Samba 3 and Windows Vista Clients
- Overview of Windows Vista's Changes
- Working with User Profiles & Folder Redirection
- Working Around the Lack of System Policies
- Making Vista not Suck (as a Workstation)
- Windows Vista's Annoyances
- Improving Vista's Performance
- Dealing with Windows Vista Components
- Windows Vista as a (somewhat) Decent Workstation
- Various Windows Vista User Restrictions
- An Example Samba-Vista Deployment
Making Vista Not Suck (as a workstation)
Back in 1999, when there was talk of Microsoft's merging their Business Operating Systems (Win NT) with their Home User's Operating Systems (Win 9x), most administrators were welcoming the move. However, most people were assuming that the Business Operating System features/preferences would prevail over the Home OS (especially after the Windows ME failure).
With the release of Windows XP, everyone quickly found out that Microsoft was starting to focus on the Home User's instead of the Business Users. With XP's unwanted themed interface, along with the perception that XP was not a very good performer, businesses were slow to upgrade their systems to Windows XP.
You would think with the slow implementation of Windows XP that Microsoft would have learned to cater a version of the Operating System to businesses that require a consistent look and feel along with descent performance across all of their workstations. However, even with 5+ versions of Windows Vista, not a single one caters to the needs of the majority of the business use cases.
My goal was to go from Vista's bloated defaults (left) to a streamlined workstation (right)
Since June 30, 2008 (the day Microsoft officially stopped selling Windows XP) it has become increasingly difficult to order new computers with Windows XP Professional instead of Windows Vista Business. There are still some companies that will preload XP when you buy a Vista license, but these companies are quickly becoming rare. So, to address the inevitable, I have decided to tackle the Vista monstrosity head on and try to weed out a good Workstation Operating System from Windows Vista Business.
The next sections mostly cover various Registry Keys that I had to hunt for and extract from Monitoring Vista's Registry. The majority of them can be applied to the HKLM tree of the Registry which means that any user logging into the machine have these settings implemented. If you do not care about the details and simply want a quick solution to the Vista problem, you can skip directly to the Example Samba-Vista Deployment Section.
