simpsonj

I tjhink it was just a GPO, under User Config- Policies- Admin templates- Windows Components- Windows Explorer - Turn off Windows Libraries features that rely on indexed file data. Either that, or I configured the mandatory profile and took out all the library locations barring the z:\ drive (which I map their My Documents to). Try the top option first and that might work, otherwise I think there are some very neat solutions to this issue on edugeek. You should have an option to set the Music, Pictures and Videos folders to "Follow the Documents folder". I set the Desktop to redirect into the My Documents (Z:\Desktop) so that students can have their own desktop as some prefer to work that way. Otherwise I would block students from being able to add files to the desktop entirely.

Ours is in the mandatory profile, so I update it as and when new software is installed. This does lead to the occassional unsightly dead link, but I can live with it. Start menu is divided into subjects, with only accessories and Microsoft office having their own folders. I think some of the above methods would be a better way to go though! Only benefit to the method I use is that its quick to setup and change, and doesn't involve running more scripts or modifying .msi files. More my limitations in that area that lead me to it I suppose.

@teejay Entirely possible but its not on a regular basis, I haven't had a network share fail on me this year, but once burned, twice shy... I use a mandatory profile for students, which seems to be working reasonable well. Not the easiest thing in the world to set up on Windows 7, though there is a good forum thread on it somewhere on EduGeek. I'm not sure I would bother with a roaming profile otherwise, I would redirect everything (Start Menu, Desktop, Favourites etc). Again, personal opinion and YMMV. Would agree with plexer though, definately no need for 3rd party tools to lock down student workstations, Group Policy can lock down pretty much everything.

My own personal concern with creating one share and putting every user under that one share is that shares have been known to fail (or they have for me), and the more people rely on that share, the more of a pain it can be. I have every student having their own hidden share, which for many is OTT, but when the share fails (for whatever reason) only one student is afffected, not the entire year or all students... But again, that's completely personal

Personally I give them a home folder in AD and then redirect to the home folder, so that you don't need to do part 2 of your post and make a different GPO for each year (though you can set different redirections based on group membership if thats the route you want to take). I've found that Windows 7 was a bit grumpy about redirecting My Docs unless it was set to redirect Home Directory, but YMMV. As a heads up, you might want to ensure that Libraries are dealt with in any way you see fit. The reason being is that if the Redirection fails, they will still have a My Documents, but it will be the C:\Users\Public\ My Docs, leading kids to save onto C: and thus it won't be there when they log back in. I use a mandatory profile to get around this issue, but if you're using individual profiles you might want to look into an alternative...

Second the Wisesoft software, very handy (just make sure that you use it carefully, I have managed to mess up big style using the Bulk AD Users software...)

I would set the share permission to have Everyone with Full Control, but make sure the folders themselves only give the student in question and the Administrator access. But other people will have different ideas on security. I'm reasonable lax because I don't think the students here are malicious, others won't give students an inch.

You might find this useful... Mikey Magic's Web Site - Active User Manager Folder redirection is/can be done purely through group policy, and folders for My Documents will be automatically made when you create the users in AD, as long as you set a Home Directory path. I would advise setting up another share for profiles, and setting the profile path in AD for the users as well. A useful tip would be to use %USERNAME% when typing in the profile and home directory locations. For example, your 2011 students would have \\\work$\students\2011\%USERNAME% as their home directory and \\\profiles$\students\2011\%USERNAME% as their profile path. There shouldn't be a need to script anything, but there is more than one way to skin a cat!

Try printing to a .pdf first? Then print from the PDF, a bit of a pain, but it might work.

Surely depends on the LEA? Ours is slowly giving more and more control back to the schools, whilst maintaining its support. For example, schools will be expected to start buying in their own broadband next year, which has always been provided by the county council since I've been here. I think the cutting of Harnessing Technology, and the lack of replacement, has effectively cut the LEA funding for expanding ICT services, or at least, it has around here, in my opinion. It could well be that partnerships of schools might be the way forward, schools pooling together their resources, which might mean that a secondary schools ICT support staff help out the primary school instead of a private firm. Or the reverse of course...

Ah well, if we're talking degree ruiners, a combination of Rome: Total War and Halo 2 did for mine

Treesize will do that, free version on every copy of PC Pro for the past year or so will do the job.

If you like horror games with armosphere, try Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Or indeed, if you're looking for old games in general, Good old Games (GOG.com) is a good place to look! Personal favourites would be Baldur's Gate, Wing Commander, Jet Strike, Sensible Soccer, in fact, almost any game on the Amiga CD32.

Yes, I think you're right, I'm confusing mandatory with my staff profiles, which are turning into a nightmare, but that's a seperate issue entirely...

I think, and I may well be wrong, that it works like this: 1, User logons on for the first time, pulls down the mandatory profile from server, which is then copied to the local hard drive under their username. So there is a profile folder on the local machine, 2.98meg big, called joe.DOMAIN. 2, User works away, and things get added to the local profile as different programs are used, files are saved etc etc 3, User logs out, joe.DOMAIN folder on the local machine is now 4meg in size 4, User logs onto the same machine, PC detects the local profile folder and so uses that instead of wasting time pulling down the mandatory profile from the server. Local folder increases in size. 5, User logs into a different machine, pulls down the 2.98 mandatory profile, local profile folder called Joe.DOMAIN is created, and so on. Personally I don't worry too much about profiles on the C: drive of a machine, usually enough space to cope with massive profiles, and shouldn't increase the login time... Profiles that size on the server however will cause an issue. If you're that worried, then there's a script that can wipe all non essentially profiles from the C: drive on log off or log on if you want, I'd have to dig it out though. Or probably a GP setting that will handle it, though I haven't managed to get it to work.

Look for something like this: Sony HT-SF470 5.1 Channel Surround Sound System HTSF470 B&H I have the older version, and it does me absolutely fine, 4 HDMI ports in which copes with my 360, PS3, and Virgin box. It occassionally falls out with my Virgin box, but nothing a quick reboot doesn't fix. Gorgeous sound when playing Blu Rays through my PS3!

For my migration of CC3 to Server 2008/Windows 7 I bought "Windows 7: Administrator's Pocket Consultant" and made sure I had at least two days set aside to Google any issues that came up. No training , just a lot of winging it and learning from the outside contractor who helped a bit. We've now added the Microsoft IT Academy to our EES/MSA, which has a lot of good online training courses on there, its just finding the time to go through them. That's about the extent of the training I get here, although if I could I would transfer my subscription to PC Pro and Experts Exchange so that the school paid for them instead...

One thing that I can think of is to make sure you have your program shortcuts in a folder called programs. For example, I have the redirect pointing to a share called ExamSMenu, within that share is a folder called Programs, then I have the shortcuts for Office etc. HTH

I would suggest something like Paintshop Pro, not entirely sure if Word Art can do a spiral, but then I don't use Word Art very often...

Having done this very thing over the summer holiday I would say this: it all depends on how much time you've got in your school to dedicate to troubleshooting network issues. We work with a company called Softegg who provide technical support, and they setup the servers to allow for a Vanilla network, but I had to do the workstation/user side of things, and it took the entire summer holiday to sort out (creating images that worked, setting up WDS, setting up KMS, transferring old users, creating new users, creating a working mandatory profile, adjusting GPOs to work with Windows 7, setting up Printers etc) and I'm still ironing out the kinks in the system. You can definately emulate, or indeed improve upon, an RM system and spend less money doing so. For instance, App Deploy does exactly the same as the RM method of creating applications to roll out across the network. However, the time it takes to setup the network, and the knowledge you might need to gain, has to be a large consideration imo.

Personally I would just make the change before I built up the ICT suite, so if I knew I was going to rebuild Room 29, then I would make the changes in WDS and then rebuild that room. Otherwise I imagine its in the Unattend.xml, but that's beyond me I'm afraid.

Then the only way I could see how it might work is to mess around with the CREATOR OWNER permission. So, perhaps, give the Student group Write and Traverse access to the folder, but not read, and the Creator owner Read, write and modify? That way the student can create a file, and thus become the creator owner of said file allowing them to change theirs, but they wouldn't be able to read anybody else's. Purely theoretical, but it could work. Seems a bit of a phaff though!

Is this using WDS at all? If so, in Windows Deployment Services on the server, right click server name, choose properties, then the AD DS tab and you can choose a naming convention and where in the Active Directory you want new PCs to be placed.

The way I got around this was to give each student a "homework" drive (a shared folder that is created and mapped on login) and then gave the teacher permission to view the folder that the individual folders are created in, if that makes sense. So, for example, student Holly Tree logs in, a homework folder "TreeH" is created in the folder 2010, and mapped to her Y drive. The teacher logs in, and the folder 2010 is mapped to their Y drive, which has all the students homework folders in. This is seperate from their My Documents, but students have been taught that if they want to hand in any work, they must copy it into their Homework drive.

Sounds similar to an issue I had, do users have access to App data on the local C:\ drive? Don't need to see it, just need read/write access to it.