DennisT

Good point. Here's an example - Sales Manager has to be able to install customer/vendor software on his laptop. This is critical as sales is dependent on it. User may not be in for weeks at a time so it is impractical for IT to do the installs. Redirecting the installs won't work as (you guessed it) many of these apps don't allow the install to be redirected to another location. It has to be in Program Files. Therefore the user is put into the local power user's group. The risks and responsibilities are explained in full. On the day of the "disaster" the Sales manager has an extremely important demonstration that is critical to keeping the company's biggest customer, the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Nervous about this presentation, he does his cleanup. Failure to save this situation by IT will result in IT being blamed for the lost business. Who's fault was it? Doesn't matter. IT will get the blame. If you have a spare PC you can save the day (and probably get little if any recognition).

"OK, here's a new laptop/PC. You'll have to reconfigure it, and next time, ask me to delete the files please. Thank you." If only life was that simple.

Google is your friend, and remember most users just want it fixed. If they feel you're working on their problem they're happy (as long as you fix it before too long). The more they like you, the longer you get, up to a point. Of course some users are like this: "I deleted a bunch of files on my PC because it needed more room. Now my PC doesn't work. I have a meeting in 15 minutes so you have to fix it now."

FYI the alternate settings in XP TCPIP is of very limited use. It will work with the range 169.254.0.1 through 169.254.255.254 (255.255.0.0). You can define other IPs (which it will allow without warning) but then it will not work. Windows will not use the alternate until after it times out trying to get a DHCP address (about a minute), and that is why the alternate tab doesn't appear unless you're set up to use DHCP by default.

Active Directory Sites & Services -> Sites -> Default-First-Site-Name -> Servers -> Server you modified -> NTDS Settings -> Right click on each object in the right pane and select "Replicate Now". OR You can install Specops Gpupdate and update everything from AD Users and Computers.

Some additional thoughts: Make both DCs GC servers. Make your domain in DNS AD Integrated. There is no primary/sceondary and so it's easier to set up and it appears to make AD work a bit faster. Set up DHCP on both servers and activate them both. Make each scope large enough to support all your DHCP clients. This gives you ongoing redundancy. Supposedly you can use the print migration tool to migrate/copy all your pint queue data to another server. I tried this once and wasn't successful though (servers were in different domains).

We run a scheduled defrag weekly using the OS defrag command. Some promote a third party defrag but I've yet to come across someone that can demonstrate what, if any, measurable improvements there are to these applications. Our scheduled defrag emails the results and defrags all local drives. An extra bonus is you also get disk usage info. Here's a sample email: =================================================================================== Weekly Defragmentation report for APPSRV1 . =================================================================================== =================================================================================== Defragmenting of C: started at 01:00 AM on Mon 06/25/2007 Windows Disk Defragmenter Copyright © 2003 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc. Analysis Report 34.18 GB Total, 15.37 GB (44%) Free, 1% Fragmented (3% file fragmentation) Defragmentation Report 34.18 GB Total, 15.37 GB (44%) Free, 0% Fragmented (0% file fragmentation) . Defragmenting of C: completed at 01:07 AM on Mon 06/25/2007 =================================================================================== Defragmenting of E: started at 01:07 AM on Mon 06/25/2007 Windows Disk Defragmenter Copyright © 2003 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc. Analysis Report 171 GB Total, 90.75 GB (53%) Free, 2% Fragmented (5% file fragmentation) Defragmentation Report 171 GB Total, 90.75 GB (53%) Free, 0% Fragmented (0% file fragmentation) . Defragmenting of E: completed at 01:44 AM on Mon 06/25/2007 ===================================================================================

I'm putting off an Exchange 2007 implementation until 2008 is released. They call me Nick. Nick Danger.

We use roaming profiles and they work great! We redirect My Documents, Desktop, and Application Data. A user's PC can blow up, we replace it with another, they log in and their entire desktop is the same as it was before. All user data is backed up nightly. We also use DFS shares for their profiles, redirected folders, and home folders. It's reliable, reduces IT support time, and their data is protected.

You can free up some space on the C drive by deleting the updates hidden folders in C:\Windows. They begin with $NtUninstall. Note that if you delete them you will not be able to uninstall the corresponding update(s). Also check Windows\Temp, Documents & Settings\Local Settings\Temp and Temporary Internet Files, and any abandoned print spool files in Windows\System 32\spool (if you're using the std location). It is typically a good idea to relocate the print spool folder onto another partition anyways. No sense in allowing a user to fill the root partition with a huge report. If you move it to another drive you may see a speed benefit. Moving the swap file to another partition will open up some space and if you move it to another drive that may also result in improved performance.

What are "full" defrag services? Yes, the built in defrag doesn't do a "complete" defrag but has anyone shown that really makes a observable difference?

I turned off NetBios by turning off NetBios over TCPIP. NBTSTAT confirms that PCs are not caching any addresses. I suspect what has made this possible (no WINS/NetBios) is that I'm running in Native mode. I'm experiencing 0 problems even though I haven't made the changes in the article I referenced.

or possibly that the logon script is defined 3x in the winning GPO.

That does bring up something I forgot to mention - Everything is in the same subnet. My concern is that everything is working yet I haven't made the changes. So maybe you don't have to make the changes to use DFS without WINS/NetBios?

I tried searching for DFS in the NT/2000/2003 server forum. No results. Tried it on all forums. No results. I know there's at least one thread that has DFS in it.