SIMS Auto update

[Guest Guest]

First id like to just say hi. I stumbled upon this forum a while ago and have been having a browse whenever ive had chance, just got round to registering.

 

 

Anyway, after speaking to our IT support, we have come to the conclusion that SIMS cannot update itself. It loads up and seems like it will update but then doesnt, permissions i guess but we have tryed everything our support line can think of.

 

So we currently go round manually running the SIMS install prog, not good when you have nigh on 100 teachers PCs to update everytime Capita decide to break/patch (read as you like) SIMS.

 

Anyway the support told us that since we have manually updated the PC there is no chance of SIMS auto updating.

 

Sorry to ramble but I dont even know where im at anymore with SIMS . So does anyone know how to get SIMS to damn work and update itself?

 

Any suggestions

 

Cheers

[PhilNeal]

If you would like to email me details of your school we will contact your support unit to help them help you. There is no way that you should be hand upgrading SIMS even if you have done it manually in the past.

[glensc]

If you would like to email me details of your school we will contact your support unit to help them help you. There is no way that you should be hand upgrading SIMS even if you have done it manually in the past.

 

Hi Phil,

we have a not dissiliar problem here.

We run SIMS on it's own member server in a RM CC3 network enviroment. The local LEA reinstalled it over summer due to merging curriculem and administrative domains, without really seeming to take into considertation it was a CC3 network.

 

This means that it's been installed manually on each teacher's workstation and on each workstation in the administrative offices. The LEA keep telling us we have to make all SIMS users local admins of the machines for the SIMS auto upgrades to work.

 

As you can guess we're extremely loathe to do that, making over 100 teachers and 20 odd admin staff local admins of 60 odd machines seems like inviting disaster.

 

Short of reinstalling the SIMS sever the RM recommended way, using the scripts developed between RM and Capita ( which I did point out we should have done at the time ) do you know if there's a way of fixing the permissions issues rectrospectively?

[wesleyw]

You don't need admin permissions for SIMS to install just the power users group will do!

 

Wes

[meastaugh1]

I've seen these symptoms when the SIMSSetupsDirectory value on the workstation has been wrong (after a SIMS server name change), ie it appears to check for an update but doesn't execute the update. Check the SIMSsetupsDirectory value in c:\windows\sims.ini on the workstations.

 

Should be something like:

SIMSsetupsDirectory=s:\sims\SIMS\Setups

 

Where users don't have sufficient permissions, I believe the upgrade will attempt to run, but then give errors when it tries to write to c:\program files\sims.

[MkII]

I have SIMS updating at startup which seems by far preferable. Just run a startup script calling the seperate installs, which check for updates, when you want, at PC startup. Your staff are not then inconvenienced by having to wait for an update to install, when all they want to do is take a register.

 

My machine which has a vanilla install checked twice today for updates, wasting minutes of my time. I know the October update last week was the only one recently so this checking seems overkill. [i've switched to calling Pulsar.exe directly].

 

A big welcome Phil by the way. Great to see you here! Your posts on Capitaes have been really very helpful in the past!

[pete]

Provided you tweak the permissions on the local sims folder [C:\program files\Sims\Sims .net\], anyone who can log onto a computer can install the patch. There's no need to make users power users or admins.

 

Check the setups directory for simsperm.bat - it calls subinacl.exe to set the access control lists appropriately for the patches to install.