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Hey guys, Need some advice on how to prevent Alt+F4 from being pressed to exit Windows Internet Explorer 7 when running in Kiosk mode [iexplore.exe -k]. I've tried googling for the last 2 days, and researching a solution, but the only thing I can find is people wanting to get ALT+F4 stopped in their own program when using "forms". I'm not designing a program, I just want to stop ALT+F4 from being pressed to close windows ANY time in windows. I finally got the windows key disabled with a simple registry hack, but it doesn't appear to be that simple with ALT+F4. If anyone has any advice I'd really appreciate it. Working on building a library Kiosk, and it's still sitting in my office here on the work bench as I'm trying to make it absolutely perfect and tamperproof, but that's the one way I can always get around it. Also, do you know if there's some way I can edit the hosts file or something, or play with the Windows Internet Explorer security settings to make ANY address typed, for example, google.ca or msn.com, go to the library homepage instead? As in, the browser will only view that site and nothing else? If not that's ok, I was just going to remove the default gateway from the machine and give it a static IP so it can only view internal sites. That's just a bonus question The real issue is just ALT+F4, because if the window is closed, they're left with a blank desktop with no permissions, even hitting the power button won't shut the machine down, you have no choice but to hold the power button and kill it. Thanks!

Hey everyone, We run a piece of software here that interfaces with our student management software. We use SASI, a system by Pearson. We also use ParentConnect, a component that allows parents to connect to a website and view information about their students attendance, grades, etc. So what I did, was set up the website and configured it using a self assigned SSL certificate. Worked great, however you all know what happens next. Over 9000 parents phoning the school saying "hey we can't connect to the site we get a message saying it's unsafe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111oneoneone". So being the nice guy I am, instead of asking them all to "continue", I buy an SSL certificate through GoDaddy.com. Once I received the certificate I began installation, however the website now shows Data Transfer Interrupted. The site appends HTTPS to the address, but all I get is Data Transfer Interrupted. Then, I try to go back to the original self assigned certificate, and it does the exact same thing, Data Transfer Interrupted. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks!

That's a good call too, however I don't think it's the Web Filter. We run the Barracuda Web Filter 310, and we would normally get a different page if the connection was blocked. AVG Admin still won't connect to AVG for updates, and the website seems to be working fine from outside. Still very stumped. I've tried restarting the firewall too, we run Smoothwall Express 3.0. EDIT: Wow, so that was it. I uninstalled completely AVG 8 Network Edition, and after restarting the servers after school, everything was back up and running. What a strange issue. I'm still wondering whether or not it was actually caused by the critical security update Microsoft released on Friday October 24th or if it was due to something else, that maybe AVG did with their updates. I'm not sure, but whatever it is I hope it's fixed soon! I haven't tried installing AVG 8 Network Edition yet on the servers, I'm going to do that tonight and see if I'm successful. I don't want to leave them without AntiVirus for too long. The one thing I'm still puzzled about is that if it was AVG that caused the update, even AVG Admin couldn't access the internet for updates. I'm assuming because it's making a connection via HTTP to AVG's main update servers. Anyway, thanks guys for your help! Special thanks to torry_loon for your advice on AVG 8 Network Edition. I'll post back here if I find anything out, and to let you know how the reinstall of AVG 8 went on the 4 affected servers.

AVG also won't update though. One of our servers that's affected is the AVG Admin server, and it can't even pull down updates.

AVG 8 Network Edition

Thanks for the suggestion. Good call, however we don't run a proxy server. We run a web filter in front of the gateway, and the gateway is configured correctly.

Hi everyone, thank you very much for the time you've taken to put in these replies. Unfortunately, I'm still having the same issue on those 4 servers. IPCONFIG /ALL shows nothing out of the ordinary and matches the other servers. The default gateway is set correctly, haha and I'm glad someone else mentioned that, I checked that first cause I've seen it not there before [this was back when the DHCP option for default gateway was an incorrect IP several months ago, easy fix]. Performing NSLOOKUP on a server yielded the same results as if I used a server WITH internet access. I put both command line windows side by side, one background in a remote terminal to another server that DID have internet, and one active on the server that wasn't working with internet, and viewed them side by side. Again, this is all via RDC from my house at the moment, they respond great, they can ping the gateway, and other servers, it's all very confusing. Any other suggestions? Thanks!

Original Title: Half of our servers won't connect to the internet after installing yesterday's update Alright guys. This is wierd. Things have been going great for quite some time, and tonight I figured well, there's an out of band security update that Microsoft is pushing as "pretty darn urgent" in the category listings [k I made that category up], I may as well install this update and get things patched. Like any Patch Tuesday, I roll out microsoft update and pull down the new update on all my servers. Then restart. This is when things get interesting. The servers come back online, and I notice that in the corner of one of them, our antivirus program is showing an exclaimation mark. So I check it out, sure enough, it can't connect. So I figure "lolol how wierd" and open IE to see if the server can get out to the internet. Nope. Nadda. So I immediately think "oh no what have I done" and I check the other servers. 3 of the servers can access the internet, the other 4 can't. I tried shutting down, restarting, removing the update, and nothing can make those other 3 access the internet. I can RDC them perfectly. In fact, I'm at home right now because I couldn't figure it out at school and I was already 4 hours overtime and wanted to get home and have dinner. I'm sitting here at my desk in my house, eating dinner, and connected via RDC to the exact same server remotely that can't access the internet. I'm extremely confused. My only guess is that it has something to do with DNS. However, we have 2 domain controllers. One can access the internet, our secondary. Our primary cannot. Has anyone else had any issues with this recent update? I updated 2 of our windows xp labs with this update, and they're all perfectly fine. No issues. The internal network is still great, and nothing appears to be down. Just those servers can't access the internet. Which takes out our antivirus updates and really, that's it. Thanks so much for any replies. I'm hoping to get it fixed before Monday morning.

Currently Editing...

I'll give that a try, thanks!

Unfortunately it's an older version of ghost and I don't have the installer. If you have an article on how to do it I could try. That involves configuring PXE doesn't it?

Aiight guys. So I took the Universal Network TCP/IP boot disk, made it into a CD, enabled CD-ROM support [still can't believe it took me that long to figure out how to do lol] and then put ghost on it. Needless to say, the login script I made boots up ghost, and the rest of the cd works great in detecting the right driver. However, there's a major problem with the cd and my network. I'll review this the best I can. If I use a traditional ghost floppy, I can pop it into the machine I'm building an image out of, and successfully dump that to a ghost server on the other side of the network, no problem. If I use the universal ghost cd I made, I can also successfully dump the image to the ghost server on the other side of the network, no problem. I use only multicasting. So that works well. So let's try deploying the image. I then pop the floppy in, and it transfers no problem to the client. I then pop the CD in.....and it fails at 89 percent every time. No idea why. So then I thought ok, let's move the client machine over to the same 5 port switch on my desk where I have the multicast machine with all the images. Used the CD, it worked perfectly. No problems. The cd just didn't like the slightly larger network that is the high school. I'm slightly confused. I could never find all the right drivers for my machines around the network, and this universal boot CD was supposed to solve everything. It looks extremely awsome, but it just doesn't complete the multicast. So here are the interesting facts. On the floppy disk, I noticed it ALSO pauses the transfer at 89 percent, HOWEVER, it continues after 15 seconds or so and ends the transfer successfully. The CD on the other hand, stops at 89 percent, and after 15 seconds or so, says "Connection reset by client" on the ghost server. We are using multicast server and ghost version 7. Thanks so much for any advice! It would be a pain to have to get floppies together at the last second.

I'll check out MySysprep, thanks! Also, I found a workaround for the admin password. Apparently, you just leave the administrator password blank in sysprep, and it uses the existing Administrator password. I tested it last night and it worked. Still having lots of issues with imaging though. I'll edit later and update with the issues, too busy right now. Unfortunately it didn't do that for me.

LOL

Thanks to both of you deepsky and gshaw for your help! Question for deepsky, in your code you have :h114 %logonserver%\netlogon\con2prt /cd "\\s1\h114" <<-- this connects the printer h114 that is created on a server [called s1 in this example] and sets it to the default printer %logonserver%\netlogon\con2prt /c "\\s1\h114c" goto end was there a difference between /cd as you put in the first line and /c as you put in the second line? ----------------------------------- Another question, if I'm doing this by OU like in gshaw's suggestion, how do I write an OU that's within another OU? Normally I guess I'd just say "Staff" for example? But what if I have an OU called Library for library computers, and theres 5 staff machines in there, and 30 student machines. How would it work? If the OU Domain Root>Staff Computers>Library, and Domain Root>Student Computers>Library, both contain computers in an OU called Library, within seperate other OU's, how would it know the difference if I just entered "Library" between the two different OU's named identically? Or do I show the path of the OU somehow? Thanks!

Hey guys, Two quick questions here on Sysprep XP SP3 before I get started. First off, I've got all my images just about finished [around 10 images]. I've been tweaking the local Administrator account in hopes that it will copy over to default user profile when I sysprep. If I understand correctly, I don't have to go into Profiles and copy the Administrator profile over to default user. I just have to have the following at the beginning of the sysprep file: ;SetupMgrTag [unattended] OemSkipEula=Yes InstallFilesPath=C:\sysprep\i386 TargetPath=\WINDOWS KeepPageFile=0 UpdateServerProfileDirectory=1 Can someone please varify this? Second question, I don't know if this is possible, but my answer file sysprep.ini that I copy pasted the above from, I've tried to make fully automated. However, I want it to stop part way through, ask me to enter in a computer name, and then continue, just so I don't have to go back in, change the computer name, restart, etc. Do I just click No, do not fully automate the setup, and when sysprep runs the computer for the first time, then accept the EULA and it will fill everything else in automatically and then ask me to enter a computer name, and continue? Currently that section looks like this: [userData] ProductKey=My Product Key Is Entered FullName="School Name" OrgName="District Name" ComputerName=* I'm not sure if I have that right or not. Also, now that I think about it, do any of you ever get the error part way through that says the Administrator password cannot be changed, and then you just click ok to it, and wait till sysprep is done it's thing, and when the computer restarts, the password is there and actually worked perfectly but sysprep just whined that it didn't? Thanks!

:eek::eek:!!!!!!!1111111oneoneone May I please have a copy of that vbs script? That would save me a LOT of time. I've been looking for a way to do this for ages. Map printers based on location. Much appreciated! Thanks!

I personally went to Royal Roads University [where they filmed Batman, the castle place] and took the Microsoft Network Security Analyst program. It was a year long, so I could get done right away and be onto a job such as the one I've landed here with the district. I graduated high school in 2006, and went straight to University, took the program, which gave me all the coursework and specialized training from people high up at Microsoft, IBM, Symantec, etc. It was extremely interesting. Lots of information very fast, but it was an amazing experience and if I ever want to review any of it, I've got all the textbooks [about 25 texts from that year]. I'm now 20 years old and run a high school network of 1000 kids and nearly 300 computers, with the grade 12's only 2 years younger than me. The Microsoft certifications are definitely a good way to go, and good for you for wanting to go right to it after school! That's the best way to go. For me, what helped so much about going to University, is not ONLY do you get the certifications, but you get a Diploma as well and other certification papers from the University itself, and to say you have certifications and Diploma from a University or College means a lot to many people out there because it tells them you were commited to going to a post secondary school and following through with it. The other nice thing about University or College or any institution for that matter instead of just buying the books and studying, is that it keeps you on track. Going somewhere every day, going to school, studying, and coming home at the end of the day. It keeps you on schedule towards your goals and puts a bit of friendly pressure on you saying "hey, you're in school, keep it up and you'll do well!" If you're studying at home, who knows what may get in the way. Relationships, friends, your own hobbies, etc. Best of luck in whatever you decide to do, and great choice in career

I should add that I use Ghost Multicasting. All I need to do is be able to boot with the network drivers, boot ghost, and and join a multicast session on each machine. It's just the "making the floppy have cd rom support" that's the issue. After I have cd rom support, apparently that gives me control to browse the file structure now of the CD, and I can then command my way over to ghost.exe, run it, and join the session [unless I have an autorun file of some sort to load the correct network driver, and then load ghost]. Thanks you guys for all your help so far! EDIT: Oh! I don't know if I mentioned I want the ghost executable ON the cd, not on a network share. So really, I just want to use Nero to use floppy emulation, copy the IMA image of the net boot disk and then be able to have cd rom support so I can browse the cd to access the ghost executable. This last part seems to be the hard part. I can now boot the net boot disk if I burn a copy of the IMA, but I cannot access ghost on the cd. I've tried placing it in the root of the cd, I just can't enable cd rom support, that's literally all I need but I don't have a clue how to do it. EDIT: ..................................................................................................I found the menupref.bat..........shutting up................

I've actually got that disk made, the network boot disk. I was reading up on it. Now that I have the boot disk made though, I've been so busy running around that I'm very confused on what to do next as to make it into a cd with the ghost executable. I heard somewhere that I have to enable CD-ROM support as well, however, I have no idea how that's done, and I can't find anything anywhere on the internet showing how to enable it. Can someone please walk me through the steps now that I have a fresh network boot disk made from the installer from the website [after making the Windows XP Startup Disk] into making it a ghost boot cd? Thanks so much

Hey everyone. Working frantically on the images before school starts on September 2nd, and currently I have a bunch of images ready, and a bunch of systems ready and labs being rebuilt. However, none of the computers have anything on them, time to image! I've got these annoying floppy disks that I usually use, a few for each system type in the school. However many of these machines now don't have floppy drives. I have the floppies, but no drives. So I need to make CD's out of them if possible. So I take the functioning ghost multicast boot disk for, lets say, a Compaq Evo, and pop it into my Windows XP machine. I then open Nero, open the Burning Rom and select the CD-ROM [boot] option, and specify the drive I'm going to use. I enable floppy emulation, and I burn the CD from the floppy disk. Here's the problem. On newer machines, there actually is no problem, Ghost boots great, and it works like a charm and takes 4 seconds to boot instead of a minute and a half from a floppy. Much easier to put a cd in, boot, take it out, move to next machine [repeat], than having to wait for ages for floppy disks. But when I go to boot the Compaq Evo for example, or an HP Compaq D530 slim PC, it doesn't work! These don't do squat. As soon as the cd starts booting the machine shows one line of something like 66667777^^^^^^^^wingdingwingdingwingding [not the text "wingding" but like, wingdings of some sort] and halts. So I don't know if it's the CD-ROM drive, the BIOS of the system, maybe the cd itself? Has anyone else come across this? Thanks so much! The sooner I can get this worked out the better! I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much for your reply tjb! Much appreciated. I'll download that file and save it if I need it. For some reason, the machines stopped doing their CPU 100% deal for SVCHOST...at least for the past few hours they have. I've been watching them closely. I did the next step in my builds, adding the sample machine to our domain, and it stopped. Of course, my domain rules the machine to have automatic updates turned off, but I'm logged in as local administrator still at the moment and have yet to log in as a domain account. We'll see what happens next! Thanks again!

I'm frantically working on images for each of the labs as school gets in in TWO weeks, and I'm really pressured. Everything is going great, except for all of the sudden, EACH of my images [i have 7 machines out on a table each a sample of a different lab in the school] and working on them. I start by installing my latest slipstreamed XP with SP3 disc, and then installing drivers, and then Office 2003 Professional and Office OneNote 2007 [since the teachers use Wacom Cintiq tablet displays and Office OneNote 2007 has better handwriting recognition]. Then I go to Windows Update, download all updates, go again, and again, etc. you know the drill, until all the fixes etc. for Office Updates have been updated fro Microsoft Update, and eventually shows 0 updates left. Also install all optional updates, including Windows Search 4.0 [a possible culprit? not sure]. So here I am. All machines are now showing 100% CPU utilization on SvcHost.exe. 10 minutes after the machine has booted up, it goes away and returns to normal and the machine is usable again. Some machine hardware samples: -Dell GX260 // Pentium 4 2GHz // 512MB PC2100 RAM // 40GB HD -Dell GX240 // Pentium 4 1.8GHz // 512MB PC133 RAM // 40GB HD -Compaq Evo D5S // Pentium 4 1.7GHz // 512MB PC133 RAM // 40GB HD If I run Windows Update [as I always do from the website on each machine, I don't run a WSUS server], the CPU utilization goes right back up, and after the updates finish and I've closed Internet Explorer, it remains at 100% until 5 minutes or so pass. Then it settles down again. I thought by now that Microsoft would have fixed this issue. So I check the Process ID, it's the SVCHOST thats carrying the list of like, 15 processes, as opposed to the other SVCHOST processes that are only running 1. Hope this helps, I'd love to get this fixed, as the idea is to have students NOT wait 10 minutes for login, that was the whole reason I started this huge imaging and hardware upgrade deal. Thanks guys.

Edit 2 [July 10, 2008]: Hey guys, still workin on this one if anyone's reading this topic. I found out the district had these 3 other domains in the login list before because they used to connect to them a few years ago when our schools servers had to go to be stored at another school while this school was getting maintenance. They had to move all their systems over to the other school and get it up and running there. But the old Network Admin never used DCPromo to clear the domains from the list before they moved back. He just moved the servers. So the names are still in the list, and none of the domains exist anymore. I tried going into Active Directory Domains and Trusts and removing it, but that didn't work since the domains can't be contacted. I also tried using NTDSUTIL, and that also failed, it gave me access denied when I tried to remove the server. The only solution I could think of for that, was to make sure I was an Enterprise Admin. However, there's no group called Enterprise Admins. So I couldn't add myself to it. I think this is because I'm a subdomain, school.district.ca. However that district.ca doesn't exist, that's just what the domain was called when the domain was created. So if we're school.district.ca, the other 3 that show up on login and that trusts are magically established with are school2.district.ca, districtoffice.district.ca, and district.ca. However, district.ca doesn't exist as a domain. I'm a subdomain of a domain that doesn't exist. I just want to clear the district.ca, school2.district.ca, and districtoffice.district.ca from the trusts list, thus deleting them from the login window, and leaving me with our domain of school.district.ca. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

Hi everyone, I just ordered a site license for Adobe Creative Suite 3: Master Collection. Normally when I deploy software, I install everything on one system for that specific hardware build for say, a computer lab or a staff machine, and then I Sysprep the computer and image the system using Ghost. I've tried doing this in the past with Photoshop CS and it works great. However, I've also tried it using the newer Adobe software which includes activation protection, such as Adobe Premiere 1.5, and it fails the activation after being imaged. I'll deploy the system, and it will come up with "Registration Invalid - Please Reinstall Premiere". I'm just wondering what the best way is to image this software, or if there's no choice but to install it on all machines afterwords. I know it's possible because another tech in the district managed to image Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium, the only problem is he can't remember how he did it the first time, and now he gets the same errors with registration after imaging. Anyways, just thought I'd ask in case anyone here has managed to "ghost" Creative Suite 3 Master Collection to a series of machines. Thanks!