Comments for CyrusBuilt dot Net

Comment on Outlook Anywhere via GPO/Logon Script by bn1cholson

bn1cholson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:53:00 +0000

I believe you can do this with a properly-constructed PRF file without creating a profile first. The PRF does support RPC over HTTP (a.k.a., Outlook Anywhere) settings. We do this so that we don’t have to manually create anyone’s mailbox as long as they’re on a domain PC.

About the PRF file:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011402581033.aspx

Create a custom .adm template, and use it in the User Configuration portion of a GPO. Store your PRF in a shared location, and use this policy to point Outlook to that PRF file. The policy below is the custom .adm template, configured for both Outlook 11 and Outlook 12. I don’t remember where I got this.

Start of custom adm template ——————————-
CLASS USER

CATEGORY !!TopCategory
KEYNAME “Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Setup”
POLICY !!PolicyName
EXPLAIN !!PolicyHelp
PART !!PRFLocation EDITTEXT EXPANDABLETEXT REQUIRED
DEFAULT !!DefaultLocation
VALUENAME “ImportPRF”
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY ;TopCategory

CATEGORY !!TopCategory12
KEYNAME “Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Setup”
POLICY !!PolicyName12
EXPLAIN !!PolicyHelp12
PART !!PRFLocation12 EDITTEXT EXPANDABLETEXT REQUIRED
DEFAULT !!DefaultLocation12
VALUENAME “ImportPRF”
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY ;TopCategory12

[strings]
TopCategory=”Outlook 2003 Profile”
PolicyName=”PRF Import”
PolicyHelp=”"
PRFLocation=”Full path to the PRF file to import.”
DefaultLocation=”"
TopCategory12=”Outlook 2007 Profile”
PolicyName12=”PRF Import”
PolicyHelp12=”"
PRFLocation12=”Full path to the PRF file to import.”
DefaultLocation12=”"
End of custom adm template ———————————

Comment on WMI Scripting with AutoIt by admin

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:45:24 +0000

Well…. that was one of the things I’d hoped to extrapolate from this type of query. I looked into querying the Win32_BIOS class, but judging by the MSDN documentation, it doesn’t look like you can get the chipset from it. I’m thinking this could probably be accomplished by querying the Win32_SystemDevices class…. though I haven’t figured out exactly how yet. For us, getting the “Model” property from the Win32_ComputerSystem class has been sufficient because we use mostly Intel and SuperMicro motherboards. The “Model” property for these boards typically returns a valid model that we can then look up and get the specs on. In the case of Intel, the chipset typically makes up part of the model name, like “D946GZ” for example. In this case “D946GZ” tells me that it’s a desktop-class board and uses the Intel 946-series chipset.

Most of the time this is all the information I need, but I’m quite sure there is a more accurate approach. I just haven’t found it yet.

Comment on WMI Scripting with AutoIt by PeterZoll

PeterZoll — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:12:01 +0000

We did much the same thing – we did find that a number of older machines running XP had null values in one or more fields. What we did not find was a field with a chipset name
like X38, G41, 955X … – the names that Intel uses. We looked through most of WMI – if seems if the chipset name is not in ComputerSystem or its child it must be well hidden. Did you have any better luck with chipset names on your computers?