VoodooV

Greetings. I apologize if this is the wrong forum but it seems related to Windows 7 since I was able to do this in XP. Our printers are all installed on a Win2K3 server and I deploy them to our users through group policy. I have a user using Windows 7 64bit and she is having problems with her printer and I was going to remove the printer and driver and reinstall. In XP, I would just be able to right click and delete the printer, then delete the driver, do a gpupdate /force and reboot and they'd get a fresh driver. But in Win7, it is not allowing me to do that. When I try to delete the printer from the computer (even when logged in as member of the administrators group, I get the message "Access is denied, unable to remove device" Since I can't delete the printer, I can't delete the driver. I've googled this with no luck. I've found one hit that describes the problem exactly...but no solution is given. I suspect it's some Group Policy setting I need to update for Win7...but I'm not having any luck finding anything that would apply. Thanks in advance!

Greetings all. I've recently made a WinXPSP3 sysprep image with WinPE and imagex. I've discovered a couple minor things that need registry changes. For example. When I was building my sysprep image. I copied the CD i386 folder to the C drive and modified the registry so that system file checker uses that local folder to do it's checking. For whatever reason though, after sysprep, those registry entries got changed to directories that definitely do not contain the source files. So I wanted to be able to lay down that sysprep image onto a new computer, and make some reg edits to correct those entries prior to the first boot up. After some researching, I discovered the reg command after some initial confusion about loading hives and etc, I've eventually figured out how to change those entries back to what they should be and i've tested it and it works. Here's where I'm stuck. I'd like to also add additional commands to the GuiRunOnce section. Currently, I've got two commands in there right now that install the recovery console, I'd like to add more commands after the fact if possible. Problem is, I can't seem to find the registry key that houses those settings. The help file that comes with sysprep says that it puts GuiRunOnce commands in "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" after sysprep is run. Since I configured sysprep to have the target machine auto-login as Administrator a few times, that means that I need to load in the administrator's NTUSER.DAT hive right? Well I've done that, but I can't find the RunOnce section at all. I've also looked in the same place under HKLM, but also no luck. So what am I missing here? where are those commands stored at? Thanks in advance!

My office is transitioning from Novell to Windows AD. We're a state agency, and our state is such that they won't let us have our own domain, we're simply an OU in their forest. Anyway, the number one complaint we've had so far is whenever the user clicks on one of the new drive mappings that maps to our new Windows servers. There is an initial lag between clicking on the drive, and when the contents are displayed. The lag is maybe 5-10 seconds. That isn't so much the problem, but if the drive goes unused for a while, and the user clicks on it again, the lag returns. Now I remember long ago, when I did some W2K server training, I ran into this issue and my instructor showed me how to fix it. I believe it was a reg hack having to do with the connection timing out and the reg hack increased the timeout to some very large number. Does this issue seem familiar to anyone and does anyone know where to find that fix because I've tried searching around and I haven't had any luck finding it yet. If I'm remembering correctly and it's just a reg hack, is this something that can be done to our servers, or is it a reg hack that has to be done to the domain controller which we don't control. Thanks in advance!

Well it looks like I was wrong, removing all instances of the printer name in the registry is not doing the trick. They seem to be eventually coming back. Now normally this is not a problem, most users simply don't notice the extra printer or don't care. But what happens is if some users go into their Printers folder, it will list the extra printer and the status will be "opening" but shortly afterwards, a spoolsv.exe application error will appear: "instruction at"0x75bc7140" referenced memory at "0x000000ab" the memory could not be read." The computer account is in a completely different OU from what it originated from. How do I get rid of whatever is still trying to point the computer to the printer that's assigned to a different OU

I'm on a 2003 AD domain and I'm trying to build a dozen computers for one of our departments. I build an image, and while doing so, I put the computer on the domain to get a current set of WSUS updates. At some point I take the computer off the domain and I image it and now I'm deploying the to the various computers. What I failed to notice was that when I put it on the domain to get the WSUS updates, I also got the printer that was deployed via a GPO. After the image is deployed to the target computers, they get put back onto the domain with different computer names and into a different OU with a different GPO that deploys a different set of printers. The problem is that for some reason, the original printer seems to be sticking around. This isn't a per-user deployment, its a per-computer. I think I managed to solve it...sorta. After I put the image on one of the computers, prior to going back on the domain, I hunted through the registry for all instances of the printer name and deleted them. That appears to have done the trick. But what's the best practice here? Shouldn't that original printer have gone away once I took it off the domain? or failing that, when I put the imaged computer back onto the domain into the target OU, once the policy refreshed, shouldn't the original printer have gone away then? If the registry fix is the way to go, which registry key in particular is the one to delete instead of deleting all references In the meantime, as an interim measure, when building images, when I need to go onto the domain to get WSUS updates, I put the computer on the domain in an OU that doesn't have printers deployed to it. Thanks in advance!

you're preaching to the choir my friend. I'm to the point where I think I need a new job so I don't have to deal with his narrowmindedness anymore. but that's a separate issue. I forgot that you could combine WIM files (I'm new to WIM) that's using the imagex -append command right? So I would have one WIM, boot WinPE on a second machine, and -append the whole C drive to the existing file and then imagex intelligently determines what files are redundant and which arent? is that the gist of that how it works? Heh, the only problem I see with that, is that if I only have one image file, my un-enlightened boss may interpret that as me defying him again. and more trouble might ensue. Because If I can't convince him that sysprep is a good thing, I sure as hell can't convince him that ImageX is combining the image and not using redundant files. Believe me, I've tried repeatedly to explain to him what sysprep does over and over, and no matter how calm and diplomatic I am about it.. he sees it simply as me not doing what I'm told. And as much as I know that my way is better and less redundant, I really don't feel like losing my job right now. I don't care if I have to reload drivers, I just really don't want to have to reinstall windows umpteen million times

In a few months, I'm going to be deploying XPSP2 across our network. We're moving from Novell to AD and we want to remove all traces of Novell from the network and go Tabula Rasa on our network. So even people who already have XPSP2 will be getting a fresh copy. We have at least a dozen different types of Dell computers in our workplace. Ideally, what I want to do is build XPSP2 on a master machine, sysprep it, and deploy it out to everyone via imagex and then script out adding in the drivers to the $OEM$ folders and have the mini-Setup do its PnP thing and detect the drivers and what not..etc etc. I haven't worked out all the details, but that's the general gist of what id like to do. My boss, doesn't seem to see it that way. He literally wants me to take one computer of each type, manually install windows and all our apps on each one and then image THAT. Try as I might, I can't explain to him the wonders of sysprep and that even computers that are of the same model, still aren't truly identical and that installing windows manually that many times will inevitably introduce various differences that may lead to later problems. I'm trying to accommodate him as much as I can, but I'm really unwilling to manually install windows that many times. So what I want to do is this: -Build XPSP2 on a master computer and sysprep it. -deploy that sysprep image to one of each model Dell we have. -install drivers and then sysprep again and take an image of each one of those so that there is a WIM file for each model Dell we have So can you sysprep an image more than once without hurting anything. or would it be better to do a -factory sysprep, deploy that image to each model, load drivers and then sysprep -reseal. Would that still take into account the differing components that exist even in identical models? Or how would you go about it? Thanks in advance.

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I apologize if this has been brought up before, I did a search, but couldn't find anything. I've been trying to script out some application installs via batch files. I discovered the start /wait command. But it doesn't seem to work for me. when I run the batch, all the installs fire off simultaneously. I've read that for whatever reason, the /wait functionality doesn't work in SP2 anymore. If this is true, is there a way around it? The only workaround I know of currently is using powershell scripts using "| out-null" Thanks in advance.