hagridsbeard

If you're not using mandatory then are you using shared roaming for each user?

Not massive, about 1.5mb. So, do roaming only get copied if there are changes? If so, is it simply a case of changing the man to a dat and if so, how do I prevent them making changes to it? Wouldn't think I'd been in the job seven years with questions like this...

But roaming profiles allow changes to be made don't they (and then copied up to the server)? In any case, this is what confuses me, with the profile (mandatory on the server), the initial logon is faster (around 40 seconds) but subsequent logons stay at 40 seconds. Without a profile, the first logon is longer, but each one after only 4 seconds. Surely with our mandatory profile, the first logon should be 40, then every subsequent 4 as the profile is already on the local machine? Or, as it's a mandatory proifle, does it get copied down each and every time regardless to the existance of a local one?

I redirect favorites to their home drive, so that's not an issue. And really, app config is still only local to each machine now anyway (as they just drag a mandatory profile down). Any settings in the MAN that I want to apply globally, I can roll out via GPP.

This is what I was thinking, but I would like to reduce that 50 second inital logon. And that was from a good machine. The 4 second ones thereafter are amazing, but that intial logon is a bummer. Espeicially for students who often use new machines. Not so much for staff though.

Just a ponder about profiles. We use a mandatory profile (from a shared drive) for all non admin staff and logons are ok, varying between 40 - 60 seconds. But I've started wondering what the purpose of a profile is. With Group Policy and Preferences, surely they're essentially redundant? I did a test taking the profile off a user and the first logon to a new machine was an upsetting 50 seconds, but every subsequent logon, even after a reboot, was 4 seconds! Which is amazing. Ideally, I'd like to go this route, but reduce the intial 50 seconds (which is when I assume the local profile is being created). Anyone got any amazing ideas or tried going profile-less with any success?

Yup, changed this a bit ago as I noticed that both %homedrive% and %homeshare% essentially go to the same place. But on testing with a user, it seems to sync, but doesn't actually locally cache the network files.

Just a quick question about offline files in Win 7. Our users get their home drive mapped from their account as normal: 'Connect H: to \\fs001\students$\intake04\joe.bloggs' etc. For those using sync center enabled laptops, I want to administratively assign that location to the sync (so they don't have to right click and make avaible offline). I've tried this via GPO and using the setting 'Administratively assign offline files' set to '%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMESHARE%' but it doesn't seem to be working. Any ideas what I'm missing?

I sorted it earlier today. No idea why, but the DivX HTML5 Video plug-in was stopping OWA from working properly. Disabled that plug-in via GPO and it all kicked back in. Very odd.

Nope, done that a good few times. Someone suggested it may be due to trusted sites, but changing that doesn't seem to have fixed it. Really odd that it does it to admin too, which siggests it is something to do with the computers GPO, but it's pretty clean so I'm at a loss.

Morning guys, having a bit of a headache here. We've got Exchange 2010 on the network and running OWA for staff and students to access email from the clients PC. However, it's suddenly started playing up. Externally it works great, but internally, you can open email, but not send or open address books. It just sits there. You can also read the first email, but none of the others even though it doesn't seem to have hung. I thought maybe it was an IE8/XP tjhing, but it happening on our Win 7 IE9 machines too, as well as under administrator accounts. Has anyone seen this or something similar as it's upsetting staff (not that that takes much).

How do, Getting in a bit of a twist here so would welcome some help if anyone understands the problem I'm having. I've got a web server running IIS 7 hosting several PHP sites (with the CURL extension enabled). Several of my sites (such as Wordpress) use CURL, but my proxy (locekd down as it's at a school) is refusing it access. I've added a rule to allow unauthenticated access out for my servers, which now let's CURL run but with a 404. On checking the errors, somewhere the URL of the CURL request is being changed to an IP (for instance, Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now is becoming 209.208.1.65/rss.xml - which is the host - so fails with the 404). Yet, if I create a PHP page that forces CURL to use the proxy, it let's it out and retrieves the correct feed using the URL, not the IP. Does this make any sense and if so, any pointers would be really welcome.

Absolutely superb. Only took a few minutes as I was familiar with the config file setup, just didn't know how it all linked together. Got a nice password prompt, then a load of tools, including WDS and Ghost. Flipping brilliant, many many thanks.

Feel really rude here as I thought I would get an email when people replied, so I didn't check, but I didn't so missed all the replies. Sorry and hello! We did have it set up (by a clever student of all people) to boot to a splash screen on F12, which needed a password. Then there were a load of options, one of which was Ghost (which we were using). Think it was called tftpd32.exe. But we couldn't do Win 7 on our version of Ghost, so switched to WDS. Now I'm thinking that WDS could have been run from that app, keeping it behind the security, but the config for this stuff really confuses me.

Hi Guys, just moved to WDS from Ghost and am a bit concerned that students can F12 right to drive management (and therefore delete partitions etc). The only way around this is to stop the WDS service when we're not using it, but that seems incredibly clunky. Is there an inbuilt way to secure it a bit more? Sorry if this has been asked, but I couldn't find it on the tips section.

We've got site wide Meru here, but quite spaced out (38 APs for a 2500 staff/student school). It works well, but I'd advise you to be cautious if you have any RealTek WLAN cards (you're bound too) as they seem to have issues with the single cell. Apparently Meru and RealTek are near to resolving it, but it has caused me a fair few headaches. On non RealTek devices, it's honestly faultless.

Hi Chaps, Got an odd problem here that I can't find an answer to. From my main TS/RDP server (which all my clients use to work remotely) no one can rename folders from mapped drives (including admin) without having to click Try Again from the dialog (the could not find this item dialog). It works after cliking try again and files ranme fine. But any folder in a mapped drive (different location for the mapped drives) don't work first time. The servers 2008 R2 Sp1 x64. Anyone seen this before?

I'm gonna cry, I've got 40 printers being processed using GPP on the Users GPO, but filtered by using targeting so they only get the printer for the room they're logging onto. All well and good, however, processing all those targeting rules for 40 printers is slowing logon. So, I had the idea of creating a GPO per room, and applying the GPP there (so it only has to process one). Great in theory, but as Shared Printer GPP is a User Config setting in GPO, it's ingnored on the Room GPO. I tried enabling Loop Back Processing on the room GPO, but it doesn't seem to work. Anyone got any ideas how to make this quite simple concept actually work? I'm losing the will to live... or print.

I have no idea if what I'm wanting to do is possible, but I'd like to setup some kind of eBook library on our network, so we can buy site licensed Excercise Books and Novels, then allow users to access them from any device they choose, such as iPads, phones laptops etc as well as eBook readers like the Kindle. This must be possible as it's such an obvious idea and would save us tons in reprographics costs as well as making life much easier for everyone. Any ideas?

That's the sort of thing I'm looking for, I'll give it a go. The thing that make me think it's not policy or profile related is that theres around 30 seconds at applying settings, then another thirty with a part desktop, which is after all the GPO's have been processing isn't it? Starting to look at software now, and in particular Impero and Sophos. But then on a test machine with that SW removed, the log ons are still long the first time. Unless they leave stuff behind. So frustrating.

DNS seems fine. We don't clear profiles on shutdown/log off, so it should be fast each time, but each fresh boot/reboot has a first logon of around 120 seconds, then 20 for each after that. Just trying to get my head around what is unique about the first logon after a reboot/boot. Wasn't sure if preferences are cached. Our start menu short-cuts and printers are all mapped using preferences, which does create a small lag while they are resolved, but are the results of the preferences cached for the next user? If so, that would account for the delay, but I can't find anything to back that up.

Ok, I'm nearly giving up so bail me out. We've got a Windows network with predominantly XP clients and for some reason, initial logons to the domain have suddenly increased to around a minute and a half (which for a laptop means ages). Every subsequent logon is fine at around 20 seconds (regardless to user), but the first after a cold boot is always really slow. Any idea what happens during the first logon after a bootup that doesn't on those afterwards? I thought it was because the machine was still starting services, but the delay is still the same if I leave the PCs to settle down before trying to login. The only major changes we've had recently are a load of Windows updates due to an incorrect setting on the WSUS server, and we've moved heavily over to GPO preferences. But we had done this already after the summer break and log on times were fine. Any ideas?

Thanks for all this, but it's still not working. Enabled all those setting and that Start Menu layout (although we have \\server\share$\students\start menu\) Noticed this in the event log though: The Group Policy Client Side Extension Folder Redirection was unable to apply one or more settings because the changes must be processed before system startup or user logon. The system will wait for Group Policy processing to finish completely before the next startup or logon for this user, and this may result in slow startup and boot performance.

Where is this policy setting? I can find it anywhere.

Nope, don't know what I'm missing here but it's just not working. I've got the user in a clean area with a new GPO. The only think in it is folder redirection. All I get is a blank start menu/desktop. Really driving me mad, surely this is basic stuff and there should be info on it everywhere.