Group Policy Timeout

[Mark Sammons]

Hi,

Thanks to the fact we are working with University lab workstations,
which tend to be heavy of applications and slow of network, we are
finding that we are hitting the 1 hour group policy timeout for
initial group policy processing, leaving workstations with corrupt
software installations and which often require you to start from
scratch and rebuild. This is extremely annoying as it seems such a
short timeout period when you consider we are deploying some MSI
applications that take up to 30 minutes to deploy.

Apart from a slow and staggered rollout of these applications, is
there a technical solution to get past this 1 hour barrier?

Thanks,

Mark Sammons,
University of Edinburgh

 

[Ken B]

Just an idea-- To solve the slow rollout of applications, you could probably
set the policy in the middle of the day for the software installations, and
from an XP/2003 machine, use the SHUTDOWN command coupled with the AT
command... and do reboots in the middle of the night, when network traffic
should be low. Staggering them to kick off at like 11p, 12a, 1a, 2a, 3a,
4a, 5a, you should be able to roll out the packages to your workstations
when nobody (save the weirdo student in the lab late at night without a dorm
room computer) is on the network.

Good luck

Ken