Wireless notebook GPOs

[cookie_monster]

I'm just creating a new GPO for managing some wireless notbooks and I have a couple of questions.

 

1. How well does GPO work over wireless, startup scripts etc, I won't be deploying software?

2. If I set the 'Always wait for network at startup' option will the wireless connect in time for startup scripts to run?

 

The reason I ask is that i'd like to use custom local profiles currently I use robocopy to copy a folder at startup to the local station it only copies if it's changed. I'm concerned that this might not work over wireless.

 

Thanks.

[cookie_monster]

Ok just thought i'd post an update. So far my netbooks seem to be working well over wireless, i've set GPO to wait for the network which it does then i've used robocopy to move desktops to the C: drive, I did try redirected desktops to the server using folder redirection but any interuption and the icons would go and not return without loging off.

 

 

Next...anyone know how well WSUS works over wireless?

[british-wave]

if there is an interuption and the icons go missing right button click the desktop and select refresh. they will reappear.

 

As for wsus it will work fine over wireless but will be slow if you are doing lots of them at a time.

If you are scheduling them you will need to make suer they will be turned at at the time the schedule will run.

 

Hope this info helps.

[cookie_monster]

I've setup robocopy to only copy changes from the server at bootup so now all user profiles are local this negated the disappearing icon issue anyway thanks.

 

WSUS seems to be working ok at the moment but I haven't had any monster updates yet, I can always plug them into the LAN once a month if necessary but i've a feeling BITS will cope.

 

We'll see.

 

Thanks.

[maniac]

I've setup robocopy to only copy changes from the server at bootup so now all user profiles are local this negated the disappearing icon issue anyway thanks.

 

WSUS seems to be working ok at the moment but I haven't had any monster updates yet, I can always plug them into the LAN once a month if necessary but i've a feeling BITS will cope.

 

We'll see.

 

Thanks.

 

WSUS seems to work well for us over wireless - you can configure how much bandwidth is used for updates somewhere I seem to remember - although off the top of my head I can't remember where. Set that for a low number and it'll stop update rollouts snarling up your wireless network.

 

Never thought about using Robocopy for doing that before - I've written a VBS script which does the same here - it's intelligent as well I get it to only copy icons for programs which are actually installed, as I've written it to check for the .EXE file, and only copy the icon if it's needed.

 

Mike.

[Silverman]

Any chance you could post a copy of that please maniac, sounds really good.

[cookie_monster]

WSUS seems to work well for us over wireless - you can configure how much bandwidth is used for updates somewhere I seem to remember - although off the top of my head I can't remember where. Set that for a low number and it'll stop update rollouts snarling up your wireless network.

 

Never thought about using Robocopy for doing that before - I've written a VBS script which does the same here - it's intelligent as well I get it to only copy icons for programs which are actually installed, as I've written it to check for the .EXE file, and only copy the icon if it's needed.

 

Mike.

 

 

The script sounds handy i was thinking about something like that here for network PC's. The notebooks only have a few apps on so I don't think it's worth it at the moment.

 

 

WSUS bandwidth is controlled by BITS so the settings are in Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - Network - Background Intelligent Transfer Service.

 

Thanks.

 

EDIT

 

This isn't really usefull to me in this situation but Peer caching looks very handy for sites with slow links between clients and their WSUS servers, seperat blocks over a wireless bridge etc.

 

Peer caching

Peer caching is a new feature of BITS 3.0 that allows peers (computers within the same subnet of a network that have the peer caching feature enabled) to share files. If peer caching is enabled on a computer, the Automatic Update agent instructs BITS to make downloaded files available to that computer's peers as well.

 

When the files have been downloaded, BITS caches them. When another (peer caching-enabled) computer tries to download the same update, BITS on that computer sends a multicast request to all of that computer's peers. If one or more of the peers responds to the request, BITS will download the file from the first computer to respond. If the download from the peer fails or take too long, BITS continues the download from the WSUS server or Microsoft Update.

 

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720428(WS.10).aspx

Edited March 3, 2010 by cookie_monster

[maniac]

It's actually really really simple.

 

This is a single example. There's one bank of icons which are copied to all our machines, the rest are means tested as follows - this example is for pinnacle studio - I've got about 20 blocks of the same code for different programs in one startup script.

 

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

If objFSO.FileExists("C:\pinnacle\Program\Programs\Studio.exe") then
If Not objFSO.FOLDERExists("C:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS\STARTMENU\PROGRAMS\Pinnacle") then
objFSO.CopyFolder "\\SERVER\SHARE$\ICON BANK\Pinnacle" , "C:\icongroups\students\StartMenu\Programs" , OverWriteFiles
end if
end if

 

What it basically does is look for the .EXE file if it finds it, it checks to see if the relevant subfolder exists in the local students startmenu structure, if it doesn't then it copies it from a central icon depository if it does it moves onto the next one. It only takes mere seconds to run through this process for about 20 different programs.

 

The above example does a whole program group, but it is possible to do individual icons by looking for the .LNK file instead of a folder.

 

The major advantage of this is when you install something on a workstation, the icons automatically appear in the students startmenu, no need to allocate them.

 

I've another part of the script which once every 4 weeks wipes the local copy of the start menu so the whole thing is re-copied from the server just incase it's become corrupted etc.