How is Windows 7 On Domain ?

C00lIT

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Oct 29, 2009
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Have anyone properly configured Windows 7 on a domain ?

If so, how has it treated you ?

I am very curious as many clients are now interested in Windows 7 for new workstations however I am afraid of seeing poor results after installation.

Such as

Windows XP Login, Press Ctrl Alt Del
Windows XP Has a drop down menu for
Log on to This Computer
Log on to DomainName

Windows Vista does not have the drop down menu so to swich you have to put machinename/username (or something like that if I recall... (I have to admit I havent looked into it to see if it was rectified.

Drop down menu for domain or computer logon is user friendly.


Have anyone joined it to a Samba Controller ? How was it
Have anyone joined it to a Server2000/2003/2008

How did it react with group security policies ?

I would greatly apreciate any information. Thank you

-Daniel

(Please excuse the spelling, Frenchy from Quebec here)
 

ijtaylor

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Nov 3, 2009
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I've had a couple of test PCs running with some more experienced end users testing for me, on both RC1 and RTM versions and it's running a lot better than Vista ever did with far fewer problems and far more responsive performance.

Unfortunatly log on works much the same way as vista did unfortunatly which isn't the best system going, but I can't see them changing it now. I'm that MS got rid of the drop down menu options as they were considered a security risk, I don't know how true this is but Win7 is the same as vista and relies on the user knowing the domain and username to switch users etc.

We are using it on production Windows 2003 servers, and also testing on 2008 test servers and had nothing significant to report in terms of problems, responds much faster than vista, network browsing seems much more responsive and Win 7 libraries are very useful for tracking multiple files across shares. We run a standard group policy for all of our schools which locks down virtually everything that Children cause havoc with, and so far the Win7 PCs are working exactly how XP did, whereas vista used to cause us issues with locking down certain aspects of the desktop.

We had some minor probs with PCs dropping connection to the server after a reboot but this was resolved by driver updates on the NICs (marvell yukon have now released a windows 7 version). The only other problem I've found regarding networking is accessing our Juniper firewalls, Windows 7 won't run any version of the juniper client and this isn't being resolved by juniper until the next version, but that's more a management issue than day-to-day networking. RDP connections are much quicker using a Win7 desktop, and I'm told they are using less memory with win7.

Sorry the info is a bit vague, but I've really had no serious issues with Win 7 so far. It may be a bit different when we release it in the field but I'm going to do this gradually, in the next 6 months Phase 1 will be to upgrade all Vista PCs to Windows 7, and then perhaps in 12 months, we will look at upgrading the Win XP PCs as well. But I'd seriously recommend upgrading your Vista clients in the interim as you will find your users are much happier with Win7, it's less of a training curve from vista to win7 thus you can push these upgrades out earlier, and save yourself many network nightmares in the process....!!

In general, industry take up of Win7 is going to be much quicker than Vista ever was and I personally feel that this is the best product to come out of Microsoft in years, of course only time will tell but the majority of my fellow IT Managers I've spoken with have all expressed a desire to rollout Windows 7 within a 12-18 month period...