Hello, firstly thanks for taking the time to read this;
I work in a P.C training / educational environment teaching students how to use ms office etc...this can lead to several hundred p.c issues... We have recently recieved 20 - Xp Pro P4 2.8Ghz units with 512MB of ram 40GB HDD (HP'S).
I would like thoughts and opinions from people whom have assembled a unit for a similar educational environment.
What i would like to achieve is having one ghost / image, as a master and i can use this for all 20 P.c's using ghost32 and of course altering the coa to the unit, which isnt an issue.
What i would like to be able to do is have 2 or 3 partitions one for the c:\windows, one for the student files, and a 3rd as a backup for C: incase the trainess kill the o/s or could be like a half hour random trouble shoot , when I could just switch to the backup of C:\ on the 3rd partition and restore windows. The exact process of achieving this, so that i can have a fail safe, is a topic i require more info about.. hence this post.
Also the tutors would like to be able to delete the students files from their own p.c unit just by accessing the unit and deleting the folder structure on the second partition which would be for students work only. Last time i tried this option i tried to share my documents in Xp.. only to run around in circles and have everything looking right..but of course you cant share this folder in xp..at least from what i read.
I have considered using another profile so that when the user starts up they could choose from one of two profiles to boot from and so if profile one is corrupt they could use profile two. Im not sure how this works in practice never having used these "profiles before"
Ultimately what i would like is the ability to have the users (desktop / profile) reset to a predefined format so that if they have an issue they could just shut down and restart and everything would be like it was previously. This would be the best option so that if they have an issue
they can just restart and keep going, ok so they might loose their work but the whole unit isnt out of commission for any length of time. I have heard this is possible.
So my learn-ed colleagues, what morssels of information can you provide me with and to assist dealing with this task in a timely fashion?
Are profiles the way to go or group policys and profiles, is there any information online that you can direct me to that can help? or other options?
I will need to commence these builds pretty soon so if you read this post after the 10 of Oct 08 please dont respond..(just incase i forget to close this thread)
My boss, like most boss's, wont want to know about any financial outlay so any reccommendations should take this into consideration.
Thanks in advance for any information that you can share.
Regards
MikeB
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