1> 98 is a fact of life. I just retired the last one a month ago. When a box is deemed important enough to keep but not important enough to update the hardware on, it must run what runs, and XP does not run well on a GX1 with 128mb ram. W2K may have run, but the effort involved in reinstalling it was not deemed worthwhile.
2> XP systems without SP2 are insane - there is no reason to run XP with your pants down, as SP2 is a critical update. Any worthy sysadmin should force SP2 on all XP systems.
WITH Sp2 - you have to change the default firewall settings and local policies. Not heinous, but required. Any worthy sysadmin should have no problems with this. The admin shares are enabled, but the firewall will only pass you to them if you are on the same subnet. Otherwise you must edit the firewall settings.
3> I agree. We go to each machine once a month and apply the windows patches, verify the AV is updated, check for spyware, run a full scan, defrag, and diskcheck. We have a fellow assigned to this, he does it once monthly, after the Windows patches come out. He cannot always get to every machine, so I have to go behind and bat cleanup to get the ones whose users were 'too busy' or that had taken them home for the day (laptops).
Some users have enough knowledge that they block remote access on purpose. These users are admin on their boxes, and ranked high enough that there is nothing I can do except correct it when I see it - and that requires an on-site visit. Then they just block it again when I leave. Any suggestion to the higherups that these folks be restricted is met with derision.
So I cannot do my job because certain folks 'know better than I'.
And I'm afraid that's what set me off - you said :
"If you are supposed to be a system administrator but you do not know and/or cannot figure out how to quietly install a patch or an app like Adobe Flash Player in an automated fashion from a separate (but networked) computer..
..someone should pull your "sysad license". "
On older machines, or machines secured from remote access, or certain other cases, even though I know how, I cannot DO it. This case was not excluded, so I assumed you were maligning me and those poor souls like me. |
