ajbritton

Those of you who use a single RIS build (I tend not to refer to them as images, as people tend to think of Ghost images), how do you deal with the ever increasing number of drivers you must need and the length of the OEMPNPDRIVERSPATH .SIF setting? Do you (like OverWorked) maintain a set of SIF files, 1 per build, or has the length of the line (I believe 4096 chars is max) never been an issue?

@Ric: How does you RIS build manage to build a PC in 5 minutes? The best I've ever seen is about 20 to 25 minutes for a vanilla XP install. Are you referrring to the time taken to copy the files down to the PC prior to the setup actually taking place?

Silly me! It must be because I've already voted!

Would it be worth having any of the following... - Forum/wiki for RIS installs - Forum/wiki for Software deployment (individual apps as well as general principles)

Can anyone tell me why the Poll appears to be closed, I thought I set it to 0 days which should be indefinite?

@Ric : I take the view that the local network is now potentially a hostile environment. Once the network spreads school-wide, it's very difficult to control what is connected to it. Staff bring in laptops which may or may not have up to date AV on them. I figure the best I can do is to implement every security feature available to me; AV, WSUS and the firewall.

Surely firewalls on individual PCs will help prevent the spread of viruses/worms within the site, should a silly member of staff be daft enough to bring one in on a floppy..?

I've finally got this working, deployed with an MSI as follows... 1 - Downloaded the 6.2 update from the Freedom Scientific website 2 - Created an ISS file (by running jaws620update.exe -a -r) 3 - Created an AUTOIT script which does the following; Copy the ISS file form the installation folder to the windows folder Execute the jaws20update.exe -a -s -f1c:\windows\setup.iss 4 - Wrapped the AUTOIT script with Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard Works like a charm!

@Dos_Box: It might be useful to start a list of software which is not compatible with the XP SP2 firewall. For myself, I have left the firewall enabled without any difficulties apart from having to open the occasional port or three.

Just wondering what everyone does with their RIS builds. Do you create lots of builds (one for each make/model of PC), or try to minimize the number of builds. Also, what do you include in the build rather than deploy. I have never bothered trying to create 'the ultimate build' which could be installed on every type of PC for the following reasons... 1 - Space is not really an issue thanks to SIS grovelling 2 - Greater control over what is installed as part of the build (I usually just include whatever was bundled with the PC - roxio/nero, powerdvd etc) 3 - Less chance of driver clashes 4 - Easier to update software which is not part of the build Downsides to the way I do it are at least... 1 - To make the same change to all the builds takes time and can introduce error. 2 - I base new builds on a generic baseline build which I don't update very often, so I never benefit from existing driver downloads/configuration/testing 3 - I have to deploy almost every bit of software with GP, including Media Player, Photo Story, Java Acrobat Reader etc. Lunch over, back to work

Hmmm, I've got a Xsara Picasso that SMELLS like an old horse!

Now you come to mention it, I do recall having some difficulty getting Easiteach to install (RM seem to have there own rules when it comes to writing MSIs!), but I got it working in the end. I'll to to look up the details of what I had to do.

I've seen EasiTeach at one school, and they love it. It looks very slick. Can you get hold of a demo?

Is the problem not that the 'D8+F8+...' is not a 'range'? You need to do something like this... = countif(D8, "=+") + countif(F8,"=+") + countif(H8,"=+")... etc.

Have a look at PLATO Learning. In their support pages they have information about network deployments. They talk about adding a .DAT file to the MSI, presumably this file would have the license details in it...

Used to be able to do this with bog standard HP scanners. Hook the scanner up to the file server and share it. System was called HP LanScan. Don't know if they still do it though...

Anyone using JAWS (Job Access With Speech :shock:)? How did you deploy it? The method on the web site don't work (create .ISS file). I'm trying with an updated version downloaded from US website (6.20). I'd be interested to hear...

If it's the case that you need to install it from a CD... 1 - Convert the CD to an ISO image and copy to network 2 - Roll out DaemonTools which allows access to ISO files as if they were real CD-ROMS 3 - Create AUTOIT script which does the following 3a - Map a DaemonTools drive to the ISO file on a server share (if this does not work, you could include the ISO image in the PC build - assuming U use RIS) 3b - Initiate the installation 3c - Intercept all dialogs and enter appropriate information 4 - Wrap the AUTOIT script with WIWW as per previous post 5 - Allocate the MSI with GP PDQ OK? Just a thought...Have you talked to the vendor

There is lots on MS information about Exchange disaster recovery which might be worth a read. I've had to do this a couple of times and it can be an absolute NIGHTMARE! Good luck

If you can make it silent using the SETUP.EXE command line options, or make an AUTOIT script to enter details and make it silent, you can deploy using a Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard. This lets you turn anything into a very crude MSI.

Browolf, You are using the RND function incorrecty (check the MS reference for details). Basically, to generate a random number between X and Y, RandomNumber = INT(((Y-X) * RND) + X + 0.5) You should also initialise the random number generator at the beginning of your code with the RANDOMIZE statement. This will use the system timer as a seed. So, try the following to replace your 'password =...' line Rnd1 = int(((ubound(wordbank1)-lbound(wordbank1)) * rnd) + lbound(wordbank1) + 0.5) Rnd2 = int(((ubound(wordbank2)-lbound(wordbank2)) * rnd) + lbound(wordbank2) + 0.5) password = wordbank1(Rnd1) & wordbank2(Rnd2)

I've got a book called 'Running Linux' published by O'Reilly, which I have found useful... Having said that, I still consider myself very much a Linux newbie.

To try to clarify the FQDN bit :? , lets assume you are trying to ping OTHERCOMPUTER, which is in DNS domain OTHERDOMAIN.COM. Your PC is called MYCOMPUTER and is in DNS domain MYDOMAIN.COM. When you DON'T specify a FQDN, you PC will always add it's own domain suffix before doing a DNS lookup, so, if your PC is in MYDOMAIN.COM, and you type 'PING OTHERCOMPUTER', then your PC will do a DNS lookup for 'OTHERCOMPUTER.MYDOMAIN.COM'. This will fail, as the DNS server will not have a record for OTHERCOMPUTER in the MYDOMAIN.COM domain. Your PC will know attempt to resolve OTHERCOMPUTER to an IP address in other ways (not sure of the sequence), but assuming the PC is on the same subnet, then a local network broadcast will reveal the IP address, and the ping will succeed, but will report simply 'OTHERCOMPUTER' and the IP address. When you DO specify an FQDN, you are in effect forcing DNS only name resolution. Your PC will do a DNS lookup for the exact name you requested 'OTHERPC.OTHERDOMAIN.COM', and this will succeed or fail. If it succeeds, then the FQDN will be reported by ping along with the IP address, and you can be reasonably sure that it was resolved by DNS. (If you want greater certainty, flush your local DNS cache first! IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS) You are right about the master browser. All PCs within a domain will 'elect' a master browser. I found this which has some more detail.

Use DCDIAG to confirm everything is as it should be. If you are on Win2K3 SP1, then there is a new version of DCDIAG with DNS tests build it. Very thorough! (Don't be tempted by the copy of DCDIAG in C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386! Download the latest from MS) BTW: Remember to ping the FQDN to prove DNS is working, or Windows will resolve by NetBIOS/local broadcast/WINS or some other jiggery pokery! If I remember rightly, each domain maintains it's own 'domain master browser', which is usually the domain controller (if there are multiple DCs, then I would guess that it would be the PDC emulator). There is a resource kit tool which reports the names of all available domain master browsers, but I can't remember what it is. Might be worth a look.

One obvious way of saving space, especially on servers with large amounts of RAM is to move the page file off the system volume. The page file is usually at least as big as the total RAM in the system, if not more. In theory, you should be able to repartition as follows; 1 - Back up the entire system (including SystemState) and verify :oops: 2 - Wipe the entire disk 3 - Create a C: partition of 20GB and install Win2K3 to C:\WIN2K3 4 - Boot into the new installation and restore the original system 5 - Modify boot.ini to allow access to both old and new systems 6 - Boot into the original system voila! I have NOT done this on a Windows 2003 system yet. Can anyone confirm or refine this method?