Resolver

Thanks for the input so far. I'm starting to think our desktop slowness is moreso related to networking lag than I'd previously thought. I plan to break out perfmon tomorrow and start checking stats. Any input to which of the many statistics to take a look at? I'm very curious about time spent processing exchange requests, AD requests, and print jobs....all taking place on the same server.

Anyone suggest a good best practices guide to the number of services to run on a server per number of users, per memory available? I've found plenty of "guides" and have read enough text books to know what the services do, but I want good solid numbers to use in laying out a network architecture. I would like to say, "We have 200 users, which may grow to 400 in two years. This server can run Exchange, print services, etc. But past x employees, Exchange will need to be on its own server"..... etc etc. Thanks for any links, or suggestions.

Oh, and this one... reg add "hkcu\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\explorer\advanced" /v ListviewShadow /t reg_dword /f /d "0" since I use a white wallpaper, this turns off the shadow effect, and instead displays black text.

So after sending most of my day doing research I've come up with this instead. I can turn off active desktop, and thus avoid the "Active desktop has crashed" annoyances; and when they lock the station, it will keep the same wallpaper. :copies the file from the server if needed if not exist "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\background.bmp" copy \\server\netlogon\background.bmp "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\background.bmp" :sets the background in the registry according to local path reg add "hkcu\control panel\desktop" /v wallpaper /t reg_sz /f /d "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\background.bmp" :stretching & tiling reg add "hkcu\control panel\desktop" /v wallpaperstyle /t reg_sz /f /d 2 reg add "hkcu\control panel\desktop" /v tilewallpaper /t reg_sz /f /d 0 :sets the background white (may need reboot to take effect) reg add "hkcu\control panel\colors" /v Background /t reg_sz /f /d "255 255 255" :refreshes system with new settings RunDll32.exe USER32.DLL,UpdatePerUserSystemParameters , 1, True Thoughts, suggestions?

I think I'm getting a better understanding of this now. It's pretty clear that my background is "on top" of the old background. Since the default Dell background, or the default windows field background keeps appearing whenever the computer is logging/locked. I guess the alternative is to copy down the .bmp to the local machine, and use the registry to set the .bmp as the wallpaper, instead of an "active desktop" item?

glennda's suggestion worked, but it took me a couple reboots to get it to apply. Which made me think I was being a bit too hasty. I instead changed it back to a network location, but moved it from \\server\share\ to \\server\netlogon I think your right about the time sync Zero, I noticed on the startup script an error 1314. That's not currently causing any issues, so I'll save it for another day I notice that the background changes when logging and locking the workstation. Not as big a deal, but I guess I'll work on that this afternoon.

Thanks for the link to Bginfo, I'd seen that used at other places and at night school, but could never figure out how to get it to display on my machines. I didn't know it was a separate app! I'm trying to resolve this just using GPO since that's the only thing currently in place; and I don't want to change around the IT managers original configuration too much.

We don't having roaming profiles set, the only thing in the profile tab is a logon script. That's only used to sync the time and map 2 drives. I could recreate the profile itself in AD, but I don't think wallpaper merits such an extreme measure. This place runs 24/7, and there are a lot of people using that profile at all times.

I noticed the other day that some users didn't have the company wallpaper being displayed, and even worse, some had Active Desktop Recovery Needed displayed. Because our users are locked out from the desktop properties, they couldn't fix it themselves. With all this in mind, I looked into our wallpaper GPO policy. Currently, all group OU's share the same User Policy. With the relevant parts being -Enable Active Desktop set to disabled, and Active Desktop Wallpaper set to enabled with the wallpaper being on \\server\share\background.bmp From what I've seen, the background seems rather hit or miss around the company. I've got a test machine next to my own that I've been running tests on. I've seen that the one user that everyone can use "public", is not a member of "employees" which is a security group. I put my test user in the employees group and the background worked fine. I took my test user out of the group and it stopped working. However, when public and test log in, the background flickers for a second like it's about to apply the wallpaper, but never does. users who are not in the employees group, do not have direct access to the \\server\share\background.bmp file. Thinking perhaps that would make a difference, I moved the file to \\server\netlogon\background.bmp and updated the GPO. verifying everyone could access the new location, I rebooted and refreshed gpupdate, but still nothing. Also, I've noticed when I have my test user in the employees group, and the background loads correctly; if I lock the screen or when I log out, the background changes to the default windows hill background. I've also tried changing the enable active desktop from disabled to enabled, since that seems to make more sense according the GPO description for that field, but it didn't make any difference. I hope I didn't rambled too much, it's just a lot of little pieces I'm trying to up together in my head. Any ideas what's going on here?

Ok, I see where it *should* be. But they're not using message logging at this location, so I can't tell what's happened.

Punch line could use some work, needs something more directly relating to the steady decline of user experience in windows. "That was the evaluation copy" or "That was the trade show demo" or "This place was never this bad before you corrupted the registry"

You are correct. I was thinking of print jobs that are sent, but require no feedback, like an LPR job.

The subnet and gateway on the ricoh itself shouldn't make a difference in whether or not you can access the built in webpage, but definitely check the options in the display panel to see if the web ui can be turned on and off. Also look for an option to toggle ICMP, if it's off, that would explain why it's not returning pings. You can also try posting over at Copytechnet Home, back when I worked on printers that was my go-to tech support site.

Exchange 2003.

Is there a setting for what the message says? The user claims they never received a bounce back message. Also, does it log the fact that this happened?