setting defaults for all users in XP?

[Farley2k]

I want to setup all the machines in our computer lab here at work with some defaults for any and all users who log in. These are not values I have found in the group policy editor either but if someone tells me they are there I will dig harder.

What I want are to

1. make is so the welcome/tour of windows stuff doesn't come up each time a new person logs in on a machine.

2. make is so the language bar never opens up (is this only something Office adds?)

3. Have the same default printers no matter who logs in. After all they are in a lab so the network printer is the same.


Anyway any good ideas of how to do these things and any resources to find out how to change more stuff would be greatly appreciated!

 

[BloodRed]

Is this on a domain? If so, you can do most(if not all) of that by creating a custom Default User profile. If this is on a domain, store that profile in Sysvol and each domain user will use it when logging into a system for the first time. If this isn't on a domain, you'll have to customize the Default User profile on a per-machine basis.

 

[mikecel79]

Also are these machines running Win2k or XP? XP has more GPOs to control this type of stuff. And what version of Office are they running?

 

[Farley2k]

One domain. So I could setup a default user profile for all, but it would also work to setup a default profile per machine because we built one of a set (say all the math faculty, all the lab computers, all the business office people) and then use the MS tool to make an image and install that on the rest of the PCs. So I could easily setup the default profile how I like and then use that one PC as my image.


Now how do I go about setting up the default user profile? Just log in as me, do all the changes, then copy everything from my directory in documents and settings to the "all users" directory or is there more (which I assume since some stuff isn't saved as a file in doc&settings but as registry entries)

Thanks

 

[Farley2k]

Originally posted by: mikecel79
Also are these machines running Win2k or XP? XP has more GPOs to control this type of stuff. And what version of Office are they running?

I almost have everyone to either Win2k or XP (we still have some folks on Win95...shudder.....) so I know that not everyone will be able to have the same policies, but as I move people to XP I would like to have the best setup possible.


And like the OS the versions of Office are all over the place. I would say that 90% oare Office XP though and those are the ones who get that annoying "language bar" when they first use the machine.