TheScarfedOne

Introduction So, regular readers of my blog will know that we run quite an extensive Remote Desktop Environment at my new School. This poses for some interesting issues when dealing with printing - so a rethink on the traditional methods was needed. Traditional Printer Scripting Lets start at the beginning - with the "old-school" method of printer mappings. Usually, this was achieved with a good old-fashioned batch script, ala Drive Mappings. Not content with batch anymore - I moved this on to VBS for speed. Ive attached my main script to this post for a nosey; but below is an except... Add printer connections dependant upon location Select Case (Left(computerName, 6)) Case "******" WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\PRINTSERVERNAME\PRINTERSHARE" WshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\PRINTSERVERNAME\PRINTERSHARE" This does as it says really. It compares the first 6 characters of the machine name (retrieved and stored in a variable earlier in the script) to a specified statement. When it matches, it runs that section. See the full script for more (the logoff one in there too) - it is well commented! WorkstationPrintersLogoff.vbs WorkstationPrinters.vbs This works fine for normal workstations - where it runs as a logon script. There is also a partner logoff script which clears the connections to stop them following the user around. The last thing we need is Student 1 printing in IT2 when they are in IT1 - just because they have been in IT2 last lesson. So, what about Remote Desktop Services But - this wont work with RDS - as the machine is resolved as the server, and there could be multiple locations with different printers. In our case, there definately are. Our Thin Client (RDS) environment is made up of two types of machine. We have repurposed hardware running Windows Thin PC (Windows 7 extra light!), and Wyse T50 terminals running their "HomeBrew" linux. The Thin PC ones use a similar script setup to the conventional PCs. The only difference is that the printers are added on startup - since the shell for the Thin PCs has been altered to load VBS and RDP session. More on that will follow in another post - but it is touched on slightly in my SCCM posts from Summer: http://www.edugeek.net/blogs/thescarfedone/871-some-things-field-sccm-saving-my-bacon-massive-system-deployment.html The RDP session is set to carry thought client printers (there is a custom RDP connection file used on all of the Thin PCs) - so they get the printer for their room and no others. The ability to add and remove printer has also been removed across the site. Well, there is no point putting the effort into setting the printers is people can monkey with them! Non-Windows Remote Desktop Connections Next then, the Wyse terminals. More problematic, as they wouldnt understand any of the scripts or GPOs. Instead, some clever GPO and OU layout - and use of the GPO Mode "Replace" to set user properties for the RDP session were used. You can see my structure here... The "TS" after the GPO name is the magic. These two GPOs have extra settings to push printer connections for the RDP sessions. Problem number two - how to work out what machines get what printers, or you just have all of them and users select theirs. Messy - very messy. Instead - group your users around printers - which they need, defaults etc. We created AD groups and put staff into these groups depending which they needed. Then, used Group Policy Preferences (not Deployed Printers) to set them. Preferences allows you to do item level targetting so only people in the AD group specified get the printer. Here is an except... Here is the actual GPO editor - so you can see we have lots of printers and lots of targetted printers. We also use this to set the defaults for different groups. You can see we also use a "Delete All" to stop them collecting printers. Job done... :-) Happy GPO Admin As always, questions, comments always welcome. Post here or PM me if you want to know more.

Yes. Use the option to set the printers as "Replace" and "Remove when no longer applied". You can also create a "Delete All" item... Im going to finsih the blog post Ive been writing for this - as Im using it extensively, and also on a Remote Desktop environment too

Using it currently on 90 staff laptops, and also have implemented it on a fleet of 160. Works nicely...depends on the systems you have in place already and on your hardware. More info on the easiest way to implement it over on my Edugeek Blog.

These keys are listed over on my blog from earlier in the year as being responsible for breaking folder redirection in various ways. The blog is here Windows 7 Updates which break things... - Blogs - EduGeek.net You can use GPO preferences to remove these registry items or logon scripts

Im not seeing this issue - and I do also use start and desktop redirection to local created folders. The libraries issue with folder redirection is in the stickies thread already as a known issue - and it doesnt specifically relate to this update.

Running the original 2007 suite (all of which are now in R3 state) with FEP. It is a very nice suite... and looking forward to the full SC2012 suite. The requirements for it are high - as you would expect. All the info over on technet.

Ok some slight progress on my issue. I installed V7.5. Got the setup completed - although the AD browser still didnt work, and I had some wierdness with layouts etc - but it at least me complete. I reused the created \appbin\.xml file and then updated to V7.6. All appears to work - as in my admin login does - but the AD browser in the Setup doesnt work still. Im guessing there is something in my AD layout it really doesnt like! What Ive no idea though. Nick - rather than post my AD structure here (obvious reasons why not) can you PM me your email addres and I will email some screenies of it to you to take a look at.

Im seconding that one....@ZeroHour :-p

Only thing I could see was this event Event code: 3005 Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred. Event time: 31/10/2011 18:39:01 Event time (UTC): 31/10/2011 18:39:01 Event ID: f79ff55f19e54ea88962a8979938e8dc Event sequence: 135 Event occurrence: 1 Event detail code: 0 Application information: Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/HAP7-1-129645574312551208 Trust level: Full Application Virtual Path: /HAP7 Application Path: D:\Program Files\HAP7\ Machine name: MAP-WEBS-01 Process information: Process ID: 48988 Process name: w3wp.exe Account name: IIS APPPOOL\HAP7AppPool Exception information: Exception type: NullReferenceException Exception message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at HAP.Web.Setup.newou_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) Request information: Request URL: http://localhost/HAP7/setup.aspx Request path: /HAP7/setup.aspx User host address: ::1 User: Is authenticated: False Authentication Type: Thread account name: IIS APPPOOL\HAP7AppPool Thread information: Thread ID: 14 Thread account name: IIS APPPOOL\HAP7AppPool Is impersonating: False Stack trace: at HAP.Web.Setup.newou_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

hmmm. i thought that too. where should i be looking for a possible problem?

Ok... here is what FireBug had to say... Response Response Headers Via 1.1 MAP-TMG Connection Keep-Alive Proxy-Connection Keep-Alive Content-Length 24 Date Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:48:25 GMT Content-Type application/json; charset=utf-8 Server Microsoft-IIS/7.5 Cache-Control private X-AspNet-Version 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By ASP.NET Request Headers Host map-webs-01.map.internal User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1 Accept application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01 Accept-Language en-gb,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip, deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Connection keep-alive Content-Type application/json; charset=UTF-8 X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest Referer http://map-webs-01.map.internal/HAP7/setup.aspx Content-Length 71 Cookie ASP.NET_SessionId=j3lxkuidy45lhiegqjojphsm POST JSON domain "map.internal" password "********" username "hap" Source {"username": "hap", "password": "********", "domain": "map.internal"} Response {"GetADTreeResult":null}

Of course...happy to help out. That was under IE8. Will grab Firefox and post up the results...

Same problem here with just the blue bar getting about 10% across. If I look on /api/setup and try the "Post" on GetAD... it shows Reference for http://localhost/HAP7/api/setup/GetADTree Url: http://localhost/HAP7/api/setup/GetADTree HTTP Method: POST Message direction Format Body Request Unknown Cannot infer schema. The Request body is wrapped. Response Unknown Cannot infer schema. The Response body is wrapped.

The guidance from Microsoft is to keep one Physical DC to protect against this. Exactly my setup - I have two further virtual DCs. 3 x Hosts, with 35 total virtual servers

Yes, WTPC is in Volume Licencing Service Centre, under Software Assurance Benefits.

@philneal afaik there is now an audit trail in SIMS, and you view it.from system manager 7. The boss will confirm though

This software exists already as has been noted ... Salamander. Get in touch with @rpwillis, he is very helpful.

I can't say I've seen these problems. There may be some gpo stuff you need to look at to allow users to install classes of drivers. Remember uac will prevent most things. I will put up a blog post about this later today when I can screenie my gpos

A little heathy competition! It looked from the tweets that were coming through to be a very usful event - even if some of the things were face palm moments - like managing apps on ipads. Grrr. Look forward to the report. Now, Ive got to go through all my tweets too...

You can view the page at http://www.edugeek.net/content.php?r=325-Microsoft-IT-Academy-Summit-2011-Reading-HQ

I have also been invited to the Exeter event... Ive been spotted, has my cover been blown (LOL)... and will be blogging/tweeting for it too. Anyone in the Southwest region, we can also use our section of the forums (under Regional) to linkup... Any items anyone would like raising - please PM me, or post here.

The hazard of being on travels all day... you miss out on being tagged in posts! As James said, we are indeed attending - and these events are made by the questions that get asked by the community. After the event, I will also try to get a blog post up summarizing key points. Anyone looking for accomodation - IBIS is central (as in a min or two walk from the Railway station, and incidentally, for those who havent been to Microsoft before, there is a free shuttle from the Railway station out the their HQ). If you want amy info about the event - or if you are coming and want to catch us - please use the PM option. My phone is now sync-ing that mail address ;-) Stuart

Im going to do a blog post on Printer Mapping with RDS - as Ive just completed a bit project with it. Learnt a hell of a lot, and its taken 3 weeks to get it right. Will update this when I post it.

The ADMXs for Office support changing the default save path. Most other apps seem to behave - typical that Office doesnt. The biggest culprit is attachments from Outlook opening in Temp. Another side effects of killing the libraries appears to be the Rip path in WMP being broken too. Ive not found the reg key responsible yet, but will hunt it down

The other big one is the printing. I know that the LA remote solution down here prevents it for DPA reasons. Seconded the timeout and two factor authentication.