Duke5A

This is a LOT more involved than that. The problem with Java and pushing it out through AD is it'll break itself when performing the uninstall of any previous versions. This VB script does a better job of uninstalling Java than the actual installer released by Oracle does. You're going to run into issues pushing out a Java MSI without running the cleanup script first, trust me.

Just an update... I got the LAN School Connection Server up and running without too much hassle. It requires an x64 OS so it went up on a 2008 R2 apps server. There isn't anything in the way of configuration for it, but it does serve a locally hosted HTTP site for checking connection statistics. Pointing clients to it had to be done by hand as the ADM templates provided by Stoneware don't have provisions for that kind of configuration. All in all, it works and clients don't seem to have any issue with traversing subnets. @FN-GM I did look into using multi-cast, but on our wireless network (fully managed Cisco setup) broadcast and multicast traffic are disabled. Wireless moves in mysterious ways around here and I didn't want to anger it.

The cab converter utility isn't actually needed. If you run the language pack to install it it'll create it itself with a name of LP.CAB and place it in the folder from where the EXE installer was ran.

Check this thread out for Java deployment: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/91837-java-msi-deployment-fun.html FN-GM pointed me towards a MS script along with a few of his own tweaks that really make it painless. It's not pushed through AD though as an MSI deployment, instead it's deployed via start up script.

VLC does some house cleaning on first run (font cache creation, etc). You could try starting VLC, playing a couple of things, and then recapturing your mandatory profile so all of VLC first run registry keys are already there.

Sounds like an HDCP problem; it's a newer form of DRM where the signal to the display is encrypted to prevent copying by splitting the video signal. This would be the exact thing it was designed to prevent. Either you use a third party media player (we use VLC) or hook the projector up as primary.

Huh, I haven't ran into that problem yet. Have you applied any updates to it before rolling it up? I didn't bother when I did so that could be a difference. As far as fixing the current problem, you could try using a startup script to set the permissions on that folder. Startup scripts run with local machine credentials so it shouldn't matter if the user logging in is a limited one or not.

That's odd, we've got CS5 running on a couple hundred Win7x64 student machines and the accounts are all limited users. How are you pushing out CS5? If you haven't looked at it yet, Adobe has a deployment toolkit for CS5. It'll make the process on orders of magnitude easier.

It depends on the AV solution you're using. I can only speak for Symantec End Point Protection 12.x, but it works just fine being pre-rolled into an image; the only thing you have to do is run a cloning prep utility that strips out all the unique identifiers from it. As far as Security Essentials goes, I'm surprised it works period with going through a sysprep process. MSE is a free for home use antivirus and isn't licensed to be used at schools and businesses. Just tossing that out there...

I just looked at the video and that's an odd one... We're running Windows 7 x64 Enterprise with Smart Tools 11.0.578 without any big issues. It works with multiple model boards too: SBX880s and some older than dirt ones that have a serial interface. Smart has a USB conversion cable for the old stuff that just flat out works with their latest version of the Smart Tools. I know you looked at the projector already, but does it show the same resolution on the OSD that Windows is set to? I've seen some weird issues with Windows 7 and EDID with a lot of equipment lately.

Well, startup scripts run with local machine credentials so I would think it would work. I would update the drivers in your image too to make sure this doesn't happen again (if in fact this does fix the problem). Did you load them by hand on one of the machine with the issue? Did it fix it?

Is anyone else having issues with Windows 7 and docking stations? The majority of our staff uses E5400s with docks, external keyboards/mice, and an external monitor. Windows, or rather the Intel display driver, gets confused at times as to what display to use and I run into situations where it'll disable the external, or the internal. Other times it'll be on the dock sleeping, and when you press the power button to wake it up, the external screen will come on like it should and then goes right back to power saving mode. It basically wakes up for a split second, Windows sees the lid is still closed, and goes back to sleep. It's almost as if it doesn't recognize that it's docked. The only way to get it back to normal is to undock it, open the lid, shutdown, close the lid, and then place it back onto the dock. Other times USB devices plugged into the dock won't even work (I think this problem is related to the sleep problem). This entire thing is just driving me nuts as we just pushed everyone onto Windows 7 Enterprise over the summer. I've got enough on plate with the migration as it is without goofy things like this happening. As always, thanks in advance for the help guys; this forum has made my life a lot easier.

Has your unattended file (if you're using one) for the WDS server changed at all? It could be something in there that's binding it up, or even a recently imported driver into the console. It almost seems like it is waiting on something and eventually timing out.

Graphics — Silent installation of the Intel® graphics drivers Give a look first in device manager and make sure that they are in fact using a MS supplied driver.

What version of Samba are you running on those boxes? If it has been around that long then my money is on the Windows systems having problems gaining access to the mandatory profiles. That's why you're seeing teachers getting temporary profiles. I would try hosting those profiles off of a Windows 7 machine (strictly for testing) and seeing where it goes from there.

Does it have a card reader on it? The machine is probably trying to boot off of it. Playing around with the boot order in the BIOS might fix it.

Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, er, give them a centimeter and they'll take a kilometer. If you've got a few users eating that much space in that little time then adding disk to the server is probably going to make the problem worse. I'd try working with the user(s) on it first. What is taking up all the room, pictures, video? I've had teachers dump video to our NAS of a school play filmed in 1280x1024 at 60FPS. Showing them how to alter the quality settings on the camera cured the issue for the most part.

Well, I guess you could set the resolution on one of the systems, export the reg keys, and use a script to import them back onto the rest. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iAlm\Device0 HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iAlm\Device1 HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO I had to do this to fix a resolution problem on a group of netbooks. It worked, but this is for Windows XP and I'm not sure if it'll work on anything newer. Really though, I would look at silently installing the Intel display drivers. You may run into another problem if you don't and use Office 2010. I actually had lab machines randomly restarting and locking up when using Power Point. The slide transition effects use the GPU and the MS provided drivers were crashing the systems.

This is more of a how I fixed it for anyone else who comes across this issue by means of Google. There was only one other mention of this issue on Experts Exchange without a resolution. I've got a Xerox DocuPrint N2125 printer, a Windows Server 2008 SP2 x32 print server, Windows 7 x64 clients, and a print driver that absolutely refused to load. The Xerox provided x64 drivers are only available in PS; which isn't a big deal, but they're not signed by Xerox. Whenever I attempted to load them onto the print server via the printers management console on my Windows 7 x64 workstation I would get the following two errors: 0x0000023f and 0x00000578. It made absolutely no sense to me as it would load correctly on the workstation. Long story short, loading them from a Windows 2003 x64 server did the trick. The only difference in the installation (besides it working) was on the 2003 server it asked me for confirmation on loading an unsigned driver, where from my Win7 workstation it didn't.

What's the hardware? If it's Intel graphics with Intel provided drivers it should automatically set the screen resolution to whatever is native for the display. I don't think the drivers that ship with Windows will do this.

I just kept printer deployments in scripts. I thought about GP, but we've got so many printers in the district (about 200) I was afraid of turning AD into a policy minefield. I already had AD fairly well organized and staff/student machines tightly named so writing a printer deployment script that could install printers based on a number of criteria wasn't very complicated. Matter of fact, then entire printer sub fit within two pages. I posted an example in a blog post. VB Script for network printer deployment - Blogs - EduGeek.net

Have they tried changing it on another machine? Run RSOP.msc and have a look at how the policy is being applied to their teacher computers.

Ghost works great with Windows 7; I still use it sometimes when having to multicast images to large groups of netbooks. Just be sure to chose Local > Disk > To Image. This will grab the entire disk and make sure you're using at least version 11. Anything under that version will not work correctly with Vista/7.

Does anyone run the central server piece? I've got a lab where the teacher machine sits on a different subnet than the students (wireless). I don't believe direct connections between the student and teacher machines will work since student discovery uses broadcast.

I've worked in a couple different districts now and have had exposure to a half dozen or so classroom management suites. With every one I had to maintain there was always a nagging flaw whether it be the client didn't run as a service, no deployable MSI, no means of centralized management, etc... I recently came across yet another one recommended to me off of a listserv by the name of LAN School. After trying out the demo we purchased a site license for our high school, and two lab licenses for our middle school. In a nutshell: The teacher and student installers are self contained MSI files The installers work flawlessly being deployed through AD The student client runs as a service It's fully managed by means of provided GPO templates Has an optional central server that can be used instead of teachers connecting directly to students (haven't tried yet) LanSchool | Classroom Management, Monitoring, and Corporate Training Software I hope this helps someone out there; it sure made my life easier.