Shuriken1

Only a guess but I imagine you could use the same code but change the verb it looks for from 'Pin to Start Menu' to 'Unpin from Start Menu' and that will do the reverse. Just a thought.

Hi Googlemad, Set up a Group Policy object and go into User Configuration > Preferences >Windows Settings > Files. In there, add a new File rule by right-clicking on the empty list and selecting New > File. Choose action Delete. Then in the Delete files field, put (in your case) '\\fileserver\staff$\%username%\desktop.ini'. You might need to go through and delete the files once but once that's enforced, it should stop the file being created and thus, fix the problem. Hope that help, Shuriken1.

Haha, glad to oblige.

I'm afraid I've not read all of the replies but I deal with downtime as follows: Just do the work. Obviously I don't plan any work during school hours and I try to do everything during the holidays, but if things break, they break. We've had two entire days offline here since Christmas due to aircon failure in the server cupboard, we had another day without any printers. If you explain to them why, there's not a great deal of argument for breakdowns. As for planned works, I definitely would not do it outside of my working hours. It's part of your job to do this work and it will improve the system. Try and do the high-profile jobs during time that people will notice, that way they will notice the improve and be able to accept the downtime was for a reason. Recabling a cabinet as you were saying is a tough one because you definitely need to do it but there's nothing in it for them, so they just see it as hassle. If there's an improvement that they will notice as a result then they will come around to your ways. As for the clubs during break and lunch, tell them to whistle. If there's an important problem that needs fixing then the club comes second! Personally I just weigh the situation, who's going to be inconvenienced, who's going to gain. Normal the latter is the whole school and that normally outweighs any single group. If they're not willing to give you the time to do it and complain even when you've warned them well, a) that's your job and b) they're teachers - they love a good whinge. To most staff your job is a COMPLETE mystery, or at least that's the impression I get. So if you ever say you're causing them hassle, they can't begin to comprehend it. Sounds nasty, but I think that's true in a lot of cases. Shuriken1.

I'm afraid I've not read all the replies but to add my 2p: We've had a couple since half-term. We've found that installing Avast on there, letting that do a scan and then a boot-time scan would find some files but not clear it. We would then enable the wireless, let Sophos update the Endpoint thingy and do a scan with that and it picked it up - can't remember the exact name it gave. We couldn't get Sophos to work without the Avast scan beforehand (although may that was only 'cos it did a boot-time scan) as the virus/malware seemed to block it. Anyway, may be another way to fix it if anyone's still having trouble.

If you have followed the excellent guides on here for removing the various items of the nav pane that you don't want people having access to (Libraries etc), you may end up in a situation where, after first logon, your users have an empty nav pane on the left-hand side of their explorer windows. To default Explorer to not showing the nav pane, modify the following registry key. I have this set on my common gpo for all win7 PC's: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Modules\GlobalSettings\Sizer\PageSpaceControlSizer I have my GPO updating that binary value to: A000000000000010030000 It is that bold zero that is changed to a one when you enable the Nav pane in Organise > Layout > Navigation Pane. Setting it to zero unticks it in that Explorer menu so it suggests that it is correct. Process Monitor didn't highlight any other keys being changed when I did it either, so I'm guessing that's it. The numbers later in the binary string, I'm guessing, dictate the actual size of your nav pane, so I guess they could be different. Just thought someone might want to know. Shuriken1.

Or misspelling them. No harm intended, just couldn't help but comment. Shuriken1.

I backup The F: drive on our fileserver (user files), C and E drives (everything) of our SIMS server - plus SQL agent backups of the SIMS & FMS databases, C and E (everything) on our exchange/PDC server - plus an Exchange agent backup of the Exchange DB, C E and G on our webserver/ISA (dont know why lol) and D and E on our internal webserver/application server (basically all the data). Also all the system states, like you said. I have to resort to running a full backup on friday nights with Differentials run on the other weekdays. The full backup totals nearly a 1Tb, takes about 16 hours. I have one LTO4 tape drive with 800Gb tapes. I don't think the compression can squeeze much more onto them either. I operate a fortnightly schedule with extra tapes to do extra, full backups at Easter, Summer and Christmas. All fun and games, lol. Shuriken1.

Oh nice, I like the Lost+Found idea! Yeah, I may have not been 100% clear, unfortunately this isn't starting from new, I'm just trying to enforce some order on what has been a ridiculous filing system. To give you some idea, they're still storing their dept resources in the same place as the web pages for their dept section of the intranet. The concept that that is just a webserver that doesn't have lots of storage and that any non-intranet-linked files should go somewhere else does not seem to be sinking in just yet! lol. I'm not far away for the 'hit them with a big stick' plan. With the network software, are you saying that the drive letter should be the same to keep the software happy? So when I install it on the P drive on the server, the mapped drive should be P as well so it doesn't get confused? Makes sense if that is the case. I've been putting off network-installed software for ages now and as a result, the few bits that are on there are a mess. Presumably you put the network-installed software's shortcuts in that mapped start menus folder and have them added to the start menus automatically like that? That's something we don't have at the moment. :/ Looks like this all needs a lot more thought and work.. Thanks again for your help. ps. As for the size limits, thats a whole new problem. Our fileserver isn't on 2003 R2 yet, so it doesn't have FSRM - which means I'm stuck with volume-level disk quotas. It's proved a minor disaster in the last few days as I've been moving files around to make space and it's started counting new files into users' quotas and I can see the 'but they're not my files, they're department files' argument coming. I don't currently have an answer for them other than 'you'll have to wait until I can upgrade the server'. Not gonna go down well I don't think.. Meh.

Ok cool, thanks Chris. That is a good point about sharing the share not the root, stupid oversight on my part. I'll change it now. It seems like you have a similar layout, although I suppose everyone's is going to be similar to some extent. That's very useful though, thank you. If it looks like everyone does it with staff and students folders with dept folders within it I at least know I've got something half sensible! Thanks.

Hi Everyone, (Feel free to point me to a thread if my search missed it.) I'm interested to know how everyone else lays out their network shares for their schools? I recently introduced DFS and now have the staff user accounts (roaming profiles) on a 'Users' DFS share with the intention to get the students onto a similar 'Students' one in the future somewhen, but how do you guys manage the Department resources and such like? I have a DFS root named 'Files' which is mapped to the K drive for staff and students alike and it contains: AdminPrivate - Just for Headteacher, few SMT etc. AdminPublic - Doc store for the admin staff NetworkSoftware - Installation point for network-installed software Photos - School photos StaffResources - Department resources for staff, divided into Department folders with appropriate permissions. StudentResources - As above, but for the stuff the teachers what the kids to get to for lessons etc. Videos - All video resources go here, divided by dept as above. It's not really ideal, as the student have to have the K drive mapped which opens up all of those DFS links to them. They're set security-wise so they can't get in (and tested), but it would be better if they couldn't see them at all. I'm toying with two 'StaffFiles' and 'StudentsFiles' DFS roots and splitting it but I'm stuck for ideas. I'm interested really in how you keep all of the dept data separate and manageable. Do you divide it by dept first then leave them to do what they like in that folder? Do you divide it out into resource type first and then give them a dept folder inside that, like I have with Videos (similar to Win7 Libraries I suppose, without the Library functionality)? Ideas on a postcard please, if anyone fancies helping me out. Cheers, Shuriken1.

Yeah, you're right Arthur. I've just left work and have robocopy doing the last folder copy for me overnight. RichCopy was quicker and it was preserving the ACLs but not the ownerships, I couldn't be bothered to work it out so I went back to Robocopy and it worked first time. Must have been making a silly mistake earlier. Anyway, Robocopy seems the way to go. Especially, as you say, it can multi-thread on Win7/Server2008 now (seems to be single thread still on Win 2003). Seems to be the way to go though.

Hi guys, I know this thread is massively old but just for anyone else that stumbles across it from Google (as I just have), check out RichCopy too. It's a newer copy tool from Microsoft, the main advantage of it being multi-threaded. I had trouble using xcopy to copy some files between servers, I tried robocopy as suggested by this thread and that couldn't seem to run at all with the paths I was using. RichCopy, however, seems be doing fine at the moment. I'm using an admin share in case anyone stumbles into the same problem, ie. copying from \\server\e$\blahblah to F:\blahblah. Just thought it might be useful to future readers.

Right, so if you found out that I wasn't in the building, it wouldn't absolve me of the crime? I think it would. Given the seeming uncertainty of the original situation, I thought I would make the suggestion just in case the issue could be tackled from a different perspective. I'm sorry if that didn't with your approval.

Well granted it's no server activity log, but if it's a matter of confirming if/when this action took place it might help. Was just a thought..

Have you considered anything in terms of workstation monitoring? Impero, Netranger, whatever the other ones are called. If you've got one of them in place, it might give you some record of what people have been up to. Just a long shot, which you probably would have considered already if you've got one in place but thought I'd mention it. Shuriken.

Hi Sarconia, thanks for replying. I haven't done any SIMS updates (through SOLUS), so I don't think SIMS has changed. Windows updates might have applied automatically through WSUS. Just running a report now to check. With regards to .NET Frameworks, Add/Remove lists 1.1, 2.0 Service Pack 2, 3.0 Service Pack 2 and 3.5 SP1. Don't know if that's correct or not. Thanks, Shuriken.

Hi everyone, I installed SIMS on a 64bit Citrix server a little while ago. It complained about the 16bit workstation blah-de-blah not being compatible and needed a little bit of tweaking with an ini file but worked. Aince last week it no longer runs. There hasn't been any updates that I've been aware of and as far as I know, nothings changed. The following SIMS Fault box appears after clicking to run SIMS .net and before the login box: Fault Code: 4668-0533-6000 The type initializer for 'System.Management.ManagementPath' threw an exception. : System.TypeInitializationException Naturally, the Capita support site doesn't even acknowledge that fault code and Google can't help either. Googling parts of that error message suggests that it's quite a general .net error relating to WMI paths. Great, I don't think it helps me much though. Tried reinstalling it, no difference. Checked connect.ini and sims.ini and they both seem roughly right. Our county SIMS support team have refused to assist as it is installed on a Citrix server and regardless of the fact that it is basically just a 64-bit 2003 R2 server, they're not interested. Maybe they don't support 64-bit at all, but I hadn't even mentioned that by the time they told me to go away. So, can anyone help? Are there any particular things to look out for with SIMS in a Citrix/Terminal Services environment? Any help would be great 'cos I have absolutely no ideas. Thanks, Shuriken.

Ah yeah, fair point. I've somehow managed to disable it though, even by editing the url it's defaulting back to Strict. Safe Search isn't locked either so I don't know how I've managed that but I agree, I would expect it to be editable via the URL. Forgot that. Edit: Sorry, ignore that, Impero is enforcing the Safesearch. It would seem that Impero combined with my ISA rule will stop them changing it too, so may still be of some use to people. Shuriken1.

Right guys and girls, I might have an answer to this! I've spent sooooo much time trying to work out how to do this with just an ISA server (2006) and I think I've finally cracked it - in a messy but seemingly effective kind of way. I have set up a Firewall Policy in ISA 2006 denying HTTP and HTTPS from 'All Protected Networks' to a URL Set I've made called 'Banned Sites' and applied it to 'All Users'. I've put it higher in the firewall list than the main web rule, obviously so it kicks in before it. In my 'Banned Sites' URL Set I have: http://www.google.co.uk/preferences* http://www.google.co.uk/setprefs* http://images.google.co.uk/preferences* http://images.google.co.uk/setprefs* The preference ones stop them from clicking 'Search Settings' and changing the Safe Search settings from that page, the setprefs one stops them using the dropdown on the image search to do a kind of inline update of the filter setting. Now granted, there's probably a number more url's I'm going to need to include in that set, but it seems to work! I've spent ages trying to get a solution for this and this seems as near as damn it, so I had to share it. I hope it's of some use to other people! Shuriken1. ps. I'm thinking that a quick insertion of the correct cookie into the student mandatory profile could also make it default to Strict rather than Modrate too but from what I've understood, Strict just enforces the filter on the web searches as well as the images whereas moderate just filters the images. We shall see.

I know this is a years old thread but just wanted to put my thanks on it. The GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue reg fix sorted this problem for me where plenty of googles and microsoft kb browsing didn't so thank you. Here is the adm file I created to apply this reg change across my domain (first time of making an adm so excuse any mistakes, seems to work though): CLASS MACHINE CATEGORY "Windows Customizations" KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" POLICY "Set GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue" PART !!NetworkStartTimeout NUMERIC REQUIRED SPIN 1 DEFAULT 60 MAX 600 MIN 30 VALUENAME "GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue" END PART PART !!Description TEXT END PART END POLICY END CATEGORY [strings] NetworkStartTimeout="Network Start Timeout (seconds):" Description="Use this to change the Timeout delay when computers start up." Thanks again, Shuriken1.

Thanks a lot for your info guys, I may well take you up on that offer Duke/teejay - thank you. I've just disocvered another school in the area already running a SAN so I think I'm going to go over and check that out before I make any final decisions. Thanks again for your thoughts. I'll update this after I've been to SAN and let you know what I go for. Shuriken1.

Well we've just drafted the budget for next year and this server replacement isn't on it as I wasn't aware of it back when we did the budget. I've got £5k from the bursar to sort this out. I was just thinking more about the SAN suggestion since my last post and I supposes theres no reason we can't run the old servers as they are with the SAN replacing the fileserver, so it's in place. Then as we replace future servers they can use the SAN too. Does that sound plausible? The bottlenecks are the hard disks at the moment, due to poor staff roaming profiles that are large and cause heavy load on the server. I doubt if I can get much more money even as a long-term solution. I could maybe get £7-8k for this, if its a definite long-term solution as I can pull money from another project. Unfortunately my knowledge is limited when it comes to SANs. teejay: It's a secondary school with about 750 students and about 100 users. 275 computers and 80 odd laptops for staff. What did you replace your 7 fileservers with? Duke: I'd be interested to know more about your SAN plans, unfortunately I haven't really found any decent examples that suit my situation, anything SAN and they seem to start talking massive datacentres and huge disk arrays - a bit overkill for me. I do like the expandability (that a word?) of the SAN setup though. Thanks guys, as ever, appreciate all of your help, Shuriken1.

Thanks for the further explanation Adam and everyone else for their thoughts. I've pretty much got the setup you suggest there Adam, only without the offline file sync. Well I say got, I'm in the process of moving the staff over to profiles that are fully redirected rather than just docs and desktop. Thanks for confirming the point about one big raid SYNACK, I think that sounds the way to go - especially with Adam's further explanation. I'll check the momry on the Raid controler as you've suggested - thank you. It's just the standard Intel one I think but I will check. I have looked at SANs, yeah, last night in fact. It's a great setup and would be great but I don't think we're quite there yet as a school. From what I gather it would mean migrating from a dedicated server arrangment, ie servers with their own resources to a centralised system, that being the SAN. Great idea, but I don't think we can afford the switchover costs - so it's just a new fileserver for now. I was also thinking of getting two smaller servers like you suggest but again, I don't think we can afford it, hence the single server approach. Do you think a two server setup with the load spread would be significantly better than the idea I'm planning? I think that's everything, thanks a lot, Shuriken1.

Thanks a lot for your reply Adam, I think we'll only have the one controller. Please excuse my ignorance but you mention effectively giving staff only 2 spindles, could you explain that further please? I'm not sure the reasoning behind your suggestion (I'm sure you're right, I just don't know why). The staff are running roaming profiles at the moment, they're a mess. I'm trying to sort them out as well but it's kind of merging into one horrible job. Students have a mandatory profile. I've spent a long time since I started trying to get the staff profiles under control, it's turning out a big problem. It's the roaming profiles that cause most of the load I'm sure, I'm also sure that when i do finally sort them it will drastically reduce the load on the fileserver. Maybe even to a point where the current server could manage but I don't think so. I've got the go ahead for a new server so I want to make the most of it. The data drive on the fileserver has about 330Gb of stuff on it, thats staff, students and some common shares - basically everything data wise. I'll be leaving the shared stuff on the old server and just moving the staff and students. Unfortunately I can't RAID10 the current server as it only has the 3 disks in it and no space for more. Thanks for the heads up on the NICs, I'll be sure to team as many as I can! Thanks for your help so far, I'd appreciate anything further you can add. Shuriken1.