Roaming Profiles and Internet History

[Guest Bullfrog]

Recently we started changing people over to roaming profiles. One of the

things we lost was the Local Settings, as this is not copied over.

Previously, if there was an issue with someone spending too much time on

internet, we could look in their Local Settings to see where they went. Now

we can't. Is there a way to keep this? Everyone is directly connected to the

Internet through a router. Servers are all 2003 and all clients are XP. I

have googled, but there isn't much out there that helps (unless I am just

looking in wrong place.) Thanks!

[Guest JohnB]

Re: Roaming Profiles and Internet History

 

When you say "we could look in their Local Settings to see where they

went"... do you mean you would actually look at their history, on each PC?

That is not the most efficient way to do that. There's monitoring software

available to automate that for you.

 

Microsoft's ISA server is one option. It integrates with AD, which makes it

even more convenient to manage.

You can Google other, similar software... put in something like: internet

browsing monitor

 

For your situation, you could use Folder Redirection: You could setup a GPO

to redirect their Local Settings to a folder on a server. But again,

something like ISA Server would be much more efficient. All internet

history would go to one log file. You can see where they've gone, and how

long they were at a particular website (there are times when someone got

redirected, via a popup browser, to another site that wasn't appropriate...

so it wasn't necessarily their fault). And of course, you can control what

sites they can and can't go to.

 

HTH

 

 

 

"Bullfrog" <Bullfrog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:CF6F4104-A45D-42E8-8ED4-F62A381F9ACF@microsoft.com...

> Recently we started changing people over to roaming profiles. One of the

> things we lost was the Local Settings, as this is not copied over.

> Previously, if there was an issue with someone spending too much time on

> internet, we could look in their Local Settings to see where they went.

> Now

> we can't. Is there a way to keep this? Everyone is directly connected to

> the

> Internet through a router. Servers are all 2003 and all clients are XP. I

> have googled, but there isn't much out there that helps (unless I am just

> looking in wrong place.) Thanks!

[Guest Bullfrog]

Re: Roaming Profiles and Internet History

 

Yes, we would look in the History folder mostly. This is not something that

is done very often (3 times in past year). We have 90 employess, and it is

generally not an issue, but every once in awhile.... The boss doesn't want

any more software, she is perfectly happy doing a quick check in the Local

Settings folder. We don't care about the one-off visits. Last year we had

someone who spent half the day on ebay running a business. Things like that

are pretty easy to see. Anyways, in past jobs we always had a proxy server,

so this was not an issue. This is first place I have been where everyone was

basically directly connected to the internet

 

I have had people tell me that you cannot redirect the Local Settings

folders? I have thought about turning off the "Delete cached copies of

roaming profiles" in the Group Policy, but as the people move around alot

(the reason for roaming profiles), we could end up with alot of profiles on

each system.

"JohnB" wrote:

> When you say "we could look in their Local Settings to see where they

> went"... do you mean you would actually look at their history, on each PC?

> That is not the most efficient way to do that. There's monitoring software

> available to automate that for you.

>

> Microsoft's ISA server is one option. It integrates with AD, which makes it

> even more convenient to manage.

> You can Google other, similar software... put in something like: internet

> browsing monitor

>

> For your situation, you could use Folder Redirection: You could setup a GPO

> to redirect their Local Settings to a folder on a server. But again,

> something like ISA Server would be much more efficient. All internet

> history would go to one log file. You can see where they've gone, and how

> long they were at a particular website (there are times when someone got

> redirected, via a popup browser, to another site that wasn't appropriate...

> so it wasn't necessarily their fault). And of course, you can control what

> sites they can and can't go to.

>

> HTH

>

>

>

> "Bullfrog" <Bullfrog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

> news:CF6F4104-A45D-42E8-8ED4-F62A381F9ACF@microsoft.com...

> > Recently we started changing people over to roaming profiles. One of the

> > things we lost was the Local Settings, as this is not copied over.

> > Previously, if there was an issue with someone spending too much time on

> > internet, we could look in their Local Settings to see where they went.

> > Now

> > we can't. Is there a way to keep this? Everyone is directly connected to

> > the

> > Internet through a router. Servers are all 2003 and all clients are XP. I

> > have googled, but there isn't much out there that helps (unless I am just

> > looking in wrong place.) Thanks!

>

>

>