Show me the time!

[E3xtc]

Hi All!

Have Win2K3 Terminal Server and when the users log onto their sessions, the time is not displayed in the system tray.
Is there any way which this can be forced on? (so that each person does not need to right click the task bar, select properties etc etc etc to show the clock)

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers
Troy

 

[PuterLuver]

I would check your group policy.

-PuterLuver

 

[E3xtc]

Hmm We don't run with AD, so the only thing we have is local group policy and I have been through each node in that to check and the only thing I have found is that you can disable the clock - the disable of this feature is supposed to force the default setting, which I would have thought was to show the clock - however this doesn't appear to work.....

Confused to say the least.

 

[ewiley]

It's a profile setting. Right-click the taskbar, click properties, then tick 'show clock'. You can have everyone do this them selves, create a mandatory profile with this setting, or copy this profile to the 'default user' profile and it'll show up for new users who haven't logged in before.

 

[E3xtc]

Thanks Ewiley!
Question though - when you talk about a mandatory profile, can you explain this a little, as I havn't heard this before?
Was keen to lock the taskbar down, so having each person adjust this isnt really an option I was hoping for....

As for the copying over the default profile - is there anything specific that I need to do for this or is it just grab a profile that is correct, and copy everything in it over the top of Default?

Cheers
Troy

 

[markdmac]

Check to see if the following registry key exists for your users. If it does then you will want to delete it.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"HideClock"=dword:00000001

If this is what is hiding it, you could script it to autodelete the key if it exists.

I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[E3xtc]

Thanks Markdmac - just checked through the registry and all it came back with was

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\{UID\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\"**DEL.HideClock"

The node has a space as the value data.

Any ideas on what this is doing?

Asides from these (for each user) there is no mention of "hideclock" anywhere

 

[markdmac]

That is peculiar. Can you exports one users entry to save it and try deleting it? Then log on as the user.

I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[ewiley]

To answer your question about mandatory profiles (for the sake of completeness):

A user's settings are contained (mostly) in a ntuser.dat file in their profile directory (c:\documents and settings\%username% in XP and 2k usually). You can copy that directory to a shared folder and change the ntuser.dat to ntuser.man, creating a mandatory profile. If you change a user's roaming or Terminal Server profile settings to point to that shared directory, they will be assigned that profile, anc can't make any changes to it.