I am at my wit's end as to how to solve a recurring problem we have here and I'm hoping someone can help!!
Here's our environment -- WAN on a fractional T1, 2 W2k Server DCs, seven subnets, mix of W2K Pro, W98 and W95 clients. Up until three months ago, we were an NT 4.0 environment. Up until six months ago, we were using roaming profiles fairly well with the occasional glitch. Folks could move from computer to computer and get e-mail, their desktop, etc., without a lot of problems. However, as more and more of our workstations started getting updated software (W2K Pro, IE 5.0, 6.0, Office 2K), we started getting a lot of screwy things happenng and figured out it was because of profiles, so we dumped them.
The side effect to this has been that every time we get a new employee, install or change a client computer, etc., I have to walk someone through setting up their e-mail in the mail properties of their computer. Not a hard thing with some users, but quite painful with others and time-consuming regardless. I'm spending at least 30 minutes a day right now doing this one thing.
This is the only feature of roaming profiles that I can't live without. I don't care about configuring desktops or restricting the Control Panel, at least not at this point. But I HAVE to be able to find some way to configure a user's mailbox at login. Profiles appears to be the best option, but even that's going to be problematic since I have a mix of operating systems in the field. Plus, since my frame relay is fractional, bandwidth is a problem in sucking a profile over the WAN at the locations where I don't have servers. I've explored putting something in the login script, but it would have to be something that would work without special scripting software beause it's not an option to put it on all 100+ workstations. No simple solution has jumped out here. If we were a total W2K environment, this would be a snap, but that isn't going to happen for a long time yet, unless I have about 75 computers die in the next month.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Surely there is someone else out there with this same problem! Me: We need a better backup system.
My boss's boss: Backup? We don't need no stinkin' backup!
Here's our environment -- WAN on a fractional T1, 2 W2k Server DCs, seven subnets, mix of W2K Pro, W98 and W95 clients. Up until three months ago, we were an NT 4.0 environment. Up until six months ago, we were using roaming profiles fairly well with the occasional glitch. Folks could move from computer to computer and get e-mail, their desktop, etc., without a lot of problems. However, as more and more of our workstations started getting updated software (W2K Pro, IE 5.0, 6.0, Office 2K), we started getting a lot of screwy things happenng and figured out it was because of profiles, so we dumped them.
The side effect to this has been that every time we get a new employee, install or change a client computer, etc., I have to walk someone through setting up their e-mail in the mail properties of their computer. Not a hard thing with some users, but quite painful with others and time-consuming regardless. I'm spending at least 30 minutes a day right now doing this one thing.
This is the only feature of roaming profiles that I can't live without. I don't care about configuring desktops or restricting the Control Panel, at least not at this point. But I HAVE to be able to find some way to configure a user's mailbox at login. Profiles appears to be the best option, but even that's going to be problematic since I have a mix of operating systems in the field. Plus, since my frame relay is fractional, bandwidth is a problem in sucking a profile over the WAN at the locations where I don't have servers. I've explored putting something in the login script, but it would have to be something that would work without special scripting software beause it's not an option to put it on all 100+ workstations. No simple solution has jumped out here. If we were a total W2K environment, this would be a snap, but that isn't going to happen for a long time yet, unless I have about 75 computers die in the next month.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Surely there is someone else out there with this same problem! Me: We need a better backup system.
My boss's boss: Backup? We don't need no stinkin' backup!
