Managing 2000 computers from NT4 Servers

[xPat_Racing]

As the title says I’m looking for a solution to managing my Win 2000 Pro computers that are connected to a NT4 Domain.

Nothing to fancy just simple stuff like forcing screen savers, fixed wallpaper, proxy setting, no run command etc etc

Now I used to do this by using HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry keys in my logon script. But the latest security templates that the workstations are forced to run block this from working.

Can anybody give me some tips for a better solution? I’ve been doing some searching but I can’t seem to find much of anything.

Thanks.

 

[SJConsultant]

Any chance on migrating to a 2003 server soon?

Your going to spend more time and effort into developing and maintaining any resemblence of GPOs on NT4 than it will take to migrate to 2k3 with the native capabilities built in.

 

[xPat_Racing]

Yes we will be moving to 2003 but I’ve not been given the time table so it could still be 6 months away

If it’s possible to make GPO like policies in NT4 if you could point me to some documentation it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[amenthes]

There was a fucntion in NT4 called System Policy Editor. Not sure what you can do with it though, I haven't touched an NT4 box in over 6 years...!

Here's a doc on MS's site that references it and how to deploy, but I'm sure it doesn't mention anything about NT4 enforcing polices on W2k and XP machines....

http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/docs/prof_policies.doc

I would certainly agree that you need to migrate to Server 2K3; you might spend the next 6 months trying to get polices to work properly with NT4. Not to mention the work to recreate all of those policies once you DO migrate.

 

[Zamboni]

Putting NT4 system policies onto Win2K clients is a twitchy job.

One way I tinkered with was to create a local group on the Win2K workstation with the policies you wanted, then add your domain user group to the local group. (But then the fun part is recreating the same local group on every single workstation.)

(Fixed wallpapers would have resulted in a mutiny at my place, starting with the managers. I put my collection of wallpaper jpegs on a server and told people that these were the approved desktops, and everyone was happy. Finding the perfect puppy wallpaper for the company president is always a cheap way to buy brownie points. )

 

[amenthes]

(But then the fun part is recreating the same local group on every single workstation.)

I'd hate to be the one to do it on 2000 client machines Shudder.