Start menu redirection

[Andi]

How do people do this?

 

Currently I have one start menu for students and one for staff, which are redirected via GPO, but I'm concerned with just how much network traffic this is causing with everyone requesting this data several times a minute over the whole network. I frequently check that no executable etc have been put in there and only lnk files so that the file size is as small as possible but I'm still concerned, especially for our wireless clients.

 

Another concern that I do want to find a way around is the fact that a lot of the links on the start menu will be broken if the station doesn't have the software assigned to it.

 

Any pointers or tips?

[cookie_monster]

We must have approx 70 shourtcuts in our redirected start menu and it's 70kb in total, i really don't think this is something that you will need to worry about. We store ours in netlogon so it is pulled from the DC that logged the user on distributing load accross DC's. As for the broken links if the application isn't installed then you will get a blank icon there really isn't allot you can do about that, we just break our menu down into sub folders for different subjects and have common links in the root this stops too many blank icons from showing.

[Andi]

Yes, this is exactly what we do, aside from ours being stored on a standard share. I didn't think the size/network traffic would be an issue, but I just thought I'd ask.

 

I'm sure there's a way to sort out the empty links though.

[srochford]

Instead of just linking to the program in the menu shortcut, we link to a script. The script does various things (checks the software is installed on this machine, logs opening and closing of program, checks license count, mounts an ISO image if needed) but it has the "correct" icon loaded from c:\icons. At machine startup that folder is refreshed from a central icon store (basically use an icon extract program to extract the icon from all your main apps) This means that the icons always look "right" and you get a nice message saying "Sorry; program not installed" rather than a windows "can't find program" error.

 

The script we use is at http://techinfo.cnwl.ac.uk/Windows%20Scripts/default.asp?dest=Launching%20a%20program.htm

[Geoff]

We've just changed how start menus work here. Previously we just had one big start menu on the network as you have. Now what happens instead is the local computers 'All Users' Startmenu is merged with a cut down network startmenu. There's a couple of gotchas with this approach though. You have to tidy up the 'All users' start menu on the machines (I suggest a reimage) and sometimes software doesn't bother to create startmenu items in 'All users'. So you have to manually fix it.

[ZeroHour]

Does 2003's Access enumeration work with this well?

Would be sexy if it did

[Geoff]

Indeed it does.

[Guest Guest]

Doesnt xp just drag down the start menu the first time and then look in its cache for the rest of the session?

[webman]

I don't know how RM CC3 does it exactly, but shortcuts for applications that don't exist on the machine get the "hidden" attribute applied to them so they are not visible in the Start Menu.

[Geoff]

Doesnt xp just drag down the start menu the first time and then look in its cache for the rest of the session?

 

Only for the portion of the start menu items that exist on the machines hard drive. eg, anything in the users local profile or all users. If the start menu items reside on the server they are subject to ABE (assuming it's enabled and installed) just like any other file or folder. You can verify this by mucking with the permissions of the start menu items on the server and observing the results on the client.

[Guest Guest]

The start menu just seems to appear alot quicker after the first time.

[MkII]

That looks great srochford.

 

We redirect start menus per room using th nasty loopback method, but i'd like to change to scripting start menu according to the machine name. Anyone have examples of that?

[srochford]

Something like this should work:

 

Idea is that you work out the current OU for the user's machine (I'm assuming that machines are grouped in OUs according to classroom - if not, why not :-))

 

You then have a folder for each OU that you want to have different programs on a server share. Under that is what you need copying to the start menu. eg if you have a room called "abc123" then you'll have a folder called "abc123\programs\programs for room abc123" and then the start menu will have a section called "programs for room abc123"

 

 

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")
set ofso=creatobject("scripting.filesystemobject")
Set oADSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")
sSiteName=oADSysInfo.SiteName
sComputerDN=oADSysInfo.computername
iComma1=instr(sComputerDN,",")
if iComma1<>0 then iComma2=instr(iComma1+1,sComputerDN,",")
if iComma1<>0 and iComma2<>0 then
 sOU=mid(sComputerDN,iComma1+4,iComma2-iComma1-4)
end if

if sOU<>"" then
 oFSO.copyfolder "\\server\share\" & sOU,oShell.specialfolders("startmenu"),true
end if

 

If you don't group computers in OUs according to room but you name them (eg) room1_001, room2_001 etc then you could just replace:

 

Set oADSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")
sSiteName=oADSysInfo.SiteName
sComputerDN=oADSysInfo.computername
iComma1=instr(sComputerDN,",")
if iComma1<>0 then iComma2=instr(iComma1+1,sComputerDN,",")
if iComma1<>0 and iComma2<>0 then
 sOU=mid(sComputerDN,iComma1+4,iComma2-iComma1-4)
end if

 

with

 

set oNetwork=createobject("wscript.network")
scomputer=onetwork.computername
sOU=left(sComputername,4)

 

(assuming that the first 4 letters of the computer name is the room name). This is harder work because you have to be absolutely rigid in your computer naming (and it falls over for us because we have random room names - including 2 which are labelled "WFG33" just to confuse the students :-))

[MkII]

We have both our machines in OUs according to room AND name all the PCs by the room name (IT1-xx, Eng4-xx etc.. )

 

we also already have the folders set up on a share named with same rom names, so those bits are already done.

 

I wish I had the 1st clue how that worked - but I'll try to have a play Monday

[robert.mabbutt]

We use Ranger to redirect our start menu's however were are getting a problem where the start menu/button freezes. This happened on our old NT4 domain (now 2003) both running Ranger.

 

We've googled a lot and tried several different solutions but none have worked. When I log in I get the local start menu and this problem does not exist.

 

PS. Sorry to high jack this thread, but a teacher was asking about this today and this thread reminded me of this!

 

Robert

[MkII]

That has happenned to me before when a link on the start menu is no longer there.

[strawberry]

That has happenned to me before when a link on the start menu is no longer there.

 

or is unavailable for whatever reason ( powercut in our case! )

[ofarrell]

Does anyone know of a simple script to overwrite the local users start menu? with one located on a server?

[srochford]

Does anyone know of a simple script to overwrite the local users start menu? with one located on a server?

 

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")

 

oFSO.copyfolder "\\server\share\specialstartmenu",oShell.specialfolders("startmenu"),true

 

This will copy what's in the folder called "specialstartmenu" to the user's start menu; it will overwrite what's there, add new items but it won't delete anything that's not on the server.

 

We use this technique to add items for particular groups of users (so staff get a link to registers, for example)

[mac_shinobi]

Does anyone know of a simple script to overwrite the local users start menu? with one located on a server?

 

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")

 

oFSO.copyfolder "\\server\share\specialstartmenu",oShell.specialfolders("startmenu"),true

 

This will copy what's in the folder called "specialstartmenu" to the user's start menu; it will overwrite what's there, add new items but it won't delete anything that's not on the server.

 

We use this technique to add items for particular groups of users (so staff get a link to registers, for example)

 

Just a quick pointer, you may of realised already but you have not set or declared the oFSO object.

 

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

 

Just noticed it and thought it may help hehe

[ofarrell]

thank you both very much! i'll try it out shortly!

[ofarrell]

i tried the script as below

 

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

 

oFSO.copyfolder "\\server\servershare\startmenu",oShell.specialfolders("startmenu"),true

 

but i get the following error:

 

Script:

\\Server location

Line: 5

Char: 1

error: invalid procedure call or argument

code: 800A0005

source Microsoft VBScript Runtime error

[mac_shinobi]

on this line here :

 

"\\server\servershare\startmenu",oShell.specialfolders("startmenu"),true

 

you have to replace

 

"\\server\servershare\startmenu"

 

with your servername and the servershare name

 

Dim server, servershare

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

server = "Name_Of_your_server_here"

servershare = "server_share_name_here"

oFSO.copyfolder "\\server\servershare\startmenu",oShell.specialfolders("startmenu"),true

 

you dont have to use the variable names but since it didnt look like you replaced the server and servershare with the actual values I think thats why it was crashing out. If it still crashes out after that then post back with the error message.

 

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Logon/code/code_800A0005.htm

[bigb3n]

I've been trying to find the best solution for custom Start Menus for a while...

 

We started off with re-directed Start Menus and then changed it to pre-configured ones ( custom NT USER.DAT with Start Menu pointing at a certain network share and folder ) for pupils and staff. I was also concerned about how much traffic folder re-direction would cause as we have over 2100 users.

 

We have recently moved away from RM CC3 and there delivery engine would autmatically hide shortcuts that where not installed on the computer.

We would love to do this as well as we have ghost icons where the software is not installed.

 

Is this possible with VB scripts? So when a user logs on it checks to see whats installed using some sort of software ini file similar to the RM CC3?

 

A few people have told me that the best way forward with shortcuts is by coping the 'all users start menu icons' over when a user logs so you can then have the correct shortcuts for the location.

 

For the time being I'm sticking with my method but I may use the VB script to inform users that the software is not installed.

 

Thanks for the tips anyway and sorry for hi-jacking this thread.

 

Ben Straw

IT Manager, Loughborough Endowed Schools

[FN-GM]

why don't you configure it so it can look at the all users folder & the folder redirection?