I'm a software/web developer and know very little about networking other than setting up a basic home network using a router and workgroups. I recently acquired a copy of Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition from DreamSpark.com. I managed to get it set up on an old P4 machine with the following roles:
File Server
Domain Controller
DNS Server
DHCP Server
Application Server (IIS, .NET)
My intention is to set this up as a development server for myself, however I also have 2 other PCs (1 is wireless), a wireless printer, and an external NAS drive. I also need to install SQL Server 2008, and Xampp (Apache, MySQL, etc). Part of the reason for installing the Domain Controller/AD, DNS, and DHCP was to learn about it but I'd like to make this as simple and straight forward as possible since I don't have a lot of time right now to invest. My main focus right now is to have a development server where I can work on ASP.NET, and some PHP websites. With the current setup I know there may be some things that are not set up correctly or have been left out due to lack of knowledge. At the moment, I'm struggling with migrating my local account or profile including application settings over to my domain profile. All the searching on the Internet that I've seen has mentioned that you can change the ProfilePath in the registry to point to the local profile, run the usmt tool, use the easy file transfer tool that comes with Windows 7, or copy the local profile over the domain profile manually. The USMT tool is beyond me, and changing the registry doesn't seem to work, and I saw nothing easy about the Easy File Transfer tool. Manually copying only partially works. (Can you sense my frustration, lol)
I'm wondering if I can get away with going back to a workgroup set up or do I have to have all the roles I mentioned above? If keep what I have already, is there a straight forward proven way to either point the domain account so it loads all the local profile settings?
So far I've spent a week on trying to get this to work and I'm close to giving up. I'm hoping/praying that someone has a solution out there.
Jim
File Server
Domain Controller
DNS Server
DHCP Server
Application Server (IIS, .NET)
My intention is to set this up as a development server for myself, however I also have 2 other PCs (1 is wireless), a wireless printer, and an external NAS drive. I also need to install SQL Server 2008, and Xampp (Apache, MySQL, etc). Part of the reason for installing the Domain Controller/AD, DNS, and DHCP was to learn about it but I'd like to make this as simple and straight forward as possible since I don't have a lot of time right now to invest. My main focus right now is to have a development server where I can work on ASP.NET, and some PHP websites. With the current setup I know there may be some things that are not set up correctly or have been left out due to lack of knowledge. At the moment, I'm struggling with migrating my local account or profile including application settings over to my domain profile. All the searching on the Internet that I've seen has mentioned that you can change the ProfilePath in the registry to point to the local profile, run the usmt tool, use the easy file transfer tool that comes with Windows 7, or copy the local profile over the domain profile manually. The USMT tool is beyond me, and changing the registry doesn't seem to work, and I saw nothing easy about the Easy File Transfer tool. Manually copying only partially works. (Can you sense my frustration, lol)
I'm wondering if I can get away with going back to a workgroup set up or do I have to have all the roles I mentioned above? If keep what I have already, is there a straight forward proven way to either point the domain account so it loads all the local profile settings?
So far I've spent a week on trying to get this to work and I'm close to giving up. I'm hoping/praying that someone has a solution out there.
Jim
