Should I create an Admin Image?

[CADGemini]

Hello All,

I am looking for everyone's opinion on wheter or not I should have an Admin Image on our network. I realize that for this to work I have to re-install everyone's machine from the Admin Image. We currently have about 10 seats of solidworks so re-installing everyone's machine is going to be a bit of a task. I want to know if people have had sucess with it or not.

It is really difficult to get user's to upgrade to the latest SP. Then when they have a problem they come searching for me. First thing I ask is what SP are you running. 9 times out of 10 it is an SP issue that fixes the problem. Once everyone is installed from the Admin Image can I force user's to upgrade before using solidworks?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. We also have a mix of stand-alone licenses and network licenses. Can the Admin Image handle this?

Best Regards,
Jon

Challenges are what makes life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Solidworks 2005 SP3.1

 

[CADGemini]

Nevermind guys..... When I did a search it did not come up with anything, then I decided to change some of the restrictions and it came up with a bunch. However I found this kinda strange. when it comes up with the topics found for the search criteria it lists on some of them that there are 0 replies. But when I click on the 0 reply posts there are several replies to it. Is this a glitch?

When I see a topic with 0 replies I usually pass over it thinking no one has responded to the question. I will be more prone to looking at all the posts that the search comes up with from now on.

Best Regards,
Jon

Challenges are what makes life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Solidworks 2005 SP3.1

 

[PDMAdmin]

jksolid,

I have run into the same glitch myself when doing searches on the site. I would definitely recommend going with an admin image; I have been working from an admin image for several years, and I can't imagine doing it any other way, given how many users we have.

You don't need to re-install every client from the admin image, but you will need to update each client from the admin image so they know its network location. Admin images can definitely handle a mix of stand-alone and network licenses, but you don't always have to do that. What we do is update everybody to the network license, then our update script checks for individual users and modifies their serial number if they are stand-alone users. (The serial number can be changed in the registry, but as always, don't tinker with the registry unless you really know what you're doing.)

 

[ctopher]

I agree. Admin Image saves me a lot of time and grief.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)

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