cheeseslice

I dont suppose anyone would have an example they could post here? I just wanted an idea of what schools focus on.

I'm wondering should I extend the lease time from 8 days to 21 days, do you think that might make a difference?

neither of these worked, I had to restart the dhcp services and then ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew just wondering what caused this to happen to just a couple of machines, don't want to be dealing with this every morning.

Hi, 2008 server has gone live and for some reason I am getting an error message on a couple of the machines stating that no logon server is available. logging in with my cached password it is coming up as connected to an unidentified network and it is not getting an ip address from the server. resetting the dhcp server and renewing the ip on the client machines works but I'm wondering why this only happened to a couple of the machines and how do I prevent this from happening again.

It seems like an eternity when I was watching it today. The thing is that I had 3 vmware clients connecting and logging to this server for the past couple of weeks and they were only taking maybe 15 seconds to log in. I'm wondering if the spec of the machines might have something to do with it, they are running celerons with 2gb ram. The time it takes to test each policy is what is killing me, I have to test with a student, then log off and on with admin, force gpupdate and reboot the machine. The changes don't seem to take until I do this.

I know this sounds stupid but I dont have a copy of the policy, I for got to bring it with me. I had created one policy that tweaked every setting I thought students would play with, taskbar, toolbars etc etc. I suppose I am asking what everyone else does, is it good enough to apply a software restriction and some general policies to block the obvious like control panel or windows update? the policy I set must have 60 or 70 settings in it, I cant test each one. had originally thought it was either dns problem or folder redirection but user with no policies logs on in seconds.

I'm guessing there aren't too many people about on a Saturday night but I have a problem that I need to fix by monday morning and I'm hoping someone is as sad as me. I have just moved my 2008r2 server from my test network where it worked perfectly with my virtual client machines, now that I have it installed something is wrong. This is the first time I have set up a server for an education environment and I was very conscious of getting the group policies right to lock the machines but it is taking about 45seconds for any account to log on. If I disable my policy it drops to about 7 secs. I thought it was maybe the folder redirection policy but I disabled it and it made no difference. So the policy causing the problems basically contains every tweak I could think of to stop students from wrecking the machines. Can anyone give me some advice on what they do. I have to get this sorted tomorrow, client machines are windows 7. Thanks

forget about this question, i have fixed it. gpo was the problem.

I have edited this question now that the caffeine levels have been topped up. server is 2008 r2, clients are windows 7 pro. for some reason I can only log into the domain if i use pre-windows 2000 logon details. could anyone suggest what i have done wrong?

updates would be for windows 7 and office. How bad an idea would it be to set each workstations automatic updates, I know that would increase the bandwidth and there isn't any central control as such but it would get me around the problem of no space.

If I was going to go for wsus I would be installing the bare minimum but the other problem that I have is the server only as 2x250gb drives in raid 1 (software) This is partition in half for OS and users Data & shares. I'm nearly tempted to turn automatic updating off all together, just have the server and workstations stay as they are.

Thanks for the quick replies, I have never set up a network for a server for this sort of environment before so I'm not quite sure what the norm is. This will seem a bit off topic but how do you deal with updates to your workstations? do you use wsus? The reason I ask is because this network is tiny, one server 20 workstations. I'm afraid wsus would kill the server but I'm not sure, it was suggested that the IT teacher in the room should have rights so that they can do updates (because this is how it has been done before) but I didn't think that was a particularly smart idea. Once I have the server installed I will only be back if something breaks, hopefully remotely. They don't have any technical support on site.

Hi, I'm in the process of making up some group policies and the AD and I'm wondering the structure you would use for teachers that would also be administrators, like IT teachers for example. At the minute I have: Managed -Computers -Groups -Staff -Students --Year2010 --Year2011 The problem I have is that I have been told they want the workstation totally restricted for both students and staff, except for one or two ICT teachers. So I'm just wondering how best to arrange this for a school environment, do you just leave the teachers with admin rights in their own ou with a separate group policy?

[quote=simpsonj; As a heads up, you might want to ensure that Libraries are dealt with in any way you see fit. The reason being is that if the Redirection fails, they will still have a My Documents, but it will be the C:\Users\Public\ My Docs, leading kids to save onto C: and thus it won't be there when they log back in. I use a mandatory profile to get around this issue, but if you're using individual profiles you might want to look into an alternative... how do you deal with libraries, what would you suggest? I have created a few test users with home directories and I am setting the group policy to redirect the documents folder to the home folder, is it best to redirect the rest of the folders too? or can is there a way to disable everything else and have the user only save to the documents folder in windows 7?

I have a quick question. Do you set up exclusive rights for each of the folders being redirected in the group policy? I have been reading a bit and there seem to be people complaining that if you keep this ticked then admins can't access the folders but if I dont give the user exclusive rights then everyone can access their folders.

mrbios, have you set up home folders in AD and then used folder redirection? i'm in the process of setting up a new server at the minute, windows7 & 2008 r2. First time using windows 7 clients on a 2008 server and finding information about roaming profiles and folder redirection a bit conflicting. do you allow ict staff to install software? I have been asked to pretty much lock down everything for students and staff so I'm thinking that roaming profiles would not be needed.

Do you use roaming profiles as well? I'm trying to work out if they are worthwhile or not in a school environment. I have been asked to create a group policy that locks down as much as possible. Though I think that it is nearly impossible to do this without some sort of third party software.

You are right, there is no need for me to do that, I'll change that now. Am I right in saying that I don't have to stipulate a home folder if I am going to use a folder redirection gpo? With folder redirection, will I have to make a policy for each intake year so that the redirection goes to the appropriate subfolder?

thanks for the quick reply. I'm having a look at the link you gave me now. What permissions do I have to set on my share work$?

Hi, I am setting up a new server 2008 r2 with windows 7 clients and I'm looking for a bit of advice on how best to bulk add students and teachers and assign them their home folders. This is my first time setting up a 2008 r2 server and I'm getting a bit confused. I have set up a shared folder d:\work$ and within this I have subfolders for students and staff which is then divided again into year groups e.g. d:\work$\students\2011\ I want to create the 200 users in ad, create a folder for each of them under 2011 folder, set up folder redirection and roaming profiles. What is the best way to go about this? Should I be scripting everything, the adding users, creating folders and setting rights to the folders? or should I just be using a script to add the users to AD and using gpo to do everything else? Thanks

I have taken your advice and purchased that book. To be honest with you this is my first attempt at deploying both windows 7 and 2008 r2, everything has been xp before this and I have stayed clear of vista totally, so I'll take all the help I can get. I'm actually thinking that it might be worth studying for the mcts windows 7 certificate just to make myself aware of some of the new features. I am a bit paranoid about setting this up right so at the minute I have the server set up in a test lab as well as a virtual lab set up for me to tinker with. I was actually playing about with these group policies earlier and was thinking of blocking everything, maybe I should have a read at chapter 15 before I do any more! I'm going to have a look at all your links now, thanks for all of your help. More than likely I'll be back again tomorrow to torture everyone a bit more. Thanks again.

Before I say anything else: Your current thoughts on how to do this are exactly what I would do. However in this case there are some unknowns that might shape the best approach. As far as I am aware they are going to have around 150 students a year that are going to be taking the courses that will be run on these computers. Their initial requirements were a system that would keep all users work secure and independent, the work would be backed up, users could log onto any machine, there would be shared folders where templates could be stored and accessed by staff and students. Eventually they plan on making use of sharepoint but that is a bit away. Email is provided by an online company so they will never need exchange. Each student will only be using word and excel documents so I have been asked to set a quota of 100mb for each student's user area. I am assuming that as students leave their accounts will be backed up and deleted to free up space. The server is only running 2x250gb in raid 1 so they don't have a lot to spare. I have partitioned this in half, for os and data. I have never heard of imageX before, I am going to have do some reading on this. Have you used it? What I would like to do is create an image to the local hard drive of each machine once I have the entire network configured and working, that should speed things up dramatically when a machine becomes corrupt. I have been doing a bit of reading this afternoon on using windows 7 upgrade media to do a clean install, apparently it is possible to do with a few registry hacks but I don't know how easy it would be to do using wds. I'll have to see the state of the machines before I make any decisions. My aim is to have as much as possible configured on the server before I arrive to minimize the amount of time I am going to spend on site. I much prefer working without and audience looking at their watches!

Sorry to keep adding questions on to this thread but I forgot to ask something about folder redirection. so I have a file and ad structure that looks like this: users -staff -students -2012 -2011 I thought it best to do this so that students could easily be removed after they leave. Is it best to have it like this and then have a separate group policy for each year to set the folder redirection or is there an easy way to have it automatically recognise the structure. At the minute the only way I can see would be to set it for each year group e.g. \\dc01\studentwork$\2011\%username%\

I'll have to check and see exactly what it is that they have purchased. If I can I will do a fresh install it would probably make things easier in the long run. superfletch, I had a look at that fogproject, thanks. I had thought about logmein, especially as it will allow me to use my iphone if something simple needs checked while I am out and about. I have enquired about a static ip and their isp wants £5 a month so I'll have to give them that choice. I have been scouring forums for easy maintenance options and I have read a few people talking about "rm boot manager" it allows you to create an image on each workstation that can then be restored from a boot manager menu. Would anyone know of a free alternative to this? Having this would make things far easier, short of the hard drive failing they could restore a machine very quickly without having to go near the server.

sted, can I just clarify what you are saying. I could download a windows 7 trial, distribute that using wds. then distribute the 7 pro upgrade using wds too? or can I download a windows 7 trial and just use the upgrade key to activate it? As far as assigning software using policies, do you think it would be worthwhile on such a small network? from what I understand of it the most they will do once everything is up and running is maybe update java and flash from time to time. I meant to ask about wsus too. I have read that it's a bad idea to run wsus on a dc and this server isn't exactly high end. Would it be best to just set automatic updates indvidually on the machines? Thanks again for all the replies