Cowardlyduck

Hi all, I'm in the process of setting up a new image for a 1:1 laptop program at the moment. So far so good. I've been able to install Itunes, and set it up the way I want, then copy the application settings file from that user profile (application data\apple computer\ITunes...etc) to the default user profile so that the settings are set for every new user logging on. It works well, accept for one thing. Whilst the Parental controls do get set correctly, the lock to stop these settings being changed does not. See the screenshot attached. Does anyone know how to make this lock on by default. I can't seem to find any info on where it's set, whether it be in the registry or the .xml settings file. Thanks in advance.

Ok I give up. Guess I'll just have to go back to the drawing board and make a new image to deploy in the next holiday's.

Anyone have any idea's???

Anyone got any experience with any of this? I'm still at a loss as to what to do next. As I said, I know I shouldn't have tried making a cross platform image, so I won't be doing it again, but for now I need to try and fix this one. Does anyone have any idea's as to how to rescue this silly situation. Thanks in advance.

Hi All, Got a very tricky one that I've been battling at for some time now. It's a long story so I'll try my best to summarize. Basically I set up a new general purpose image on a T61 initially for use for the teachers laptops. Then we needed one for the IBM desktops around the school at the front of classrooms, (these are 8808's). So I simply ported the image across, (I know, first mistake ) and it worked. Once it was on the desktop I went about removing unwanted drivers and apps specific to the T61 etc, then installed the drivers + additional apps for the 8808's and reimaged. This worked fine and in the last holiday's I imaged all the teaching computers around the classrooms. We use Total Traffic Control or TTC (Made by Lightspeed Systems) for web filtering here. TTC basically picks up who is logged in, what computer it is and writes these values to HKLM\Software\Lightspeed Systems\User agent\Current user. The problem I've got is that after deploying the image around the school, we've realized that TTC is not writing who the currently logged in user is to this location in the registry and therefore only giving the currently logged on user the minimal internet access available, even for domain admins etc. I've managed to pinpoint the cause down to the Thinkpad Power management utility. If I image an 8808 with an adapted T43 image (that came from the T61 originally) and contains all the power management stuff, TTC works. As soon as I remove the Thinkpad Power manager and reboot it no longer detects who is logged in, but if I reinstall it and reboot it starts working again. However, on an 8808 image that has had a little more work done on it previously, simply installing the Thinkpad power manager, does not fix the problem. Either do several of the other Thinkpad apps that I've tried. So the path I've taken now is to try and use the process monitor to identify what changes are being made to the registry when I install/uninstall the Power management stuff. The problem I've now come up against is I don't really know how to use the process monitor to identify this. I'm getting way too much information to find what I want. Does anybody know how to filter this down to installer specific stuff? So far I've tried using a HKLM filter and tried the boot logging, but neither gave me much usefull info. Has anyone ever come across this kind of problem before? Also, I do realize I shouldn't have taken this path in the first place. I guess I've learn t the hard way, but now I've still gotta try and salvage the situation. thanks in advance.

Thank you very much ssx. I was able to figure this out based your last post. Turns out I was making a silly mistake. I hadn't pointed the menu.bat to run the logon.bat so it wasn't performing any of these instructions. Now it just prompts for the domain user name and password which is ok. As for using PXE booting and no media. I do agree with you, this is much easier and simpler, once you get it up and running. Problem is I have no idea what kind of difficulties I might run into in setting this up, so I'm just sticking with what I know works for now, and when I find the time I'll delve into getting the PXE booting up and running. No doubt I'll be back with more problems/questions when I try to get that up and running. Thanks again for all your help. Cheers

Sorry for the late reply. I haven't had the time to continue working on this so far this week. However, I have been using the USB in a round about way. I've been imaging some of the PC's around the school, using a CD at that was compiled before my time, but some of the PC's are getting so old now that their CD/DVD drives no longer work. So what I've been managing to do is; Boot from the USB I set the menu time out to 1 sec so it quickly goes through local login to workgroup etc... It loads the NIC drivers successfully It then brings me to the N:\ prompt At this point I can successfully type in 'net use...' Press y to start the service... Enter user name and then password twice for domain Start ghost from mapped drive. And it works. My question now is; Is there a way to automate this process above? Where would this information be entered? I can't seem to find the .bat file where I should enter this. Sorry I'm not to good with scripts (yet) Cheers

Hi ssx4life, Thanks so much for the offer. Your pretty spot on with your 1.2 steps as to what I'm trying to do. So a menupref.bat that auto logs onto the domain, (I can edit this myself) and a logon.bat that maps to a share and runs ghost.exe (if it can auto join a ghostcast session and initiate download that would be fab) . I am not quite sure where I went wrong originally though. Below is my original menupref.bat and logon.bat files that did not seem to work? [menupref.bat] @echo off REM *** The Menu Program reads/writes to this file. Please boot the disk and allow the Menu Software to modify this file. The password field is Encypted! *** REM *** Do not change the order of the commands in this batch file. (Or the Position of the equal signs!) *** rem NETCARD=EL3c574 Set WORKGROUP=ACADEMIC Set USERNAME=***** ::: PASSWORD=******** Set DISABLEDHCP=0 Set IPADDRESS0=192 168 0 123 Set SUBNETMASK0=255 255 255 0 Set DEFAULTGATEWAY0=192 168 0 254 Set LOGONSCRIPT= rem TIMEOUT=3 Set DNS=192 168 0 253 Set WKSTN=BD1766474 Set PACKET=1 Set DNSENABLE=1 Set MOUSE=1 Set REDIRECTOR=Basic Set NTFS=0 Set CD=0 Set UDMA=0 Set WINS=192 168 0 252 [logon.bat] @echo off echo SAMPLE LOGON SCRIPT echo. echo *** You'll have to modify this script to suit your network. *** if not %NTFS%==1 goto N SHOWMENU Loading Read-Only NTFS Support... REM *** NTFSDOS - EDIT BELOW TO SUIT YOUR LAN, ETC *** net use m: \\svc\ghost m:\ghost.exe -rb REM *** NTFSDOS - EDIT END :N REM --- EXAMPLE --- Automatically run Ghost from a network share --- net use m: \\svc\ghost m:\ghost.exe -rb REM Note: the -rb = reboot when done Any idea's anyone? I've probably made a silly mistake. Cheers P.s. I know it's not good, but the password for loging onto the domain has a '*' character in it. Can this cause problems?

Thanks so much for all the info guy's. I spent most of the day today trying to get the Netbootdisk to work the way I want it to, but wasn't able to fully automate it yet. I also can't seem to find help on the issues I'm having. Sorry to go off topic here. I managed to manually get netbootdisk to log onto the domain, then net use to map to my share where the ghost.exe was located and ran it no probs. My difficulty lies in, if I log onto the domain first thing, it will not load the nic drivers correctly, but if I use default options the first login (i.e. workgroup, administrator), then re-run the script and log onto our domain, it will load nic drivers and I can use the net use command etc to run ghost. Seems strange to me??? Does anyone have a precompiled .bat file for the logon script and menu options that I can change the variables on? Just in case I'm making some silly mistake. Basically what I need is a fully automated ghost cast setup on a USB that can get the machines all waiting for the image to be sent. I'm assuming this has been done before. We will be moving to PXE booting eventually, but need to set aside some time to figure this out and set up PC's first. Thanks heaps.

Hi all, I am in the process of creating a USB that can boot into Ghost, from which I can then select a session to restore an image from. I've been using the very helpful website below to do this so far. Ghost Boot Disk :: Multiple NIC Ghost Boot CD It's working up until the point of selecting the network options. From the research I've done so far I think the problem is to do with the NIC drivers not being present. As our school has many differing types of systems around, and we are only going to get more, I don't like the idea of manually identifying each individual NIC in every computer. So what I'm looking for is a way to integrate most of today's common NIC drivers onto my USB Ghost boot disc. Is this possible? So far I've discovered that the driver pack for NIC's from News | DriverPacks.net does not contain anything useful because these drivers are not for DOS. Does anyone know of any DOS driver packs for NIC's. Also, how do you go about intergrating these onto the USB? Would it require manually editing the niclist.map file for each individual driver, or is there an easier way? Thanks in advance.

Hi Mattx, What do you set in the GPO to get this to work? For Firefox is it just a matter of redirecting '%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox' to the users home profile? I seem to remember trying this previously without success. Will try again however. Thanks in advance. Blake

Not that i've seen. We already use Frontmotions MSI and ADM stuff, but none of that let's you redirect an entire profile. If it is possible to redirect an environmental variable like this, it will mean a whole lot more than just Firefox profile stuff. I could see this being used to preconfigure various apps on a per user basis without the need to have massive sync's for an entire profile at each login etc as is the case with roaming profiles. I guess it's a sort of lightweight roaming profile, only specific to what you require. Any thought's anyone?

Hi all, I'm currently investigating if it is possible to have students profiles roam with them in our school network. Currently we do not use roaming profiles, (too much network traffic), and we have no interest in projects like Weave (too much internet traffic, and not the direction of the school). What we need is a way to have users bookmarks, tabs, etc, follow them around the school, and possibly a way to insert an unchangeable section into everyone's bookmarks containing read only bookmarks. I know this last one may not be possible 'yet'. Anyway, what I think may solve the problem for me at this stage is to create a GPO that redirects '%APPDATA%\Mozilla' to each users home directory. IS THIS POSSIBLE??? That's my main question at this stage, as that's the path I can see will solve the problem. Any other ideas anyone?

Finally got this working. Trick was, I found I cannot use any other formating for the USB stick other than FAT with LBA FAT16X enabled. Not sure why this is exactly. USB_Multiboot_10 reportedly supports NTFS and even FAT32, although it's meant to be slow. So i've now got a USB stick which can install XP on any hardware config faster than a CD or DVD + it has a whole lot of customisations to XP to suit our needs. Although it's been frustrating at times , the learning curve to get to this point has shown me a lot about how to operate NLite, how to use Driver packs, unattended installs, etc. I think the other staff in the ICT room shared some of my frustrations, especially when I choose to select the KTD option when intergrating the driver packs as it makes the installation process beep continuously 300 to 400 times after install (very annoying) and there is no easy way to stop it. I just choose to take my lunch break then and came back to some red faced colleges. I have revised my original instructions (below) for this whole process if anyone finds this useful. Feel free to recommend any changes or distribute. They should work now. Cheers, Blake 1. First obtain a copy of an XP installation, (preferably with the latest service packs and updates, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t) and copy the content of the disc to a folder on the local computer. 2. Next download and install nLite. Run through the wizard and download the latest XP post SP3 update pack from here, then follow the guide below to integrate it into the XP installation. Update Pack nLite Integration Directions 3. Download the Driver Pack application and all driver packs from here. Downloads | DriverPacks.net 4. Follow the Driverpacks tutorial to slipstream all drivers into the XP installation, selecting the disc option to integrate and using text mode for the storage drivers. Do not select the KTD option as it does not work and will make the installation process beep continuously 300 to 400 times after install (very annoying). DriverPacks.net Forum / DriverPacks BASE tutorial (English) 5. If making a CD/DVD, without making any further changes burn to disc or make ISO. 6. If making a USB; download USB_MultiBoot_10 from here. http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=1054 Or here http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=5669 7. Follow one or both of these two guides to setup USB XP installer based on pre-configured XP installation with drivers. Make sure you use the PEtoUSB option (Option P) and select LBA FAT16 enabled, otherwise it will not boot. How to install XP from USB Installing Microsoft Windows XP from usb device (usb-stick, usb-hdd, SD card) simpler method [EeeUser Eee PC Wiki]

Well, I've still been strugling with this, but I am making progress. Discovered that I was still selecting the option to 'Press any key to boot...' which I don't think is entirely compatible with booting from a USB. I'm not in the process of following the steps in the post below in the hope this will solve my current problem, which is that my USB is not booting at all now. What order "nLite", "RyanVM" "DriverPack&quot Have many of you had any experience using Driverpacks with a USB? I'm not quite sure what to do after selecting the option to create a multiboot install. It asks for the setup .ini but I just want to slip stream the drivers into the current install from scratch. It works if I select the disc option, but then my USB won't boot. Any ideas? Cheers, Blake