jonny_valentine

ARGH!!! N0o0o0o0o0000oooooo go away!

I had same prob in several schools, heres what i did: remove all network card utilites, install xp sp2.. let windows manage the wireless, and all should be fixed, you may find you will have to login a couple of times to get it to keep the wep key there, make sure the blox that says, 'the key is provided for me' is unticked.

heheh, it should be enabled! Force classic start menu>enabled

Sounds good.. i would do it but i dont know how to do all the fancy lines n stuff

I see, thats fair enough, wasnt sure you see

Russ: you know im right ;p Mark: didnt mean to cause a fuss, sorry. I've edited the wiki myself, i think maybe the top part should be completely removed and put each in its respective subject? That way there arent any repeats, i duno. Imo, it would be better to know which catagory each came under. (ps. 2 times not 4 ) Geoff: nice one, im off to waterstones!

projector1: I dont know off hand of any websites that go through all the flaws in GPO's, i could post some impero logs of a few pupils' computer activity showing step by step, how they bypass certain policies, but someone would probably moan saying im advertising. One quick simple hak (i thought was an old & obvious one) that you all may wanna try is, goto m$ word, write something, right click and add hyperlink, type c: and click ok. Then follow the link in word to the c: drive. There may be a policy to stop this but from the ones ive got in place at one school, you wouldnt think the above could be done, since the c: drive is hidden and so on, but it does work. The wiki had links on to software that can stop this kind of thing, but someone called mark, kindly removed the links because it was on there twice, once under internet security/monitoring and once under desktop security.. this is obviously not allowed even though the software does cover both.. :?

Yes, but it still technically sets the wallpaper when they do that, so it will show up upon logging on/off. My kids got really crafty and, using that knowledge, found a really nice way around it... The use task manager to end explorer.exe and re-run it a few times. After that it somehow braks the active desktop, and no desktop shows, just a white error screen. At this point, anything you set as your desktop stays your desktop =/ After this i finally cracked down and disabled task manager, but they just went online and found a proprietary version of the task manager and ran it from there USB drives. I still havn't found a way to stop this from happening... I must hand it to them though, these kids are rather bright and resourceful, i simply wish they'd use there intelect to go places and do things rather than focus on getting around stupid things like default backgrounds. hehe, kids are damn clever sometimes.. anyway, you should look up reg.exe and reg.ini to set permissions on the control panel registry key for local user. This works for me, since they dont have access rights to change the background. GPO's are bypassable in oh so many ways.

There are many flaws in GP's and ways to bypass them. Looking in the logs i can see all sorts of very hand methods to bypass GP security; the pupils are very annoying. Anyway, the answer is to either ditch office like someone mentioned, or get another security tool, see wicky for details on apps for this purpose. website: Security tools on the wicky! Some of these are likely to help.

hmm, yes i had exactly this.. its strange that the above proc doesnt work. You must ensure that you login as admin to see all files that need syncing by all users, then delete the ones for that server. It is odd if that doesnt work. Pitty I cant come and have a look If the server still exists, then you could try creating the root folder that they are trying to sync to, and give everyone full permission to it, then when it tries to sync they will be able to, then delete the files from the server. We had a server go down, so I had the same unavailable error. I definately deleted the files, removed the server from the list of servers to sync to, and also added an exclusion to make sure.

Some network cards do not initialise until the log on screen appears, this messes startup scripts up, but wont affect logon scripts, i even have this at one school on winXP sp2, not even wireless cards. Mark, surely your map network drive is in the logon script? Anyway, you can simply try: On Error Resume Next Dim NetDrives Dim i Set NetDrives = WSHNetwork.EnumNetworkDrives If NetDrives.Count <> 0 Then For i = 0 To NetDrives.Count - 1 WSHNetwork.RemoveNetworkDrive NetDrives(i) Next End If That should remove your network drives. You could even check for just the P: drive and remove that only. if not then try : CreateObject("WScript.Shell").Run "net.exe use P:" & " /delete", 0, True WScript.Sleep 250 This will delete the mapping first jon

Mark, It just so happens that the same problem has happened to me last week. I fixed it by doing a couple of things... Firstly, you must log onto the teachers laptop/pc as an admin, since they will see ALL files that are trying to sync from ALL users. Then, click the 'view files' button. Sort by server name and delete all the files you dont want to sync. Then in settings somewhere, there is i think an advanced button, which allows you to say which servers to sync to. untick the appropriate servers. Then perform a sync as admin. All the above is by memory so sorry if its slightly wrong words, but im sure you know where i mean to look. This should sort it. Jon

Rename the default user profile, then export the good profile into the documents and settings folder, and rename it to default user (or just export it as 'default user').

I was just trying to give examples of things that Ranger/Impero does that cant be achieved using active directory etc.. and i meant having the whole class on ya screen as thumbnails. And NetSupport .. 4got that 1.. although the product we made is a quarter of the cost wish i could post the url up so u can compare to the big names Sorry Ric.. last 1 ..whats a wiki?

cool.. i'll look into that.

nice one, thanks for that!

Hi there Free444etc.. I think you are right to the most part, but Ranger is a front end to windows, and it does make things a little easier to manage for some people, we all have our own way to do things. Things like changing passwords and creating user accounts etc, yes can be done with active directory and the rest. But what about things like, if a child accesses a website/program that they arent allowed to access.. I dont know about Ranger, but i know the software I helped to create alerts the teacher/you when they access these things.. you cant easily achieve that by other means. How about things like, viewing the screen of the child? I cant think of any easy way to do that either. But like i said, i do agree with you in a sense. I think Ranger's price is so high because they have included so many un-useful features (that may well be accomplished in other ways). thanks, jon

I think mainly because Windows has so many security settings in Group Policies for it, ie6 is very versatile in a domain environment. Firefox is the best browser Ive ever seen, but like i said, not ideal for schools. What if you didnt want them to download files via firefox or not give them access to certain things? Maybe im too new to Firefox, but i havent seen anyway to do the security things in ie6.

No i didnt try that.. good old unix, i will remember that for next time! It will probably work.. Thanks

Ive recently installed firefox.. excellent to be honest, i love it sooo much.. BUT i dont think Firefox is a good solution for schools, i dont know.

You can ask psexec to run in the system account.. in which case the username would not be blank.

I agree with Ric.. the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon contains a 'Shell' Key where you can specify iexplore.exe instead of using GPO's.. not sure what key to use if on Win98. I would go the GPO way and put the pc's in their own container like Ric suggests.. im suggesting the reg key in case you dont want them on the domain.

Alan, You can contact Fairham Community College 0115 9744 400 (Barry Smith).. he successfully removed 5.1 from the network not long ago. Also, Hadden Park High School 0115 9135 211 (Simon Hughes).. who also removed it. I think Hadden had a few uninstall problems, and had to format a few pc's though. Both would be happy to help you. Jon

Kingswood, thanks for the great suggestion. I had tried that, but the file just didnt change. Similar I suppose to Windows 2000 and long filenames (when you have a really long filename in XP, you cant touch it in 2000). I ended up creating a little VB app that deleted the file using API calls, it didnt even ask a question.. just deleted the damn thing Prob is, i cant exactly do this to all the kids work.. but then again its not even being backed up, nor can it be opened, so tuff!! Thnx, Jon

They pay that much for some unknown silly reason, i dont know. Anyway, they dont pay that now, as I redone the whole network and they use something else. Ric_: They had 2 techies as well as CSE.. the techies left because they wanted a normal windows network and it wasnt a user friendly interface. As an extention to the question, a few years ago, me and a friend decided to create our own product to assist techies and teachers who couldnt afford Ranger and CSE.. im not advertising it, but it does all the same stuff (the useful bits) and costs less than the yearly maintenance of the bigger names. If you want to give it a go NetMan, theres a 30-day trial which you can install and uninstall if you dont like it. PM me for info.