Setting different wallpapers with GPO for two different OU's

[HMCTech]

I have a School wallpaper that is set in an OU called pupils which has all the pupil accounts. This GPO sets the desktop which is in a shared area. Have recently created a new OU with compputers in for a new suite, I would like the wallpaper to be different in those PC's so created a GPO setting the wallpaper I would like and enforcing it so its the last GPO thats read. But any logons always set the wallpaper in the Pupil OU and I cant figure out why.

 

I am thinking I may have to resort to a logon script which I dont really want to do rather keep it all in a GPO. If anyone has any nifty logon scripts for setting the desktop they would be handy.

[Domino]

if its set in two places its not surprising its not working.

 

You've a few options, either making a GP for the other machines with the other wallpaper, and taking it out of the pupil OU - or setting the security on the computer group to not apply the Pupils GP - dependin on what else that policy does.

[Daleus]

The previous admin here must have copied the wallpaper to the machines using a startup xcopy script and then popped a .reg file in students' shared start menu "Startup" folder to set it.

 

I think he feared the AD.

 

It took me a while to realise what he had done, make sure you don't have any silly .reg files applying or something similar.

[Bezwick]

The pupils GPO will always be the last GPO to be applied as its applied during the pupil logon phase. The computer GPO is applied at boot ie before the logon screen hence the pupil one is applied last and hence overwrites the computer one.

 

You will need to remove the wallpaper setting from the pupil gpo account and it might work then.

 

Good luck

[powdarrmonkey]

Close, but not quite. Remember GPO application comes in two phases: user and machine. During each phase, the objects for the OU are evaluated in the context of the phase, that is: if you specify user settings in a GPO that is applied because the machine is in that OU, they won't have any effect (and vice versa).

 

If you want to specify settings for users based on a machine's location, you need to do it with a loopback policy. See Loopback processing of Group Policy. The normal inheritance and override behaviours are still maintained (basically, the two phases get merged).

[gshaw]

Just use bginfo for the wallpaper, less aggro than the AD one and no Active Desktop required

[Michael]

I recommend BGInfo too.

[ricki]

BgInfo is the way I would go.

 

Richard

[GoldenWonder]

I wrote a little vbs script for machine startup that I placed in a GPO. This copies over an image and sets the default background in the registry.

 

As the rooms are organised in OUs in AD, I simply made different GP's for each room or area.

 

Therefore whenever a PC is added or relocated it picks up its new background.

 

Took a little bit of setting up and probably not the cleverest way but its now self-maintaining and it makes the ICT suites look nice!

[powdarrmonkey]

I wrote a little vbs script for machine startup that I placed in a GPO. This copies over an image and sets the default background in the registry.

 

As the rooms are organised in OUs in AD, I simply made different GP's for each room or area.

 

Therefore whenever a PC is added or relocated it picks up its new background.

 

Took a little bit of setting up and probably not the cleverest way but its now self-maintaining and it makes the ICT suites look nice!

 

group policy does this natively if you set it up as above, no vbs hackery needed