Kalamane's questions

I have about 20 cloned machines running Windows XP Pro SP3.

Three of the computers are experiencing an issue where clicking the 'Proceed to checkout' button from the amazon.com shopping cart causes the browser to time out while trying to load the next page (This is going from http https).

All of the other machines behave normally on that site.

The page on affected computers displays “waiting for https://www.amazon.com/gp/cart/[the rest of the url]...” on the status bar. On ‘healthy’ systems, the page completes loading nearly instantly.

The odd thing is, when the issue happens, it happens in IE and Firefox and Chrome in exactly the same way as described above. Clearing cache/cookies does nothing to resolve the issue.

On affected machines, the issue happens in the limited User profile, the Administrator profile, and even happens on newly created test profiles.

As the computers are physically identical and the software was cloned to each one, I looked at the differences between them.

TEST-006 (not affected by issue) has an assigned IP of 192.168.1.126.

TEST-030 (affected by issue) has an assigned IP of 192.168.1.27.

When I assigned 192.168.1.126 to TEST-030, the computer was no longer affected by the issue.

When I assigned 192.168.1.27 to TEST-006, the computer was affected by the issue.

Assigning 192.168.1.27 to PROD-012 (Different computer type with a different image) did NOT cause the issue on that computer. Plugging one of the TEST computers assigned with 192.168.1.27 into the same port PROD-012 used had no effect. The TEST computer was still affected.

Setting the DNS server to 8.8.8.8 didn't affect the issue one way or another.

This is driving me nuts, what could be causing this behavior?

I have a small fleet of laptops that aren't part of a domain running Windows XP Pro SP3 as limited users.

They are used for printing different shipping documents.

I have a script that runs when they start up that uses devcon and prntmngr to detect and install/configure the currently connected usb printers.

This lets us deploy the laptops to any printing station with a USB printer and have the printer 'just work' for the end user employee.

I've taken the original clone image and have added functionality to it. Since then I've discovered a bit of an issue with using HP LaserJet P1606dn printers. They have started asking for admin rights on setup. This is with and without the script running. Previously they would automatically install because I had installed WHQL plug and play drivers for them.

I thought it might have to do with the HP Smart Install Utility but it happens when that is disabled.

I don't have a good point to roll back to before this started happening because this was an issue on the image I took initially to start this upgrade.

What could be causing this?

I have a website that uses basic authentication as described on this webpage. Each of the computers I manage have the password saved in their browser.

There is only one username and password for this. After someone logs in to the site this way, they are presented with their individual username and password prompt as part of the web page. The purpose of the initial username/password is to protect the site's externally accessible sections.

So far, when we've had to change this password, I've manually gone to each computer and updated the saved password.

I'm writing a startup script to configure other aspects of these systems so that I can maintain them easier. I'd like to be able to update the saved password via this script.

The operating system running on these machines is Windows XP SP3 and the browsers they're using to access this site are IE8 and IE9.

How can I update the saved basic authentication information for a website via a script?

I have a bunch of computers with local USB attached printers. I'd like to be able to monitor things like paper jams and toner levels with Nagios but all I've been able to find involves using SNMP.

How can I use Nagios to monitor local USB printers?

I'm automating the removal of a USB printer from machines with Windows XP SP3. To do this, I'm using Microsoft's Devcon Utility.

Running the command:

devcon findall *hp*

Returns:

USBPRINT\HEWLETT-PACKARDHP_LASERJET_PROFESSIONAL_P1606DN\7&8885729&0&USB001: HP
LaserJet Professional P1606dn
1 matching device(s) found.

Running the command:

devcon remove *USBPRINT*

Returns:

No devices removed.

I've tried multiple combinations of the Hardware ID and wildcards with no luck. Plugging the device in to the computer and running the remove command mentioned above removes the hardware.

The issue comes from me using devcon piped to find to determine if the device is plugged in so that it can be automatically configured. If I can't remove it, it will be detected by my script even if it isn't plugged in.

I've tested this with multiple USB printers and one USB mouse, all exhibit the same behavior, which leads me to believe this is normal behavior for Devcon.

Is there a workaround? How do I remove hardware entries that are no longer connected?

I'm running Windows XP SP3.
I have a fleet of laptop computers that I'm creating a master clone for.
Each of these computers will have a different function when deployed so I've created a series of batch files to configure their shortcuts and other settings.

One thing I haven't figured out how to do is automate a local printer install via USB. I can do it with a network printer, but none of these will be using network printers.

How do I automate the installation and configuration of a local printer?

I have an internal IP Address (192.168.0.57) that every couple of days will get assigned to a machine which will then periodically lose it's connection to the network throughout the day.

The first machine that this happened to was running OSX and the rest have been Windows. Neither OS has detected an IP conflict.

When I ping the hostname of the machine I know it's been assigned to, it will give me back the IP in question. When I ping -a the IP, it gives me a completely different hostname.

I can't find any machine on the network that has the second hostname. Is this an issue with the DNS? What could cause this?

I'm using the following code to mount a network drive in a script that configures desktop icons and favorites by copying them when the user logs into windows.

NET USE W: \\Server\Files\IT\auto /user:"DOMAIN\username" "password"

I have read the question How to mount a drive with read only permission but it's asking about linux.

Does anyone know how to mount a network drive as read only via script?