ajbritton

Please tell me the new theme is not permanent... It's trashed my iPlayer (set top box with Internet access) browser... What would be really cool would be a lo-fi or text only version of the site...

I don't think anyone has mentioned the change in default behaviour of the SIS service on Win2K since SP3. SIS no longer 'grovels' the entire volume where RIS is installed, only the RemoteInstall folder and contents. This means you don't necessarily need to dedicate a partition to RIS. Unless of course you want to.

I've read in many places of people having problems doing network printing to HP inkjet/deskjet printers and today it happened to me. I had a server with an HP InkJet 2200 on LPT1 of a server. Test prints from server worked OK. Test prints from a PC worked OK when logged on as an admin. Test prints from a PC when logged on as a student failed, and killed the printer for everyone! Solution in this case appeared to be... Moved the Spooler folder and modify the permissions. I moved it off the system volume, and set permisions for Admins & System:Full, Users: Modify. From that point on, it worked fine. Dunno why!! (I should note that other print queues on the same server worked fine for all users, and they use the same Spooler folder obviously. It seemed to be a driver issue.)

Check this Open Office article in the Guardian

I've used WPAD in the past but found it to be unreliable. Now I use Group Policy to set proxy. In essence though, you need to have a web server with the IE configuration file in such a location that a web request to http://wpad/wpad.dat will download the file.

If you want resiliency, you can use DFS...

According to PCPro IIRC, this can be caused if someone is using a looping script to access the google web APIs and is therefore causing too much traffic. As mentioned, all the traffic will appear to come from the proxy IP address and will presumably be grouped together as being from the same source.

Crashed and burned with the above mentioned techinque! It used to work on NT! If I ever get it working, I'll post what I did. Still be interested to hear anyone with ideas...

If you want to find switches for individual applications, check out AppDeploy, InstallSite and MSFN Unattended (all listed in the Essential website wiki). You will also find information on switches for particular installers. InstallShield is easily automated by running the setup with /r to record a setup.iss file in the Windows folder. Copy setup.iss to the installation source folder then do silent installes with setup /s. (this technique is well documented on the above mentioned sites) Assuming you want to assign the software to PCs, rather than to users, then .ZAP files cannot be used. If you don't want to repackage, then I would reccomend using the Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard. This will create a custom MSI which will kick off a silent install. It can even kick off an uninstall if you enter the right command line. There's a link on the Essential Software WIKI page. Another possibility might be WPKG, which appears to be a freeware installation/uninstallation script tool. I too have used AutoIT to automate installations which either cannot be made silent or do not run fully silent. It's often the case that whilst you can launch the main setup with a silent switch, the setup chain loads additional setups, which do not then run silently. In these cases, AutoIt can be used to create a stub loader EXE which chains the original setup with the silent switch added.

I have used Virtual PC since it was the Connectix product. Done lots of testing, sometimes with 2 servers and a workstation on the go. Done RIS build simulation, software packaging. You name it, it does it. Linux support not good though. I too thought that I noticed a speed decrease when it went to MS, but this seems to have been sorted with SP1. Think I read somewhere that the VMWare player can play MS Virtual PC images (!!!). With regards to the PC spec, I'd get a bigger HDD. I rapdly filled most of a 160Gb disk with a few server builds.

I'd be grateful for any help/advice on this one... sitrep: Win2K server (DC) with Exchange 2000 (part of any existing forest, but not a sub-domain per se) Got a full backup (system volume, data volume and Exchange info store) Need to rebuild starting with blank system volume 1 - Install win2K to C:\WINTEMP 2 - Boot and restore original C: drive. Modify boot.ini 3 - Boot into restored copy of windows 4 - Restore System state 5 - Get exchange working enough to accept data restore 6 - Restore exchange information store Advice/comments ... pretty please !!!

@Kingswood: Why would I need to put RIS on a different volume? Not for SIS, as this now only works on the 'REMINST' folders. @Geoff: Thanks Geoff. I'm XP SP2 all the way, which already has the SC client included. Anyone know how ShadowCopies gets on with Exchange / SQL server?

Sorting out OU structure is definitely a good idea, but it doesn't matter how clever your OU structure is, chances are that sooner or later there will be a good time to use GPO filtering. I tried to avoid it for quite a while, and made life very difficult for myself. I now use OUs to group PCs for as much software as makes sense and then use filtering for software like Whiteboard software which is only required on certain PCs (would be nice to use WMI to do this but not had chance to try it yet), or software which has limited number of licences. Don't be scared, it's quite easy to do. I would recommend naming your filtering groups so that they are easily recognised as such (or keep them in a 'GPO Filter Groups' OU. Also, I tend to rename GPOs when they are filtered so that they appear more obvious. There is another school of thought which goes that ALL software should be installed using GPO filters. This way, all software can be assigned at a high level, and computers added to groups as appropriate. This method has the advantage that moving computers between OUs will not cause software to be uninstalled/reinstalled.

I just tried this on a Win2K3 server with a C: and D: volume. As a test, I configured ShadowCopies on D: volume, using a storage area on C:. It appeared to work fine.

Are you sure about that? Although I've not tried it, it looks quite simple via the interface build into Win2K3 to store shadow copies on another volume??

I'm thinking of enabling ShadowCopies on a volume, but I will have to host the copies on the same volume (not best practice). Assuming I do not limit the storage space available to ShadowCopies, what happens when the disk fills up. Will old ShadowCopies be deleted to make more space for user data, or will the disk appear full?

OK, after a bit of reading I think I know the answer to question 2, but if anyone knows better, please tell me. If you enable ShadowCopies on a volume, then when that volume is backed up, backup simply backs up the most recent shadow copy. By default, shadow copies are created at 0700 and 1200 hours every weekday. I assume from this that any work done on Friday afternoon (not much, I know) will not be included in the Friday night backup. If your system goes up in smoke over the weekend, I guess you lose all the drunken nonsense you created after Friday lunchtime in the pub. In a disaster recovery scenario, then, if the entire volume had to be recreated from a backup, all the shadow copies would be lost, as they are not included in the backup.

Two questions in one really both relating to NTBACKUP. 1 - When backing up a volume where single instance storage is active, does NTBACKUP copy the single instance copy and all the links, or does it back up multiple copies of the same file? 2 - When backing up a volume where volume shadow copies is active, does NTBACKUP include the shadow copies along with the original data. If the shadow copy is on another volume what then? Knowing the answers to these questions helps me work out how much life is left in the old DDS3/4 systems out there (I'm guessing not much though!)

Set up a user account and password, then transpose a couple of keys on the keyboard so that when they type the password, it won't work. I have to say, I can't see the point in someone knowing what TCP/IP means and when it was developed. Surely what you want is to know if they can fix real world problems.

I would also suggest asking the Ranger people themselves. They always maintained that there should be no issues using Ranger and GP on the same system.

Well, instead of booting from a floppy, you can boot the PC from the network to run Ghost. Not as neat as if you had the Ghost client on all your PCs, but handy for ad-hoc builds and uploads. If you are familiar with RIS, you'll know that you can create multiple install builds and select the required build when booting the PC from network. The Ghost Boot Wizard will install an additional build which becomes available on the build selection screen. It's actually possible to integrate just about any boot disk/cd with RIS, but the Ghost Boot Wizard makes it nice and easy for Ghost disks.

Install the Ghost console and you can use the Ghsot Boot Wizard to build boot disks. You can even make a boot disk that works via RIS - very useful.

When I get chance, I'll try to rearrange those WIKI page to give it a bit more structure. Something like; Network Management Software Packages - Intro - What's out there - What can it do for you - What are the alternatives

lol

I would point out that the WIKI in question is meant to list ALTERNATIVES to WinSuite/Ranger and such like, NOT to promote them. (Hence the ALTERNATIVE heading) I listed them at the beginning because they are the products which seek to do lots of tasks. The sections beneath are meant to list the various functions provided by the jack-of-all-trades products and provide suggestions on alternative strategies. For this reason I will remove the entries for Ranger etc.