OverWorked

Update just for the record: I've just bought and installed 3 Cisco Aironet 1131s from ONI and after three weeks there's been no trouble with them. They're rock solid. Not like the stuff we had in before.

Use GP filtering so that GPO only applies to that user. In GPMC, create the GPO with the logoff script. The scope tab show the Security Filtering - it list Authenticated Users by default (i.e. everyone in the OU it's linked to and below). Click remove to remove authenticated users and click add to add the users name. That's it - a GPO that only applies to the named user (or group or whatever you put in the filtering). You'll still need to link it to an OU that's above the named user, or it won't apply to anyone.

PCPro are offering free stickers to remind people to switch their computers off at night. I applied four weeks ago and they've just arrived. I'm sticking them around staff offices - the worst offenders. (I know that if I put them in the main ICT suites they'll just get pulled off). PCPro link I also use Energy Star's EZ GPO to manage energy saver settings (turn off monitors etc) by Group Policy. I don't know if these have been mentioned before, but it's worth mentioning again. Every little helps.

I found that out. Vista creates a new roaming profile ending in .V2. I don't know how to handle that yet. There'll be more of these gotchas, I expect. It's little things like this will catch you out, and take loads of time to sort out.

It was a long thread on FFS a couple of weeks ago. It's still running. I don't want to go there again!

Could you just stop them sfter school? Or do you have a lot of after school activities? I know this doesn't really solve the problem, but do you need 3 DHCP servers? Could you just extend the scope on an existing server, or add a new scope to an existing server? Apart from that I'm stumped - sorry!

Just some ideas:- If you temporarily disable the scopes of the other DHCP servers, what happens? Do your clients get an IP from the problematic server? This is just to test if it is actually working, but saying it's not. Is the DHCP server also a DC? When you authorised it, was it from that server, or another DHCP server?

I had a good look round. No joy, though.

I expect you're right, Geoff. Our LEA still provide XP laptops, so they're still available. The description on the packaging states Vista, they just downgrade them to XP. I don't remember what they COA sticker says. They got these from PC World. They just picked up 'consumer' laptops from the shelf, and happily brought them to me Monday morning, then trotted off to the bursars office to get their receipts refunded. (I posted about this at the time, on FFS, and started a 5-screen ranting thread).

I'll go with Business. I don't have the laptops in front of me right now amd can't remember what they were. (At the time I just wanted to get them out of my sight). They'll be back soon, though. I do remember that although they were different brands and cases, the device manager showed almost identical internal hardware. The missing drivers were for chipset, graphics and a few other things. XP would run on them, but very slowly. Vista ran at a decent speed, as it happens. I don't think it matters, anyway. This is a sign of things to come. I believe that in a few months most new hardware (especially laptops) will be Vista only. XP won't be supported by the manufacturers.

If anyone's interested, I've just found this. The differences are minute.

Thanks! I knew someone would say that. I'd prefer the laptops to have an 'accident'. I wish I had a choice. The laptops I've been presented with won't downgrade to XP because of lack of drivers. It seems manufacturers aren't encouraged to make XP drivers, so Vista (as a MS OS) will be increasingly hard to avoid soon.

Which Vista Edition should we be using in school? Our LEA don't have a position on it yet. I need to upgrade two laptops from Vista Home Premium to something that'll join a domain. The nice guy at Pugh told me that the MS School Agreement included Vista Enterprise. Do we need that, or will Business do?

Thanks to you both. Sounds like good advice. I was hoping to put this off for a year, but have been dropped in it by staff buying laptops with Vista Home Premium on, which I'll need to upgrade before I can do anything.

Exercise. I took up running for half an hour twice a week, joined a Gym, and cut right down on alcohol. I now feel much better physically and mentally. I feel much more able to organise my time better at work, have more energy to get more done, and am more able to tell people I can't come straight away. I used to go to the pub with a newspaper or play computer games in evenings but these made me worse. I'm still going to get Half Life 2 Episode 2, though!

Has anyone here had any training for administering Vista? Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm asking because I've barely touched it yet. My few attempts at joining Vista machines to the school's domain haven't been entirely satisfactory. I feel thet a decent training course might be the answer, or otherwise it's just another uphill learning curve I really don't have time for. I'm not looking forward to this! Are the new MCPs for Vista (or whatever the equivalent of MCP is now) any good?

Fixed it (partially), if anyone's interested. Here's the link just for the record if anyone else searches for this. http://support.microsoft.com/?id=224384

I've got DFS running OK, with three roots. I've tried to create a new root but I get the message:- The DFS root "rootname" already exists. Please give a different name for the new DFS root. There's no root of that name listed, so when I try to show the root, the one I want is in the list under "show root..." . When I select it I get "The specified DFS root does not exist" There's some trace of the old root (I must have created and deleted it a while ago) still hanging around somewhere (AD?). How do I get rid of it? I can easily get round this problem by just using a different name, but would like to reuse the original name if I can. Any ideas? Thanks.

Those few minutes at the end of summer term, when you've just got home, got changed and sat on the sofa ready for 6 weeks hols. (If you're term-time only, that is).

It's faster and much more stable. No more "page not found" errors when the browser times out.

Tom - I'll send you an email.

Thanks everyone. I'll order a 1130AG and see how we go. If it's good ( and I think it will be) I'll have to persuade the Head to part with money for some more. I didn't know Cisco did discount for schools. I'll look into that too.

Just looked at Misco. The cheapest Cisco is the Aironet 1130AG. It looks like it'll meet my needs. Is this the one you mean?

What model was it? Presumably that's an Aironet 1240AG Series, not the seriously meaty-looking 1500. EDIT- I was looking at the Cisco UK site, which only lists two models. The worldwide site has more.

What I meant is:- One part of our network is handled by 3com managed switches. Access points connected to these were frequently (every hour or so) getting cut off from the network. I'm not sure what was happening, but I think the switches were detecting a loop between the APs and preventing any more traffic to them. They were on different channels (so I suppose traffic couldn't be going between them hmmm...). Disabling STP on the ports connected to the APs greatly reduced the problem, but didn't eliminate it completely. I'll look into the HP 420's, though. Thanks.