tango

Hi , any idea of the file thats needed and the shortcut ? Thanks

Hi disk, Thanks for the great reply. Currently we use MDT to build the image using a suspend task to pause it. At that point we run all of the software , entering any license details , save locations etc. We then resume the task sequence and let MDT capture it to WIM. We then import the WIM into SCCM and deploy the images that way. We then create a local user (lets say called "profile") with admin rights on a PC in the lab , log on to that and run any software that was added to SCCM task sequence on top of WIM. We then log on with a domain admin account and run a script that copies the "profile" to a shared folder on a server. After that we change permissions on registry by mounting the ntuser.dat on the server and then rename to ntuser.man We then configure a group policy to "set roaming profile path for all users logging onto this computer" to point to the share on the server. We've also tried copying the profile from the server to default on each machine. Can you give me a bit more info on how you are capturing the profile and the USMT steps please ? Thanks in advance. Tango

Hi folks, We've been getting complaints/comments about slow login times in our student labs. Labs contain quite a bit of software (Adobe CC , Office 2016 , Autodesk , Visual Studio etc etc). In general we create a local account , log on and run/configure all the programs before capturing that profile as the "default" mandatory one which works well but is large and slow. I've seen many posts with amazing logon times , can anyone share their secrets and give me advice on how they create profiles for labs , keeping them small and with quick logons please ? Thanks in advance. Tango

Thanks. Looks like I'm going to have to do an upgrade task sequence then

Hi, I understand that "files on demand" requires 1709+ , is this an OS limitation or is it just the version of OneDrive that is installed on 1709+ ? Basically if I have 1703 PCs , can I update the OneDrive client to support "files on demand" ? I'm guessing I'd have to go down the road of a per user SCCM deployment if this is the case ? Or is my only option to go to 1709+ ? Management want students to use it in the labs and while most labs are 1709 I still have around 300 PCs with 1703 which for various reasons weren't upgraded last summer. Thanks, tango

Hi , I'll give it a go with the DesktopApplicationID and let you know how I get on. The "Log Off PC" is a shortcut to "C:\Windows\System32\logoff.exe" I noticed the Office problem , overall I'm not too worried about it at the moment , I'll correct that before the final version but thanks for the pointers. Cheers, tango

Hi folks, I'm having problems with only some of the groups displaying in the start layout. What I've done - set up the menu on PC , exported it then altered the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ paths to %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ copied the .lnk & .website files to c:\programdata\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs on other test PC The LayoutModification.xml was added to the SCCM task sequence to import it with this command "powershell.exe Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath LayoutModification.xml -MountPath $env:SystemDrive" On the test PC I can see the correct LayoutModification.xml in c:\users\default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\ folder. When I log on with a student account I only see So I'm missing the University , Logoff & New Group - Department 1 groups totally. Any ideas where I'm going wrong with this one please ? Its obviously using the new xml as Office & Web Browser groups are correct. Thanks in advance, tango LayoutModification.txt

How do you manage to get your default profile down to 165 Mb ? We create a gold image using MDT then deploy with SCCM and set copyprofile=true in unattend.xml We use 1 profile per lab , created on 1 PC , copied to server then scripted to copy round each PC as the Default User profile. Most them are 400 or 500 Mb plus and logging on takes much longer than 50 seconds. I'd love to eventually be able to get the whole process running much quicker & smoothly for students & staff. Any advice or guides etc welcome. Thanks in advance tango

Hi, For previous versions of Windows we've always used mandatory profiles - 1 per lab and set via GPO. We normally log on with a local admin account , run all of the software , configure any tweaks to settings (eg default save dir etc) then log off and with another account copy the profile to network , regedit and make it mandatory (as well as deleting local & locallow folders). With Windows 10 mandatory profiles seem to be causing problems with search & start button unless we leave appdata\local and locallow in the profile which makes them huge. Just wondering if anyone has any guidance on using GPO/GPP instead of mandatory profiles. If using GPP etc how do you know which files from the profile are actually needed and which would be recreated ? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated. Just trying to get my head around the GPO/GPP approach. Typical software includes Android Studio , Eclipse , Office , SPSS , Visual Studio etc Thanks in advance, tango

I'd love to say it was full of .tmp files etc but as you can see its config settings etc for all of the apps (as much as I can see) Not sure what I can delete & keep the software configured. Gamemaker in appdata is large but its the only way it runs with the lite version. Thanks, tango

Hi folks, I've seen various posts about the size of mandatory profiles and can't understand how they can be so small. Most of my profiles (1 per lab) are at least 100Mb and thats after removing appdata\low & appdata\locallow. We do have quite a bit of software installed on the image (SPSS , Office , Audacity etc etc) What we do is image the machine , log in as a newly created local admin user , run all software & configure it , log in as admin & copy the profile to the fileserver. I then delete low & locallow , mount the ntuser.dat & remove perms for the account used to create profile & give full control to everyone , unmount & change to ntuser.man Is there anything else I should be doing ? Any advice on how to reduce the size of the profile would be much appreciated too. Thanks in advance tango

Hi, I'm currently investigating alternatives to Quest ActiveRoles for managing our AD environment of approx 30000 accounts. Basically for auditing , web front end , scripting of account creation , workflows for approval , dynamic groups based on attributes and ideally self service password reset. Just wondering if anyone had any recommendations ? Softerra Adaxes looks promising but I've haven't delved too deep just yet. Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks tango

Hi we've recently moved our fileserver onto Windows 2008 R2 and since we have , creating a folder now takes around 5 minutes. If you access the folders over the network (from Win 7) then the folder creates instantly as you would normally expect. I've run process monitor etc and dont notice anything unusual, Just wondering if anyone else had any ideas ? TIA

Hi folks, Having a problem getting rid of the message "microsoft visual studio is configuring the environment for first time use. This might take a few minutes." I've googled and found a solution for VS 2005 which involves changing Tools , Options , Import/export to a location other than in the profile but I've already got it set to a location inside VS folder on C drive. What I'm trying to achieve is to alter the default user profile so that when a student logs on and runs VS 2008 the message doesn't appear - and its doing my head in Any help/ideas would be most welcome Thanks.

Nope no wireless, static ips with no conflicts either. If I log on locally I can ping the server no problem , just cant find the tree. I'd be happier if it just could never find the tree then at least I'd know there was a problem , its the fact it works sometimes and sometimes not that is bothering me so much.

Hi folks, Intermittent problem here , Novell 6 and client 4.91 SP3. It only seems to happen on Dell GX520s for some reason so far which have been freshly upgraded to XP. One minute everything is fine , can log on no problem , next cant find tree , log on locally check settings , log back out , 50/50 chance of it working or not. I'm not a Novell person so this is doing my head in. Any ideas ? I'm pondering redoing the XP image just so I can rule that out of the equation as images for other models seem okay. Just wondered if anyone else has come across this before ? Thanks tango

Hi ZeroHour, I'd certainly be interested in testing the script

Sorry , was typing that off the top of my head , just checked the batch file were have for machine start up and its :- %windir%\delprof /q /i /d:0 Obviously we have delprof.exe copied to the windows dir on each PC. We also run it manually on each PC when doing a general tidy up in case the PC hasnt been rebooted for a while. I work in a Uni so there can be perhaps 20 students logging on to a PC each day so they can build up over a few days if the PC hasnt been rebooted. I have scripts to WOL all the PCs and then using psshutdown from Sysinternals pstools reboot them all , and I try to do this every so often early in the morning when nobody is logged on.

You can use delprof.exe from Microsoft to remove profiles, we have it configured via group policy to run at machine startup. Just a batch file with delprof /Q /D:1 in it. Hope that helps.

Hi folks, Just wondering if anyone uses any , hopefully free , software/scripts/whatever for logging how long machines are used for. Something similar to LabStats software but hopefully free Something with nice graphs and pictures for management would be perfect. It would be used to monitor around 400 PCs in the first instance then probably another 400 or 500 on top of that. Thanks in advance.