Wireless laptops & GPO

[Aaron]

Hi everyone

 

Just a quick question hopeing that maybe someone else has run into this. I have just added some laptops onto our network and so far they seem to be running fine allowing students to log in and print from them. What i have seen is that they dont seem to pull down the Group Policy that i have set to install apps like shockwave and flash during start-up. They do just fine if they are plugged into the network but overwireless it is touch and go 1 out of the 4 had no problem then if i left them switched on for about 10mins and restarted another would then pick up the Group policy.

 

I have check and they are getting their IP address right and they are seeing the DNS server and everything is fine. I have it set in GP to wait until the network is ready and i have also tried logging on and doing gpupdate /force but this still doesnt seem to pull the apps down when the laptop is restarted.

 

Has anyone else had this problem i know that it would be best to have them hardwired in but there are no more network points available which is why i am using wireless. All the laptops allow logging into the domain just fine but does the wireless only start when its sitting at the logon screen and not before hand?

 

Any help would be much appreactiated.

 

Aaron

[FN-GM]

There is a group policy to set. i cant remember it off the top of my head its something like

 

Wait until network connection before logon.

 

This will wait for the wireless to connect then it will start applying the group policy and install software.

[Aaron]

Thank you for your reply i will double check that i have this set i am nearly sure i do have this done

[FN-GM]

We had the same settings this will work. I just cant remember the full name of the setting. Its under computer configuration.

 

The problem is that when you start up the wireless has not yet connected so it is skipping the install. Doing this will make the machine wait.

[Aaron]

the policy i have set it under System/Logon - always wait for the network at computer startup and logon

[MJR]

Aaron,

 

You should also try applying the following policies in the screenshot that I have attached. Pay particular attention to the Software Installation Policy.

 

Go to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administration Templates > System > Group Policy

 

Click on the software installation Policy, enable it and check the two options then click ok.

 

Possibly look into enabling the "Slow Link Detection" group policy setting it to 0 to disable it.

 

MJR

[Aaron]

I will def take a look at this in the morning thank you for your reply

[ozzy]

This is the local poclicy you need, discovered this worked when I was deploying software over our wireless network. Local Computer policy>Computer Configuration>Addministrative Templates>System>Logon>Always wait for the network at start up and logon. This is a local machine policy if you apply it via AD it will not work.

[Aaron]

on the laptops when i open mmc and add in the local group policy under administrative templates and then windows components there are only 3 folders search, windows updates and windows media player.

[Aaron]

I have also just changed the policies to allow for slow connections thank you very much for this suggestion MJR as well

[Griff]

Is there anyway to apply this to say 30+ machines without having to do each one individually?

[Aaron]

I have it set in GPO from MJR's GPO to wait for 30secs to allow the wireless to become active this seems to have fixed the issue as the laptop picked up the software when i restarted it, these laptops now have to wait for a bit when starting up but thats not really a massive issue as they work fine.

 

Thanks guys for all your help with this.

[box_l]

Are you using Zeroconf or the tool that came with the drivers?

 

I find that using zeroconf, it just works.

 

BoX

[Aaron]

im using zeroconf ive never really liked any of the tools that come preinstalled with laptops prefer just to stick with the standard windows wireless utility

[contink]

Doing some searches on "pre-authentication" for resources on this... it's been discussed quite a few times before...

 

Apparently Win2k8, Vista, etc... are much better at dealing with this now.

[Aaron]

i am running windows server 2008 in the school at the min but looking to move onto windows 7 and i see that windows server 2008 r2 is alot better as the GPO's are for windows 7

[chilbs]

Have a look at this thread.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/networks/26938-wait-wireless-connect.html#post255565

 

Chilbs