1. I know Dell will image a machine for you before shipping. I'd use LogMeIn or similar solution to access these remote machines. Remote Desktop kicks of the current user - not good for walk-through support.
Sam Cayze Information Technology Administrator ROLLOUTS ONSITE * ON DEMAND LinkedIn Profile <http://www.linkedin.com/in/samcayze> Facebook Profile <http://www.facebook.com/samcayze> ________________________________ From: Don Kuhlman [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 1:54 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Best way to get remote access to new network PCs Hi folks. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season! Maybe I am too much because I'm trying to think of the best way to do something that should be simple and drawing blanks... Here's the situation: 1) Small business client with few users and 3 remote sites. OS is XP Pro SP2 or better. Servers are 2003 with 1 SBS 2003 Pre R2. 2) All sites are remote with no real IT staff on site. 3) They purchase a computer from a vendor who installs the base OS on it. 4) It's delivered to the remote office and they put it on the network. 5) It's not in the domain and it came with allow remote control off and firewall on. 6) We want to join it to the domain and then push Vipre, etc. down to it but we can't do this remotely. What we've been doing is having a local user logon to the box with the local Admin id and turn on "allow remote control" and turn off the firewall and also walk them through joining the domain - We grant them enough rights temporarily to allow them to do this (they don't know that at the time). Once it's on the domain we can then get to it provided "allow remote control" is on and firewall is off. Then we install VIpre, remove other stuff we don't want on it, and set it the way we want. Since the machines don't come to me or other support before arriving at the site, I've never used an imaging solution to build them. Options/Questions? 1) Have the computer supplier set it to our specs after baseloading the os before shipping to the site? 2) Setup a poor man's imaging solution to be able to image any new machine remotely(any suggestions for this)? 3) Still don't know how to get it on the domain without local intervention. 4) Add a group policy or other to make the remote control and firewall settings we want automatically when it's joined to the domain - if we do this, where's the best place to put the Group Policy settings and which ones? Any thoughts appreciated! Thanks Don K ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
