GoldenWonder

Do you mean the Server side users folder has to have the user as the owner? Thats going to be a pain to configure as we have 2000 students, and I guess the owner of their folder is still set to Administrator

I'm not expecting to have the full Windows 7 experience without 2008, but this is the basics of a Windows network - folder redirection is a simple policy that should work on Win7. A bit of research shows that you either a) get Win7 working fine in 2003 domain or b) get such variable results you either give up or migrate to 2008 server Alas I'm in b)

Oh I definitely agree about rolling out 2008 (budget permitting!) but its likely we'll have W7 pcs in the 2003 domain before 2008 is rolled out. Daft thing is the desktops are redirecting. The event viewer says that all of the folders have been successfully redirect. But the start menu remains practically empty (some local programs only) EDIT: Oh dear. Now my W7 test PC won't boot. Stuck at 'Please Wait' on boot. Its not going well is it! Did MS actually change Vista or is W7 purely a rebranding exercise!

So folder direction in W7 is designed NOT to work in 2003 domains? Thats not the impression MS give - althought they offer very little info on this to start with.

But W7 should work with 2003 as the redirection policies are the same? Group Policy settings should work as long as you maintain the W7 ones from a W7 PC. Moving to 2008 is an expensive option at the minute as we'd have to buy all new CALs as well.

Ok, so I gave in and decided to setup W7 Pro in our 2003 domain to see what it would be like. Not a good start really, several flaws have come to light: 1) Start Menu redirection doesn't work - users end up with a nearly empty menu. Desktop redirection does work bizarrely. 2) Local profiles can't be deleted with a script (as we do now) so every PC will eventually have 1800 profiles on it! 3) You can't remove the profile/library icon from the desktop via group policy 4) You can't change the default desktop (i.e the login screen) using scripts like I do with XP 5) No Active desktop. I know this disappeared in Vista but it has some uses here Not the best start - and I thought W7 was a step forward from Vista, as I seem to remember problem 1) in Vista when I tested that!

The last time I had a software policy that failed to apply was due to permissions. The install source needs to allow read access to Domain Computers (or whatever group the PC/laptop is in) and I'd missed that out when creating the share.

I'm looking at Yosemite for next year - BExec is pretty poor. Support is abysmal and every time I've replaced a tape drive I've had to spend days getting BE to recognise it and use it without errors.

We use Exchange 2003 here and have done since 2004 and I have to admit its been great. Everyone has a mailbox and all can access this from home. Rumblings in the LEA are we will all be using Gmail and google apps as part of the BSF project so i suspect this may have a lot to do with the sudden interest! I still think its a bit of a grey area pushing so much towards cloud computing - we're still talking about kids and schools here! They need flexibility but also a dab of control.

As the title says! We've been approached a few times by HODs and SLT about this. Personally I think it needs careful consideration using Google Apps, as you need to either a) use it fully or b) don't bother! We already have an intranet, a VLE and obviously personal work areas. Adding yet another method of storing data seems to be introducing more scope for confusion. But that word 'collaboration' (i.e email and IM) seems to be used to batter everything through at the moment.

When you say removing IE branding, are you removing any policy that refers to the IE Maintenance Settings? We use the IE Maintenance settings to configure the proxy etc, I've removed the Browser title etc but the problem still occurs.

Maybe Sophos is a common thread here. We have a single DHCP server here which points to the two AD integrated DNS servers. These DNS servers use the LEA DNS servers as forwarders (this hasn't changed in the last couple of years, but the problem has only started occuring in the last few months) Its almost impossible to diagnose as I don't know what PC will be affected next! EDIT: We're using IE8 ADM templates when the PCs are using IE7 (we're rolling out IE8 later on) but this was done only a few weeks ago, well after the problem actually started.

I did wonder about Sophos because we had an issue with one update (several years ago now) that caused a lot of PCs to hang (around 70% of them) However this was fixed by the next Sophos update so it only really caused hassle for a day or so. This is happenly randomly and has been for a few months now. We also use WSUS, but I only push updates out during the holidays - unless theres a really important one and I haven't done that for a while.

Well I'm officially stumped by this problem now. Its still happening and theres no evidence of anything actually going wrong. The only thing I can assume is that its related to the users profiles, not the machine or software policies as it only hangs during the 'applying' stage. Does anyone know if the 'applying' stage is where the policies are written to the local machine, or is it where the policies are being read from AD?

Presumably even though your existing contract conditions apply, you would now be working for another private company and therefore will automatically be included in their 'disclosure' type of restrictions - on top your TUPE'd contract.

Post BSF I think all ICT staff are gagged. Maybe not literally but certainly contractually!

The documents I've read from our LEA mention (almost proudly) that no school has sucessfully managed to provide a viable business case. Anyone know if thats actually true?

Haven't tried a different reader to be honest, but Adobe reader is installed (and update) across the network. Mind you, since about version 5 Adobe PDF reader has been a right pain in the !

:mad:I think I've tried everything now - even asking HP for support (ha ha! waste of breath) Managed to fool it into working by using the deskjet 694C driver on the server. Not at all impressed with HP releasing an untested driver - last deskjet I buy from them

I tried the original driver on the disk, and also the one downloaded from HP (slightly more recent) and it made no difference. I may as well try a 'similar' driver (has worked before)

We've got at least 40 networked printers and they all work with PDF files though! Surely a brand new HP would work? Even our crummy old laserjets will print a pdf file (memory permitting!)

I've just installed a networked Hp Officejet Pro 8000 printer onto a Windows 2003 server, and installed the shared printer onto a few PCs. This works fine, except they can't print any PDF documents at all. The printer makes a noise like its about to print, then thats it! Everything else (Word, IE, other apps etc) all print fine. I've tried Adobe Reader 5,6,7,8 and 9 and they all fail, and on all of the PCs, using one of any of a dozen PDFs. I've used the driver from the CD, and also from HPs website and it makes no difference. I tried printing from one of the the PCs directly via USB and it works OK. As per usual HP are no help, their FAQs list some simplistic things to try. I'm stumped! Printer is ready to get ditched if I can't sort this. Pathetic that a modern printer can't cope with PDF files!

You have to allow: Sysvol and Netlogon shares (I used wildcard i.e \\Server?\sysvol) which covers Server1,Server2 etc C:\windows and c:\windows\system (defaults to allow these anyway) We allow c:\program files by default as only admins can install software Everything else in our list is simply executables\applications etc that are on server shares. Along with a few batch files users run on login. One peculiarity was in desktop and start menu redirection - we had to allow the source of the desktop/start menu as well as the targets for the applications listed. Works well now. In that the users don't like the fact they can't just run any old rubbish that someone gave them on a usb pen

They have no admin rights on the laptops now, but I was hoping for a simple solution like K9 that would validate web requests against a central server. Will have to look deeper into Smoothwall or similar!

We use Software restriction policies here. Using a whitelist basically won't allow any executable unless it is one we know about. Sometimes its a pain as staff are forever bringing in some pointless flash animation on a USB pen which is blocked, but we have 'safe' areas to copy these too so they can try them out. You have to have a good idea of software in use on your network, but you can bypass a lot by allowing know pathnames (ie C:\Program Files etc)