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ZENworks knows the difference!

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7 May 2010 - 4:13pm
Submitted by: dmichael

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If you have ZENworks apps that set configuration settings for your XP and 2000 workstations, you may want to prevent those apps from changing the settings on Windows 7 workstations.

To do this, modify the ZENworks Apps on their "Availability" tab so that it will read the registry key named "HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/ProductName"

It will either read "Microsoft Windows XP", "Microsoft Windows 2000", or it will have one of the various flavors of windows 7.

The best way I've found to filter it is to require the key to fit XP or 2000 and anything else is excluded from running the App, as shown below.

Also, I set an environment variable in my login script to match the 10.xx portion of the user's IP address, then I require my zen apps to read that variable and if it is not 0A11 (10.17 in hex), then my user is on a machine outside of my local lan (using a machine at a remote site) and in that case I also prevent the zen app from firing. This prevents the possibility that one of my users might visit another site, login to one of their workstations, and the workstation wind up re-configured with our locally preferred settings.

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Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.



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lhaeger's picture

ZFD and Win7?

Submitted by lhaeger on 10 May 2010 - 7:50am.

Two questions:

1. Afaik, ZFD7 (as of your screenshot) does not support Win7 anyway. Why do you need to filter apps then?

2. There's an "Operating System" requirement that allows filtering by OS version number, why bother re-inventing that through multiple regkey requirements?

dmichael's picture

Interim solution

Submitted by dmichael on 12 May 2010 - 5:19am.

Q1. Why? Because certain configuration settings that one might need for XP, may need to be different for Windows 7, or may need to be applied differently. If you have Zen apps that currently apply certain settings to XP (but not 2000) based on "Windows Version >= XXXX", then that app will try to apply those same settings to Windows 7, sometimes with unfavorable results. Identifying Windows 7 as such, while still locked into Zen 7 (2 more months till I switch to Zen 10!) enables me to filter the few Win7 workstations so that they won't try to apply those changes.

Q2. The OS version number filtering in Zen 7 is based on a number that can vary based on Service Pack Level, OEM vs. Retail, Home vs. Pro, etc. It worked for XP because I could say "where Windows Version >= xxxxx" which would get all XP but nothing prior. Now that there are multiple flavors of 7 whose version numbers (plural) will be different, it is just easier for me to read the value from the registry key.

To each his own. Actual mileage may vary.
8^D

spond's picture

ZEN7 != Win7

Submitted by spond on 23 May 2010 - 1:00am.

I think what lhaeger meant was why bother checking for Windows 7, since ZDM7 does not run on Windows 7, so there never can be a problem like that

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