Changing Static IP's when the user isn't an administrator

[Guest]

Got a slightly unusual problem and any advice would be very helpful

A certain software package I am working on allows users to interface with
certain embedded Ethernet monitoring devices. These are scattered at various
locations around the country. Engineers travel to these locations with their
laptops and plug into the LAN at each location to sort out any problems there
may be.

The problem is each of these sites has a unique group of IP addresses set
and unique subnet and naturally if the subnets don’t match the systems cannot
communicate. There are no DHCP servers anywhere in the system so the laptops
have to be set to a static IP. We have written a rather nice little program,
which allows the engineer to just select his location from a drop down list
and which automatically sets the laptop to have a suitable static IP and
subnet mask.

Unfortunately due to windows access privileges, this software only works
when the user is logged in with full administrator privileges. This has
naturally caused quite a few problems and it would be a lot better if we were
able to change the static IP address and subnet mask from a “normal†user
account.

I will greatly appreciate any help, which I can have in solving this

Thanks in advance

Dave Collier

 

[Jason Kontkanen]

Since you wrote the app to change the IP, perhaps you could turn it into a
service running as local system or admin and communicate to the service to
do the change. So you'd have a "user land" app to talk to the service to do
the change.

 

[Phillip Windell]

They don't have to be full administrators,...they only need to be local
administrators on the laptop. If these people are technicians it is not
really acceptable for them to not be local administrators on thier machines.

Netswitcher (www.netswitcher.com) is also something you might want to look
at.

--
Phillip Windell [MCP, MVP, CCNA]
www.wandtv.com
-----------------------------------------------------
Understanding the ISA 2004 Access Rule Processing
http://www.isaserver.org/articles/ISA2004_AccessRules.html

Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration Server: Guidance
http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/techinfo/Guidance/2004.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/techinfo/Guidance/2000.asp

Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration Server: Partners
http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/partners/default.asp

 

[Guest]

Thanks very much - I think that would be a good approach to take.

Dave

 

[Marcel]

Got a slightly unusual problem and any advice would be very helpful

A certain software package I am working on allows users to interface with
certain embedded Ethernet monitoring devices. These are scattered at various
locations around the country. Engineers travel to these locations with their
laptops and plug into the LAN at each location to sort out any problems there
may be.

The problem is each of these sites has a unique group of IP addresses set
and unique subnet and naturally if the subnets don't match the systems cannot
communicate. There are no DHCP servers anywhere in the system so the laptops
have to be set to a static IP. We have written a rather nice little program,
which allows the engineer to just select his location from a drop down list
and which automatically sets the laptop to have a suitable static IP and
subnet mask.

Unfortunately due to windows access privileges, this software only works
when the user is logged in with full administrator privileges. This has
naturally caused quite a few problems and it would be a lot better if we were
able to change the static IP address and subnet mask from a "normal" user
account.

I will greatly appreciate any help, which I can have in solving this

Thanks in advance

Dave Collier

How about creating multiple hardware profiles for selection at boot-up? IP
addresses changes with it.