatically? That may help them remember to put things they actually need to keep in alternate folders...
necunlock Posted January 7, 2015 Author Posted January 7, 2015 There is yes, and i'll enable that for users. Just a shame there's no Open button!
DGardiner Posted January 8, 2015 Posted January 8, 2015 (edited) Ive not had this problem either, though i did move a lot of our chrome data about using the go to make sure it didn't pile up on the users appdata/profile one thing i do dislike is the updating at launch its probably disable able in the GPO but i wish it would do it on shutdown so it didn't make the user wait >.< Oh also, redirecting the app data /works/ but makes a ton of network traffic I ended up doing: the user data directory to ${profile}\Google\Google Chrome\ and Disk Cache directory to ${local_app_data}\Google\Google Chrome\Cache this reduced the network traffic a good chunk for us as far as i could tell - not sure if its good practice or not! but i went from servers getting slammed from hundreds of clients to being un noticeable and forcing adblock install from GPO is the best thing ever Edited January 8, 2015 by DGardiner
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