Support is >Here<

In many Organizations, the AD support team is separated from the team in charge of Imaging.  The AD team naturally is protective with their setup and fight any GPO setting that would result in more responsibility to their staff.  So that leaves us in some occasions having to turn to Local Group Policy to apply the settings we want.  I’ve recently come across some great tools provided by Microsoft (very quietly) for Government usage.  [ Read More ]

Because the Windows 7 CopyProfile=true option only saves a handful of configurations.  We are left with the fun of trying to automate the rest.  I’ve outline some basic, such as specifying a custom Themepack for All Users: http://supportishere.com/how-to-set-theme-in-windows-7-via-script-for-all-users/   The Windows 7 Alert Settings can become a nuisance if you disable the Firewall or do not use a Virus protection program that MS considers safe.  So in some cases, it  [ Read More ]

In most cases, my customer base have decided to install Open Office applications outside of their base images.  The silent installations are fairly simple, because the install files are provided in .MSI format. Applying custom settings after a clean installation need to also be addressed.  I found this was also fairly simple.  All of the settings changed are made to the files stored in the following folder: Windows 7: “C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org”  [ Read More ]

I previously wrote an article on how to set the default theme via a script: http://supportishere.com/how-to-set-theme-in-windows-7-via-script-for-all-users/ This article is displaying a method to simply set the Default Background image for new users in Windows 7. This method performs the following actions: 1. Takes Ownership of “C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows\img0.jpg”. start /w "TakeOwn Of img0" "C:\Windows\System32\takeown.exe" /A /F "C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows\img0.jpg" 2. Grant Full Permissions to img0.jpg file to Administrator. start /w "Take Permissions" "C:\Windows\System32\Icacls.exe" "C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows\img0.jpg"  [ Read More ]

The process of setting the theme for all users outside of group policy is still tedious in Windows 7.  The method I came up with is not the cleanest, but it is supported by Microsoft and easy to implement. Procedure: 1. Build .ThemePack file on test machine via the “Personalization” control panel applet. * If Aero is desired, ensure test machine supports Aero. 1a. Set all desired settings, Background, Background  [ Read More ]