Tyrael's Blog

Posted in: Computer Problems, Life, Work

So I’ve been working at my old high school still. You may recall that I was helping install that school’s wireless infrastructure for use by both students and teachers as we roll out our whole laptop for every student thing. Well, we’re past the networking part and are working with the Windows techs (hired from outside) to get every machine in the building up to date with the schools various software packages (Word 2007 and Adobe CS3 being the major packages). All kinds of stuff going on with that. We’ve got operating systems installing from the network, group policy issues, and teachers giving us blank stares as we figure out how to fix their issues on a case-by-case basis.

The Windows mercs have implemented a method of reloading the machines that I think is pretty awesome. Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS), we can hit F12 as the machine boots, select the image corresponding to the machine’s specific build (there are several species being used throughout the building) and Windows is (re)installed fresh on the computer in about half an hour over the network. All we have to do is name the machine once it boots for the first time on the network.

Now, we have brand-spankin’ new HP Elitebook 2730p laptops that are going out to the teachers this week. The teachers already have laptops (Toshiba something-or-others, we’ve got like three similar models of them floating around) and we have to move their data so that it appears on the network and is synchronized to their new laptop when they log on. The Windows mercs have devised a Group Policy that redirects their “My Documents”, “Desktop”, and “AppData” folders to the network and uses Sync Center to make them available offline (ie: at home).  The problem is that the Documents redirection very rarely ever works properly (automagically). So I have to move the teacher’s data from their local machine (usually in “My Documents”, or on the extra partition on the machine) up to the network and then get them on the laptop. Once they log in, I have to manually relocate their Documents folder to the network, and then make it available offline. Me and the other two guys working on this have made sure to get out of the habit of saying “It shouldn’t be too long,” and have instead picked up saying “This will never work!” when we sat down at their machine.

I’m also getting a crash course in Symantec Ghost and Sysprep (got any tips?), as there are several machines that don’t take kindly to WDS, we need a way to update them, and for the price of the Windows mercs getting it done we could buy all-new machines to replace them. I’m enjoying this part, I’m basically getting a chance to custom-roll an install for the school. While I’ve already convinced them to load up Firefox (something they were quite opposed to), Notepad++, 7-zip, MediaCoder, and VLC Media Player on the computers, this is different because I’ll get to handle it. Even though the machines I’ll be imaging are far from the best in the building, I know I can make them run well enough to be confused with the best . When these other guys roll up packages, they leave all the junk around. Adobe Reader quickloader, Flash/shockwave updaters, driver tray programs, and all kinds of other unnecessary junk–not a big issue on the beefier machines, but on the boxes I’m working with (512MB of RAM or less) it really eats up resources. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, on the old Toshiba machines, about half of the taskbar would be eaten up by this crap. They’d take about three minutes to be usable after login while it all loaded!

I love this shit.

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Tags: Life, problems, sync, technology, wds, work