eejit

That sounds right Windy. Something else must be wrong. Are there event log errors on the local machine? Also, have you ran the "group policy results wizard", that can throw up some interesting pointers.

This may not help you, but when using ghost you cannot have a copy of sysprep at c:\sysprep on the machine you want to create an imge from because that is where ghost copies it's version. It won't overwrite the other one for some reason. Worth looking at. A second issue may be that the sysprep.inf does not match the sysprep.exe that you have. Did you create a new sysprep.inf by using setupmgr.exe?

You can definitely run mandatory profiles and GPOs together. Policies are applied in this order I believe Local Policies >> Mandatory profiles >> Group policies i.e If there is a setting that is in a mandatory profile AND a GPO, then the Group Policy would "win"

Sure, it only works for Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) drivers though. That means real WHQL passed drivers - putting them in a folder labeled "WHQL" does not work as done by Logitech with their Quickcam Express drivers Anyway, it's known as a server-side install: Make a hidden folder share on the server (\\server\drivers$) Extract your drivers to that folder so that the *.inf is in the root Open regedit on the client and browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion In the DevicePath key append the server share after a semicolon Example: Before %SystemRoot%\inf After %SystemRoot%\inf;\\server\drivers$ That should do it. BTW, I give full share and security permissions to Everyone on the driver share folder. No one knows it exists, and that way I know that the files will definitely be accessible by all.

This is the biggest mistakes in group policies as far as I'm concerned. You can't block exe's for subfolders. So for the examples above you would have to disallow d:\*.exe d:\*\*.exe d:\*\*\*.exe d:\*\*\*\*.exe etc., for all the other drives too, and for any other extension that you'd like as well. Nightmare

Breakthrough! :idea: If you put the drivers on a network share and alter the registry devicepath to point to that network share. Then, as long as the drivers are Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) supported the device will be found and added even for a pupil. This is known as a server side install which is the only way to allow non-admins to add a device in XP. Thanks for the guys at Microsoft for helping me with this.

Burst Technology do a nice add on that should totally cater for your needs. You can completely customise it to your needs, but tbh, the default configuration is good enough. http://www.burstek.com/

I haven't used Smoothwall for a couple of years now, but although it was a great firewall it's pretty basic otherwise. ISA has a lot more capabilities including a client which means blocking messenger etc is much easier.

Are you saying that Surf Control have an ISA plugin? Actually I've just found it myself on their website. How good is it? I presume that you can use it to block certain words from urls as you can't in ISA, plus they'll have their own blacklist. Is that right? Cheers

Are you saying that Surf Control have an ISA plugin?

No, but I am dying (figuratively) to get on that beta.

You take a ghost of your SIMS server before an upgrade? Wow. How do you get the time to schedule in that kind of downtime?

Looks nice, I'll certainly give it a go. I've seen many pretty cool homepage portals (if that's what they're called) but the thought of re-typing in my 200+ bookmarks is very frightening.

Wow, thanks very much for that.

Cheers fooby, that file didn't work, but like you, I checked what it did. I actually added "Everyone" - "Full Control" to the windows\inf folder as a test, but that didn't work

I use my.yahoo.com as my homepage (no flaming please - it's really handy for organizing links - honest!) and for some reason the edugeek rss feed can't get added. All the previous rss feeds I've added have a *.xml extension, but this one has a *.php one. Am I doing sonmething wrong or is Yahoo not using all the standards? cheers.

Cheers for the link, but it says "Grant Users and Power Users the ability to install USB mass storage devices." will that really allow users to add devices too? Will test it shortly.

Absolument. Do you have webcams or that bloody Intel microscope that was everywhere 5 years ago, but that they quickly discontinued?

I presume that it would be the height of bad manners to bump this question.

Right, unfortunately/fortunately after 5 years of tears I've managed to get single ghost images to work on all kinds of hardware including laptops so that's where this USB device problem becomes a major pain.

So, do you use a seperate ghost image for each room, Pete?

I have to admit that I don't like it at all. Are you able to move the URL bar back to where it was before? It feels like too little too late to me, it's the extensions that set Firefox apart and I can't see MS allowing users to add their own extensions to IE any time soon. BTW, I thinks tabs are godawful too.

So, since the above group policy made no difference ( Computer Configuration >> Windows Settings >> Security Settings >> Local Policies >> User Rights Assignment >> "Load and unload device drives") I wonder what it actually does?

@ Pete. Do you have all the same hardware throughout the school? We find that ghosting doesn't keep the drivers on all machines - probably because I've checked on machines that were a different hardware type to the 'master' image and so the USB ports are new. (USB ports must have individual Device IDs or something that causes this problem in the first place) @ Mark. Cheers for the reply. Had a quick look through those threads, USB sticks always get picked up fine for some reason, so not a problem with those @ Geoff. yep, driver signing is switched off too. As Paul once said to me "There will be an answer. let it be."

I'm sure I've seen this topic before but have not been able to find it, apologies if it does exist somewhere already. Basically, I need pupils/staff to be able to plug in various USB devices (webcams, intel microscope) etc. and for the device to be picked up by XP and just work. Instead, after ghosting, those devices get 'found' again and need the drivers to be installed. So, I have to run around with every USB device and plug them into EVERY USB port as just plugging them into one does not work. When you plug them in as a non-admin you get a login box pop-up asking for the username and password of an administrator as you need to be an admin to install the device. I found a group policy in Computer Configuration >> Windows Settings >> Security Settings >> Local Policies >> User Rights Assignment >> "Load and unload device drives" which I added Everyone to as a test, but that didn't work. What do you guys do - this must be a common problem? Cheers.