Winsuite...

[Jon]

Does anybody have any experience of the awful winsuite desktop control software.

If so have you experienced the problem were by destops that are controlled bt Screen manger refuse to load on client machine? I have a school that uses this dreadful programme and certain machine display this problem sometimes a uninsatll and reinstall of winsuite on the client will cure it ... Sometimes not.

Any help greatly appreciated.

[plexer]

It was installed here when I started now we have vanilla 2k3.

Ben

[craiglay]

Yeah, I've seen this before. It was fixed by doing a clean uninstall then reinstalling Winsuite. I used the following command

\\YOURSERVERNAME\RollNT$\Townt.exe /W /UC

Then reinstalled as per normal.

The usuable uninstall seems to leave all the config files which are probably causing the problem.

Seconded that it is awful... Trialing its removal in one school as its causing problems. The only good point (IMO) about Winsuite is the logon box as i'm in Primary's.

Craig

[Slartibartfast]

Winsuite is horrid. It screws up so many things in a non-standard way. Vanilla 2003 is definitely the way to go.

(Four Norfolk edugeekers in one thread? Is that a record? )

[plexer]

Just proves how such a nasty piece of software was imposed on Norfolk schools by the LEA.

I didn't even notice the original poster was from norfolk actually.

Welcome also to Craig who's my feeder schools cluster support technician finally got on here then.

Ben

[craiglay]

Yeah, nasty software to go with my nasty Elonex hardware too

Another tip is not to uninstall it from the server as you cannot register it through the county proxy (it didn't fix this problem either). I found a NCC hack in another school though so its a common problem.

Hi all, esp Ben, only been about a year... Love the site. Very helpful and got me out of hot spots many a time.

Craig

[Jon]

Hi to all the Norfolk Techs...We are not really all related are we?

This winsuite and Elonex hardware thing does seem to be a Norfolk Issue...

Are you people employed by your schools directly or are you LEA (ICT Solutions) techs.

[craiglay]

Not that I know of

Yeah, and now we get Dells :s

I'm employed directly by the schools (6 Primarys in the area)

Craig

[plexer]

I'm employed by the school and I have 1 technician in house helping me and Craig out in the field supporting the feeder schools.

Previous to having Craig onboard some of the feeders bought in to the overpriced field tech service.

elonex were the LEA preferred supplier for hardware so that's why we've been lumped with that and winsuite was their security method.

Ben

[phil_thebeans]

Hi all just thought I'd give a different side to the winsuite experience. The early versions were the most awful piece of dodgy software ever built but the latest version is as far as we have experienced very reliable and significantly reduces our tech time as we give all students the exact same desktop plus 1 for adulted, 1 for staff and one for the 6th form.

Although I would prefer to go down the vanila route I inherited the system and haven't been able to convince management that there would be a great benefit to the users as unfortunately there is very little concern for our students to experience a real world setup, however the new ICT coordinator is as keen as me to give the kids a taste of what they will encounter when they leave school. So no RM crap or specialist software that they will never encounter we are trying to change their experience so as to prepare them for corparate networks etc. Thank god that the online ks3 testing is not now compulsory as we shall hopefully never put our kids through those poorly designed tests, oh and guess who is behind them RM isn't it?
Our local lea (norfolk) has consistently made the wrong decisions regarding hardware for example Tiny, then Elenox (really badly built switches on their desktops and the power supplys failed after less than 18 months, we had to replace over 50%) broadband is a last becomibg reliable although the speeds are poor in comparision to a leased line (for obvious reasons, contention) no remote access to our network for myself or my techie and the caching server they gave us is so noisy that we have had to house it in a remote cupboard ( although we have now decommissioned it as we are useing our own proxy as we had always done)

OK sorry for digressing into a rant about my lea but i'm sure all the norfolk techies could agree on some if not all points and as a final dig at the lea i'll leave you with 2 words ICT SOLUTIONS.

[plexer]

Trouble is this thread just appears to be us norfolk techies talking to each other

Do you have the active directory version of winsuite?

You can have remote access via neoteris for £1000 p/a and £750 thereafter.

Ben

[SteveT]

Hi to all the Norfolk Techs...We are not really all related are we? .

.... you're from Norfolk so you probably are all related!!!! <----------- (ducks and runs)

[Jon]

Hi to all the Norfolk Techs...We are not really all related are we? .

.... you're from Norfolk so you probably are all related!!!! <----------- (ducks and runs)

Yes but we can type that much quicker with 6 fingers on each hand

[phil_thebeans]

Yes we are using the active directory version.

The problem with neoteris as i understand it is that it only allows access to folders and we want complete remote access to all our systems

[plexer]

Phil,

Neoteris allows you to remote desktop to a server or machine.

Plus you can have your intranet forwarded as well.

We didn't have the AD version of winsuite only the policy version.

Ben