teejay

Once you've done the above and set the browser to automatically detect settings, the browser will check dns for an entry wpad.your.domain and get the wpad.dat file from http://wpad.your.domain/wpad.dat Good thing about this is it works with Firefox and anything else that auto detects proxy, whereas doing it through GPO or DHCP will only work with IE.

Cached outlook mode is fine, just depends on the speed of you VPN link. Mail between users in the branch office will go through the vpn link when sent and back down again to the receiving client. If they're mailing big attachments to each other, this can make things grind to a halt. Another alternative would be to move you exhcnage infrastructure to the cloud. Netmasks etc: You'd set the branch office on a seperate IP range and route between the two.

3 & 2. In your redirection check if you have compatible with Windows XP etc set, if so Documents will redirect as My Documents etc, which may be causing some of your problems. 1. Use security filtering on the GPO.

Yeah, by the looks of the the critical issue was between keyboard and chair ;-)

DFS secuirty - if going through a vpn link the tunnel is encrypted, the data will be stored on the branch server. For security at the branch office, consider encrypting the data drive on the server. Exchange - you can have multiple exhange servers, you just put the mailboxes of the branch office users on the branch office exchange server. If the link is down, branch office will be able to send mails externally and to anyone in the branch, mail to people in the head office will be queued until the link comes back up. Incoming mail would be queued at the head office exchange server until the link came back. Your other alternative is to run the branch office on a seperate domain within the AD forest, or use a subdomain.

To allow them to work without disruption by loss of vpn link, you will need a server as a backup or rodc, you will also need an exchange server in there if you use exchange and you could also use dfs file services to sync a local copy of any documents they need access to and to also allow backup of their docs to the main head office.

The recommended way to do this is through dns, you create an alias to the server hosting the wpad file. This is the best way as it's compatible with a wider range of browsers. You will need to unblock wpad in dns before you can add it though if running 2008 server as it's blocked by default. In GPO set the proxy to automatically detect settings. Detailed info on how to do this is here.

Looks stunning: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01690/aurora-big_1690787a.jpg

You probably need to put these in the default user profile, do the following: Customize a user profile as needed Go to Control Panel and create a new dummy admininstrator Reboot, log in as the dummy admin Browse to C: and go into the Folder settings and Show all hidden/system files Browse to C:\Users and CTRL-drag the Default folder to make a second (backup) copy of it Browse to C:\Users and CTRL-drag the customized user profile to make a second copy of it SHIFT-DEL the original Default folder Rename the customized folder copy to Default Create a new dummy admin and reboot/log in to test it

Should be fine, just check that the processor supports VT technology, there are a few random Xeons which don't.

Yes you need to sysprep as previously said. Windows 7 product keys should be done using a KMS server, not by putting a MAK key in the image as you'll run out of MAK key activations. Local Admin should be set using an unattend file. How Windows 7/Vista deploy is different to Windows XP and takes a bit to get your head round it and out of the previous ways of doing things. If you are using WDS for deployment, get hold of WAIK to sort out your unattend scripts, or MDT 2010 which automates some of it, but perosnally I founf it better just using WAIK once you get it figured out. The way we work now with Windows 7 is just to have 1 standard image we deploy, with drivers deployed through wds, product key through kms, any customisations in the unattend file or done through group policy and software deployed through group policy. It really does make things easier to maintain in the end and much more flexible.

Bet your neighbours love you, must be like living next door to Heathrow airport when you start that one up ;-)

Yep, done all the SQL refresh etc, will phone Capita when I get chance, it's just not a priority as there are a couple of other ways I've shown her to get what she needs, it's just this is the way she's always done it. Slightly more pressing issue getting our deployment of Windows 7 finished to be honest ;-)

Yeah, sorry, should have clarified, it was the class list report, export to clipboard to paste into a document, so is part of reports but Capita refused to support it.

Just thought, the easiest way to set these, make sure you've got Group Policy Manager on a Windows 7 machine, go to personalise desktop and switch on all the desktop icons and apply. Then turn off the ones you don't want. In GPM in your chosen group polciy, go to User Configuration, Preferences, Windows Settings, Registry. Right click and select New, Registry Wizard. Select Local Machine, browse to HKCU, Software, Microsoft, Windows, Current Version, Explorer, HideDesktopIcons, NewStartPanel and tick all the reg keys. This will import the full set of keys into GP with all the settings you want.

My Computer - {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} Internet Explorer - {871C5380-42A0-1069-A2EA-08002B30309D} Network - {F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C} Control Panel - {5399E694-6CE5-4D6C-8FCE-1D8870FDCBA0} Recycle Bin - {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} Just replace the appropriate bit in the curly brackets in the reg key above. If you want the item to appear, set the DWORD to 0, set to 1 to remove.

Had one today with the office manager having problems with the export of class lists when selecteing a specific class, she was told by Capita Support that NT4 was no longer supported and to use the functionality in SIMS.net.

So they managed to find you purple wireless acess points then ;-)

Use group policy to set the following reg key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel] "{59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}"=dword:00000001

You can, yes.

Yep that's right, the only gotcha is that desktops won't activate until there has been 25 activation attempts. You can check the activation count through slmgr.

I tend to generalise so the image can be used on other hardware, for instance if you got another batch of laptops in. Activation should be done through KMS keys ideally, otherwise put the key in an unattend file and attach it to the image through the wds console.

sysprep doesn't need copying across, it's in c:\windows\system32\sysprep by default on WIndows 7. Just run that, generalize and then use the wds capture image win pe image to capture the modified image.

3Com have been bought out by HP, 3Com as such no longer exists. Most of their switches have been rebranded as HP, some discontinued.

Yeah, you'll also want to have the same number of ports on your server and SAN assigned to the link, otherwise it's a bit pointless unless you've got multiple servers connected to the SAN. You'll need to install the Intel or Broadcom server software for your network cards on your server so you can link aggregate properly.