Cohesively synergizing efficiency paradigms by leveraging group policies

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Cohesively synergizing efficiency paradigms by leveraging group policies

Zedlic: Mar 10, 2005; Ask me about being too much of a sperging idiot to understand what resisting arrest means.

I don't care if I'm replying to an old thread, this is too good information to go into archives. Helped me a lot.

Also, I have a problem that's related to Active Directory and Group Policy. Hopefully someone here has an idea towards a solution.

You see, when I was creating the domain for this AD (tiny company, first time administering Windows, learning as I go, etc.) I figured it would be a good idea to name the domain the same as the URL for the company. As in companyname.is. So the domain is called companyname.is and the url for the website (hosted elsewhere) is companyname.is.

This was all well and good until I realized that this meant that all users trying to access companyname.is from a browser on a domain computer were redirected to the web server on the domain controller, instead of accessing the actual website on the Internet.

After looking around I found an A Record in the DNS settings on the domain controller pointing companyname.is to the domain controller IP. Thinking I had found the problem, I deleted the record, but now no machine can even ping companyname.is.

Can I tell the DNS server to forward requests for companyname.is just like any other requests that get translated to an IP? Or do I need to rename the domain?

# ¿ Feb 27, 2009 03:57

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 11:10

Zedlic: Mar 10, 2005; Ask me about being too much of a sperging idiot to understand what resisting arrest means.

Suspicious posted:

Don't mess with DNS records of domain controllers or anything created by active directory because you could break many things. AD is dependent on DNS to work.

What you could do is make a https://www. A record that points to the IP of the external site or turn on IIS on the DC and create a simple page that redirects to the external IP

Thanks, this worked perfectly.

Now I'm having another problem: GPO-enabled drive maps don't map at all on laptops.

The setting is enabled under User Configuration -> Preferences -> Windows Settings -> Drive Maps and is set to Replace (that is, create if not there, else replace. I've also tried Update, and toggling the Reconnect switch) a drive map giving each user access to a central share. This GPO is linked to an OU containing all users. This works perfectly on all desktops in the domain. Drive gets mapped every time, no problems.

On the laptops it doesn't do anything. Nothing is mapped, no events are logged telling me why nothing did. It just doesn't work. Mapping it manually in Windows Explorer works fine.

Now, since the laptops and desktops are currently operating under the exact same GPOs, that is obviously not the issue. So it must be something related to some laptop-specific feature which brings us to the most likely culprit: Wireless.

With that in mind, I enabled "Always wait for the network before logging on" but still nothing. I'm completely empty and have no idea why the laptops can't just loving map this single drive. Help.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2009 00:48

Zedlic: Mar 10, 2005; Ask me about being too much of a sperging idiot to understand what resisting arrest means.

murk posted:

Are the laptops XP, and do they have group policy preference client side extensions update installed?

The laptops are Vista, just like the desktops. Not sure about this update, but WSUS is running on the GP controller and all the clients are more or less up to date. (Edit: All other GPO's work perfectly fine on the laptops too).

Actually I'm also having a tiny problem with that, where I have a hundred approved updates and a GPO that tells all computers to auto-update at 03:00 even when asleep/in hibernation but then I log on the next day to see all hundred updates still needed for all the computers. Can I force feed updates?

Zedlic fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Mar 3, 2009

# ¿ Mar 3, 2009 10:33

Zedlic: Mar 10, 2005; Ask me about being too much of a sperging idiot to understand what resisting arrest means.

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

What kind of security are you using with your wireless? I think the always wait for network before logging on will only work if it is an open AP, and you need to go through some hoops to get the wireless to pre-authenticate during system startup before you can get drive mappings to work over wireless.

I'm using WEP-PSK right now but I could switch to WPA if necessary. I actually tried setting up a GPO for only the laptops telling them to connect to the AP using WPA-PSK but it didn't give me the option of specifying the key itself. Maybe I'm missing something.

Do you know what hoops I need to jump through to fix this?

# ¿ Mar 3, 2009 15:57

Zedlic: Mar 10, 2005; Ask me about being too much of a sperging idiot to understand what resisting arrest means.

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

I've never had to do it personally, but if you look under Computer Config, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Wireless Network (IEEE 802.11) Policies you should see what you need:

Then you need to jump through a few hoops with importing a certificate on the clients (which you can also do through policy) which will supply the access key. Or maybe this is a situation where you should be using straight WPA2 and using LDAP for authentication, maybe with the computer system account credentials. Again, this isn't something I have had to do personally.

I took the easy way out by plugging "net use x: //server/share" into a login script for all users. Apparently that's executed a bit later than drive map GPO's, so it worked.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2009 11:45

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