TheScarfedOne

SCCM here, and there is a load of info over on my blog if you are stepping into that territory for the first time. Reall power is single driver store, single image, single point of contact for build and updates (as integrates WSUS)

The blank glass square isnt that bad, but then again, we have all our machines on requiring the "Require CTRL, ALT and DEL" anyway, plus an AUP to accept - so the screen isnt really seen for much time. Not worth the significant investment... remember we never used to have anything before in Domain logons anyway.

I use roamin profiles - and I know that people have their own views on using them, so no flaming please! I use it for all users, and combine it with folder redirection to for speed and efficiency. Here is an outline of my setup then... and some links to getting it set up the same way if you are so inclined. All userdata is stored on SAN paths, mapped through DFS. But, but could have this on single servers equally, and it would work just fine. The root path is \\DNSNAME\Network\, with paths off this for home folders, profiles and redirection. A great Microsoft Article from the Directory Services team gives you the lowdown on how to get this set up, so rather than just repeat all of it - here is the link...http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2008/06/30/automatic-creation-of-user-folders-for-home-roaming-profile-and-redirected-folders.aspx Right... so youve got that all set up just nicely then, but someones profile gets corrupted? You go and delete the folder (yes the whole folder - do not just delete the contents or you will get a "Temporary Profile" message). Sorted... wrong, becuase this is a member of staff - who has a laptop. Laptops are set to cache logons, unlike workstations - so that they can logon offline at home. So you go and delete the folder there too. Youve done all this correctly, but you still get the "Temporary Profile" warning. What has gone wrong? Vista and 7 store the profile paths in the Registry, and going in and deleting the folder remotely doesnt clean this up. If you logged on Locally, and used the Advanced User Control Panel to delete the profile and it would be fine. To manually tidy up, follow the below... 1.Fire up regedit (yes you can do this remotely too - Connect Network Registry) 2.Locate the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList 3. The ProfileList entries are all SIDs. This is a placeholder for the security identifier (SID) of the user account that is experiencing the problem. The subkey should contain a ProfileImagePath registry entry that points to the original profile folder of the user account that is experiencing the problem. Delete the subkey for the affected user. 4.Exit Registry Editor. 5.Log off the system. 6.Log on to the system again. 7.After you log on to the system, the profile folder is re-created

YES, really. Using HyperV in a cluster (which needs shared storage - ie SAN) - your VMs can move between HyperV hosts with no downtime. This is exactly how my system is now setup - and following shenanigans with a UPS, it has been demonstrated a few times in the past week when we loose one! There will be a series of articles published on this soon - so if any one is interested in this area, keep an eye out.

Shameless plug... guide over on my blog EduGeek.net - Sharing and Pointing, Pointing and Sharing.... - Blogs after a few people were having issues with the GPO preferences route. It wotks on XP too for those with co-existance...

but by not running the vms from a san, you loose the ability to set up hyper v as a cluster - and have the failover of vms.

Hello again! This one wanders off into slightly differenet territory for my normal blogging - but its one Ive had lots of questions about recently. Its also been a fairly busy one on the forums too, so here is a reasonably definative guide on how to get it working properly... 1. Create a server side copy of your structure Sounds simple, but how many times this isnt done properly never ceases to amaze me. Now, some poeple I know wont like what Im about to recommend, but trust me - there is a very good reason. in your NETLOGON folder (\\DomainNameHere\NETLOGON) create a folder called Environment. This will be our nice handy root folder. Why netlogon? Well, first off - it has permissions on it so Domain users and Domain compuers can read it but not mess with it; second, it gets load balanced and sync'd between however many DCs you have. No single point of failure. Now, I know you can craete your own DFS (Distriburted File System) to do the same thing, but there really is no need for most systems. The files you will have in this folder are shortcuts - and are tiny anyway. Right, in ENVIRONMENT, create Staff and Student subfolders, and then StartMenu and Desktop subfolders within those. You will also need a Programs folder in StartMenu (StartMenu rather than Start Menu - better not to have spaces). Copythe various shortcuts you want, and create your Desktop and Start Menu as you want them to be (I have only said about Staff and Students, but you could do this for as many other user groups as you want - you will just need extra subfolders). 2. Create your GPO Settings This one is where people sometimes have issues. Usually, you will have a GPO for Staff and another for Students. I will assume here you do. If not - create them for this purpose. The settings, in the main are identical. The only difference comes at the folder reference part. For speed - I have included a screenie below of the settings I have used in my previous Schools, as well as at those I have been across to to set this up. You may not want to be as restrictive - the choice is yours. Then, you need to actually point at your desktop and start menu folders. This is done at User Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings >Folder Redirection > then right clicking the object to redirect and selecting Properties. Choose Basic—Redirect everyone's folder to the same location, and then select Redirect to the following location. Enter your path. Now, you have two options here. I personally redirect to a local copy of the structure I have on the Server. This is maintained by a Startup Script. This I will cover in a 2nd part to this article, including the script used. Alternatively, you can point to the Server path. Note, for Start Menu, do not go down to the Programs level - your path would be \\DomainNameHere\Netlogon\Environment\StartMenu Then, you must go to the Settings tab. In the Settings tab in the Properties box for a folder, you should change these settings: Grant the user exclusive rights. This setting is enabled by default and is not the recommended setting for here. Usually, yes, but we dont want to lock others out of it (particularly on the Server sharing scenario) Move the contents of [FolderName] to the new location. This setting moves all the data the user has in the local folder to the shared folder on the network. We definately dont want this either Also apply redirection policy to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. This enables folder redirection to work withWindows 7 and Windows Vista, and earlier Windows operating systems. This option applies only to redirectable folders in earlier Windows operating systems, which are the Application Data, Desktop, My Documents, My Pictures, and Start Menu folders. You will want this setting. 3. What often goes wrong Right, the setting that causes this not to work! The one to watch is User Configuration > Policies > Admin Templates > Start Menu & Taskbar > Remove User's folders from the Start Menu - this needs to be DISABLED for Windows 7. On XP, it should be Enabled. So... yes - in co-existance you will need two policies, and to use security group filtering to ensure Staff applies to Staff, and Students to Students. Alternatively, careful use of the "Apply to OS" setting can also do this. I will cover this scenario in more detail in Part 2. Hope this helps - and the screenshot will be added on Monday!

Rather than directly running shutdown.exe, what you could do is call a vbs script which displays a message box with a timeout in it (I use these kind of scripts for other things - like updating Start Menus), which then calls shutdown.exe.

i know weve now got the ability to have booking admins which are separate from domain admins; but what about per room/resource admins? i do like to push the boundaries!! looking excellent so far though

Impressed. I wont have to tweek anymore ;-)

I would give Alex Pearce (@apearce) or Richard Willis (@rpwillis) a nudge. Two very knowledgable Sharepoint guys.

To be clear, you can not, as the email sent says, distribute direct links to the msi or the page with the msi links on it. Only Adobe - Flash Player Licensing is a valid link as it states. I know it sucks but generally Adobe are not too slow and you only need to do it once per year (why per year....) and for new versions over that year I have reused the emailed link. Kindly refrain from posting links to the Adobe Players MSI pages...

Ok, how about we all take a deep breath here and accept that everybody has different systems and prefered methods of doing things. Just because that doesnt match with yours does not necessarily make it wrong. Some summary points... 1. Yes, a lot of schools use MSI deployment for applications, whether that be GPO install, SCCM, FOG, WKPG or others - and it has been on a collective wishlish for some time that SIMS would move to this eventually. The silent switch options on the installers has improved over time - which is what most of us now use with our various flavors of scripting, or the above. 2. MSI does not mean that anyone would be locked into GPO or any of the above install types. The MSI/MSP technology would would just fine on P2P networks too, it would not take much logic (which is built into MSIs) to do a "oh, old client version (on connection attempt) - so run MSP first". 3. On to Solus 3 - it is still a *new* product, under development and there are oversights in it. That being said, they (Capita) have tried to listen to what we as customers have asked for - they just havent quite got there yet.

Stay tuned to my blog on here, and links over on Microsoft Schools blog as I will be detailing our solution using HyperV and two R710s, 1 MD3200 SAN. Didnt cost the earth either - I had a very limited budget too! A couple of quick answers tho... yes, cluster your Hyper V. Why? Well, you can then do the rebooting of Physical servers with no downtime. You can let HyperV migrate them around for you. We had this demonstrated perfectly when we had a UPS power board fail taking out a server. Yes, the VM OSs will need updating, but let WSUS take care of that, and reboot for the ones that need it out of hours by scheduled tasks. A quick whistly stop, but any qs message me. There will be articles soon on this. If you are in the southwest - or can get here, you are welcome to come and take a look.

Yes, its 5 year lamp and projector. Call Casio support, or your reseller if you dont have their details. Usually turned round in a week.

Ok, so - some of you have tried to put this in place and have not had much luck with it. I use this one a lot, as it saves additional software - and it is just nice to have everything all in one place. How to do it properly then... 1 Create a NEW GPO... yes I said new. Don't go adding this to exisitng ones as when you want to change the time for different machines - you will be stuffed (well you could use item level targetting -but thats a bit out of the reach of this post)... and the second reason is more important though. For some reason - when you use GPO Scheduled Tasks - it breaks GPMCs way of showing the settings in that nice little HTML pane. At least if it is just these in there, you dont really need it. 2. Computer Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Scheduled Tasks 3. Right Click, New Task - and complete a la 4. Repeat as required - we have our machine set to wake on BIOS - so that is why there is a Weekday and Weekend Shutdown - the Weekend shutting down at 9.30am. Enjoy :-)

For those having fun and games with it not working, Ive just put some details on my blog... http://www.edugeek.net/blogs/thescarfedone/960-shutting-down-machines-group-policy-preferences.html

+1 for GPO Preferences Scheduled Task

@ihaveaproblem - you are right - fill that folder with the various screen res that you have name the files backgrounddefault*screenres*.jpg. Use your favorite picture editor to set the image resolutions. You dont change the main backgroundDefault. You create an info folder in the oobe folder, and a background folder in the info folder - then put all the images in there. Then you need to change a registry key.Browse to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Window\sCurrentVersion\Authentication\Logon\UIBackground , double click on key named OEMBackground and change its value to 1 (If you cannot find the path or the key go ahead and create it, remember OEMBackground is a Dword) Note, this is fully supported by Microsoft too.

in as startup and logon/logoff script to ensure it stays as planned. if you use different scripts for staff and students, and or machines, you can achieve what you want to.

+1 for qres here. Thats what I use, and it works well

Wisesoft has a load of free tools too...

Hell youve been busy ZH! I've closed the reported post for you :-p

And if you are on Win7 - it has its own logging catagory, Group Policy Operational logs, go down the tree in Event Viewer

The better option for the background is to use the defaultBackground.jpg in C:\Windows\System32\OOBE\Info route works really well. Use it on all my machines, and you can deal with it all by GPO too.