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phoeneous

rwwest7 wrote: »

Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\Default Pictures on a Windows 7 machine as an admin and try to delete or rename any picture in that folder. You're an admin, and it's not about controlling what admins can or can't do, so you should be able to delete any pictures you want from YOUR hard drive correct?

[sigh]

You're missing the point.

[/sigh]

rwwest7

phoeneous wrote: »

[sigh]

You're missing the point.

[/sigh]

Ok ok, I do actually kind of get the point. I know certain registry entries will referance the original profile. The exact same thing would happen in XP when doing it the Microsoft way (which they ditched starting with Vista). My last question is are you speaking from real world experiance or strictly from your studies? I (along with 2 other co-workers) personally support about 1,500 PCs and laptops for a school district. Every single one of them has been imaged and deployed with the default user profile method I described. It's been 4 years since I started doing it that way. So unless I'm totally missing something and the users just aren't saying anything, then there must not be any real problems with doing it this way. I know it's not the Microsoft way but it's way faster and easier than the Microsoft way and it works for me. Sigh.

Hyper-Me

Well first, you can delete those files all you want. As long as you are elevated (which is the whole purpose of UAC).

Second, one has to wonder that if the method you are using is that easy and has zero side effects, why wouldnt Microsoft endorse it as an official method?

If something is too good to be true, it usually is.

rwwest7

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Well first, you can delete those files all you want. As long as you are elevated (which is the whole purpose of UAC).

Second, one has to wonder that if the method you are using is that easy and has zero side effects, why wouldnt Microsoft endorse it as an official method?

If something is too good to be true, it usually is.

Did you actually try it?

I don't care what Microsoft endorses, I know they used to endorse it under Windows XP. This is from Microsoft about their "Official" way of doing it:

"However this process does have a drawback. It does not propagate all settings to Default User and there is no known documentation as to what will and will not be propagated. It also can be difficult to determine if a setting did not carry over to a new user because it was considered inappropriate (i.e. not copied to Default User by design) or is being reset by Minisetup/Specialize or first logon processes."

And this is the problems they state will happen with doing it the old way:

The manual profile copy process can cause issues such as:

• Their list of most frequently run programs is not cleared
• Whether the user has been introduced to the Start menu (will be set to TRUE for the source account, but should be FALSE for new users). Windows Explorer does some special things the first time you log on to introduce you to the Start menu and other new features.
• Whether the user is an administrator (and should therefore see the Administrative Tools, etc).
• The personalized name for “My Documents” will be incorrect. All users documents folders will be called “Administrator's Documents”. This is documented in the Knowledge Base article “The Desktop.ini File Does Not Work Correctly When You Create a Custom Default Profile” (http://support.microsoft.com/?id=321281).
• The default download directory for IE will be set to the Administrator's Desktop folder.
• The default Save and Open locations for some application with point to the Administrator's documents folder.
• Windows 7 Libraries are broken.

The first four "problems" are a who cares, the next two are easily corrected after saving a document for the first time. The last one I don't know much abut yet, but our staff don't use there computer for the Windows 7 Libraries, they use them to work. So, I'll take that short list of minor problems over "there is no known documentation as to what will and will not be propagated. It also can be difficult to determine if a setting did not carry over to a new user" any day of the week.

Hyper-Me

rwwest7 wrote: »

I don't care what Microsoft endorses,.

Thats not a very good mindset to work on critical technology with. Bottom line is that its unsupported, it won't show up in certification exams, you will get hung up on if you ever call MS support and start asking about it and the overwhelming likelyhood is that youll end up uncovering a huge issue with it down the road.

At my last job there was a local OEM that some departments bought computers from. They did some quirky, unsupported things with their images of XP for years. Low and behold when SP3 released it could not be installed. It was causing BSoDs on any machine that had been imaged by them, due to permissions being removed for SYSTEM on certain folders. Not saying this is related to profile copy, but only that if you go and do rougue things, eventually it bites you in the rear.

rwwest7

Hyper-Me wrote: »

At my last job there was a local OEM that some departments bought computers from. They did some quirky, unsupported things with their images of XP for years. Low and behold when SP3 released it could not be installed. It was causing BSoDs on any machine that had been imaged by them, due to permissions being removed for SYSTEM on certain folders. Not saying this is related to profile copy, but only that if you go and do rougue things, eventually it bites you in the rear.

To each his own I guess. I've never ever called Microsoft tech support, other than having to reactivate a CD Key here or there.

We had a similer problem with SP3 when it was first released on some machines. Turns out it was a bug in the service pack itself and NOT the machine or load. We had to do some "unsupported" things to get the computers working again after installing Microsofts "supported" update. We just waited a few months for Microsoft to fix their service pack before installing it globallly and everything was fine.

Hyper-Me

rwwest7 wrote: »

To each his own I guess. I've never ever called Microsoft tech support, other than having to reactivate a CD Key here or there.

We had a similer problem with SP3 when it was first released on some machines. Turns out it was a bug in the service pack itself and NOT the machine or load. We had to do some "unsupported" things to get the computers working again after installing Microsofts "supported" update. We just waited a few months for Microsoft to fix their service pack before installing it globallly and everything was fine.

I've never called MS support either, but I assume the need may arise someday.

I never had any problem out of SP3 (aside the aformentioned local OEM).

I pushed out SP3 on WSUS to a building that I had personally imaged every machine in except a couple of labs of those local OEM boxes, they all hosed and the rest went perfect.

I mean if its working for you, by all means do it. But so many bugs come from supported MS methods that I truly fear the unsupported

RouteThisWay

Hyper-Me wrote: »

At my last job there was a local OEM that some departments bought computers from. They did some quirky, unsupported things with their images of XP for years. Low and behold when SP3 released it could not be installed. It was causing BSoDs on any machine that had been imaged by them, due to permissions being removed for SYSTEM on certain folders. Not saying this is related to profile copy, but only that if you go and do rougue things, eventually it bites you in the rear.

does not surprise me one bit.

Hyper-Me

RouteThisWay wrote: »

does not surprise me one bit.

Yeah, you know all too well of the company im talking about.

rwwest7

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I've never called MS support either, but I assume the need may arise someday.

I never had any problem out of SP3 (aside the aformentioned local OEM).

I pushed out SP3 on WSUS to a building that I had personally imaged every machine in except a couple of labs of those local OEM boxes, they all hosed and the rest went perfect.

I mean if its working for you, by all means do it. But so many bugs come from supported MS methods that I truly fear the unsupported

BTW, that SP3 issue also turned out to be related to OEM builds also. Like OEM builds from small comanies like HP. See here: XP Service Pack 3 Kills AMD Machines

It was due to them using the same image bor both Intel and AMD based computers.

Hyper-Me

rwwest7 wrote: »

BTW, that SP3 issue also turned out to be related to OEM builds also. Like OEM builds from small comanies like HP. See here: XP Service Pack 3 Kills AMD Machines

It was due to them using the same image bor both Intel and AMD based computers.

Oh I know about that SP3 issue, but this one was entirely different. We didn't use any HP models at all. The Dells we used all installed SP3 fine, and the local OEMs that I had reimaged with a clean image made by myself worked fine, but the ones that had been imaged by the local OEM failed miserably.

RouteThisWay

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Oh I know about that SP3 issue, but this one was entirely different. We didn't use any HP models at all. The Dells we used all installed SP3 fine, and the local OEMs that I had reimaged with a clean image made by myself worked fine, but the ones that had been imaged by the local OEM failed miserably.

I can think of 10 diff reasons why, and I can say that confidently

phoeneous

rwwest7 wrote: »

It's been 4 years since I started doing it that way.

I didn't realize Windows 7 has been out for 4 years...since, you know, that's the OS that we've been talking about this whole time in this thread.

XP and 7 are two totally different beasts, I'm sure even you know that.

Do what you want if that's what floats your unsupported boat, I was just trying to be helpful.

rwwest7

Hey I was just trying to be helpful too. Sounded like you were wrestling with sysprep so I suggested another method. Good luck in your syprep adventures.

I'm just curious about something else, when doing it the sysprep way do you have to go through all 15 steps everytime you need to update your image? With my unsupported method, if I need to update an image I just Ghost a computer...make any changes I desire...then re-Ghost the computer back to the server. The reason I've stayed away from sysprep is it just seems like too many steps to go through every single time you want to update an image.

phoeneous

rwwest7 wrote: »

Sounded like you were wrestling with sysprep.

I was but not anymore

I'm just curious about something else, when doing it the sysprep way do you have to go through all 15 steps everytime you need to update your image?

Nope. I took a "common" image while in audit mode which can be applied to any machine provided its the same hardware. I took it with both ImageX and Ghost. This way if one fails I have a backup. Then load the image, make the changes and then image it again. Keep in mind, unless you modify the rearm tag of a sysprepped image, you can only sysprep an image 3 times before the OS gets mad. The only reason why I sysprep is because we use an unattend file, otherwise I'd just use Ghost.

Hyper-Me

rwwest7 wrote: »

Hey I was just trying to be helpful too. Sounded like you were wrestling with sysprep so I suggested another method. Good luck in your syprep adventures.

I'm just curious about something else, when doing it the sysprep way do you have to go through all 15 steps everytime you need to update your image? With my unsupported method, if I need to update an image I just Ghost a computer...make any changes I desire...then re-Ghost the computer back to the server. The reason I've stayed away from sysprep is it just seems like too many steps to go through every single time you want to update an image.

Wait you don't even use sysprep?

With the deployment tools in Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can add drivers and windows updates offline. In Windows 7 you can even remove drivers and add or remove Windows components, add or remove activation keys, change sysprep answer files, etc etc all offline. You can also boot the image into Audit mode, as phoenueus said, to make online changes without hosing the later sysprep phases.