Networking hints and tips

I've been in my job for about 6 months now, and considering the
state of our small office LAN when I started, I've performed miracles

One thing I haven't managed to get my head around yet is
logon scripts (mapping drives, home folders, setting the desktop etc).
It's not a big problem right now, cos when the boss is buying in
some more PC's he's buying old second hand boxes running
Win98SE, but I do want to learn how to do it for future
referrence. Our server is Windows Server 2003, and we have
about 20 PC's - 6 of them are WinXP Pro, the rest are Win98SE.

Can anyone point me to a good online source of how to go about
these sorts of things, or recommend a decent book?


Cheers in advance.



James H

Hi James,

The Labmice site (at http://labmice.techtarget.com) is quite good, and there is a special section on scripting (http://labmice.techtarget.com/scripting/default.htm).

http://computerperformance.co.uk/Lo...gon_scripts.htm is also good, and gives examples of mapping printers and network drives.

HTH,

Edwin

Ok, I created a couple of test users, and set user 'test3' 's home
directory to a network location. When I log in on an XP PC and
save a file it saves to the folder on the server. Bingo.

Re: Group Policies. I tried to create one which prevented users
changing the wallpaper/screensaver, and denied them access
to Control Panel. I wanted to apply it only to my Test group, but
instead it applied it to everyone, so I had to remove it and go back
to the default policy. Any ideas how you apply a specific policy to
certain groups?

Also, I'm still having bother with roaming/mandatory profiles. I set
up the profile I want (screensaver, desktop, desktop icons, etc) on
a XP PC, saved the profile, copied it to the test3 user's home
directory, set the profile path to:
"\\Server1\home\test3\NTUSER.MAN"

but when I try to connect from an XP PC I get messages like

"Unable to log you in because your mandatory profile is not available."

This is despite the profile file being in the user's home directory,
which I know is working ok.



James H

To apply a group policy to only certain users, there are two ways:

1. Create a new Organisational Unit, and move the users who you want the policy applied to into the folder. Then, right-click the OU, select Properties and click the Group Policy tab. From there, you can create a new group policy which will only apply to the users who are inside the OU.

2. Create a new group and add all the users who you want the policy to apply to. Then, right-click on the domain name, select Properties and click the Group Policy tab. Create a new group policy. Then, open the security settings for the Group Policy and click the Advanced button. Select all instances of Authenticated Users, double click and click the Change button. Change Authenciated Users to the name of the group that you have created.

To create a roaming profile, on the server, create a new folder, such as Profiles. Share this folder on the network, giving all users read and write access. In Active Directory Users and Computers open the properties for a user and select the profiles tab. In the text box "Profile path" enter something like \\servername\Profiles\username. This should get roaming files working.