Blank Redirected Start Menu

[Darylrese]

Afternoon,

 

We have successfully redirected desktop and start menu's, however the first menu is blank as screen shot shows below, then the 'all programs' list is populated with the shortcuts in the redirection path.

 

 

Is there a way of populating the first menu too? (IE is at the top as it allowed user to pin this himself, however normally he cannot right click to pin anything else) We would like a uniformed look for student accounts so that they all have the same menu structure.

 

Many thanks

[eddyc]

What we do for our students is run a pin items vbs script to pin a set of common applications (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc).

 

I'm not at school this week, but did get the script from here - I will find it and post a link in a mo for you

 

 

And the script is here -

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/100014-windows-7-pinned-start-menu.html

Edited October 1, 2012 by eddyc

[Darylrese]

Perfect thank-you! The script works, however it appears to only work on some machines and not others. For example a user logged onto a PC in library, pinned items appeared, logged onto a pc in our office and menu was blank.

 

Any ideas why?

[Ergo]

Without knowing the applications you are trying to pin, or the differences in the machines in question, but the thing to check would be:

Are the paths to the applications the same on both machines?

If the library machine is installed using x86/32bit version of windows then office will be installed in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14" wheras on a x64/64bit version of windows "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14"

[Darylrese]

Hi,

 

Yep all PC's have the programs in the same locations, all 64bit machines

[Darylrese]

Strange findings so far. One user gets it on all PC's, Other users logging onto those PC's dont get it, cant see a pattern at the moment between their accounts. Errors in event viewer refering to access denied to a redirected folder Edited October 2, 2012 by Darylrese

[eddyc]

We had something simular, I had to put a sleep comand at the start of the script for say 10 seconds.

Our newer machines which are gig to desktop would run the script too soon, and therefore not pin anything.

The older machines would work everytime - the sleep command seemed to fix it for us.

[Darylrese]

how do you add in a sleep command? Sorry im new to scripting

 

The PC's in question are older dualcore PC's and mine is an i5 2500 machine, however different users are logging onto the same machines and only a very small amount actually get the menu items, the rest are blank

[AJWhite1970]

Strange findings so far. One user gets it on all PC's, Other users logging onto those PC's dont get it, cant see a pattern at the moment between their accounts. Errors in event viewer refering to access denied to a redirected folder

 

Have you tried to customize the libraries by any chance? You see a lot of redirected folder errors when the libraries are setup in a non standard way?

 

Andrew

[Ergo]

The only other suggestion I have would be to look and see if there is a reason why the script is not running on the PC in your office - is it possible the script is not being triggered to run correctly? Event Logs may help - also what happens if you run the script manually?

 

Dave

[Darylrese]

We get a lot of these errors in eventviewer:

 

 

Also this error: Windows failed to apply the Folder Redirection settings. Folder Redirection settings might have its own log file. Please click on the "More information" link.

[eddyc]

At the start of the command put this on the top line.

 

WScript.Sleep 10000

 

The time is in milliseconds - so this is 10 seconds.

[Ergo]

We get a lot of these errors in eventviewer:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15374[/ATTACH]

 

Also this error: Windows failed to apply the Folder Redirection settings. Folder Redirection settings might have its own log file. Please click on the "More information" link.

 

You may want to ensure that you have the GPO setting for "Wait for network" enabled which forces all Computer GPOs to process during startup before the logon prompt is presented to the user. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/60257-gpo-processing-allways-wait-network-computer-startup-what-do-you-choose.html

 

Regards,

 

David

[Darylrese]

Cheers, tried the sleep command and it didnt work for those users who didnt have it. Its still blank for a majority of users For those who are working, it seems to work fine each time they logon and instantly appears.

 

Thanks David, sorry im a little new to this setup, where do i find that out?

[Darylrese]

this is the one dave!

[Ergo]

The setting I was refering to can be found in: Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Logon and is called Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon (screenshot below).

 

Hopefully that helps.

 

Dave

[Ergo]

The other part for testing would be to run the script manually for a user where it did not work. This may be slightly more difficult as the users no doubt are prevented from accessing the Run dialog or loading the Command Prompt, but if you are happy to allow either of these for a short period of time to allow you to test all you would need to do would be to open either (although the command prompt is better as you will see error messages, etc) and run:

 

cscript \\server\share\scriptname.vbs

 

PLease substitue the correct path and filenames!

 

If you get an error, please post it back. If it works please let me know.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Darylrese]

Hi Dave,

 

The wait for network policy didnt work unfortunatly. Running the script locally for a user did nothing also, however i may need to test this further. Ive noticed these users who are having problems are also missing mapped network drives?

[Ergo]

OK, that is useful - that the script did not work when run manually is key - this means either the script is faulty, or something about the users' environment is not applicable to that user/machine combination. From the missing network drives I would look carefully at the users' profiles.

 

Dave

[Darylrese]

gave a student whos effected command prompt and it says ERROR no file extension?

[Darylrese]

deleted effected students profile from file server and created a new one, he still does not get pinned start menus or mapped drives other than home drive.

[Ergo]

I've just run a quick test on my machine here and used the following script:

 

Dim ObjFolder, ObjFolderItem, colVerbs, objverb, objshell

Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")

Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace("C:\Program Files\WinRAR")
Set objFolderItem = objFolder.ParseName("WinRAR.exe")
Set colVerbs = objFolderItem.Verbs
For Each objVerb in colVerbs
If Replace(objVerb.name, "&", "") = "Pin to Start Menu" Then objVerb.DoIt
Next

WScript.Quit

 

with the following in a command prompt window:

 

C:\Users\davidi>cscript C:\Users\davidi\Desktop\startMenu.vbs
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\davidi>

 

This pinned WinRAR into the start menu for me successfully. I would therefore recommend for a user who this did not work for on your systems look at the script line by line and test the path, exe name. Also when you right click on the Exe you are trying to pin that "Pin to Start Menu" does exist in the context menu.

 

Dave

[Darylrese]

are you saying the file names / paths are possibly incorrect for the machines they are trying to run on? If so, all our machines have the same images and programs are in exactly the same places for all users

 

Users cant see the C: drive so they arnt able to pin them themselves

[Ergo]

are you saying the file names / paths are possibly incorrect for the machines they are trying to run on?

Not necessarily, but there must be something wrong with the script, or the users' ability to run it. The trick here is going to be identifying that problem!

 

To look at this from another direction, if you have two people next to each other - one who it works for, and one who it does not work for - will it ALWAYS be the same for each of those users? (ie it Never works for User A, and always works for User B?) Apologies if I have asked this before. If you swap those two people over to the other machine will you get the same result? For two users (one who it works for, and one who it does not) are the group memberships and OU locations of user account identical?

 

Dave

[Ergo]

gave a student whos effected command prompt and it says ERROR no file extension?

 

not sure I understand this error - can you post me a screenshot?

 

Thanks

 

Dave