Automated script to backup IE favorites?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

Hello - I work in disaster recovery and we have a few other applications
(Lotus Notes), where we have users click on a file in their delivered
applications window and it will backup all of their pertinent Notes files to
their home directory on the SAN.

Is there a way to automate the backing up of favorites in Internet Explorer
(Windows 2000)? We'd like to have something setup where the users can click
a file and then it copies all favorites to their H: drive and then a script
that will copy the files down whenever they login to a new PC. Is this
possible?

TIA
 
Hi,
You must provide us more information about your system so that we can better
help you (Server OS, Win2000 Service Pack, IE version,...).

In fact, there are several possibilities.
If you use Windows/Active Directory and Win2000/XP Pro, the best one is to
use roaming profiles for users. You can store theses profiles directly on
your SAN and backup them with your current backup solution. That makes it
possible to answer your two problems. Not only the favourites of the users
are automatically copied on the SAN at the time of each disconnection, but
they are automatically taken again when their connect on another computer.

If you don't want to use roaming profiles them post an answer here and I
would give you another solution.

Bests regards,
Diego
 
Can't you teach them to use IE-File-Export to create a single HTML
backup file??

....Alan
--
Alan Edwards, MS MVP Windows - Internet Explorer
http://dts-l.org/index.html



On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:10:02 -0800, Adam West <Adam
 
We could do that but we want to simplify it for the users - plus I want to
avoid hundreds of questions - this is for over 2000 users.

Diego - it is Windows 2000, we are using Active Directory and IE 6 latest
version. Roaming profiles is not an option.

Thanks for the replies.
 
Well, you can create a bath file with a command like
"xcopy %USERPROFILE%\Favorites\*.* /S /E H:\Favorites\".
If you don't want to use a batch file, WSH is an interesting alternative.
Create a text file and rename it to "something.vbs". Edit the .vbs file and
write this :
Set MyShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MyShell.Run "xcopy %USERPROFILE%\Favorites\*.* /S /E H:\Favorites\"

Them, you have to create a GPO to run the batch or WSH script on user logoff
(Use GPMC or Active Directory to create the GPO and launch the batch form
"User or Computer Configuration | Windows Settings | Scripts
(Startup/Shutdown) | Shutdown" Click add to create a link to the batch file).
If you prefer that the users launches the copy themselves, create a GPO to
deploy a IE link to the script file in "User Configuration | Windows Settings
| Internet Explorer Maintenance | URLs | Favorites and Links"

Diego
 
Diego - thanks!

The batch file is exactly what I want to do and thats what we do for other
apps. I tried this similar batch file before with different variations - and
every time I run it I get it "Invalid Number of Parameters" - I can't figure
it out.
 
Diego - disregard last message I got it! I just had to put a quote around
the directory names and it worked - this is exactly what I wanted to do.

We'll add this to our running scripts and have it download from their home
directory when they come to a DR site.

You rock!
 
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