New
#51
This might be to your fancy Roasted...We have deployed it, and we recently removed it. Deepfreeze doesn't play nice with a lot of the software the students use. I forget the exact reasoning because I am not assigned to the high school, even though I help out here a lot. The other tech in the department is more familiar with exact reasoning behind problems with the software we ran into.I hope you find a solution...I really do...hiattech -
I talked to the network administrator, who was very open minded about the thought of roaming profiles. And just like you mentioned, server space came up in the discussion, which is a huge reason why roaming profiles would be an issue. He said it's something we'll have to talk about more, because a bigger storage server will be needed to accomplish that.
SquonkSC -
Well, I fail to see why I wouldn't have some involvement in with the new version of Windows when I'm in desktop support. I have to support desktop computers... a ton of them... and they're running a Windows OS. I'm the one who has to deal with the problems in the schools with this. Sure, I'm not the Director of Technology, but my boss gave me instructions to play with this and see if I can make it work in our environment, so I'm trying best I can to make pigs fly. We're not WANTING to go to Windows 7, but we got a bunch of new computers and no XP drivers exist for them. I found all of the drivers on the individual manufacturer's web sites except the chipset. The manufacturer just doesn't make an XP chipset driver, so I was stuck. Currently, I'm looking at considering putting Vista on these systems. It'd be so painful to do that, but XP won't work, 7 won't work, what choice do I have? I could throw Linux on it I guess. :P
Darryl Licht -
Yes, we're all on a domain. All buildings are on 1 domain. With FOG, despite it supporting multicast, I use unicast because my 24 port gigabit switch I do imaging with does not support multicast. I can fire an image to 23 computers (last port is for my FOG laptop) in about 20 minutes. This of course depends on the size of the image. If it's a standard XP image with Office 07, Firefox, maybe some basic applications, etc (typical of Middle and Elementary labs) than 23 computers in 20 minutes is accurate. The images begin to get bigger when you start talking about CADD labs, business labs, Photoshop labs, etc (High School). That's where the imaging process can be a bit longer - but even still, I can image an entire lab of 30 computers in about an hour's time, assuming worst case scenario with big images.
I image labs once a year regardless of whether or not there are any issues with them. It's typical maintenance. I could go to each computer, defrag it, make sure it has the latest updates, run CCleaner, delete any garbage students might have installed, etc. But it's far easier to walk in with my FOG laptop, a 24 port switch, a ball of ethernet wires, and just get the job done in no time. FOG is something that we can put on our main network, however it really isn't in the cards since our buildings are pretty far apart, and I need to be making changes on the FOG server to choose which image to deploy, etc. So I keep things mobile and use a switch + laptop. Works out pretty nice, too! But like I said, our imaging solution is free and can do so much more than Ghost can ever hope to achieve. And uh, did I mention, it's Linux based? :) :)
At the end of the day, I'm just sitting here with a bunch of computers that are currently useless to us. Windows 7 cannot do local default profiles. I've followed each guide, including Microsoft's sub-par guide. The more I googled last night, the more people I saw confirming it doesn't work. To do roaming profiles it would almost guarantee the need of a larger server which just won't happen overnight. I just really think we need to drop back to Vista, despite how ever so badly I've tried to avoid doing that, and try to get Vista to play nice with local profiles as well.
Thanks to everyone who's helped me here. I just have very little patience with Microsoft at this time considering the situation at hand. But we'll get something working somehow.
One question though...Why hasn't your school labs deployed deepfreeze to prevent permanent student installed junk and other changes a student might have done to a computer?
Ever since we removed Deepfreeze, things have been a lot better in terms of flexibility in the classroom. Now we just implement more group policies and filtering to allow the students to do their jobs on the machines while still having some sort of security implemented.
I'm installing Vista at the moment to try and figure this out. There's also another tech in the department helping me with another computer as well. It's just difficult because with 7 or Vista, it's a lose-lose. Who uses default local profiles? Schools. Who uses Vista and 7 in schools? Nobody.
Insert fork into temple.
That's all right, though. It was almost comforting to hear other users had issues with sysprep. It made me feel like an idiot to be trying it step by step and it erroring out. So even though it's a step back knowing 7 won't fly just yet, at least I know I'm not a total moron. :P
Announcing Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deploym
Quote
