🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear All,

I am a technician at a large secondary school (2000 users). We currently use
Novell 5.0 as our server and MS Windows 95/98 clients.

I have the job of changing the server over to a Windows NT4 based network as
soon as possible.
I have installed everything fine so far, but my problem is this:

How do you map a users home directory from the login script so it is a root
drive?
(I.E The same as doing a MAP ROOT command on machine using Novell Client)

I have looked on the MS TechNet site and found that according to them it is
a limitation in WinNT4 that you can only connect to shares one level down.
(I.E \\Server\Share\). I later found that I could use the MS Distributed
File Services to fix this problem. I installed the service and now I can
achieve the equivalent of MAP ROOT on Novell.
BUT! This only works on WinNT workstations, which we only have 2 out of the
100 computers I serve.

Again, in the release notes of the MS DFs service, it says that due to a
limitation in the Windows 9x NET USE command, you can not map drives more
than one level down.

I have been told of another work around, where I create every users
directory as a share, but apparently, each share takes up about 50Kb of
memory, so I would need 100Mb of RAM just for the shares. Plus I do not know
of a way to batch create 2000 shares.

When a user goes to there home drive (which will be F: Drive) I do not want
them to see 2000 directories where they have to find there own amongst them.
I need the F: Drive to map directly to their home directory, giving them
direct access to their files.

*PLEASE!* Can anyone tell me of ANY way to doing this in a feasible way. Has
anyone been in a similar situation and figured out a way of doing this?
Are there any third-party applications, which allows this to be done?

I have been told about an application called "Kixtart". Has anyone used this
and successfully managed to map users home directories to a root drive?

Surely there must be a way. If there is not, then I simply can not use
WinNT4 server. Can you imagine the chaos it would cause when a Year 7
student (11 yr old) who is new to computers, suddenly has to search through
2000 directories on a screen to find their own??
Not to mention the fact that I will probably find that Win 9x can't handle
that many directories on screen at once.

ANY help would be gratefully received. Does anyone have any scripts they
could show me, or links to software that could achieve this?
Thank you in advance.

Jason Thompson
IT Technician
Allerton Grange School