Windows 7 - I've Given Up

[garethEds]

Yes indeed I've given up bothering to get Windows 7 onto our network. I'll just wait until the LEA get things sorted and push it through.

 

For now I'll stick with XP and getting Office 2007 out there. We will go 2010 eventually but I think I'll wait until Windows 7 for that.

 

So why have I come to this decision? Simply because I have not the time to mess about with things that don't work. I don't have the time to find workarounds simply because the mapped drives will not appear for admin users or to fix the black background issue. Okay I've done these but my latest bugbear is with a profile...

 

We've created the profile as per instructions - but for some reason drives do not get mapped to a profile that has already been copied over to the local machine. We use mandatory. When the user logs on for the first time they pick up everything, but when they log on a second time - they get nothing! Delete their profile and it all works again until they log on again...

 

What else.... security groups. I cannot get my security groups to work for some reason. We have three security groups staff/pupils and admin. I want Background 1 for Admin and Background 2 for staff - do they work? Nope not a chance. If B1 get's set then it doesn't B2 doesn't appear for staff.

 

I need to spend time on this but fancied a rant. Sorry everyone. Back to normal now, I'll resume my testing tomorrow.

 

[Edit - are there any schools on the M4 corridor before Bristol (in Wales then) that are running Windows 7 on a 2003 domain that I could come and see?]

 

 

Gareth

[Gatt]

Quick thing about your profiles, do the have ".V2" at the end of them?

If not then they wont work

 

if youa re in a mixed environment of XP and Vista/7 then you need 2 profiles

 

eg user Joe Bloggs will need a profile like "jbloggs" for XP and "jbloggs.V2" for Vista/7

[jsnetman]

There are lots of things to be tweaked and setup when going to win 7. I had a nightmare with printers and nearly decided to roll back to XP, I did'nt and hung in and am very happy I did. 7 on laptops that staff use back and forth from the school network work seamless. The workstations are very stable and perform well. Lots of tweaking of software also needed, I would hang in there for a little while longer. Often just taking a rest from a problem and then tackling it from a different direction often works for me.

[chrbb]

Just setting up my first staff windows 7 laptop, taken ages so far! But.......... with a fair bit of tweaking (and I mean a fair bit) I've got all our software to work! Backgrounds to do tommorow which will probably make me want to cry, but I'm not going to let it beat me. We had xp on a nt server and that was traumatic to start with, but windows 7, like garlic bread, is the future.:D:D

[6Foot2]

Backgrounds to do tommorow which will probably make me want to cry, but I'm not going to let it beat me.

 

Start Menu and Desktop redirection had me stumped. I stopped there until new ideas came along. After all if they can't get their shortcuts why bother?

 

How do you plan to tackle these 'little niggles?'

[Gatt]

I found Start Menu and Desktop redirection to be very easy - just make sure you remove the Exclusive Access check and if using a mix of XP and Vista/7 to ensure the start menu is available for XP machiens as well

 

on your server create a folder called "Pupil Start Menu" and share it (eg \\server\pupil_smenu$) then inside that folder create a folder called "Programs" and add your links to that folder

In your GPO redirect the startmenu to \\server\pupil_smenu$

 

Simples....

 

For Windows 7 though DO NOT configure the "Remove All Programs list from the Start Menu" otherwise the redirection fails... (i think its that GPO!)

Edited July 12, 2010 by Gatt

[garethEds]

Quick thing about your profiles, do the have ".V2" at the end of them?

If not then they wont work

 

if youa re in a mixed environment of XP and Vista/7 then you need 2 profiles

 

eg user Joe Bloggs will need a profile like "jbloggs" for XP and "jbloggs.V2" for Vista/7

 

HI Gatt,

 

Yes - that's sorted. I created the profile exactly as was required in all the instructions using System Image Manager and the xml file. It works fine. I've removed everything from the profile as well (as I read somewhere else).

 

Gareth

[garethEds]

There are lots of things to be tweaked and setup when going to win 7. I had a nightmare with printers and nearly decided to roll back to XP, I did'nt and hung in and am very happy I did. 7 on laptops that staff use back and forth from the school network work seamless. The workstations are very stable and perform well. Lots of tweaking of software also needed, I would hang in there for a little while longer. Often just taking a rest from a problem and then tackling it from a different direction often works for me.

 

Funny thing is - I've got the printer to work using a GPO for my room. I didn't have any issue at all.

 

Gareth

[garethEds]

Just setting up my first staff windows 7 laptop, taken ages so far! But.......... with a fair bit of tweaking (and I mean a fair bit) I've got all our software to work! Backgrounds to do tommorow which will probably make me want to cry, but I'm not going to let it beat me. We had xp on a nt server and that was traumatic to start with, but windows 7, like garlic bread, is the future.:D:D

 

Backgrounds has been a pita. There is a registry fragment missing so I had a GPO to create the registry fragment and populate it with the wallpaper location (stored on a network drive somewhere). This worked but when a user logged in with a different desktop setting it didn't work and the first background stayed there.

 

Gareth

[garethEds]

I found Start Menu and Desktop redirection to be very easy - just make sure you remove the Exclusive Access check and if using a mix of XP and Vista/7 to ensure the start menu is available for XP machiens as well

 

on your server create a folder called "Pupil Start Menu" and share it (eg \\server\pupil_smenu$) then inside that folder create a folder called "Programs" and add your links to that folder

In your GPO redirect the startmenu to \\server\pupil_smenu$

 

Simples....

 

For Windows 7 though DO NOT configure the "Remove All Programs list from the Start Menu" otherwise the redirection fails... (i think its that GPO!)

 

 

I've not got this far yet. My main priority for the past two weeks has been to get the mapped drives working and the backgrounds working.

 

Gareth

[Gatt]

We use BGInfo at logon to sort our backgrounds out - though i do believe thre was another GPO that causes erroneous Background issues with Windows 7...

[6Foot2]

Backgrounds has been a pita.

 

To be honest that is what I find so surprising. My 'XP' backgrounds came down without me having to do any extra work. Did BGInfo help here?

[Gatt]

I've not got this far yet. My main priority for the past two weeks has been to get the mapped drives working and the backgrounds working.

 

Gareth

 

If you have 2008, (or is it 2008 R2?) with the GPO Preferences, then you can sort mapped drives out via GPO - no need for logon scripts

[Gatt]

To be honest that is what I find so surprising. My 'XP' backgrounds came down without me having to do any extra work. Did BGInfo help here?

 

It certainly helps - we deploy it via a kix login script so it gets applied once all the GPO's have been applied...

[edutech4schools]

On our 2003 domain we have most stuff including the drives mapped by kix script and everything works fine on win7, but I have found the folder sync on win7 very flakey so for the moment the teachers are using sync toy.

[garethEds]

If you have 2008, (or is it 2008 R2?) with the GPO Preferences, then you can sort mapped drives out via GPO - no need for logon scripts

 

The LEA are running a 2003R2 server so no 2008 here at the moment. Still I have a W7 management machine running RSAT and they have an admx store on the server (the kind discussed by AngryTechnician in his blog) - so I can edit the GPOs.

 

There is a well documented issue with admins getting mapped drives. I've also sorted it for staff users - perhaps someone could send me their output for the mapping drive GPO - I know you can save them from within the GPO Editor. I could then take a look.

 

If anyone does have W7 working and tied down for staff and pupils I wouldn't mind looking at their GPOs in HTML format if they wouldn't mind sending them over.

 

Many thanks as always

 

Gareth

[Gatt]

If I remember, I'll export my GPOs to DHTMTL and send them over

[6Foot2]

It certainly helps - we deploy it via a kix login script so it gets applied once all the GPO's have been applied...

 

This may seem like an odd question but we only user KIX to deploy printers at the moment and we should not need KIX for that come Windows 7. It took an age for us to get the KIX scripts for the printers just right. To give us a head start would you let us see what your KIX script to deploy your desktops looks like? Not sure if I will need it as, like I said desktops [for Students] works 'out of the box' Might help for my Staff desktops and and Start Menus though as none of that works.

[Gatt]

@DaveP - TBH, now we are on 2008 R2 & Win7 or KIX scripts are pretty basic now - mainly for BGInfo, but I'll send them over to you tomorrow...

[garethEds]

If I remember, I'll export my GPOs to DHTMTL and send them over

 

And that is why this community is so great. Don't worry I'll remind you ;-)

 

Many thanks

 

GJE

[garethEds]

@DaveP - TBH, now we are on 2008 R2 & Win7 or KIX scripts are pretty basic now - mainly for BGInfo, but I'll send them over to you tomorrow...

 

I've never looked at KIX scripts - are they something I should be looking at?

 

Gareth

[SYNACK]

I've never looked at KIX scripts - are they something I should be looking at?

 

Gareth

 

In my opinion, No. KIX scripts are a 3rd party form of script that requires an interpreter and although it is used on a bunch of networks you can do exactly the same stuff with a VBS script without having to add more dependencies and incompatibilities. The first thing I did to get rid of a bnch of issues when we went Vista from XP was rip out KIX and it solved 3/4 of the problems we were having instantly. I know there are newer versions that are compatible now but I preffer it to work out of the box without adding additional requirements.

[Arthur]

PowerShell and VBScripts are the way to go, along with Group Policy Preferences. Batch files and KiX scripts are so 2001.

[mac_shinobi]

PowerShell and VBScripts are the way to go, along with Group Policy Preferences. Batch files and KiX scripts are so 2001.

 

Not really tried powershell and have only done a very small amount of batch file stuff - mostly been vbscripts / wmi and the likes for me

[mac_shinobi]

I had a nightmare with printers and nearly decided to roll back to XP,

 

What issues did you have with printers and what did you do to resolve that ?