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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
Here's the situation: a non-profit where I volunteer wants to establish a
computer/office skills training program. They've already done a little pilot work with half a dozen students to figure out what's important to them and how to present it. It was deemed successful and they've tweaked a few things as a result. Recently, the organization has received a donation of half a dozen desktop and ten laptop machines for this purpose. They are all running Win 7 Pro (and pass the Win 8.1 readiness test should we decide to go that route). I figure we can support the students in two ways and I'm fishing for suggestions. We can set up a client-server system by using one of the desktop machines as a server for the others. There is a strong suggestion by experienced instructors that the students NOT be allowed to store files locally--on the desktop or laptop machines. A pinch of additional HD capacity on the designated server would suffice and is inexpensive these days. It requires a fair bit of setup, however. The other possibility is to issue thumb drives to the students where their work files would reside. It has the advantage that their work is portable - if they have access to other machines they can bring it with them, i.e., to the local library which provides free computer use. I have never set up a client-server network on Windows, but I have on other systems, so I think I could grope my way through it. My question regarding the thumb drive approach is this: can one set up a portable drive in such a way as to essentially contain their user environment plus work files? I presume there would be a userid associated with each thumb drive. In other words, can what would normally reside in c:\users for each student live on the USB drive? That would have to include the Documents folders as well as local settings(?). TIA, Jason |
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#2
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
Jason wrote:
Here's the situation: a non-profit where I volunteer wants to establish a computer/office skills training program. They've already done a little pilot work with half a dozen students to figure out what's important to them and how to present it. It was deemed successful and they've tweaked a few things as a result. Recently, the organization has received a donation of half a dozen desktop and ten laptop machines for this purpose. They are all running Win 7 Pro (and pass the Win 8.1 readiness test should we decide to go that route). I figure we can support the students in two ways and I'm fishing for suggestions. We can set up a client-server system by using one of the desktop machines as a server for the others. There is a strong suggestion by experienced instructors that the students NOT be allowed to store files locally--on the desktop or laptop machines. A pinch of additional HD capacity on the designated server would suffice and is inexpensive these days. It requires a fair bit of setup, however. The other possibility is to issue thumb drives to the students where their work files would reside. It has the advantage that their work is portable - if they have access to other machines they can bring it with them, i.e., to the local library which provides free computer use. I have never set up a client-server network on Windows, but I have on other systems, so I think I could grope my way through it. My question regarding the thumb drive approach is this: can one set up a portable drive in such a way as to essentially contain their user environment plus work files? I presume there would be a userid associated with each thumb drive. In other words, can what would normally reside in c:\users for each student live on the USB drive? That would have to include the Documents folders as well as local settings(?). TIA, Jason Returnil System Safe (http://www.returnilvirtualsystem.com/products) free version available, don't bother with their integrate anti-virus unclear if non-profit use if permitted but business use is not Toolwiz Time Freeze http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...me_freeze.html http://www.toolwiz.com/en (site is currently down) free Acronis True Image (backup software, payware) includes Try & Decide These programs redirect all disk changes (and that includes the registry since changes are saved to disk files) to a virtual disk. The students can phuck up the computer as much as they want. When the computer is next rebooted, all the changes to the virtual disk are discarded. Upon reboot either the real disk is accessed or a new virtual disk is used; that is, the reboot can return the computer to full use or it can wipe the changes and virtual any changes thereafter. The instructor powers down the computers at the end of the day or the students after they quit using the computer or a scheduled event can run shutdown.exe to power off the computer. Thus a following boot discards all changes from before and starts fresh (with the real or another virtualized disk). This eliminates having to restore the computer after the students screw up the computer. The reboot-and-wipe process means new software cannot be installed when the virtual disk is active. These provide a password feature so only the instructor could reboot back to the real disk to install software. That also means while the virtual disk is active that any software installs that require a reboot will be absent after the reboot. These programs permit setting up folders that are not protected. As I recall, they cannot be in the OS partition but have to be on a drive for a different partition. The virtual disk is storing all changes on the OS partition so data files cannot be saved there; else, on a reboot, all those data files or the changes to them will disappear. You can use the wizard in Windows to change the physical location of the %userprofile% folder which contains the default user folders of My Documents, Pictures, Videos, My Music, and other special folders. One method to change the location of a special folder is to right-click on it, select Properties, and use the Move button under the Location tab. Many programs are hardcoded to use the default path for an assumed user profile folder. That is, you telling Windows to move the folder doesn't make ignorant programs change from using their hardcoded path. That means after having Windows move the special folder to somewhere else still requires creating a junction point for the old folder that points to the new folder. After using Windows to move the old folder to a new folder, make sure everything gets copied from the old folder to the new folder (I don't think the Windows move will move all files). Rename the old user profile folder, like appending .OLD to its name. Then use the 'mklink' tool to create a junction point at the same point as the old user profile folder. So you: - Use Windows wizard to move special folder: - Make sure everything gets copied from old to new folder. - Rename the old folder (e.g., C:\users\oldprofile). - Use mklink to create a junction point that is the same as the old user profile folder (e.g., mklink /j c:\users\oldprofile d:\newprofile). The old folder cannot exist because the junction replaces it in NTFS (so t can redirect to the new folder). This is off the top of my head so there may be nuances that I missed. The idea is to get Windows to move the special folder to somewhere else, make sure everything under the user profile folder gets copied over. Rename (or delete) the old user profile folder and replace it with a junction that points to the new folder. I'm sure you can find online tutorials that guide you step by step on how to move the special folders, user profile, and use mklink to point any requests to the old user folder to the new one. While I've not heard (or read but then I didn't bother to research) anyone moving the special folders or user profile folder to a removable device (e.g., USB-attached drive), I suspect some real problems would arise if local permanant storage were not used. Just what would happen if the USB drive wasn't plugged in and a program wanted to store some app data under the %userprofile% path -- which doesn't physically exist because you forgot to plug in the USB drive? And does a pre-inserted USB device get assigned a drive letter early enough during the Windows boot process to ensure nothing would try that access the folders on the USB devicde before it got a drive letter assigned to it? I suspect there would be problems trying to move special folders or the %userprofile% folder to removable or networked devices. Move and redirect (via junction) to local storage, like a drive letter assigned to another partition on a hard disk in the computer. The user can do their own copying to the USB drive whenever they want. You could, for example, write a .bat file that paused with a prompt to the user telling them to copy their data files to a USB drive and then add that batch file as a logoff script. Whenever they logged off (or shutdown which first initiates a logoff), the script would run to remind them to copy (or it would do the copy but would need some checks that the USB drive was available before trying to do the copy, and issue a prompt to tell the user to keep their fingers off the computer during the copy). http://www.bing.com/search?q=logoff script windows 7 |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
Jason wrote:
I presume there would be a userid associated with each thumb drive. In other words, can what would normally reside in c:\users for each student live on the USB drive? That would have to include the Documents folders as well as local settings(?). TIA, Jason One can't relocate 'what normally' resides in c:\users elsewhere. Windows will object to any attempts to store a userprofile externally. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:38:57 -0500 "VanguardLH" wrote in
article Acronis True Image (backup software, payware) includes Try & Decide This feature has been dropped in the latest release. Perhaps nobody used it or perhaps Acronis couldn't get it to work right... Telling? |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
Jason wrote:
VanguardLH wrote Acronis True Image (backup software, payware) includes Try & Decide This feature has been dropped in the latest release. Perhaps nobody used it or perhaps Acronis couldn't get it to work right... Telling? Perhaps Acronis wanted to focus their resources on all the other bloatware they want to push (i.e., it's lureware in disguise), like their cloud storage service. I suspect they got too many tech support calls from boobs that don't understand how disk virtualizing works. A call could be, for example, from a user that wants to know what all their new or changed data files disappeared after a reboot. They just can't figure out how to punch holes in the security product, if it exists, to not virtualize disk I/O to specified folders or that they should be saving data on a partition other than the one for the OS that is getting protected. Quite often software vendors will roll in a new but separate feature that they realize later generates no revenue (it doesn't increase sales) but does cost them for tech support. Easier to get rid of the unrelated product than to support it. After all, something like Try & Decide is not a function of a backup program. Sometimes vendors lose focus and then later get back on track. Acronis True Image 2015: Try and Decide Is Not Supported https://kb.acronis.com/content/48608 It was, I believe, available up to the 2014 version. The lame excuse that Acronis gives is to hide that they don't want to support the Try & Decide feature. No one bought any Acronis product solely due to that feature and it loaded them with tech support calls from users that are ignorant on how such products work. Creating a full image before installing software or making a change to the OS/app setup is NOT as quick as redirecting all further disk I/O to a virtualized disk. Yes, you could save an incremental backup but that's based on a chain of other incremental backups going back to a full backup. The longer the chain, the more fragile it becomes. Full backups were the only safe means of ensuring a restore if a software install or "test" went badly. If full image backups were the cure to restoring a host back to a prior known state then disk virtualizing products would never have existed. Backup programs were around decades before disk virtualizing products. It's amusing that they even include their cloud storage as part of their claimed alternative to disk virtualization. Have you ever tried to restore an image of a partition from the multi-gigabyte sized file stored in their (or any) cloud storage? You won't even get the downstream bandwidth of downloading a file from a site when you attempt to retrieve data from cloud storage. Unlike using a virtual disk that takes only the time of a reboot to revert back to the real disk and discard all changes made to the virtual disk, it can take hours to restore from a full image on local storage and days to recover a full image from cloud storage. They just pushed out some gobbletygook to pacify their customers that whined about the loss of Try & Decide in the 2015 version. I'm back on the 2013 version. I find it is cheaper to wait several major versions before updating commercialware. Rarely does a new version, or even several, have sufficient bang-for-the-buck for me to spend my money on a new version. Obviously they need to change or add to the product to have draw to customers well trained in the newer-is- better sales mantra. Change just means different, not necessarily better. They're selling a product. If the current version does everything that I need, they have nothing they can sell me. That's why some products are actually subscriptionware to force to a new version of their product. Anti-virus software has been that way for a couple decades. Other software vendors are jealous of that sales model and more are jumping to that sales model. Dropping Try & Decide probably has little effect on their sales. This is similar to when ISPs dropped Usenet service. Yes, there were customers that vowed to drop that ISP but it never happened (the number was so tiny that the cost savings for the ISP far outweighed a puny number of dissatisfied customers that actually left). Since the users of True Image targeted that product as a backup solution, the loss of Try & Decide probably went unnoticed by the vast percentage of their customers, and those who did notice might've whine a bit but soon shut up and focused on using TI as just a backup solution. So Try & Decide is not an option if you want to get the latest (2015) version of Acronis True Image. There are still other choices. However, although slower, saving a full image is a means of testing unknown software or letting users phuck with a host and then later do a restore to revert the disk back to a prior known state. It is unknown (to users) just where Acronis obtained the disk virtualization technology. Often a company will contract with another company to borrow technology to present as their own. I doubt Acronis actually developed their own disk virtualization component. They got it from somewhere else. If they got it from Returnil then it's obvious why Acronis discontinued Try & Decide: Returnil discontinued their product. Returnil still distributes System Safe but it really hasn't been supported for a few years. Instead they focused their resources on developing a whole new disk virtualization product: they went from System Safe to QuietZone. There was (is) a free version of System Safe. There is no free version of QuietZone. With Returnil investing no resources on System Safe and with increased cost to obtain QuietZone, anyone that contracted with Returnil for their disk virtualization technology would rethink about providing that contracted code for free in their own product. Since Try & Decide was not a revenue generator for Acronis is why they dropped it. Knowing just who actually provided the disk virtualization technology to Acronis might also reveal why Acronis dropped their rebranded disk virtualization component. I used to use Returnil System Safe for several years. When Try & Decide showed up in True Image, I switched to using that. Neither one precludes the need to backup. I have not tried the Toolwiz disk virtualization products. I only know they exist and others have use them. Microsoft once had their own disk virtualization product called SteadyState but dropped it after a few years of providing its download. Outsiders never really know the rationale of why a company drops a product. Hell, insiders often don't know why management makes the decisions it does. I was in several technology companies and they buy/acquire software from other companies but then just dropped it or never employed it in any of their products. I worked several months getting an enterprise-level backup solution configured, defined, documented, and ready to go that didn't use any software our enterprise customers didn't already have that came in the OS so it wouldv'e been a free solution to our customers and generated good will towards our company; however, management dropped that project with no explanation. I still got my salary since it was a side project but it was frustrating to work with the sysadmin all that time and do the testing to provide a robust setup and then just have it killed without any explanation. Don't expect management to make logical decisions. Too many times they behave like they do crack. Disk virtualization allows quick restore to a prior known state. Restoring from a full backup requires more time and more user intervention. Quick reversion using disk virtualization is handy and a good safety net but backups are still required. |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 17:14:12 -0500 "VanguardLH" wrote in
article I was in several technology companies and they buy/acquire software from other companies but then just dropped it or never employed it in any of their products. Been there.... :-( |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 15:07:08 +0000 "Stormin' Norman"
wrote in article As for file storage, instead of allowing students to use flash drives to store their work, you might consider having each student create a free Dropbox account and manually upload / download their lesson related files. That's a good alternative once the students get comfortable enough with computers - most have little or no experience. And thanks for all the pointers - my search horizons are expanding! Jason |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
.. . .winston wrote:
Jason wrote: I presume there would be a userid associated with each thumb drive. In other words, can what would normally reside in c:\users for each student live on the USB drive? That would have to include the Documents folders as well as local settings(?). TIA, Jason One can't relocate 'what normally' resides in c:\users elsewhere. Windows will object to any attempts to store a userprofile externally. Perhaps true on the %userprofile% folder but not of the special subfolders contained within it. From what the OP said, it looks like he wants the users' *data* to be stored somewhere other than under the default user profile folder. Because programs are too often hardcoded to use a specific path (although Windows is already using redirection via junctions for old programs using the old paths) is why some subfolders, like AppData, shouldn't get moved. Windows itself provides easy and standard movement of the special folders simply by right-clicking on them in Windows Explorer and going under the Location tab. The AppData folder doesn't have that tab because it really should not be relocated, but the Contacts, Downloads, Favorites, Links, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos subfolders do have a Location tab for moving where their contents are physically store. While moving those special folders to elsewhere is possible and even made easy using the Location tab that Windows itself provides, I recommend only moving to local storage (e.g., a partition on the same or different disk than the OS partition which gets its own drive letter designation). Do not move the special folders to networked or removable media since it is entirely possible that location may not exist when needed or expected to be available. A problem that I foresee with moving the special folder is with permissions (well, with the lack of them). Does having Windows move the location of special folders also carry along the permissions on those folders? That would require the move from an NTFS formatted partition to another NTFS formatted partition to carry along the permissions from one file system in one drive to the file system in another drive. Users may not want their data files [easily] accessible by other users. The %userprofile% folder has permissions to the user but not other users (except for those in the Administrators security group) to help isolate those files for privacy concerns. After using Windows to move the special folders to another drive, I'd check the permissions on the new folder matched those for the old folder. Then some user that was copying everything under, say, D:\Users (which had subfolders by the user's account name with the special folders under there) wouldn't end up copying files for other users. I would think moving the special folders to another drive (and assuming those new folders got the same permissions as for the original folders) would be all the OP has to do. It would be up to the users if they wanted to copy their own data files to elsewhere by copying their files to a USB drive. If the users really needed repeated and often access to their data files but didn't want to have to buy USB sticks (and also wear out the USB ports on the computers), I would think they could make use of OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or some other cloud storage service. They would create a folder (in their own special folder) that was the local copy of the files to get synced to the cloud. I haven't played with clients for cloud storage to know if they correctly isolate the different user accounts or if another instance has to be installed for each account. The users could then tell the sync client which of their folders to include in a sync so they would have copies available from the cloud via a webclient (web browser) or on their own computers running the same sync client. No dragging around a USB stick and having students damaging the USB ports. |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
On Sat, 25 Apr 2015 00:15:20 +0000 "Stormin' Norman"
wrote in article You are welcome Jason. I will be curious to see where you ultimately end up with this. You're not the only one! I have lots of experience in design and development but little in sys administration (of Windows, anyway..). Jason |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
VanguardLH wrote:
Jason wrote: VanguardLH wrote Acronis True Image (backup software, payware) includes Try & Decide This feature has been dropped in the latest release. Perhaps nobody used it or perhaps Acronis couldn't get it to work right... Telling? Perhaps Acronis wanted to focus their resources on all the other bloatware they want to push (i.e., it's lureware in disguise), like their cloud storage service. qp Try and Decide as a stand-alone feature in Acronis True Image was originally designed to help a user test a new system configuration, and "decide" to go back to a previous configuration if something went wrong. Acronis True Image 2015 is inherently a "try and decide" product, as performing a full system image backup prior to installing and testing any new software allows you to "decide" to go back to your previous configuration. With our completely re-engineered user experience and user interface, this process is similar to previous versions, and can be performed either from a local backup or one stored in the Acronis cloud. As such, the older try and decide feature was removed in Acronis True Image 2015 as its no longer needed. /qp -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
winston wrote:
qp Try and Decide as a stand-alone feature in Acronis True Image was originally designed to help a user test a new system configuration, and "decide" to go back to a previous configuration if something went wrong. Acronis True Image 2015 is inherently a "try and decide" product, as performing a full system image backup prior to installing and testing any new software allows you to "decide" to go back to your previous configuration. With our completely re-engineered user experience and user interface, this process is similar to previous versions, and can be performed either from a local backup or one stored in the Acronis cloud. As such, the older try and decide feature was removed in Acronis True Image 2015 as its no longer needed. /qp Yep, the contents of the Acronis article which I gave a hyperlink. A bunch of bogus crap because everyone knows restoring an entire partition from an image backup is slower than just rebooting the computer. |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 19:00:15 -0500 "VanguardLH" wrote in
article If the users really needed repeated and often access to their data files but didn't want to have to buy USB sticks (and also wear out the USB ports on the computers), I would think they could make use of OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or some other cloud storage service. I'm not so worried about wearing out USB sockets as about the fact that our users are not generally knowledgable enough to easily use cloud services yet. |
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Portable Windows user ID on a thumb drive
Jason wrote:
On Fri, 24 Apr 2015 19:00:15 -0500 "VanguardLH" wrote in article If the users really needed repeated and often access to their data files but didn't want to have to buy USB sticks (and also wear out the USB ports on the computers), I would think they could make use of OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or some other cloud storage service. I'm not so worried about wearing out USB sockets as about the fact that our users are not generally knowledgable enough to easily use cloud services yet. Interesting. Many cloud services provide the option to save, delete, manage files via Windows Explorer(Win7 and earlier) and File Explorer(Win 8 and later). Are those same users incapable of saving, deleting, and managing files on USB sticks using Windows Explorer ? -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
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