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DS vs. NS

carubin's picture
carubin
March 26th, 2009
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I cut my teeth in the Altiris world with Deployment Server and it still is my preferred way of managing the workstations in our environment.  I like the speed and the instant feedback.  Today, though, I encountered a situation that made me glad I had NS in my toolkit.

We needed to add an internal web site to the list of trusted sites.  You can do this through a registry entry but the entry is to HKEY_Current_User.  In DS there was no way that I could think of to touch this key but in NS I just set the job to run for all users of the machine and voila problem solved.

+4 (4 votes)
Palvaran's picture
Palvaran
34 weeks 2 days ago

Love DS

Amen.  I love DS and it is my preferred method as well simply because that is what I started with too.  That said, you can actually send registry edits via the DS by creating a run script task.  Here is an example of one we used to use to set 60Hz refresh rates for some of the computers connected to projectors.

1. Create a copy task and send the .reg file to the temporary directory of your choice.  We use c:\temp typically.
2. Then create a run script task that appends the new registry file to the current registry.  You can include current user, local machine, etc.  For this example, we use, "regedit /s c:\temp\60hz.reg"

My 60hz.reg file includes the following syntax.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96E-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\MODES\1024,768]
"Mode1"="60-60,60-60"

Whalla!  Still NS is a good tool and just like a mechanic, we have various ways to get our jobs done.  I just wanted to share that we can still use DS too.  ;)

Gimme a flathead over a phillips any day!  :P

"The happiness of your life, depends on the quality of your thoughts."

-3 (3 votes)
Brandon's picture
Brandon
33 weeks 6 days ago

If you send HKCU keys with

If you send HKCU keys with the DS they will not work except for the install account. Your step 2 is not entirely correct. You have to do some fancy vb scripting or use carubin's idea of the NS applying it to each logged on user for HKCU keys.

+2 (2 votes)