What have u done today ?

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Thanks Mate

What type of PC's and systems to you use at work?

Do you RIS build PC's or slipstream them?

 

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I am 1st line only mate, so not involved in pc repair although I'd love to be and hopefully will after A+.

Here we use IBM desktops and laptops, they have just locked down what users can do on their pc's here, they now access all applications via citrix ICA files. They can install pracitally nothing on their machines now .

Mate, not sure what RIS or slipstream means ?

Remote Inhouse Support ? at a guess lol.

 

Typical desktop specs here


IBM ThinkCentre A Series Type 8198
Maximum Memory Capacity: 2048MB
Currently Installed Memory: 512MB
Available Memory Slots: 0
Number of Banks: 2
Dual Channel Support: No
CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel
CPU Family: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.40GHz Model 2, Stepping 9
CPU Speed: 2392 MHz

 

Intel pro/100 network cards

 

Work today.

Quiet and have managed to finish chapter on powering/cooling the pc.

Also just got my first junk pc !!

Its an IBM thinkpad desktop
Celeron D processor not sure of the speed yet
512mb ram
What looks like an IBM micro ATX Mobo ??
And one faulty 40gb hard drive
Floppy Drive
DVD player drive

Everything looks in really good condition apart from the Hard drive, they were gonna junk the lot !!

So I'm thinking will have to wait for another desktop to be junked and then will have the harddrive and RAM out of it Any maybe keep it for spares.

Great day for me studywise.

 

Does this mean users are not setup as power users in their profile? If so what happens if a particular piece of software needs updating in order to work?

It's interesting this is one of the problems we suffer at work. In order for users to use a specialised piece of software designed for patients they need to be made power users and in some cases administrators which mean they can install all sorts of programs onto their PC. I once was called to one who said they kept on getting popups when they used IE. A closer look at their PC and I found out they had download 3 types of toolbars and screensavers.

 

OK RIS your were almost right it's

Remote Installation Service We take images from a server which has over 20 PC and laptop images with Windows XP or win2k and has the chipset drivers for these PC. Then once the image is loaded, we do a gpupdate in the command screen to refresh the policy for that PC.

Sometimes it is not possible to do a RIS, this could be because the network card is not supported by the RIS server or the user as asked for a paricular old OS like win98.

Then we would slipstream windows meaning we would install all software via CD's. Takes a lot longer and can be a pain sometimes setting up the domain controllers.

 

Sadly, went to work today!

Spetn the day rinsing out an old DC from AD - running DCPromo with the forceremoval switch then clearing the metadata out using adsiedit.

That was fun!

Then moved on to updating the AV gateway (moving it onto a new box). All going fine until I realised no mail was routing inbound - hairy ten minutes til I realised I hadn't changed the source route on the firewall to reflect the new AV gateway... Ho hum!

 

Sounds a productive day

adsiedit is that a file used to edit information in AD accounts like an registry editor or is more like Computer management window?

 

Its a GUI-based tool for modifying the Schema in AD.

Exceptionally dangerous if you don't know what you're doing!

I had to delete the DC using NTDSUtil first, then run ADSIEdit to clear out all the shite it leaves behind.

I've done it a couple of times before, but long, long ago and under much less stressful conditions.

 

Evening UCM, hows things.

I'm not sure where exactly they are locked down but will findout, if software needs installing then IT do it, users have no accesss to update or install software.

 

RIS sounds cool mate, thanks for the link .

Nope we don't use that at my place yet, we use Norton Ghost, I quite like Ghost but RIS sounds the way forward for sure.

 

Wooo got my parts pc today, another IBM thinkcentre desktop.

Taken the harddrive out and gonna swap it in for the faulty one on the other machine tonight.

 

haha i feel like such a noob after reading all these replies that i dont understand

but today i didnt get a single callout so no money for me

had 2 private jobs for friends tho, one i just had to run the windows recovery console because of an unmountable boot volume

and the other i just had to get rid of some spyware that was causing chaos

made £5 in the end

 

Do you work in the same hospital as me??? Must be something about NHS staff!!

 

Yeps

Or alternatively, you might want to tell the chocolate-covered pillocks who wrote the damn software in the first place to use the rights management system Microsoft spent years developing.

Fair enough M$ hasn't exactly covered itself in glory when it comes to security, but it really makes my blood boil when makers of commercial software can't be bothered to code properly and just say "oh by the way, all our software requires users to have elevated privilages or it won't run. Blame Microsoft. Thanks for the 50 grand"

 

That sounds like a job for...

dun dun dunnnnnhhhh....

COMPLIANCE MAN!!!

Dashing through the multiverse with reams of AUPs, disciplinary warnings and audit records... (snip) that's enough of the crappy superhero analogy.

Seriously - if you HAVE to have software installed that requires people with the intellectual capacity of a garden shrub and technical experience of cro-magnon man to have admin rights on their PCs the very least you should have is an AUP which says something like:

"anyone caught even changing the colour on their desktop background will be beaten, tarred & feathered and decapitated, with their head put up on a pike at the gatepost as a salutary lesson to anyone who might consider doing the same thing"

 

Wow, haven't updated this in awhile.

Been busy at work and busy studying.

Quarter of the way through first read of Meyers book and really enjoying it.

Have helped swap out a system board on one of our file servers at work.

Have helped replace a degraded RAID SCSI drive and rebuild it on our print server.

Flashed the BIOS and the onboard ROM on RAID controller on exchange mail server....that was fun .