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I certainly hope this question is deemed acceptable, and doesn't violate the Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. portion of the FAQ.

Anyways, I have a network that I've basically inherited from a consultant. It's a Windows environment, with about 70 end user machines. As it stands, the network runs well but I'm always looking for ways to improve it. In an attempt to abide by Rule 8 of the 10 System Administrator Commandments "Thou Shalt Automate", I'd like to know what people have in their scripts. I know that this is a bit open ended and very subjective, but I'm curious to see what others are doing in their environments to make their life easier.

Let it be clear that I'm not looking for code or for people to post their scripts - I'm more than capable of researching and testing syntax. I'm more curious as to the functionality that the scripts accomplish, as opposed to the syntax.

As it stands, I run two VERY basic scripts

Logon

~ Shared drives are mapped

Logoff

~ Files from users computers are backed up to a personal shared drive they have (ie templates, favourites, signature files, etc). This helps reduce the recovery time in case their hard drive should fail.

As you can see, these are both very basic and I'm looking to improve my automation. I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

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You really shouldn't need logon/logoff scripts for most things anymore. Microsoft has really added a ton of GPO templates between 2003 and 2008R2. For drive mapping, you should use Group Policy Client Side Preferences to map the drives, and for the logoff script, the users documents or even entire profile should be redirected to a network share so that they're not working locally in the first place. Keeping any meaningful data on a user's local hard drive is waiting for disaster to strike.

I manage Group Policy for over 1,000 computers in a lab environment and I don't have a single logon or logoff script.

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Thanks for the feedback Mark. That's some great food for thought! I'm going to look into implementing folder redirection asap. – DKNUCKLES Aug 31 '11 at 14:12
@DKNUCKLES I was actually at a MS event about a year and a half ago, where the presenter (a MS Evangelist) said that they were doing everything possible to eliminate the need for startup/shutdown/logon/logoff scripts. They're definitely still useful for automating admin tasks, but they're losing the battle for relevance in Group Policy. – MDMarra Aug 31 '11 at 14:22
This is exactly why this site is such a great resource. As a (somewhat) recent graduate, we were taught that scripting was the best way to do this sort of task. It's great to get different perspectives on this information. Thank you for your input Mark! – DKNUCKLES Aug 31 '11 at 14:26
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