Nozza

Hi I've tried to create an unattended installation disk to make installing Xp on our non-RM machines quicker and easier - we have a reasonable range of different machines in that category. The first disk worked OK except it still asked for partition info and right at the end of the installation (after reboot) it also asked me to enter a user name. I resolved the first issue but not the second. In my second attempt I tried to add drivers for some of the more common machines we have. Some of these came as zipped files which I expanded into folders and pointed nLite at them. However these folders did still include files like setup.exe. On trying this disk it seemed to be working fine until the drivers bit when it suddenly came up with a "found new hardware" dialogue for a PnP monitor. I've never seen that during an installation before. The resulting installation would not boot completely. Any ideas what I did wrong? When I add drivers which parts of the zipped files should I add - just the inf ones? Thanks N

In our school we get continued problems with laptops not connecting. The problem is sporadic but frequent enough to be a PITA. The usual fix is to wire them up and reboot. I've noticed that when the problem occurs the laptop only has an APIPA address. So i tried adding a fixed IP to the alternate configuration and this solved the problem without recourse to hard wiring. It would seem that hard wiring them allows them to get a DHCP address. This does explain why they cannot get the DHCP address in the first place but this could be just a poor connection at the time or something. Is it possible to get windows to issue a different range of alternate addresses rather than the APIPA ones? Otherwise I can reserve a range and manually add them to the alternate configs. One thing I have noticed is that the laptops I experimented with didn't release those alternate IPs on their own. They still had them 2 or 3 boots later. Any ideas welcome. Thx N

Thanks but I already tried entering in manually and it doesn't work. Same error.

Yes i can see the printer there

The printers with this problem are the the latter - printers attached to workstations and shared. You get the option to list when you install them as I remember it. OS is Win XP pro for workstations and a mix of Win2000 and Win2003 server for servers. One thing I've just discovered is that if I find the IP of the PC connected to the printer and use that then it works. So it would appear that some sort of naming problem is in effect. The PCs have dynamically assigned IPs. So obviously I will try assigning one a static IP and using that to see if that solves it. Any tips on investigating whether a naming problem is at the root of this. Ping resolves the name to the IP. BTW, on ping - I can ping the PC name like "english-admin-PC1". Can i also do that by giving a fuller path including the domain? Say our domain is "schoolnamesch.internal" - what would be the proper path to ping?

You mean the service "Print Spooler"? I can check. What is your thinking behind that?

I'm not sure of the logic of trying to add it as a local printer but I tried it and it says it cannot find the path specified.

Recently we've developed a problem with our shared printers. Most of the shared printers (usually connected to a PC via usb or other) are listed in the AD. They are happily working with the PC they are connected to and usually some others in the same locale. But now when you try to add that printer to a different PC the following error is reported: "Windows cannot connect to the printer. Either the printer name was typed incorrectly, or the specified printer has lost its connection to the server. For more information, click Help." Obviously I can uninstall the reinstall the printer and start again but this can be a bit of a job when it's being shared amongst various teachers laptops and those teachers/laptops are not all around together. So ideally looking for a better solution than the old reinstall!

I've solved the actual issue now but I'm interested in knowing what happens. If the station delivery app gets its info from AD then I'm wondering where in AD that info is.

And where would I go to look at drive mappings there?

Thanks. So that app runs locally on each machine? Where does it get its info from? Is there a corresponding ini file for each workstation or something?

Yes I know how RMMC handles it. What I want to know is exactly how this is effected by Windows.

Can anyone tell me how CC3 goes about mapping network drives? What I mean is how Windows actually does it underneath. So when a domain workstation is booted up how the drives are mapped. Is this set when the machine is built and then managed locally from that point or is it done by the domain controller when the machine boots up? If so, where is this managed - can I see/control this using the active directory tools on the server?

As I understand it, the password relates to the volume header and you can make header backups. This means you can have more than one password, as long as you have the corresponding header. This is what they say "After you create a volume, back up its header to a file (select Tools -> Backup Volume Header) before you allow a non-admin user to use the volume. Note that the volume header (which is encrypted with a header key derived from a password/keyfile) contains the master key with which the volume is encrypted. Then ask the user to choose a password, and set it for him/her (Volumes -> Change Volume Password); or generate a user keyfile for him/her. Then you can allow the user to use the volume and to change the password/keyfiles without your assistance/permission. In case he/she forgets his/her password or loses his/her keyfile, you can "reset" the volume password/keyfiles to your original admin password/keyfiles by restoring the volume header from the backup file (Tools -> Restore Volume Header)."

One problem I've found with TrueCrypt in within our particular setup appears to be related to roaming profiles. One feature of TC is the ability to set Favorites. This allows you to have TC try to mount favorite file containers. This means the user doesn't have to find the container/partition manually. This works fine except on our laptops when not connected to the domain. It appears that TC stores it's favorite information in Documents & Settings and cannot find the info it needs when offline. Since the main reason for using TC is to encrypt data being transported away from the network, this is pretty annoying. Has anyone else come across this and solved it?

In our case it was no internet connection. So the local firewall was preventing the smartcache client from communicating with the smartcache.

Hi We're on CC3 and in the course of troubleshooting some internet problems, it has become apparent that on some workstations the Windows Firewall is controllable locally. On all the others, it is greyed out and only global policies apply. Funnily enough these are the machine that had the internet problem. The problem was caused by the firewall not allowing RMSmartCache Client traffic through. It was solved on these particular workstations by logging in locally and adding a program exception. For all the other PCs we could solve it by applying a port exception in RMMC. What is happening with these workstations? Thanks N

I think the group policy is to allow the firewall to be on but it restricts it's use. Probably a stupid Q but will the GP management tool only affect GPOs on that specific workstation?

I've been told that windows firewall should be greyed out for workstations if a group policy has been applied to the domain - it's deliberately like that to allow only global control. However this clearly presents problems should any individual workstation uses a piece of software needing access to the internet via various ports etc. I'm not aware of having MS group policy management tool on the PC but how would I check to be sure? I tried another new account and this one seems to have worked. I'm not happy with it though since I still don't understand what exactly is going on.

OK update: the new account made no difference. What access I do get differs on different machines it would appear. BTW. using CC3 - is it usual for the workstations' Firewall settings to be greyed out for admins? Because most are except some machines where it isn't?!

You can set it up in different ways. I only have the portable TC executables on the stick itself because non many of the PCs I work on have it so I want to be able to access my data where I like. My admin rights allow me to run exe's from sticks OK. The standard way of using TC is to install it on your machine and then store either a "file container" or partition (or an entire device) on the device you wish the data to be held - be that the HD of the PC or a removable memory device. You then point TC at the file/partition/device and tell it to mount it. Does that actually answer your Q?

Are you talking about he local machine or the server? On the local machine it says INFO: The policy object does not exist. I have done the registry fix on it though - if that makes any difference.

OK I have wireshark but no idea how to use it to troubleshoot this particular problem. I've plugged my laptop into the ethernet socket and it has the same jittering playback. I can see the server with the video on it talking to my laptop IP but I don't know what this is telling me. Is there a way of testing the speed of a particular network segment to see if it's running at it's rated speed?

Truecrypt is an excellent, stable product. I use a portable version on my USB to encrypt the data on it so I can access it from any PC. It's perfect for laptops too. Set up right it's as simple as typing in a password after you've booted up and an encrypted drive is mounted. You can save to it, back up to/from it, even defrag it. I think it's worth encrypting USB sticks since it's very hard to erase data from them. Even most commercial "evidence eraser" packages don't wipe data from USB sticks properly due to the level-wearing system they tend to use. So sensitive data can stay on them for ages.

Yes I raised a call a whilst ago. They don't have an answer as such other than to create a new account. Which is probably the best thing. I can work around it by making w registry changes which I've put in a reg file for quick use but whilst handy that's not the point. I'm still interested to know what is actually going on!