Duke5A

I'm using this little guy for home use: Newegg.com - Zmodo CM-I11123BK 640 x 480 MAX Resolution RJ45 Wireless WiFi IR Night Vision Pan Tilt IP Network Camera It's crazy how cheap IP cameras have become and the features you can get. Newegg sells cheap enclosures too.

What are your plans for services? Plan on running DFS? Or is just going to be a vanilla file server? If it's nothing special, then just use whatever Windows Server edition that it shipped with. We're still running 2003 Storage Server on our 7TB NAS (HP DL380 G5) and have no plans to upgrade. Even 2003 Server Standard Edition would do what we need it to do.

It shouldn't, no; as long as your WDS server hostname is registered in DNS you're fine as far as the DHCP scope options. As long as you can get DHCP into your new VLAN it should just work. I'm going to assume a Cisco switching setup for this... The ip helper-address command needs to be set in the VLAN interface on the switch. It should point to the IP of your DHCP server. Whoever setup your new VLAN in the switching configs should be able to do this for you.

I'm in a similar boat and didn't want to do a MITM style setup. Our guest network needs to be filtered and the content proxy is offsite at our ISD (not managed by us). So I setup a transparent Squid installation with a captive portal splash screen. It forces users to click an acceptance link to terms and conditions, and then forwards them to a page with instructions for adding proxy settings for HTTPS to work. If they don't follow the instructions they can still get out with just HTTP that is sent to the upstream content filter.

Got a copy of Ghost laying around? As long as it is version 11, you should be able to boot the machine up using WinPE and using Ghost32, make an image of the entire volume and dump it somewhere remote. Place your new drives and dump the image back down with Ghost and it'll resize the partition to fit the new space. Windows should be none the wiser the next time it boots. If for some reason this fails, you can always put the original drives back into place. I've used this process to migrate a lot of Windows systems, desktop and server alike to bigger disks.

Press Shift-F10 at the connection screen to open a command prompt and run ipconfig to check for an address. I'm thinking it might not have drivers for the NIC and isn't telling you.

No idea off of the top of my head, but try giving the logs a look at. %WINDIR%\Panther\

Does the script show up in the registry for that user? HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\Scripts\Logon\0\0 Does the entire script fail to run, or just a portion that was intended for users who have local admin privileges? Is there a debug mode you can enable? Do you use nested group membership?

If you multiple domain controllers in the domain you can force the policy changes to replicate between them using Active Directory Sites and Services. Once every DC has an up to date copy of the policy you can force update on the client. It's either that or wait for the policy to replicate itself amongst the DCs (default is 15 minutes I think).

No I didn't, but now I'm wishing I did. I've only ever seen this happen this one time and we were in the middle of imaging a couple hundred netbooks while running them on batteries (quite the undertaking, think D Day). After a reboot and no fix with everything running on batteries I was in a hurry to make the problem go away.

Give this thread a read and look at the attached image. Even though the GPO editor will gripe and say you need the IE Maintenance Extension for this, posts in that thread claim it works without it. Can I use Group Policy to control cookies? - Spiceworks

I ran into this just the other day with a student machine. Trying to ping anything by host name was failing, but when I pinged the local machine by its host name it resolved as an IPV6 address. Going into the adapter properties and unchecking IPV6 support resolved the issue.

You're going to have to split the subnet up; here is a way to do it while still maintaining the resiliency of having two DHCP servers and keeping the sites workstations identifiable by addressing: Break each site into it's own VLAN with a 23 bit subnet Create scopes for both of the site's subnets on each DC Limit the addresses to half of each scope on each respective DC Add IP helper addresses pointing to the other DC on the router Workstations will pull site specific addresses from each DC and you'll be limiting the broadcast domain to each site.

@dgsmith I had a similar issue a while back with Squid and an upstream proxy that isn't administrated by my department. The upstream proxy sat in a public network and would only allow connections from certain addresses which were the public outside addresses of all the schools that used it. This setup works great when connecting directly to it, but when we tried to go through an internal squid proxy the connections would time out. It turns out in Squid's default configuration it sends the originating internal IP address to the outside proxy in the payload. The outside proxy was looking at this as the originating address instead our outside interface on the firewall and blocking the connection as a result. To disable Squid from passing the internal address to the upstream proxy add this to your config: forwarded_for off I hope this fixes it....

Boot up with the capture image again and open a command prompt with Shift-F10 when it's done loading. Manually map a drive and capture by hand with imagex. Import the captured WIM into WDS and see if it takes.

This one is more justification to management than staff but, bring it up to management that this will translate into less time you have to dedicate to support desktops. When users have limited access it curtails their ability to bork the computer. I hope you have 100% backing of your management behind you on this; I've seen directly what happens when you take local admin away from a user base. Get ready for the pitchforks and torches.

@mac_shinobi Sure thing! I plucked out the relevant parts from our log on script and pieced it together into a self contained sample script. I hope it proves useful. VB Script for network printer deployment - Blogs - EduGeek.net

VB script may be showing its age, but it's still incredibly useful. Printer deployment at my district is handled by means of a VB script that collects various bits of information that is then used to determine who gets what printers; said bits of information include: username, user group membership, user LDAP path, AD site name, computer name, computer group membership, and computer LDAP path. Obviously you don't need to use all of this, but this script will still pull it out for you and you can customize to your needs. The sample script below I left in debug mode. You can run as is and it'll bring up the collected information in message boxes. In addition, the sub that pulls group membership calls out to a function that will in turn call back on itself for every nested group it finds. This will add nested group membership to the final results. I hope this helps... Edit: The strExpectedPrtName string is derived from the computer name. Most machines in the district are named by building, room, and then number. For instance, a teacher computer in room 12 in building A would be: BDA-RM12-TW01. Classroom printers are named the same way, just minus the workstation designation, so it would be: BDA-RM12. So the at the end of the printer sub it'll attempt to add a printer with the name it derived from the classroom workstation name. If it doesn't exist, it'll simply skip over it an finish normally due to the error handling. Dim strUserName Dim strUserPath Dim strADSite Dim strCompName Dim strCompPath Dim strGroups Dim strUserGroups Dim strCompGroups Call InitializeScript() Call GetGroupMemberships Call Debug 'Call Printers Sub InitializeScript() Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") Set objADSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo") strUserName = objNetwork.UserName strUserPath = "LDAP://" & objADSysInfo.UserName strADSite = objADSysInfo.SiteName strCompName = objNetwork.ComputerName strCompPath = "LDAP://" & objADSysInfo.ComputerName End Sub Sub Debug Msgbox "Username: " & strUserName Msgbox "User LDAP Path: " & strUserPath Msgbox "AD Site: " & strADSite Msgbox "Computer Name: " & strCompName Msgbox "LDAP Computer Path: " & strCompPath Msgbox "User is a member of the following groups: " & strUserGroups MsgBox "Computer is a member of the following groups:" & strCompGroups End Sub Sub GetGroupMemberships Set objUser = GetObject(strUserPath) Set colUserGroups = objUser.Groups Set objComp = GetObject(strCompPath) Set colCompGroups = objComp.Groups For Each objUserGroup in colUserGroups strGroups = strGroups & objUserGroup.CN & "|" GetNested(objUserGroup) Next strUserGroups = strGroups strGroups = "" For Each objCompGroup in colCompGroups strGroups = strGroups & objCompGroup.CN & "|" GetNested(objCompGroup) Next strCompGroups = strGroups strGroups = "" End Sub Function GetNested(objGroup) On Error Resume Next colMembers = objGroup.GetEx("memberOf") For Each strMember in colMembers strPath = "LDAP://" & strMember Set objNestedGroup = GetObject(strPath) strGroups = strGroups & objNestedGroup.CN & "|" GetNested(objNestedGroup) Next End Function Sub Printers Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") If Len(strCompName) < 5 Then strExpectedPrtName = "" Else Position = InStr(5, StrCompName, "-") - 1 If Position < 0 Then Position = 5 strExpectedPrtName = LCase(Left(strCompName, Position)) intCompNumber = Right(strCompName,2) End If If InStr(LCase(strCompPath), "BuildingA") Then strPrintServer = "\\BldA-PrtSrv01\" objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & "BldA-Copier" objNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter strPrintServer & "BldA-Copier" ElseIf InStr(LCase(strCompPath), "BuildingB") Then strPrintServer = "\\BldB-PrtSrv01\" objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & "BldB-Copier" If InStr(LCase(strUserGroups), "staff") Then objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & "BldB-OfficeCopier" objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & "BldB-MediaCopy" End If If InStr(LCase(strUserGroups), "student") Then objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & "BldB-LibPrt01" objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & "BldB-LibPrt02" End If End If On Error Resume Next objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection strPrintServer & strExpectedPrtName If Err.Number <> 0 Then 'Nothing to see here folks, move along. Exit Sub Else objNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter strPrintServer & strExpectedPrtName End If End Sub

I'm still using VB scripts for printer deployment as well. All of our machines are tightly named and organized in AD so I have the login script hand out printers based on name and computer object LDAP paths. It works so well I don't really see a reason to replace it.

I figured it out. On the install CD there is a number of folders and I originally went for the Windows folder in the root. Under that there is a separate folder containing MSI files for each of the different pieces of software. So I plucked out the Common Platform, Notebook, and Product Drivers MSI files and worked with those. The SMART Install Manager would open each one and let me create transform files for the install no problem. It's just when trying to use the Notebook MSI with one it wouldn't auto activate. It would install like it should with all the custom settings intact, just no activation. So further up in this thread I read there was an all inclusive MSI that contained everything instead of it being broken down into separate ones for each piece. I also found it on the disc under \Administrators\Windows\Education Software Install. When I used that with the Install Manager everything worked including activation.

For the life of me I cannot get this infernal software to activate silently. I used the SMART Install Manager to generate an MSI for the Notebook software and everything works with the exception of the product key; it just seemingly ignores it. If I open the MST in Orca it clearly creates a new row in the property table named ISX_SERIALNUM with the value being the code I gave it. The ACTIVATE_LICENSE property is also set to 1. But after installing it when I open it up the activation dialog will open and won't even have the key in it. So I moved on to trying to activate via the command line and it doesn't work either. It doesn't matter what argument I pass to the activator, it just quits without error as soon as I run it. I'm using this syntax: "c:\Program Files\Common Files\SMART Technologies\SMART Product Update\activationwizard.exe" --puid clash_notebook --m=4 --v=1 --a --pk xx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx -proxy=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080 This is the exact syntax as to what is called out for in the deployment guide. I'm positive I'm using the correct key too since it will activate correctly with it if I use GUI. I'm about ready to say forget it and go back to 10x. Any ideas guys?

Are you using Office 2010 by chance? Word has some pretty powerful collaboration tools built right in that would do exactly what you're looking for.

You don't necessarily have to segregate computer objects into separate organizational units to do this. Look into WMI filters for you group policy objects. Anything that can be queried through WMI can be used to filter which machines get what policy. AD Site can also be queried through WMI.

Try capturing it by hand and importing it into the WDS server through the console. PXE boot into the capture setup again, and when it comes up press shift-F10 to bring up a console window. Manually map a drive to a share that has enough space to store the image and do the capture using imagex. imagex /capture d: "image filename" "image description"

A lot of our staff use drop boxes pretty heavily for student assignments. A drop box is pretty much a share that looks somewhat like this: -Building 01 -Staff Member A +Drop Off +Pickup +Staff Member B +Staff Member C +Staff Member D +Building 02 Every staff member of a particular building (or group) will have a folder on a share named by their last name, and under said staff name will be two addition folders. One for students to pickup assignments, and the other for them to drop off, or turn finished assignments in. To keep the folder structure intact and to keep students from sharing their assignments with others, file level permissions are set. This is where this gets a bit goofy... For this to work correctly, you're going to need two security groups: one for building level staff, and a second for the students (ours are done by grade level). At the root of the building folder both security groups have read and execute to allow them to traverse the folder structure. At the pickup level, the specific teacher will have Read/Write on sub folders and files only so they can manage files without being able to delete the pickup folder itself. The drop off folder though is a bit more intricate. We can't allow students read and list to this or they'll be able open other student's completed assignments, and since the students group has read/execute at the building level, we'll need to block inheritance on this folder. Once inheritance is blocked, the students group is given create files/write data only. Teachers are given the same permissions as on the pickup folder: RW on sub folders and files only. Now all the students can do is blindly save files to this folder. That's pretty much the gist of drop off and pickup folders, but creating these by hand would be an enormous time sink, so I wrote a VB script that will handle bulk creation. This script will pull teacher names from an OU in Active Directly, and will pass off permission settings to icacls. All you have to do is create a fresh building folder on a share somewhere, edit the strings at the top of the script and let it go. Cheers! strLDAPPath = "LDAP://OU=BuildingA,OU=Staff,OU=Organization,DC=sampledomain,DC=com" strUNCPath = "\\server\Dropbox\BuildingA\" strTeacherGroup = "BuildingA_Staff" strStudentGroup = "BuildingA_Students" Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set objContainer = GetObject(strLDAPPath) objContainer.Filter = Array("user") objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strUNCPath & Chr(32) & "/grant" & Chr(32) & strTeacherGroup & ":(OI)(CI)RX") WScript.Sleep 100 objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strUNCPath & Chr(32) & "/grant" & Chr(32) & strStudentGroup & ":(OI)(CI)RX") For Each User in objContainer strUser = User.SAMAccountName strFullPath = strUNCPath & strUser On Error Resume Next Set objFolder = objFSO.CreateFolder(strFullPath) If Err.Number <> 0 Then strLog = strLog & strUser & Chr(58) & Chr(32) & Err.Description & Chr(13) Else Set objFolder = objFSO.CreateFolder(strFullPath & "\Pickup") Set objFolder = objFSO.CreateFolder(strFullPath & "\DropOff") objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strFullPath & "\DropOff" & Chr(32) & "/inheritance:d") wscript.sleep 400 objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strFullPath & "\DropOff" & Chr(32) & "/remove:g" & Chr(32) & strStudentGroup) wscript.sleep 400 objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strFullPath & "\DropOff" & Chr(32) & "/grant" & Chr(32) & strStudentGroup & ":(OI)(CI)(WD)") wscript.sleep 100 objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strFullPath & "\Pickup" & Chr(32) & "/grant" & Chr(32) & strUser & ":(OI)(CI)(WD,AD,DC,X,RA,RD,REA)") wscript.sleep 400 objRun = objShell.Run("icacls" & Chr(32) & strFullPath & "\DropOff" & Chr(32) & "/grant" & Chr(32) & strUser & ":(OI)(CI)(WD,AD,DC,X,RA,RD,REA)") End If WScript.Sleep 100 Next 'msgbox strLog