Oakie

I am a K-5 computer teacher in process of migrating my primary school computer lab from XP to Win 7. I use mandatory profiles for the students in the computer lab. I found that implementing mandatory profiles for Win 7 was a bit of a puzzle. I tried the sysprep method , but it was overly complicated and I tired of troubleshooting the errors and then realizing that even when I got it working, sysprep had trashed all my carefully crafted custom settings. I tried the Win Enabler method to force the enabling of the profile dialog box "Copy to" button to work, but in the end I opted for a more organic and manual copy method. After googling and experimenting for a few days I got mandatory profiles with Win 7 working well in my mixed client platform ( XP / Win 7) computer lab without using sysprep or third party tools. I am using Server 2003 R2. Here are the basic steps: 1) Create the ideal default user profile using a local administrative account. 2) Using a different local admin account, rename original default profile "OLD-default" . Rename the newly created profile "default" 3) Use regedit to configure the new default user profile for use by any user. 4) Copy modified default user profile to a network share - Add .V2 extension to profile folder name. 5) Rename ntuser.dat to ntuser.man to create mandatory (read only) profile. 6) In ADUC - Set user's paths to network location of new default mandatory profile. I cobbled this information together from various bits of info I found while googling. I worked out the steps for my own use and documented my efforts with screenshots and explanations. At the time I write this, it is still early in the school year and all of these steps seem to be working just fine. However, it is always possible when working with these things that there are "gotchas" waiting to be discovered. I am combining these mandatory profiles with a bit of folder redirection in a GPO for user docs, music, images, videos, and downloads. I have briefly tested with several user accounts and I haven't had any issues with temp profile loading errors, weird folder behaviours, corrupted recycle bins, access denied errors, printing problems or taskbar icon issues. In short, everything seems to be working. I present my documentation here as part or all of it may be of use to someone else trying to implement mandatory profiles with Win 7. Have a look: A Windows 7 Mandatory (roaming) Profile Solution that Works Without Sysprep

I just received 60 donated Dell and HP computers. The air can thing was just not going to be cost effective. they were 5 years dusty and I used 1 can for 3 computers. No way was I going to buy and discard 20 cans in the landfill. I bought this 40 dollar air blower and it has a 500 watt motor that blows dust all the way across the hall. Amazing product. I cleaned every single computer and every single computer worked afterwards. No damage at all. I held the fan blades still with a pen while i cleaned the power supply, CPU heat sinks and case fans. I didn't want to take a chance generating any electro magnetic electricity and sending back into the components. I paid 40 dollars for it, but now that I have used it I would pay 80 for it. It's that good. Amazon.com: Metro Vacuum ED500 DataVac 500-Watt, 0.75-HP Electric Duster: Home Improvement

I actually did recently find a solution to my issue. Turnkey Linux Domain Controller does these things: "I am wondering if there is a linux distro that I can use as a fileserver that can: a) authenticate users b) automatically mount their home folder on the server. Can I get this to work with both linux and windows desktops? " I installed it, joined a few windows XP Pro machines to the domain , logged in as a domain user and found a home drive and public share automatically mapped to the server. It works great. It did not work for me with a linux desktop, since it uses a netlogon folder with a windows style batch file to map the drives.

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Our school acquired 60 donated computers with all the disks wiped clean. I have the reinstall disks too. I've already imaged a bunch of them with clonezilla server. But I also tried a software called RedoBackup.This is a clean , pretty gui on the well known partclone. "Redo Backup and Recovery is so simple that anyone can use it. It is the easiest, most complete disaster recovery solution available. It allows bare-metal restore, which means that even if your hard drive melts or gets completely erased by a virus, you can have a completely-functional system back up and running in as little as 10 minutes. All your documents and settings will be restored to the exact same state they were in when the last snapshot was taken. Redo Backup and Recovery is a live CD, so it does not matter if you use Windows or Linux. You can use the same tool to backup and restore every machine. And because it is open source released under the GPL, it is completely free for personal and commercial use." I tried it an it and it is now the disk I am going to use for imaging single machines to a USB drive or a network share. I also can give this to the rare volunteer who wants to help out around the computer lab. Easy GUI Backup Solution, Bare Metal Restore, Open Source GPL Recovery

I am actually coming up with something different, as I had a few Master's thesis topics under consideration, but I still am intrigued with finding an opensource way to solve the same problems that the MS AD structure solves so well and easily. Karoshi looks promising and I've recently found Turnkey Linux that has several premade linux appliances, one of which claims to be a drop in replacement for a PDC. Domain Controller Appliance | TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library I used to lock everything down, but over the years I've relaxed the policies more and more. This has really been possible on the desktop level with the implementation of the faronics deep freeze product. This is why I don't mind if a linux solution lacks the GPO functionality, but still makes me wonder how to deal with patch management if the clients are primarily windows machines.

I think my title and description were too broad and vague. I have some general experience with linux distros. Old redhat 7.2, Suse 9, ubunutu intrepid. I have tried samba and webmin and samba conf. file. I've never really gotten the configuration or results that I am after. As a computer teacher at a primary school, I use a Win 2003 DC and Xp clients daily. Now I am working on a Masters degree in educational technology. Up for consideration for my thesis is a bit of research into why more primary schools don't embrace Linux, not simply at the desktop level but at the server level and particularly as a Domain Controller and file server. In my limited experience, I have found that it is fairly simple to implement a linux webserver and especially now that many come with all the LAMP stack pre-installed and or preconfigured. I have not found the same to be true with a linux Domain Controller type of fileserver. I would like a preconfigured appliance type linux Distro that would act as a Domain controller allowing XP and Win7 clients to join the domain, make it simple to add user and machine accounts, authenticate users at log-on, allow the configuration of mandatory roaming profiles and automatically map a drive to the logged on user's home folders. In a nutshell, I am looking for a windows domain controller functionality in a preconfigured linux distro. Reading various info on the net seems to indicate that linux does not have the advanced desktop control functionality using Group Policy or ADM type files. I am fine with that. I am looking for something relatively simple to implement as opposed to requiring a PHD in linux knowledge to cobble together a Debian distro with an alpha version of samba 4. I cannot justify advocating linux in the schools as DC / fileserver if it's that difficult. If there is any one here who has actual hands on experience doing what I am interested in, I would like to hear your experiences. I'll understand if all this searching for the holy grail in the linux world is not yet ready for primetime.

I am a computer teacher at a primary school. I am wondering if there is a linux distro that I can use as a fileserver that can: a) authenticate users b) automatically mount their home folder on the server. Can I get this to work with both linux and windows desktops?

The main thing is I want an imaging solution that can be installed, scheduled, can use differentials, supports RAID, has a bootable restore disk and can do some measure of adaptive restore to different hardware in case it becomes necessary. All that plus affordability are key. I have used BartPE and Ghost for years and it remains one of my favorite tools. But keeping up with chipset drivers, cpu drivers, mass storage drivers, network drivers etc has worn me down. I tire quickly of slipstreaming / integrating drivers, fussing with the errors burning half a dozen disks just to get one that works with the machine at hand. Lately I like to use linux based disks because they often seem to have excellent out of the box support for a wide variety of drivers. I have never tried driveXML though I will eventually get around to it, as I seem to try every imaging software at least once.

I found a quick and inexpensive solution that worked perfectly for my needs. I used terabyte's image for windows program. I installed it on the win2003 DC and then imaged the whole drive. As bad luck would have it, not long afterwards the drive crashed and the machine was no longer bootable. The drive was a 160GB SATA Western Digital and it was only a 2008 model. I think maybe the stress and heat of imaging it took it to it's grave. Image for windows comes with bootable dos rescue disk but that turned out to be a complete waste of time as it would not recognize my usb keyboard, mouse or usb external. I thought I was in big trouble. However there was also an "image for LINUX" bootable disk that could be made. So i burned a disk and booted up to it. The interface is crude and clumsy, standard linux style. But it recognized all my hardware and I began the restore. 20 minutes later everything was back to new. The DC worked, the VMserver started up and the ubuntu server on it worked perfectly. I find it incredible that a program under 40 bucks can image servers considering the typical cost for the major brands is significantly more. I'm pleased. A quick test with the program's scheduler worked fine, but a differential failed to be configured. I have to go back and see if I can get that to work. (not so pleased). This experiment was done on a cheapie lab test configuration server, I plan to try this on a win2k advanced server DC with hardware raid 1 and win2003 DC also with hardware raid 1. The win2k server also has VM server on it with linux and dans guardian. (disclaimer: I do not work for or get any ad money from this company)

I have set up a Windows 2000 advanced server domain controller in small school. There is only one physical machine, a Dell Poweredge T300. It is new. It's using Dell SAS hardware RAID 1 split into 3 partitions. A utiltity partition, operating system partititon and a data partition. The machine is used for logins and as a file server for a small lab with 24 student machines with XP pro. I installed a VWware server on it, and then an ubuntu server on that, and then Dans Guardian on that for content filtering. The whole thing has been running nicely since august. I have the data files on the data partition automatically backed up to a usb drive nightly. I want to image the entire disk or at least the operating system partition in case I need to do a bare metal type restore. What do i use to image the machine with Windows, VMware and Ubuntu all rolled into one partition? Since server edition imaging solutions are pricey and since this is a private school struggling during a tough recession, I need an affordable and of course reliable imaging solution. I am a one day a week, part time tech for this school, so ideally I want a solution that will minimize my administration overhead. I'm a bit worried about how I would test a restoral. If the test restoral fails how do I recover? I can wait until a holiday when I have more time to get things working and documented.

I am the computer teacher at a primary school with 850 kids. About 300 of the children are between the ages of 4 1/2 to 6 years old. I run an XP computer lab. I use AB tutor to restart the machines after every 1/2 hour class. I also use Faronics Deep Freeze so the computers are rolled back to original configuration after the restart. Since I only have 5 minutes between classes, I restart the machines in masse with ABtutor, then once the new group of little kiddies is seated, I log the whole lab in to a generic student account in masse with ABtutor. There's a logon button on ABtutor and then I just type in the account name like this: [email protected] and all the computers I selected from the list will logon with that account.

I think you should work on figuring out why the machines are not getting the mandatory profile. I have the same setup , Win 2003 and Xp pro. Sounds like a network issue. Likely a DNS issue. Set a GPO to give the clients the DNS address of the main LAN DNS server. If you are running the Win 2003 as a DNS server, go look at the entries for the Server itself. Does it resolve to more than one IP address? Are there two network cards active on your server? Are the clients trying to resolve to the DNS server and getting the address of the wrong card? Then they fail to get resolved, can't get the mandatory profile and then the problems start.

I have optiplex GX620's with the intel graphics that allows the kiddies to rotate the screen. They were doing it while I was teaching and once one kid did he'd show the kids in the whole row. Pretty soon he had effectively hijacked my lesson and all the kids attention was lost. I stopped it with a GPO software restriction to hkcmd.exe. It's the intel hotkey executable for the CTRL + ALT + arrow keys. Works perfectly. When that group came back this week for their weekly lesson, those same kiddies went at it right away pressing and re-pressing and trying it over and over. They couldn't get it to work. Sometimes the kids win, sometimes I win. I won this one (for now). I'm on Windows 2003 domain with XP SP3.

Sounds like a real timewaster at this point. You may just as well be able to build a new laptop image with all the apps and settings in less time than it will take to resolve the cloning issue. The holy grail of building a single image to cover all possibilities is still tough to achieve. There is a company called Binary Research with a product called universal imaging utility that sounds like they may have solved the problem. But the price is quite high to start. Good luck and let us know how you get on.