srochford

If you follow back through this thread then you'll see that this was a known problem which MS fixed quite a while ago - as @tjb says, the fix is a change to the windows update software itself but that should just come down automatically. You mention desktop search; unless your machines are pretty powerful then I would definitely not include this - it really can slug performance (to be fair to MS, most search software can slug performance on a low spec machine; it's a big job to index a complete hard drive!). It's also not terribly useful unless your users save files on the local drive.

Haven't used Ghost 2003 but with Ghost 8 and earlier you need to install the Ghost client onto the machine in Windows (it's an MSI so it's easy to deploy). Once you've done this, the machines will appear in the ghost console. You can then organise them into groups (eg by room) and make sure that each machine has an appropriate template selected (this basically defines the network card driver - you may need to add extra drivers and this process is documented but it's fairly easy) You then create a task to deploy an image, join the domain etc. when you start this task going, a number of things happen. A set of files get pushed out to the client in Windows and a "virtual partition" is created (basically, a hidden file which contains the contents of a DOS ghost boot disc). The machine is then shut down and rebooted automatically and starts up in DOS. the first time you do this a couple of reboots take place as the correct stuff gets put in to place but eventually you will see the Ghost multicast server console start and machines appear in the list. Once all the machines are ready, the imaging process will start automatically. When the imaging finishes, they will reboot automatically (i think they boot once into DOS and then back to Windows). Sysprep will run and then another reboot happens when the machine gets renamed (back to the original name if that's what you choose) and joined to the domain. If you just have a few machines which don't have the client installed then you can push it out from the Ghost console - you just have to select the machines and give an admin username/password. PXE booting doesn't really help - you still need to go to the machine and choose "network boot" at startup (or set the default to that and make sure that your DHCP server is not handing out boot info by default). If you use the ghost console you never have to touch the machines after the first install - everything is remotely managed. I haven't used FOG but from what I've read of it, it's just a way of multicasting to PXE booted machines - again, you'd need to touch each machine to make it boot and connect to the FOG server; Ghost avoids this stage.

Depending on how many people you might have with this problem, it sounds like something where a script will work wonders :-) the following script queries AD for a list of all users who have a script set for them. It then loops through and checks to see if the script has a space at start or end (checks to see if the trimmed name is not the same as the untrimmed name). If they're different then it resets the script. sLogFile="C:\temp\problems.csv" Set oFSO=wscript.createobject("scripting.filesystemobject") set oFile=ofso.createtextfile(sLogFile,true) Set oRootDSE=GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE") sRoot=oRootDSE.Get("DefaultNamingContext") Set oConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") oConn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject" oConn.Open Set oCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command") oCommand.ActiveConnection = oConn oCommand.properties("Page Size")=100 oCommand.CommandText = ";(&(objectCategory=person)(scriptpath=*));sAMAccountName,scriptpath,distinguishedname;subTree" Set oRS = oCommand.Execute Do While Not oRS.EOF sUsername=oRS("sAMAccountName") sLoginScript=ors("scriptpath") if sLoginScript<>trim(sLoginScript) then wscript.echo sUserName & ",>" & sLoginScript & "<" set oUser=getobject("LDAP://" & ors("distinguishedname")) oUser.scriptpath=trim(sLoginScript) oFile.writeline sUserName & ",>" & sLoginScript & "<" end if oRS.MoveNext Loop oFile.close

When you say "hard drive is seemingly blank" are you looking at it with a Boot CD or similar? If not, can you check to see if the partition is just not "active" - if it isn't then it won't boot, even if all the other files are present.

I've seen that happen before (even whole servers get labelled with wrong IP addresses) and it doesn't seem to matter - would like it to not be there, however, because it just looks wrong :-)

Don't know if this is relevant which suggests it's a permissions problem. It's not directly to with it but it's the same error code (take the negative number, convert to hex and look it up - often helps!)

Much better to do things like this with WSUS but if there is something which needs deploying but is not WSUSable then you could use BITS to get the file to the machine in trickle mode (so you don't mash up your network) and then run it. Put something like this in your machine startup script: bitsadmin /addfile XPSP3 \\server\share\xpsp3.exe c:\temp\xpsp3.exe bitsadmin /setnotifycmdline XPSP3 c:\temp\xpsp3.exe bitsadmin /resume What that will do is start BITS downloading the .exe file (more or less what WSUS does). It then specifies the command to run when the download is complete and finally sets the download going. Not absolutely sure of the syntax because it's a while since I've used this but it's certainly possible to do this sort of thing.

If you're already on gigabit switches and they're being saturated then NIC teaming probably won't help. this is where multicasting really scores and Server 2008 becomes the best solution - instead of sharing bandwidth between all the machines, they effectively all get to use all of it.

Agreed. You won't boost speed but you can make it easir to run across multiple sites.

May be better to use it in the machine startup script - by default users don't have the right to change the system time. Also, the "net time" command is deprecated - in common with all the other old Lan Manager commands they may not be supported in the future. You can replace it with w32tm /resync

no problem - everyone makes mistakes but I'm impressed that you did think it through and remembered all the details. It certainly makes sense that the waveform will get distorted (listen to a battery powered amp when the batteries are going flat) and if something needs nice sharp edges then it will have problems if it doesn't get them.

Is there a BIOS setting about SpeedStep or anything which looks like speed or power management - does look like they've decided to slow down to save power. What happens if you do something CPU intensive (play a video, for example)? It could be that when they're idling they just slow down the clock but will wind it up again when needed.

I'd quite like it to be quiet here but it isn't :-) We have courses that run through the summer so there are students in but we've also got endless builders, electricians and other odd bods doing things (putting in a new lift is quite exciting!) There's also a new building going up outside my window - amongst other things, buses will be serviced in there so there's some fairly heavy duty kit being shifted in to it :-)

If you can possibly back up to something somewhere else then do that rather than using tape. It seems like a good idea but it's (a) expensive and (b) a pain If you don't remember to take the tape out then you're not covered by the fireproof safe when it all goes horribly wrong over the bank holiday weekend :-) If you can have a backup machine somewhere secure but a long way from your servers then that may be a safer way to work.

errrr?? Are you sure??? As I understand it, the quartz crystal has a resonant frequency which should be very stable. It does depend on a sort of feedback loop and I'd guess if the battery is running down then that might be affected but I wouldn't have thought that that mattered when the computer was running from mains power. It could be a faulty capacitor - back in the olden days (:-)) digital clocks used to have a variable capacitor so you could fractionally adjust the timekeeping. Don't think they are ever fitted to PC motherboards - I'm guessing that they're supposed to be more stable and not need adjusting but if a cap goes leaky or something then it might fail. You can configure how often the time service checks against the server; if you set this to (say) every 5 minutes then that ought to keep it stable.

Wow! Those MCA scanners would have been expensive; I remember buying 1 about 15 years ago (maybe more?). For the time, it was really good and I still like the idea of just being able to "swipe" an image - much more compact than even the smallest flatbed scanner. Pretty sure we've still got some 2Mbit radio equipment up on the roof but it's not in use. Our policy is to replace at 3-4 years old for normal hardware and we generally keep to that but I do know that we have some hoarders who have old rubbish hanging around (better than my previous career as a chemistry teacher where the hoarders would take home bottles of chemicals which were no longer allowed in schools ...)

there are good and bad things about the new method. With the office 2003 (and earlier) MSIs you did an admin install to the server, deployed to clients and all is well. A user then wants (say) equation editor and the workstation connects back to the server, picks up the new item and installs it - all is good :-) You then download the service pack and update the admin install. You start installing new machines from this location - no problems. Another user with machines from the first batch wants a new component. The MSI recognises it needs to go back to the server share but now it falls over - it doesn't recognise the files on the server because they are effectively a different install. The only way round this is to force a redeploy from the original folder -that way all your machines get updated (real pain because it's slow and we have WSUS to push out updates). Alternatively, you create a new admin install point for SP1 and start deploying from there. You now have 2 install points and have to make sure that machines are picking up from the right one. If you have a standard group policy to push out packages and you update it ready for new machines it forces a re-deploy for the old ones. Office 2007 gets round this; it copies everything to the local hard disc, MSPs and all, and installs it from there. If new updates come out you put them on your server share; new machines will get them, older machines get updated through WSUS and all is well. It does have to do more work for the initial install (every machine has to do the patching rather than just the one admin install) but it's probably faster (running the process from local hard drive rather than over a network) I still don't like it :-(

Worth just deleting the device and then doing a re-scan; far too often I've found that this fixes "yellow exclamation marks" Resource conflicts can occur but I don't think I've seen one for a good many years - I think ACPI motherboards are just much better at handling this (and that is what they're supposed to do!)

With difficulty :-) What I've tried to configure is a script run as machine startup script in group policy (we don't have SMS) The trouble is that it doesn't always work and I can't see why. I've tried splitting it into two sections now; the main one which runs from a network share - this runs in "cacheonly" mode so that the local installation source is built. At the next startup, a check is made to see if the LIS cache is there and, if it is and office is not installed, it runs setup from the local cache and this time installs it. I'm afraid it's all gone on the back burner a bit - there's been no real demand from staff (and we do have it available with SoftGrid) - and I've got lots of other things to do (I leave this job on Friday and trying to make sure everything will work after I leave is a big job!)

Sounds like a good excuse to go down the pub :-)

I would definitely default to the docx etc format - it makes a huge difference to the size of any file including bitmaps. It's now nearly 2 years since MS issued the file format converters and I'd like to think that most people will have deployed them by now (although I'm sure many haven't!)

In DFS management, you've got 2 bits - one for namespace and the other for replication. I'm guessing you're trying to do something like this: Put the home folders on (say) server1 now but in a year's time you're going to replace that server with server2 but don't want to change everything that references server1. In this case, you don't need to worry about replication; just set up the namespace "home" to point to the share "home" on server1. In a year's time, copy all the files from server1 to server2 (robocopy or other tool can be used to do this, preserving permissions etc) and then add a new namespace server - server2. Once that's done, you can remove server1 from the namespace and unshare home on it.

somehow this reminds me of the "640kb will be plenty of RAM" ... type thinking :-) Even now, I suspect that many people will own 3 or 4 devices which have IP addresses. Add to this all the other devices (bus stops? buses? motorway signs? anything which can be remotely monitored?) and I suspect you're starting to get perilously close to 4 billion. Of course, if you NAT everything then that doesn't matter - I suspect quite a lot of PCs have got 192.168.0.2 as their IP and it all works fine - but it will be simpler to go IPV6 eventually.

I think that ought to be "I have no need for it" rather than "there is no need for it" :-) There obviously is a need - even with NAT it's getting more difficult to get enough IPs for all the devices which need them - but most people are managing without. Reallocating existing (and perhaps underused) IPs will help (10 years ago, my college had over 1500 public IP addresses (195.194.12.1 - 195.194.17.255 in case anyone is interested :-)) but we were asked to give back all but the first 32 so they could be allocated to other colleges. I'd guess that at some point it ought to be possible to allocate public V6 IP addresses to every device which can use one but I'm not rushing to implement it (with only 5 days to go I'm not rushing to change anything!)

£500 per day is cheaper than many consultants!