How to apply GPOs without having to relog users?

Question

hI,

I am using Windows Server 2008 and I have to do a final migration from the Windows 2000 Server (demoted long ago). I have to transfer group, public and user files on the new server.

The only question I got about this is because since I am changing servers and the GPOs are attached to the old server shares in the GPOs, how can I change users' network drives pointers thru GPOs without anmy intervention on their computers, not even a relog, so I can avoid any form of downtime?

ie : I wanna change the pointer of the personal user's U: drive without asking the user to relog or even notice it. I'm going to change it from \OLDSERVER\users\%username% to \NEWSERVER\u\%username%

I know that there is DFS that avoids this thing and it's gonna be implemented after the migration.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you don't have DFS I don't think their is any way that you are going to change drive mappings with a GPO without the user noticing.

You might be able to make this with a DNS aliases, but as I understand it, you have to apply a change to all the clients first that will require a reboot.

Answer 2

Just have the users logoff and logon again. You're trying to make this too complicated for not a lot of payoff. I'm all for doing things transparently but there's a point of diminishing returns (and you could've done this in a way as to have the new server computer end up with the same name as the old server computer, but you didn't).

You can use a NetBIOS alias. You don't need to make any changes to clients (see http://serverfault.com/questions/23823/how-to-configure-windows-machine-to-allow-file-sharing-with-dns-alias for a pretty good writeup) in order to use it to my knowledge.