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I have a classroom with ~20 PCs. One for the teacher and all others are for students. They all have pre-installed licensed Windows 7 Home Premium (cause reasons) and reinstall OS to another is not an option :( Also they all are in same work-group (in one net).

Is there any tools (like Active Directory \ VNC \ "Microsoft Garage Mouse without Borders" etc.) which can do exactly the same operations at exactly the same time on all students computers from the "main" teacher-pc? For example: I start this "magic" program in small window, it connects to all PCs (if it can), then I move my mouse inside it to the left and all mouses on all PCs moved the same way. Press Start - it will open Start on all student-PCs. It's some kind of botnet program (I suppose), but it will help a lot.

VNC not good, cause you must reconnect every time and do the same operations x19 times - eh... AD as I read didn't support Home Premium (or I misunderstood?) - eh again. If there is no such tool\tools, what kind of OS (may be some Linux distributives) can do such thing?

mkrieger1
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Yury
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  • Do you just want to share the screen to do actual operation on every machine as done by the Teacher ? – unbesiegbar Jan 20 '15 at 11:06
  • No, not sharing, actions! Like pressing buttons, moving files etc. Of course every PCs will have their own differences but it's ok - just ignore some impossible operations. – Yury Jan 20 '15 at 11:08
  • I think for mouse/keyboard interactions this would not help you a lot. If one mouse controls two screens and they only get desynced a little you would not be happy with the results. However does this have to be mouse keyboard operations? I imagine most stuff you would want to do on all pcs is installations or change settings or copy something... this could be done with scripts. The most basic implementation would be one shared folder on the network. All computers run a script from that folder on every startup and check if changes have to be made.... – Syberdoor Jan 20 '15 at 11:41
  • Yes, you are right - it's all about installations, updates and moving files. Your idea about script is pretty interesting... But what kind of script (I mean powershell \ bat \ other) can run for example install.exe from net folder with admin rights? Which way is the most easiest ? – Yury Jan 20 '15 at 11:50
  • Questions about general computing hardware and software are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used primarily for programming. You may be able to get help on Super User. Questions on professional server- or networking-related infrastructure administration are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve programming or programming tools. You may be able to get help on Server Fault. – frasnian Jan 20 '15 at 12:07
  • In powershell you could store the credentials of an admin afaik. Of course doing so is always kind of a security risk. You could also log in as admin on these pcs every time you want to update. Or you could go a step further (i was not sure whether I was on the right track of your use case so I didn't mention it before) and even use some software distribution solution. This would probably have some client running on every machine that has all necessary rights, but would probably not be as easy to set up as the script solution – Syberdoor Jan 20 '15 at 12:15

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Well,
Let me take this in three different perspectives.

1) Sharing the screen.
There comes a hardware called as screen splitter (Use the one which requires power adapter)
Pros : scalable witout using Netowrking., No lag.
Cons : View only mode, Students cannot perform any action.

2) Sharing the desktop
As you have already mentioned, there are tools like teamviewer (Internet/LAN), VNC (LAN) which can be used. They require network access hence the connection might drop at time.
Pros: Students have simultaneous access to their machine
Cons: Connection may be an issue

3)Only sharing the resources
I dont think this is of your use but Active directory in windows and LDAP or LTSP on Linux is something which helps achieve resource sharing but doesnt help in desktop sharing.

IMO: You have to either go by 1 or 2. Both at the same time cannot be achieved with a legacy.

EDIT: My asnwer is considering you as a teacher and not sys admin. In the later case, tasks might be different which can be handled in various other ways.

unbesiegbar
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  • So, no options like RDP, but on many computers at once? Second option is close, but it's not what I want: 1) Network access is necessary of course, no problem with it 2) It's not about sharing, it's about action (see my comments there ^^^ (installing, moving, updating) 3) At the time teacher "enters" students PCs, they disallowed to do anything (like pause). – Yury Jan 20 '15 at 12:23
  • Not exactly what you want can be directly achieved with such a ease. Go through this link and see if you find something near to what you want. http://www.efytimes.com/e1/fullnews.asp?edid=154049 – unbesiegbar Jan 21 '15 at 09:45