Ok... so a departure from my normal belongings - but a bit of idle (well maybe not) fun and games...
Read, and enjoy the underbelly of society!
The DARWIN Awards!
It's with great pleasure that I announce...it's that time again. The Darwin Awards are out! These Annual Honors are given to the persons who did the human gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.
You may recall that last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke
This post is going to seem very odd - as it is Part 4 of a series, where Ive only published Part 1 so far! Bear with me, there is a reason...
A lot of my blogs recently have covered areas I get asked about a lot - and this one came up today!
Take the scenario, you are sending out your OS Builds to Machines, and also you are letting staff choose from your catalog of software to install themselves.
Problem - your OS install also shows in the list, so technically - they could bork the mac
Ive had a lot of contact from people asking about installing System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) – having all sorts of issues with it. Normally – this install and config to the basics of doing a build and capture, through to the end game of it deploying your network clients for you!
Im not going to cover AD or DHCP – other than saying have 2 accounts setup ready to use, something like SCCMAdmin and SCCMClient. Make sure that you arent running SCCM on the same server as DHCP; and if at
Ok – so, most of you know I love System Centre products – and after getting SCCM (System Centre Configuration Manger) setup nicely (I will blog on this, as lots of people seem to have a problem getting this up and running in less than a day) – it was time to play with its partner in crime SCOM (System Centre Operations Manager).
Introduction
What exactly is Operations Manager? Well, it revolves around an agent on the computer to be monitored. The agent watches that computer, grabbing and col
The last article covered some of the rationale and an overview - this is a bit more of the "how to". Remember, there are two elements to MySite – the first showing your feed, all activity from your linked people (a la friends). The second, your profile.
Now – the problem comes with the logic behind setting this up. In Education – we tend to like everything being accessible through one entry point. This will usually be though a firewall or gateway device.
MySites - the standard config issue
When I first started writing on Edugeek, many will remember me as one of the Sharepoint gang. My more recent writings may have convinced some of you that I was less interested in it now…but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Sharepoint 2010 is a brilliant product – and one which could be put to great use in Schools and Colleges.
The Rationale
As IT Professionals, we are constantly battling against the students (and the staff in some cases) with Social Networking. We are also in a battl
Introduction
This article is a continuation, and update on the changes made since the original article published earlier in the year.
A bit of background to start with… in Summer 2011, I started a big modernisation project at the Academy I took over at. When I started, we were still on Windows XP across the desktops. To take us to Windows 7 presented a problem – the specs of some machines prevented it. I had a significant number of Celeron 1.6’s and 1.9’s. Although I tested Windows 7 on thes
Introduction
Right... as part of a corporate branding exercise - I have been working on sorting out the email signature front.
Before everyone says it - yes, I know you can do a "sort of solution" on the Exchange server. Im not going to cover that one in this post - as its more designed for Disclaimers. If you want to know more on that - Google "Exchange Transport Rule Disclaimer".
Why not Exchange Transport Rules
Back to this post - and why I didnt use Exchange server. Well - the one bi
Introduction
So, regular readers of my blog will know that we run quite an extensive Remote Desktop Environment at my new School. This poses for some interesting issues when dealing with printing - so a rethink on the traditional methods was needed.
Traditional Printer Scripting
Lets start at the beginning - with the "old-school" method of printer mappings. Usually, this was achieved with a good old-fashioned batch script, ala Drive Mappings. Not content with batch anymore - I moved this on
I use roamin profiles - and I know that people have their own views on using them, so no flaming please! I use it for all users, and combine it with folder redirection to for speed and efficiency.
Here is an outline of my setup then... and some links to getting it set up the same way if you are so inclined.
All userdata is stored on SAN paths, mapped through DFS. But, but could have this on single servers equally, and it would work just fine. The root path is \\DNSNAME\Network\, with paths
Hello again! This one wanders off into slightly differenet territory for my normal blogging - but its one Ive had lots of questions about recently. Its also been a fairly busy one on the forums too, so here is a reasonably definative guide on how to get it working properly...
1. Create a server side copy of your structure
Sounds simple, but how many times this isnt done properly never ceases to amaze me. Now, some poeple I know wont like what Im about to recommend, but trust me - there is a
Ok, so - some of you have tried to put this in place and have not had much luck with it. I use this one a lot, as it saves additional software - and it is just nice to have everything all in one place.
How to do it properly then...
1 Create a NEW GPO... yes I said new. Don't go adding this to exisitng ones as when you want to change the time for different machines - you will be stuffed (well you could use item level targetting -but thats a bit out of the reach of this post)... and the seco
So, as you will have gathered from my recent blog posts... there is some serious systems change happening at my place!
Quite simply put - without SCCM and Windows Thin PC, there is no way I could have got it done.
THat being said... there were a few times I was pulling may hair out with it! So, this post is a heads up on what might go wrong... and in no particular order...
1. Error 8004005 - Cannot retrieve policy for this computer and a reboot before even getting to task sequence choic
Couldnt quite work out what to call this blog post - as it ties so many different areas in together.
As Ive written about before - Ive been busy doing a mass upgrade and virtualisation project at my new place. First step was getting the HyperV hosts all set up. That was a breeze, as was the SAN - all bar a bit of waiting whilst it all initialised.
Once that was done, it was time to get the roles onto each of the nice new HyperV Clients. An SQL cluster, a pair of SCCM servers, and Forefront
OK - so some of you now know I moved on from my last School - where I was very vocal with Sharepoint and later SCCM.
Well, now at my new Academy - we are going to get down and dirt with virtualization as well. You may have seen my last post about SCCM and AppV; and also Windows Thin PC - which is part of the story, and also our testing and QA process.
Whats going in then? Well, to sort out the underpowering on the Server side - incoming 2 x Dell R710s with 300gb Raid and 128GB RAM; and an
So... Windows Thin PC (Windows Embedded Standard 7 - for its full name really) is now out, whats the story?
Its the replacement for Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCS... ie its a cut down version of the current Windows OS, designed for older PCs to make them last a bit longer. You can use it to make a "Think Thin Client"... ie Autologon, start an RDP session and thats it.
And thats exactly what Ive done with it.
So, hows it all set up, and what do I think of it? Well - it installs in t
Laptop House Education Show: 17th June 2011
After a break of two years, it was time for these guys to have another Trade Show. Like last time, they didn’t disappoint! So, first for a bit of an intro…
Laptop House are an independent IT equipment reseller founded in March 2002; and based just outside Stoke on Trent. They are able to supply major brands including Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, Sony, Apple, Fujitsu & IBM, Promethean, Bretford, Smart and many more.
Also on offer are additiona
Ok, so after I left you all wondering on the AppV score - I thought it was about time to show where we had go to...
Well - progress is good, very good! AppV (as if it needed any more ranting and raving) is a seriously cool piece of kit. Take this one problem... using CS4 on out ICT Suite machines and to bring in CS5 would bring a learning curve for staff and students alike. Well, what if you could run the two side by side. Normally, not a chance, but with AppV you can. CS4 sequences rather ni
So, yet again I find myself starting my blog with "Ive not written in ages, and here's why..."...!
Well, first off - Ive moved workplaces. A number of you will already know that - but this blog is going to concentrate on essentially the setup of a new network on the side of the old one!
Why did I move on? Well, after 5 years, all that could be achieved had been - and the system which Id written from scratch (ably assisted by my senior) was in a good state ready for someone else to take on
Microsoft Recently released a Service Pack for Windows 7 and it has worked fine until it has been made available via WSUS/Windows Updates for Automatic Install. It has been known to cause a few problems where the system has halted upon startup with a Fatal Error as shown below:
Fatal Error C0000034 applying update operation (Update 282 of 103814)
Many people have turned to re-building the system but there is a fix to getting the system back up and running and it is as follows:
1) When y
Ok, something we are just about to implement - Password Policies for Staff. However, I hear you cry, you can only have one policy per domain - the "Default Domain Policy GPO". Yes - pre Server 2008 that is true...
With Windows Server 2008 you will now be able to define different password account lockout policies within the same domain. Previously this was not possible and this was also one of the reasons many of our customers implemented multiple domains in their forest. With Fine-Grained Pas
OK - I know SP1 is now out - but in case you havent applied it yet, and arent going too - watch out for these two...
Note - These are supposed to be rolled into SP1, supposed to be!
Issue 1: If your Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 stops responding at the “Please wait” screen before you are requested to press Ctrl+ALT+DEL.
Lets say you try to start a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
However, the operating system stops responding at the “Please wait” sc
That time of year again (well - for us anyway), after doing a load of machine rebuilds - and name changes etc - your AD may look a bit cluttered. Even more so as we moved from using RIS (groan - old tech alert) to SCCM...
So - rather than resurrect some old threads, here is a collection of highly useful powershell scripts to hunt out those old computers and remove them or move them to another OU so you can spot them all together.
Credit to original posters: Boz_l and Rabbieburns
For thi
OK, I know the "old" XP version of Movie Maker wasnt the best - but as far as quick (ish), easy, and user friendly and FREE movie editting goes - it ticked the boxes. It also follows all the rules for Group Policy etc with no irritations unlike some commercial offerings.
Problem, Microsoft upset the EU Anti Trust bods, so no longer is it in newer versions. Ok, no biggy - lets use the new "Live" version. Er... no - its full of "Live" links and upload and signin rubblish. We have a sitewide ban
Because when you want to have a real rant - one post isnt enough (or you go on too much!), here is part 2 of my (Bil's) rant about Sharepoint Document Libraries...
