IT Employment

Unfortunately we are a small research and production company, we don't have a legal dept.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Simon

I'm new to the IT administrators job too. I work for a government dept with a network of 90 computers. In my situation, the IT administrator is the person who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the licences exist for each program loaded onto each machine. She and I manage the network. She is taking leave for a year soon so I will have the job without her. I will miss her because we work very well together and have developed half an IT brain each. We have a mandatory profile, user name and password logins and only the administrator can load programs. This makes the job of software licences very easy because we store all the disks centrally and no-one else can load or share programs. We only load programs that we have licences for. We remove the run command, control panel and network neighbourhood as a group policy. This nails down the desktop.

This sounds really useful, now comes the 64 million dollar question, how? Is it something I can do in house or do I have to get somone in? I'm resonably happy wandering around Win98, 2K and NT. Did you just remove the links from the desktop?

Thanks for taking the time to reply

Simon

Removinf the icons from your systems is relativly simple. If you are employing active directory you can simply create a policy and have it applied when users log in to the network. If you are going to touch each machine all you need do is edit the registry. Here is an example:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoNetHood"=dword:00000001 (removes network neigborhood from the dekstop)
"NoRun"=dword:00000001 (remove the run command)

Theses work in nt/2000.

There are countless resources available simply by searching Microsoft's site or even doing a google search! In the recent past I have found Google to be an excellent resource for locating tips/tricks for modifying Windows!

Good Luck!

Hi Simon,

I'm a mid-range Admin, experience-wise (~5 yrs) and the first Golden rule I've learned is "Plan It...don't panic." I too have inherited a network that was reasonably maintained but the licensing was very chaotic. Having said that, this is a company that wants everything licensed legally and do not balk at the heavy costs of properly licensing a network. Your first step should be to look at License Manager on your Server(s) to see if it is being used. If so, you're halfway thereas most of your Microsoft products licenses can be managed from that console. Free information on how to use it is available from Microsoft. (& probably Techrepublic!) Keep in mind that Licensing is the #2 headache for Administrators everywhere, so don't be surprised if the road is difficult. Whether the license service is running or not, you will need to manage other licenses, and there are many options to choose from. You could make your own spreadsheet and gather all origional CD's and license agreements -(current & expired - don't throw them out yet!)- everything you can find. Then, use add/remove programs to determine, machine by machine, exactly what you have installed. Now match the 2 together to determine what you have and what you need. The expired licenses may still qualify you for and "upgrade rate" rather than full price to re-license an expired product. This whole process is very cumbersome but should be manageable considering the size of your organization. An alternative is to search the web for "license management" or similar and you will find many products designed for maintaining and even scanning machines to determine the license status of most products.
More to follow...make sense so far?

Thanks for the info, we tend to buy one at a time as new emplyees join. However I have inherited a whole lot of PCs and users. I'm creating a spreadsheet with all the PCs Operating systems and major software installed

Chances are you are in situation where you will have to track all licenses by hand. Newer computers will have a microsoft sticker on the side or bottom with a reg code. That shows that PC has a license for that OS.

Download this guy, it will help you catalog what is installed on each PC.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

If you have any Microsoft Products installed your license agreement gives them the right to Audit you. Trust me it will be MUCH cheaper to actually go buy the necessary software than get caught without it. I believe the Business Software Alliance ads were stating that you can be fined something like $25,000 an instance per pirated install. If you have 10 machines that's alot of cake.