Joined on 07-20-2005
Hartford, CT
Well, you're going to need a test machine before you start playing around with group policies. Changing mass group policies will greatly annoy your users if they are not implemented properly. You can check out your group policies by going into
Administrative Tools \ Group Policy Manager. If the Group Policy Manager is not there, you can go to
Microsoft Downloads to download it here.
This will let you look at all of the Group Policies in the domain. You can check their settings to see if one in particular might be preventing login. I advise to check the
Small Business Server Client Computer policy. If you haven't any clue on what to do with Group Policies, you may find
this article from the Petri IT Knowledgebase handy.
Tread lightly and with great care in Group Policies.
Thanks for the advice Shipley. Before I go that route, I want to offer a little more info that might be useful: The two users that can access both machines have either admin priveleges or "power user" priveleges. Thanks for all your help.
Joined on 02-18-2004
New Hampshire
This definitely sounds like a permissions issue then. By some chance, are you using Active Directory groups with your users that aren't power users or admin users all grouped together?
All of the users are created using a standard template. I believe that template has been determining access level for all of the users. I am also reasonably certain that the admin and standard users are in different groups. How would I go about determining that for certain?
Joined on 07-20-2005
Hartford, CT
You could go itno Control Panel \ Administrative Tools \ Active Directory Users and Computers and start browsing AD for the groups. Open the AD groups and you can see whom is a member and whom is not. But when you say the users are "Power Users" and "Administrators" - these are generally local groups on the individual workstations, not Active Directory groups.
Where is the standard template? Is it in ADUC? do you copy a "template user" and fill in the details for new users here? Or is there a wizard that creates users for you and you're selecting a template for those users from a list it provides?
Gary,
Sorry for the late reply. Was laid up after a car wreck last week. Didn't want you to mistake my absence as ungratefulness for your help. Whenever I add new users, I use the add new user wizard. I checked in the ADUC and there is a "companyname.local" directory, and I see several groups which appear to be built into the system. I don't see any direct references to existing users, only groups. In the computers directory there is only one machine displayed. I know a lot of this is noob stuff. The guy before me did some things that were very counterituitive and I am a little gun-shy given my own lack of experience, about untangling something someone else did. Thanks again for all your help.
John
ps. I really just want to set the machines up so anyone can access any computer.
John
Joined on 02-18-2004
New Hampshire
Hi John, sorry for my late reply, it has been busy here at the office. Sorry to hear of your car accident, hope you are feeling better. As far as the computers directory, that should have every computer joined in your domain, if not, then this problem lies pretty deep. As far as finding out if users belong to groups, right click on the user, click properties, and click on the member of tab. See the groups this user is in. Then check the groups to see if the log on to is set for certain computers.
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
Hi John,
When ever possible use the wizards and SBS admin tools (server management) to manage the server and user accounts. Especially in the exchange part if you create a user mail box in exchange SBS doesn't always know to connect it with the correct user.
When I create user accounts I check the "Do not set up a computer", and the user can log into any work station. It is about the fourth screen in on the add user wizard. That may be related to your problem.
Dave
Joined on 07-20-2005
Hartford, CT
Computers and Users in a Small Business Server are not located in the Computers folder if the wizards are used. They are located in the MyBusiness\Computers\SBSComputers folder. When managing a Small Business Server, however, you should use the Server Management program. It will have a directory on the left and Client computers will be one of them. It should scour the entire Active Directory for all workstations and display them on the right.
Gary,
I got it sorted out. You were a huge help! I do have one other minor question. I really need to free up space on the HD. I am not sure what files I can delete. I already moved paging files, deleted logs, and uninstall/update files. But the previous admin made this partition absurdly small. Any suggestions. i am nearing a point wheere i think performance will be affected. Thanks again for all you help!
John
Joined on 01-21-2005
St. George, Utah
http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmiet/pages/sharepoint-database-log-file-cancer.aspx will help with moving Sharepoint databases to another drive. You can also use Partition Magic or the like to resize the partion on the hard drive (unless the partition takes up the whole drive). http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/resize-partition.htm
Joined on 02-18-2004
New Hampshire
Hi John, I am sorry that I somehow missed your post. I have had the same problem as you in the past. I had to go through the headache of starting over from scratch. I copied off all the data, and reinstalled with a much larger partition. If you do go with a software solution, make sure you get a good data backup in case you run into troubles.