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Wallpaper and Group Policies

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11 replies

by ahowley

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Here's my situation: On a W2K with a specific wallpaper set within group polices, how can I change to wallpaper for a different user profile, without effecting or changing the group policies. For example: we need to change the background wallpaper on a training profile. The reason behind the request was so sales professionals know they are in a training profile rather than their live profile. Knowing that we use group policies to disable changing the wallpaper, can you make any suggestions at this point on how to change the TrainMe wallpaper, retain the live profile wallpaper without effecting the group policies? Thoughts? Thanks.

11 replies

by cg it

nice thing about group policy is you can apply is domain wide, to OUs, to groups, or individual users. Same way you define wall paper for the domain, you can define it for the group TrainME. Just create the group TrainME, add users to that group, define the group policy for that group and have the sales people log on as users to that group to get the wall paper.

by cg it

well hummm I can create OUs and groups, assign users to those groups, create group policy and apply it to those OUs and groups. I can also configure computer configurations for specific computers that users will always use and apply it via group policy.

by ahowley

I forgot to mention, these users are not connected to our domain, just a workgroup. Also, we do not have AD.

by shaunjanzen

DR is partially correct. Group policy can be set on OU's, Domains as well as sites but you can't set them for a group or user specifically. I am assuming that when you talk about a training profile that the user is logging in with a different user than they would for regular use.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to create a new OU and put the test user in that OU. Go to the group policy for the new OU, click the Options button and check the "No Override: prevents other Group Policy Objects from overriding policy set in this one". This will prevent your current policy from applying to the training user in the new OU.

Hope this helps.

by ahowley

I forgot to mention, these users are not connected to our domain, just a workgroup. Also, we do not have AD.

by cg it

if their not connected to a domain and your not running active directory then group policy does not apply or can be applied, therefore your initial question regarding using group policy to force wall paper designations e.g. control users desktop is an erroneous question.

by ahowley

It's not erroneous question, group policies do apply for workgroups as well. I have applied other group policies successfully on a workgroup laptop without any issues.

by cg it

what your doing on a peer to peer network is creating a user profile which is applied to a specific user when they log on. Group Policy on the other hand is directly associated with Windows Active Directory. Before Active Directory and group policy, e.g. Windows NT environment, administrators used scripts for employing certain desktop features to users. Basically making a user profile for a group and then coping that profile to each users log in profile. Wasn't until Active Directory that applying policies like wall paper or screen savers across the entire domain or to just a few users in a group, came about. So I will say that your use of the term "group policy" in a non-domain/non- windows-active directory environment is a misnomer.

by cg it

further if you've applied previous group policies in a peer to peer network sucessfully, then all I can say is, copy what you did before except change the layout to effect wall paper.

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