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.

Export the PPT slides as images. add those to your video in the video editor.

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.

You need catch the machine as it boots and tell it to start from the CD rom NOT the hard drive. At the "Welcome To Setup" screen, you will see these options: To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER. To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R. To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3. Press Enter, don't choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console., You don't want to load Recovery Console. Accept the License Agreement and Windows searches for existing Windows installations. Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair. Setup continues like it's doing a clean install, but the apps and settings remain intact.

Sounds like an issue for Acronis to resolve. However, IF you had an XP cd, ( I know you said 98% were misplaced) I would attempt a repair install to see if the MS cd would resolve what looks like driver install issues inluding the processor. Once that was done, then clone the working laptop to use for all the others. This is a longshot, but IF you had the paragon cloning bootable disk with their version of universal restore, I would give that a try and see if Paragon's software coders can do a better job than their Acronis counterparts in this situation. Good luck again.

I have used acronis universal restore and it works excellent. Here is how you can clone the desktops to the laptops: 1) First pop in the acronis universal restore cd and boot to it on the desktop computer. Clone the whole disk to a usb disk or network share using regular or universal restore method. If you use a usb drive, plug it in before you boot up to the CD so it can be detected. You don't need to concern yourself about using the universal restore option for cloning at this point, that comes at the restore part. 2) Next, backup all the drivers on the laptops. Use a driver backup software that can save all the drivers or just the non microsoft drivers to a self installing exe file. I use driver genius, but there are others. There are FREE ones out there that will detect and backup drivers to a folder or a zip file, but for speed, and automated convenience, I like to use the self installing exe type. Backup all the drivers from the laptops to a self installing file AND to a folder. Put the .exe and the regular folder full of drivers on the usb drive or network share with the cloned image. 3) Next, restore the cloned desktop image you made with Acronis to the laptop disk. Boot the laptop to the acronis universal restore cd and this time, choose the UNIVERSAL RESTORE option. Acronis will detect and select the correct HAL for you. It installs the drivers for the hard disk controllers OR if not found, will prompt you to supply the drivers. Access the necessary disk drivers from the driver folder you put on the usb drive. 4) Reboot the laptop machine to the working image. Microsoft may have been able to install some or all of the remaining drivers, but you probably won't get that lucky. If not, run the self installing driver backup exe file and let it install all the drivers. If you did not use self installing exe to backup the drivers then you can still let the machine detect the hardware and get the drivers from the driver folder on the usb drive. 5) DONE. That's pretty much it, but you'll maybe want to adjust the power schemes for laptop use. That said, you can have trouble if the dekstops are using an OEM version of Windows. You should only use VLK versions. If you don't use VLK versions, you'll get prompted for activation. Also make sure you back up ALL the laptop drivers , they have some extra drivers for the touchpad and whatnot. Use my instructions above as a guide to getting it done successfully ONLY if the weather is good, you've had a good breakfast and your'e feeling like you can do no wrong. Good luck.

I use a nifty little (Free) thing for that purpose called ShR toolbar. http://www.moskvin.biz/soft/

Use the built in XCOPY command in a batch file to send the reg key to multiple computers. Then use Psexec tool to merge regfile remotely. The following batch file goes through a text file (wslist.txt) with all the names of the computers to want to copy the reg file to. It connects you to the hidden administrative share ipc$ on each machine and authenticates with the username and password. (be sure to change those to suit your needs). Then it uses Xcopy to copy a folder named regkeyfolder and its contents to each remote computer. It pauses at the end to let you see the results or (lack of). Copy this code to notepad, save as copyregfiles.bat : @echo off for /f %%a in (wslist.txt) do ( net use \\%%a\ipc$ /user:administrator yourpassword xcopy /s /i /e /f c:\regkeyfolder \\%%a\c$\regkeyfolder ) pause Create a .txt file called wslist.txt Put the names of the machines you want to send your .reg file to. computer-01 computer-02 computer-03 Put the copyregfiles.bat file and the wslist.txt file together at the root of C:\ on your admin machine. Create a shortcut to the copyregfiles.bat file and put it on the desktop for easy access. Create this folder C:\regkeyfolder on your admin machine Put your reg file in there, I’ll call it: myregfile.reg Create a batch file that will merge the contents of myregfile.reg into the registry of the remote Computers. Here is the code for the batch file: regedit /s myregfile.reg Name it : mergemyregfile.bat Put mergemyregfile.bat with myregfile.reg in the folder C:\regkeyfolder on the admin machine. Click the copyregfiles.bat shortcut you put on the desktop to start copying C:\regkeyfolder and the contents to the remote machines. Once we have copied the regkeyfolder and it's contents of myregfile.reg and mergemyregfile.bat to C:\regkeyfolder on the remote machines, you need a tool to run the mergemyregfile.bat files on the remote machines. To do this download Pstools (free) and place psexec.exe in the c:\windows\ directory of your admin computer. you could put in any other folder of your choice, but if it goes there, you can run it from any directory in the command line. Open a command prompt and change the directory to C:\ > Run this command: psexec -i @wslist.txt -u administrator -p yourpassword c:\regkeyfolder\mergemyregfile.bat This file runs psexec and uses the list of computers in C:\wslist.txt . The -u switch supplies the administrator name, the -p switch supplies the password. Psexec then runs the mergemyregfile.bat file. That batch file merges myregfile.reg into the remote computer’s registry. Reboot remote computers to complete registry changes. you could do that with psshutdown.exe. C:\>psshutdown -r @wslist.txt -u administrator -p yourpassword Done.

You are welcome. I am still using the older version and after using it few years I can say that it has a few tiny bugs that hopefully the new version corrects. Early on, I had written to Ben at bigbrainz to discuss removing the part where kids had to jump over a large gap (drawbridge style) just to start the first round of 2X tables. I tried the new version and it looks like it has been removed. Perhaps others had commented to him about it as well. Additionally, on my network version, the program hangs at multiples of 4 when the kid's creature "dies" or miss too many questions on 4X, 8X and 12X. You need to use the task manager to kill the app / process and restart the game. No matter, I like to use those as "teachable moments" . I actually prefer those opportunities to teach kids the ins and outs of tech problem solving. In any case I still heartily recommend for anyone in the primary schools to try this program. It is a real winner.

I had an old photo editing program from adobe that needed admin privileges to run. I had finally gotten 2 methods that worked, none perfect. Method 1 was to use a freebie program called "steel run as" which basically allows you to create a new shortcut to the corel 10 .exe. The new shortcut runs the program as an admininstrator. If I remember correctly, the issue is that once that program is run under the admin credentials you can get into trouble when the people go to save files since they now can save or delete all the same things an admin can. Method 2, the one I still use today, is that using a GPO setting I gave the group of users Power User status and discovered that the photo editing program would run under that context. Of course the drawback is that now you have a bunch of power users, but fortunately there have been no issues to date.

Also try using a plain "G" setting, no "B", no extended range stuff, No 108 speed stuff, just 54G. We use wireless exclusively at private school where I work. Our access points are capable of the B, G and N wireless standards, but I'm not so sure that every wireless laptop, iphone, and desktop's interoperability lives up to those compatibility standards as advertised. So we run "G" and have gotten better results at times. additionally, we put a Hawking 15dbi corner antenna on the main access point and noticed an immediate throughput improvement on our clients. Clients that fluctuated from 36,24,18,and 11, bumped up to 54, 48, 36mbps. We have a building about 40yards away from the main transmitting access point. We added a signal booster (200-400Mw) and another high gain antenna to boost reception through our trees and brick walls on our existing Linksys wireless bridge and it made a big difference in consistent throughput. We used to get 2mbps speeds and lots of dropped connections. Once we went to 54G with the antenna's and booster we could get up to 36, 24, 18mbps fairly consistently with virtually no dropouts. We have another situation with a linksys WAP54G access point and a desktop that is only 5 feet away line of sight and the speeds are low, like 2mbps at times. All I can figure is that the drivers on the desktop wireless card are just junk,or the card is junk. I bought a few 20 dollar wireless USB flash drive style cards to plug in to computers to see if the connection improves with these. If they do, I know the internal wireless cards are the problem, and not obstacles or desktop placement. Good luck

I tried untangle, it worked quite well against web searches for porn, but it was worthless for google image searches. They are working on a solution that forces the google safe search to be on in the browser. Until then a user in their forum provided a time consuming but effective workaround. You have to manually go to each computer and set the google preferences to safe search. Then add a line or two in the untangle configuration that prevents the link to the preferences link from functioning. This might work in small workgroup setting where there is a single sign on name, but in a domain where users have their own user profiles and cookie storage, I don't think it will fly.

Here's one I use to do that. Just copy and paste into notepad and change extension to .vbs and run it. 'Created by Matthew Hull on 11/06/03 'Last Updated 12/29/03 'Documented on 4/25/04 'Version 1.01 'This script will look for orphaned folders. 'Version History '~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 'Version 1.01 - The script now searchs the whole domain for the 'Version 1.0 - First version of this script released. '************************************************************************************* Option Explicit On Error Resume Next Dim objFSO, strUser, strRootPath, strPath, intCount, strMessage Dim objFolder, objRootFolder, colFolders, bolCheck, txtOutput, strOutputFile Dim objConnection, objCommand, objRootDSE, objRecordSet '************************************************************************************* 'Set the root folder and the location of the output file strRootPath = "\\win2003\users" strOutputFile = "C:\Orphaned Folders Verification.txt" '************************************************************************************* 'Create a RootDSE object for the domain Set objRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE") 'Establish a connection to Active Directory using ActiveX Data Object Set objConnection = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") objConnection.Open "Provider=ADSDSOObject;" 'Create the command object and attach it to the connection object Set objCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command") objCommand.ActiveConnection = objConnection 'Create the File System Object Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 'Set the orphan folder count to 0 intCount = 0 'Create a folder object that points to the root Set objRootFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(strRootPath) 'Create a collection of folders that contain the subfolders of the root Set colFolders = objRootFolder.Subfolders 'Start the message that will be displayed to the user strMessage = "The following folders are orphaned in " & strRootPath & vbCRLF For each objFolder in colFolders 'objCommand defines the search base (in this case the whole domain) a filter '(All object of type user that match the foldername) and some attributes 'associated with the returned objects (SamAccountName) objCommand.CommandText = " ">;(&(objectClass=user)(SamAccountName=" & objFolder.Name & "));SamAccountName" 'Initiate the LDAP query and return results to a RecordSet object. Set objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute 'Set the Check to false, it will turn true if a folder isn't orphaned bolCheck = False 'Loop thru each item in the Record Set and compare it to the folder name 'if they match then the folder is not orphaned. There should only be one 'item returned in the Record set so this procedure is fast. While Not objRecordset.EOF If UCase(objFolder.Name) = UCase(objRecordset.Fields("SamAccountName")) Then bolCheck = True End If objRecordset.MoveNext Wend objRecordSet.MoveFirst 'If the folder is orphaned increase the count and add the folder to the message If Not bolCheck Then intCount = intCount + 1 strMessage = strMessage & intCount & " - " & objFolder.Name & vbCRLF End If Next 'Close the connection to Active Directory objConnection.Close 'Change the message if no orphaned folders are located If intCount = 0 Then strMessage = "There are no orphaned folders in " & strRootPath End If 'Create a text file, write the message to it and close the text file Set txtOutput = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strOutPutFile) txtOutput.Write strMessage txtOutput.Close 'Display a message to the user when complete MsgBox strMessage,vbOkOnly,"Orphan Folder Check" 'Close objects Set objFSO = Nothing Set objConnection = Nothing Set objCommand = Nothing Set objRootDSE = Nothing Set objRecordSet = Nothing