OverWorked

I've given up and bought the hosted My Little Server instead. A much better solution, especially as I can access it from home and share it with my other customers. A great product OP!

That's given me an idea, though. I could use loopback-processing GPO to disable offline files for everyone except certain users. I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the replies, but nothing useful yet. I don't think it's possible. Disabling offline files wouldn't work because the staff need to take their laptops home and have their docs there for them. Giving them big flash drives and telling them to use them would just cause more problems. Offline files works great if a machine is only used by one person. There doesn't seem to be anything in XP to deal with documents from more users than the hdd has space for.

I set up Liberum a few years ago at my main school and it works OK. I'm just installing it at a new school, and can't get it to play. I think it's a Server 2003 problem. I've successfully gone to http://server/helpdesk/setup.asp and done that, I can access the license.jtml page, but can't access any other pages. If I go to http://server/helpdesk/ or http://server/helpdesk/default.asp I just get a 404-not found page. I know the page is there. ASP is enabled. I've given everyone full access to the helpdesk folder and the database folder, just for testing. I can access the setup.asp page, but nothing else. I'm completely stumped.

Is there any way of automatically deleting offline copies of files for user who haven't logged onto XP for a while? I've got staff laptops with 20GB HDDs filled to the point of being unusable with docs from staff who logged on once months ago to take a register. This is the third time recently I've had to go through and manually deleted their profiles and offline files. Is there any way of doing this automatically, say for an account that hasn't been used for a month? I thought of just creating an account just for staff to use for doing registers on other people's laptops, but this would just make things more complex for them and they wouldn't stick to it anyway.

Thanks. I'd seen that line and thought it may be relevant. Does that mean you can fiddle it so the image will work with any machine? I'll try it later.

Thanks. It's a long time since I last tried riprep images with RIS. I've been using CD-based images for years, after having problems with different HALs before. I thought that it checked the HAL later in the process and gave an error. I'll have to take an image from an identical (or very similar) machine.

Hello, I've just created a RIS image from RISetup. Deployed it to a VM no problem. Now, I've just tried to deploy the same image to an old machine and the image I've created does not appear in the list on the 'OS choices' screen in setup. My VM running on VMWare Server sees a choice of 32-bit or 64-bit XP, then it sees the full list of all the images on the RIS server. My old machine doesn't get the choice of 32/64 bit and doesn't get the choice of all images. Does RIS decide which machines can see which images? How does it do it?

Thanks guys. Four good responses is good enough for me. I'll make the call in the morning.

Is Sky broadband OK? I know this has been asked before, but not recently. I'm currently just getting 4 terrestrial channels and using VHS tape. I have to get into the modern age. The cost saving of going from BT to Sky broadband 8Mb would make it worth it. I just want to know if the service is any good. Thanks.

Hello, I'm selling old hardware on Ebay. I have 2 drives from a 4-drive RAID-5 array, and would like to sell them. Is it possible for someone to access data on them? Of course, if there was only one drive missing from the array, it could be done easily. But with two missing - is it still possible? I don't have a suitable working drive controller to erase them, and need to be sure the data on them is useless. If there's any possibility of the data being read, I'll just break them physically and chuck them. Thanks.

We've got some old Toshiba PocketPCs running Windows Mobile (I think - they've been sat on a shelf unused for so long I don't know what they're running). I've set the proxy server address so they can access the internet. Is there any way of setting the proxy bypass so they'll access web sites (like Eportal) on the LAN? Thanks. (We bought a few of these PDAs years ago. Biggest waste of money I know of). I've also got an Asus Eee on my desk, running the original Asus Linux distro. It works like a dream.

I've had the opposite problem. I've been alone in school, the caretaker's been on leave. Still I've got contractors turning up unannounced expecting me to sort them out, give them access to areas, tell them what jobs need doing. They turn up with no appointment and give me awkward looks when I can't help them. Besides that, I've got a lot done. Now I'm off for two weeks.

I didn't either. Good bit of info to keep for when one needs it. BITSAdmin Tool

The problems I had before with WSUS were with version 2. I've got WSUS 3.0 SP1 working perfectly, with no annoyance to the users. XP SP3 + Media Player 11 + loads of other stuff deploying happily now. Thanks.

Not been to BETT before. How does one get tickets? Or do you just turn up? I can't find any mention of tickets on bettshow.com.

Adobe produce this guide, which is *some* help in producing a script. No support for AD deployment, though. This is very poor. Adobe used to be one of the best for support in enterprise environments. Previous products (Reader 8 for example) even had a installation customisation wizard to produce .mst files. Anyway, I only got the license to replace a license that was on loan from the local college while their staff were teaching here. I'll have to stick with the existing earlier versions as we don't have machines that have 1GB RAM.

XP comes with an earlier version of Windows Installer built in, so I thought it should be possible to deploy by msi, but this requires v3.1, which has to installed either manually, by script or WSUS. (I think WSUS needs v3.1, so it installs that before anything else on clients). Thanks for the script. It doesn't matter now anyway, I've installed it by hand on 30 machines. Took two hours, but at least the job's done.

It's v2

I can see a pattern forming here... .net Framework 3.5. requires Windows Installer 3.1, and guess what... there's no msi for it. I know that WSUS makes this update mandatory. It's becoming clear that MS are reducing support for for msi's. I didn't know it was possible to deploy apps like this with WSUS. I don't have WSUS working at the moment. I'll have to fix it. In the meantime I'll just install Expression Web manually. I have to get it done this week and don't have time for WSUS at the mo.

They're at it again! Expression Web requires .net Framework 3.5. But there's no msi for that either!!!! Livid!

Me too! WTF are MS thinking of? Releasing an app in this day and age without any msi or other deployment method. Not happy. Will try to create an msi using WinInstall LE.

The GP approach didn't work. I'll give up with this. I'll fix WSUS. I gave up on WSUS a while ago when I couldn't get it to stop insisting on logging off users and rebooting after a each update, but that's the subject of another thread.

Quick question. Is it possible to deploy XP SP3 by GP, like it was with SP2? I've just the read the MS pdf "overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3". The last paragraph says:- No mention of GP or WSUS. Typical Microsoftese - they'll only tell you what you can do, not mentioning anything they've stopped. I don't have Systems Management Server 2003 or System Center Configuration Manager 2007. My WSUS isn't working at the moment -I'm going to fix it anyway - is it possible through WSUS? Edit:- Although there's no extract option anymore, looking through extracted folder, shows an update.msi. I'll try that.

In that case, go for option 2 with VMWare Server. VMWare Server has the ability to auto-start VMs on startup. It's better (IMO) to have both machines virtualised so you can easily migrate them later. I've only just heard of VMWare ESXi after getting the email from VMWare this week. It's something definitely I'll look into though.