WinXP patch update and policy questions.

[GlobalBrain]

I’ve got couple of questions about ZENworks.
First: Moving whole school to Win XP and one thing is really bugging me is constant updates that Microsoft is producing. For a few extra pounds per year I can buy “ZENworks patch management for Windows”. I’ve got number of different build machines. Does anybody using it? How difficult is it to set it up, run updates? Would you recommend it?
Second: In policy for pupils I’m pushing “Classic Desktop”, everything is working fine except that every folder is opening in new window, so to open a document you end up with ten open windows. Can this be stopped and only one folder is used? I can’t find anything in policy manager to change that.
Any help welcome. Thank you.

 

[terry712]

rip their hands off

patchlink is superb - simple to setup and maintain

 

[marvhuffaker]

I'm not sure if there is a specific policy that controls that either. I believe it is a registry setting. Maybe you could do a snapshot of before you set the command and then after.

Also, what I like to do is build a custom workstaiton image.. Login as whoever I want, then customize all those settings and make the workstation so it's actually usuable. Then copy that profile to the "DEFAULT USER" profile. Then, you use DLU and when your users login, their profile gets copied from the default user and the settings are already made.

I assume you're using DLU and Imaging, they are really cool pieces of ZEN.

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[GlobalBrain]

Thank you. I’ll try that. But to be honest with you I’m very new to ZENworks, so just starting to find out everything about it. All I do at the moment is just setting up different ZENworks policy for different user groups; I haven’t done anything more advanced. It’s not easy to find good resources about ZENworks except Novell website and couple of Novell Press books, which are as useful as the website:-(, so any more detailed help is welcome.

 

[marvhuffaker]

Well, one thing to keep in mind with ZEN... A lot of the things you are doing are basic functions that are already built into Windows. ZEN just helps facilitate the management of these functions. It helps centralize and standardize the workstations, and you use your existing eDirectory users groups and containers to do it. Without ZEN, you pretty much have to do things manually on each workstation.

Here is an overview of some of my favorite things you can do with ZEN.. Sorry for tooting my own horn, but I agree, it's difficult to find good information about ZEN and what you can actually do with it.

http://www.redjuju.com/resources/feature/the-joy-of-zen.htm

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com