Using Host File with MS server 03

megarock

megarock

megarock

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Joined
13 Sep 2008
Posts
2
Hi,

Is there anyway I can force all the users in the office to use the same host files so i can redirect users to sites. I am using MS server 03 and all users are running XP Pro

thank you in advance
 
you could copy the host file into the correct directory on each machine in your startup script in AD.

Might not be the MS way but is how I would do it.
 
Yup a machine startup script probably the best way. If you use a logon script you'd have to make sure the user has write access to the dir.
 
Ev0 said:
Yup a machine startup script probably the best way. If you use a logon script you'd have to make sure the user has write access to the dir.
Click to expand...

True, I forget that all my users have local admin rights.

Something like the following in a batch file will do it providing the above is true and the hosts file (to be copied) is in the same directory as the script.

DIR
CD "%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\"
copy hosts "%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\"
 
Ev0 said:
And? :) Not got as many here (only 150 or so) but previous place was 500+, no one had admin rights :p
Click to expand...

We have a very strange setup; all of the laptops belong to finance directors who are in varying locations across London. Originally they had no real rights but this started becoming more and more of an issue as they were at clients trying to connect to their wireless networks, run java code and work with odbc drivers etc.

More recently I have outsourced all of our business critical apps, email etc onto servers at Rackspace & other providers this allows for the reduction in security while not compromising our data.

As you can imagine it can get a bit messy at times but 3 years in to giving the director’s local admin and we are yet to have any real issues. There has been the occasional problem but the guys always call to check before they do anything that could get messy or that isn’t covered in our best practices. Seen as they own the company I am in no real position to argue the toss on what they do with their company laptops (until something goes very wrong) I am only here to clean up the mess.
 
If the users are all members of a domain then you should ideally have the server as the primary DNS source. Custom A records could then be set up that way.

Of course when the users are offsite, they may not be able to see the server and would resort to the 2ndary dns source. In this case the hosts file is a good place to start.
 
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