robjduk

I have password policy and firewall policy for thinks like AV and SIMS in my default domain policy. I tend to leave it alone.

See I think being a good network manager in a school is about offering the latest developments of technology into the classroom. The way I see it is if a student goes and buys a computer in a shop then the school should reflect it. Like it or not, Win 8 is how you use a computer in 2014 and would hate my students to be on the back foot. Also it didn't help when I went on a training course a couple of years ago with one of those XP and open office till I die types. Full Windows 8 deployment here and never looked back. Login times are up and issues are down. Working on my 8.1 deployment for summer now and its looking good. Only problems we ever really had was customising that start screen on the original 8 but nothing a few file copies couldn't fix. Love it. Lets be honest, the tech companies know what we want long before we do and I have given in complaining about it as the world moves forward without you otherwise.

I seem to remember you can put upto Windows 8 ADMX files into 2008R2 however 8.1 just spat them out so I suggest 2012R2 DC's (lots of other benefits too. Happy with our new DC's). May be worth doing that with an older and plain non 8.1 version of 8 but from memory I don't think there is too much to get excited about in there unless you are aiming for "under the bonnet" improvements. In my opinion the main trick to Windows 8.1 is customising the start screen which is best done via GPO which you cant do because the DC's are holding you back. I have never really played with a DC enough to confidently tell you the best way but I would suggest replacing them with 2012R2 before you get more serious into 8 / 8.1 however if you are confident either upgrading them yourself or upgrading the sites schematics then go for it as customising the start screen via XML is the main group policy you will be gaining access too and although there are other ways, they aint pretty in my experience. As for the here and now, I would expect any Windows 7 policies you have aiming at your test machine will work however with regard to your original point of the domain account not showing... maybe check to see if there is an WMI filter on any group policy (doubtful but caught me out a while back. WMI filters on GPO's will be your best friend when testing 8 on a 7 network). Not sure if any of that makes sense as I am very full of coffee at the moment but hope so.

yeah I have it working here as a .bat however point it towards a network share rather than a DC location... cscript "\\file location here\pinitem.vbs" /item:"c:\Windows\Explorer.exe" /taskbar works well but would love to get it to not show up when it runs. Tried /S and such but it stops the script working. Guess that is for another post on another day though.

I believe you have to have 2012 DC's to allow for the latest group policies however someone on EG told me I could have got away with just upgrading my domain schematic to 2012 level but having a virtual instance on your desktop should be just fine. VMWare here for testing and going well.

We looked at Xirrus and if I were in charge at the time we may have very well gone with them (but glad we have Ruckus). To me instead of Ruckus's approach of less radios but better detection, the Xirrus solution just bombarded its AP's with radios. The main mistake I think they made is during their presentation they told us how the US military had just bought loads of Xirrus APs.... we were quite impressed until later in the demo the guy let slip that a lot of their higher ups were ex US military so basically just got contracts from their friends in my opinion.

worked perfectly. Thanks all

I have 2010 and will give that a go thanks but would be nice to see who is doing it at the moment. Also nice to meet another Rob D on the internet

thank you for that. It is doing the trick but wonder if you can point it at users in a certain OU or exchange database? Thanks again

Hello all, I wonder if anyone knows of a way to check and see if a user has an automated forwarder set on their mailbox which points to an external address without signing into their account? Its come to our attention that some staff may have this setup as practice and need to sort it out asap. Thanks all

As prophesised...... HP 3015dn

TOR....... (giggles to self)

wow your nice. Any unknown device such as a chromebook or personal device I have set to 30 minutes elevated time!

It does not join the domain. It completes the imaging, does it's getting ready thing but upon the first login on a physical machine it claims wont log in and the problem seems to be it has not changed the default admin account to my customised one although on a VM it works perfectly. At this rate I may just keep "Administrator" as the default name but its admitting defeat which I don't want to do (not admitting defeat is about 25% the reason I am deploying 8.1 to begin with tbh).

This is 50% cry for help and 50% venting... I have an 8.1 build which is a thing of total beauty. Builds perfectly on my VMWare workstation however the twist in the tale is when I install it on a physical machine, I hit an issue where it claims it does not know what the default administrator password is even though it is set correctly when I make the task sequence and have also amended in the unattended.xml . As I say, Virtual machine deploys like it was made by the heavens but physical just fails at this point. (seems to be before the domain recovery). Any suggestions at all? I seem to remember my last tech having the same issue last year and think he filled the TS with restarts to cure it. Thanks all

thanks for the offer but I have found my server level fix is working surprisingly well! Thanks anyway though

another idea is if you run Exchange with OWA they can change it in that (think its exchange 2010 SP2 onwards)

after fighting these thoughts I have come to the conclusion I am just making my day harder than it should be by insisting on group policy. Could anyone direct me to a good resource for scripting printers please? Ta

ah i see. sorry

Im more a VMWare guy but I would expect there would be a virtual bios where you can change the boot order.

if it is virtualised I can not praise Veeam enough. I don't use tape backups anymore however I am fairly sure they added this function a little while ago.

You will want to get ahold of this... Internet Explorer Administration Kit You set your options and it creates you a nice, customised MSI for your network.

sounds good thanks. Just on a research mission at the moment but all help is very welcome. Thanks

Morning all, Can someone tell me in an easy to understand manor what my options are for replacing our ISA 2006 server with a modern solution are please? I don't have an SCCM and although I am aware of TMG, I feel I need a current and up to date product. Some AV solutions seem to have solutions for this but they seem really expensive. All I have it for is pointing external addresses to a few internal servers (moodle for example) and one LDAP rule so don't need anything too impressive. It may not be until later in the year but I cant go on much longer with such an old piece of software. Thanks all

I had to open it up for my IT teacher's coding class although I work in quite a nice school where the students tend not to bugger about with things.