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Question about adding a printer
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Question about adding a printer
10:46 AM EST 12/6/06
I'm not the tech at our library, but I have worked with the Gates computers for a few years and know a lot about them.


When trying to share a new printer using a VPN Program called Hamachi, I have had success on three out of four Gates' stations. The one that is giving me trouble has 'adding a printer' restricted through the Local Computer Policy. When removing that restriction via the Policy Editor, I can add a printer. However after shutting down and locking the hard drive with the Centurion Guard, I end up losing my new printer.

By taking off the Computer Profile Restrictions and adding the printer, that is how I have done the other three with out any problems at all.


Any and all input into helping me with this problem is greatly appreciated.


Aaron
Re: Question about adding a printer
5:53 PM EST 12/6/06 as a reply to Aaron Cushman.
Something isn't quite following for me about your description. On the other computers you have just removed Profile Restrictions, which is exactly what you should be doing.
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But on this one, I take that something wasn't working when you did that, and then you tried manually making the change through Policy Editor. But there are two problems with that:
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First is that when you remove Profile Restrictions, that should also remove Policy Editor (and the C:\Policy directory). So if you can still see it, that says to me that something is broken there with the profile restrictions. In that case I would go ahead and remove the Profile Restrictions and the Profiles themselves completely; make sure that C:\Policy and C:\Profiles are deleted. Then reinstall the Profiles with no restrictions and make sure you can add the printer. Finally add restrictions back.
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If you are getting errors trying to remove the restrictions and profiles, follow <a href="../do/DisplayContent?id=7398">these instructions</a> to get them uninstalled.
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The second issue is just an fyi: even if everything else was working correctly, it wouldn't work to just manually change the Policy restriction about adding a printer, because that only addresses one of the three levels of security on the Profiles. You would also need to change the permissions on the profile folders so that user account has modify permission on it's own profile. And then you would also need to change the profile type from 'mandatory' to 'roaming' so that the system will even attempt to save the changes at logoff. This last is done by changing the extension on the ntuser file in the profile from .man to.dat. When you remove the Profile Restrictions normally, all of these things are done at once.
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Dale
Re: Question about adding a printer
5:32 PM EST 12/7/06 as a reply to Dale Musselman.
I think there is something wrong with the profile restrictions. Usually when you remove them, the Start Menu on the All profile is unrestricted. Somewhere along the way our I.T. person must have done something incorrect.


I think your link to the instructions is just what I need to complete my task. Thanks a lot!!
Re: Question about adding a printer
9:27 AM EST 12/8/06 as a reply to Aaron Cushman.
First off, step #12 on the link dalem posted says to remove the Public Access Security Restrictions. I do not have that in Add/Remove Programs, nor do I see them listed in the Configuration Tool. The three I have are Profile Restrictions, Profiles, and System Restrictions. Is there a new version of the Configuarion Tool? The one we have is version 1.0

I am having a problem removing the Profiles. Every time I try to remove them, following the steps, I get a message that says "fatal error." Now I know the IT messed it up at some point.


What should I do now?

Message was edited by:
mraaron12
Re: Question about adding a printer
1:47 PM EST 12/8/06 as a reply to Aaron Cushman.
That looks like it is just a typo on step 12. It should read System Restrictions.

If you are getting the fatal error as you are removing the Profiles in step 13, you can try doing the following manual process. Be aware that this is from memory, and I no longer remember all the specific file names and paths:

Browse your C: drive. If they exist, delete C:\Policy and C:\Profiles.
Also look in the Windows directory for backup profile folders and delete them if they are there. They are somewhere in a sub folder I can't remember the name of, but try searching for the 'all' folder.
Also either in Windows or Windows\System32, there should be probably 6 batch files that contain the instructions for removing and replacing Profile Restrictions, System Restrictions, and Profiles. Again the exact file names excape me, but if you sort by extension they will all be together. You need to identify the one that removes profiles (if you can't tell which is which, come back with the file names, I'll recognize it if I see it). You want to edit that file like this:
-Right-click on the *.bat file and choose edit. It should open in Notepad.
-Select all the text and delete it
-Type "exit" (no quotes) and press Enter
-Save the file

Now go back to Control Panel and remove the profiles. This should happen very quickly since it isn't really doing anything, but it should make the system now believe that the profiles have been removed.

At this point you should first reboot, and then go back to the Configuration Tool and install the profiles again, make the changes you were originally trying to make and then install the system and profile restrictions.