OverWorked

Adobe supply the Adobe Customization Wizard for free. CustWiz.exe. Search their website for it. It allows you to create an mst for any Adobe product (I think). As strawberry said, you may have to register for the free redistribution license for it. It's a while since I dabbled with it, but it'll probably allow you to create an mst to disable the auto update. You'd have to redeploy Adobe Reader with the new mst. I created an mst for Adobe Reader just to remove the desktop shortcut. Just deploy the msi via GPO with the mst you've created.

As I suspected, our LA ISP are blocking the bittorrrent peer-to-peer networking it was using. They're not going to unblock it either. I can understand their reasoning so I'm not going to pursue it any further.

Ahhh but these are real collectors' items. I'll have one. It's about time I contibuted some money to EduGeek the amount of times it's saved my skin.

I could try that. I suppose it has to be hub and not a switch for sniffing the packets? I don't have a hub, though! I'd also have to trial it on a real machine, as opposed to the VM I had been using. @kerrymoralee9280 - have you tried the vendor-supplied msi (see my post about 3 minutes before yours), rather than creating your own?

It just extracts a msi to:- \%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp and runs that. The msi's file name is random. I've deployed it to a test machine and it installs. I can't download programmes with the iPlayer though. I can play them on the website, but not download them. I get:- Sorry Download Manager cannot connect to the server... My Smoothwall doesn't report any problems, either in the firewall or proxy server logs. It could be our upstream proxy. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks to all of you. I think that'll be enough!

Thanks - that's a good one I didn't know about. I'd like the others if you can find them.

Hello, Does anyone know of any good websites aimed at informing kids of the dangers of the internet: sharing personal details, chat rooms, meeting strangers etc. Since I've blocked social networking sites, webmail and chat rooms, pupils are moaning about it. I thought it may do some good to put links to websites on the intranet to better explain why they're blocked. Thanks.

I don't know either. If you find out, please let me know! Although I've used it for three years, I haven't been able to get staff to use it, except for a couple of exceptions. That's the real challenge. I have to manually record all their verbal requests on it myself, just so I can keep track of them.

I vaguely remember something about that. Glad you got it working. I've been using Liberum for 3 or 4 years now. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for my needs. One thing to watch is the date formats. You can set it to use British formats, but when searching jobs, you have to enter the dates in American format even though the drop-down menus are set up for the British format. (ie the days are numbered just 1-12, and the months numbered 1-31). Just set a wide range and it'll work.

I set up Liberum ages ago. I can't remember much of what I did to get it working though. If you look through the folders on the IIS intranet server, is the admin folder actually there?

Yes, that's probably it. I didn't look at this option because changing the policy to re-enable it wouldn't have worked as the machine was orphaned from the domain. I've just looked round and can't find the setting. I'll leave it for now. Thanks.

Safe mode fixed it. Booted twice into safe mode with networking temporarily enabled the local admin account for those sessions. First safe mode boot, removed from domain. Reset computer account in AD. Second safe mode boot, rejoined domain. Voilà! Domain admin account able to login to firewall again. I just did that to reassure myself it was possible. As soon as it was fixed, I whipped it out and put the Smoothwall back in. The local admin account was definitely disabled when booting in 'normal' mode. Error message saying the account was disabled. Having said that, I didn't look at the account in the control panel before I took it offline.

Thanks for the suggestions. Safe mode had crossed my mind - I'll try it in the morning. If that doesn't work, I'll try the UBCD. I haven't forgotten the domain admin account's password (if I had, I'd be more than concerned - I'd go to the nearest pub and not return), and having more than one domain admin account wouldn't help in this case. I've just reset the computer account for that machine in ADUC, which for any machine stops domain accounts authenticating from it. As it's a member server, the local account gets disabled when it's joined to the domain. Then if you reset or delete the computer's account, like I have, you're stuck with no way of logging on.. I reset the account when I put Smoothwall in it's place with the same name (though I now know I didn't need to). I've just had to put the old ISA Server back while I do some work on the Smoothwall. I hope to get rid of it (the ISA Server) soon anyway. It's working happily as a firewall, even though it's orphaned from the domain. I just can't logon to the thing. I'm not too bothered. Thanks again for the suggestions.

I had several of these and a few of them kept doing it frequently (every few hours). Disabling Spanning Tree Protocol on the switch ports they were connected to helped, but didn't solve the problem completely. I've replaced them with expensive Cisco Aironet 1131AG's and this solved the problem.

Help, I've reset the account of one of my servers (Server 2003) in AD and now can't logon to it with the domain admin account. I can't logon to it as a local admin either because the local admin account is disabled ("Your account has been disabled"). Is there any way round this? I suspect there isn't. Is there any way of enabling the local admin account from GP (but then if the server can't authenticate with the domain this probably won't work either). The server isn't vital. It was just running ISA Server as the firewall, so I could easily rebuild it if I needed to, and I'm going to scrap it soon when we move to Smoothwall. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks. I've been to the MS licensing site, and requested access to the agreement, using the number on the Ramesys invoice. The number was validated, so should be OK. I've phoned Ramesys and they said it's a MAK key, but they give the same ones out to a lot of customers, so it looks like it's been fully used. They're going to send me another key. Thanks everyone. I'm starting to find my way through this.

How do I find out if the key I have is MAK or KMS? Or can keys be used as either? Does this mean I have to set up a local activation server? This is going to be a day of reading MS Technet, I think! Pass the Optrex, please.

Thanks. I have Business Edition, but I don't know what MAK or KMS means. It looks like I'll have to do more reading. I was avoiding using WDS because I couldn't get it to replace my RIS server in deploying XP. Is it possible to use RIS and WDS together in the same network? I suspect it isn't. Project Vista is becoming bigger the more I look at it. (PS I saw Gavin from Smoothwall yesterday. He told me you'd had a great night out at BETT. I'll have to get down there next year).

But I have a volume licence! I've just started tinkering with Vista on a VM so I can get group policies set up. I've got a volume license from Ramesys, and this is the first time I've used it. Just tried to activate it, typed in the activation code on the Ramesys invoice, and I get this. Then it gives a series of options, none of which are realistic:- Buy another key - **** off Enter another key - I don't need to I've got a license for this. Use the automated phone system - what? every time I install Vista? Contact MS to resolve this problem. - Maybe I should calm down first. :mad:

Thanks. I've only got one client so dhould be OK. This is a lot of work for one student!

Thanks for that - I'm setting up a VM with XP now for the server (or SiteManager as they call it). You're right about the confusing terminology. The client is called administrator.

I've just sat down to install this for the first time. The installation guide says gives among the pre-installation tasks: Is that essential? I don't have a server (Server 2003) that isn't running IIS. It's a bit vague, but by 'server machine' does it really mean Server 2000/2003 or will XP do? What problems would Server 2003 with IIS cause anyway? My first instinct is to install create a VM running XP Pro and install it on that. I'll see how it goes. Any suggestions?

The jolly nice people at our LEA ICT Services have produced a guide for making an MMC snap in. I use it and it works.

Being German, they sell a lot of German food - like Frickadellen (big fat burgers) and amazingly cheap Stollen Cakes at Christmas - better than M&S at a fraction of the price. I always wonder who they're selling this German food to. I only know one German around here. I'm wondering off topic now... food mmm...