OverWorked

How are servers included under EES? Are they based on the number of FTe staff or number of servers? And do we have to include all servers or just the ones I want to upgrade? We already have EES for clients (OS & Office). Now I want to begin upgrading servers to 2012, but don't know whwether to sary on with perputual licenseing or go to EES. I've been quoted:- Pertpetual Select Plus - WinSvrStd 2012 SNGL MVL: £98 Subscription OVS-ES - WinSvrStd ALNG LicSAPk OLV E 1y Acdmc AP 2Proc: £27 / year

The standalone is really an edition of Server Core, with only the Hyper-V role available. There's no GUI, so unless you're a wizard with command prompt you'll have to manage it with Server Manager and Hyper-V Manager from another machine running Window 8 / server 2012. Apart from that, they're identical feature wise.

I'm having trouble getting my Ruckus 12-month support contract renewed. I ordered the renewal in September from my usual Ruckus supplier, and after 3 months they still have not been able to get the contract renewal from Ruckus. Although the old contract expired in September, the supplier have been good and said they'll still provide support in the meantime. Is anyone else having this problem (or other problems with Ruckus) or is it just me? Thanks.

This might be a feature of the volume license media. A really annoying bug is the way the picture viewer splits all my landscape pictures in half and shows the left hand side twice. Strange. I've googled, but can't find anyone else this is happening to. It briefly shows the picture correctly before replacing it with 2 left sides. The original pictures aren't getting changed - it's just the way it shows them. Any ideas, anyone? I like the way the search charm thing can search anything - once you understand how to use it. I think I'm beginning to understand it. I now have Windows 8 on my private laptop and my administrative desktop. It's slowly growing on me as I begin to understand it. Compare this with my Android phone which I loved from the moment I saw it in the shop. There was very little "learning" to be done with Android. Remember how much oprobrium XP got in 2002? Techs (me included) really didn't like it. Eventually we all came to love it. There were 2 XPs though: pre SP2 which was very malware prone, had no firewall, and optional (and kludgy) Windows Update. SP2 fixed all this all this. Hopefully there'll be a Win8 SP which will tweak things in the right direction. I think the thing I'm least kean on is the flat GUI. But this isn't just MS - it's a trend that started in the industry about 2 years ago. Everyone's getting rid of the shiny, 3D rendered icons that make an OS pleasing to look at. We're going retro with icons that look like hi-res versions of Windows 3.1 and a 256 colour pallette. It's hard on the eyes. I don't see any need for this on a proper-sized monitor.

I've just upgraded my administrative machine to Win8 this morning. So far:- I'd like to add that the new Server Manager is *fantastic*. Much better than previous. Server 2008 R2 and earlier need to have Windows Management Framework 3.0 installed. Annoyingly though:- Hyper-V Manager is incompatible with earlier Hyper-V 2008. There's no workaround, except to manage Hyper-V from Server 2008 R2, or upgrade Hyper-V to 2012.

Thanks very much, AngryTechnician! I just switched it over before you posted, and it all appears to work. The sky hasn’t fallen down. Here’s my experience, so far. - I did just switch over, and it did work. I was already on “Active Directory” server type, so was OK. All I experienced was a brief internet outage. Refreshing web pages got them back. I didn’t need to log off and on again. All green, so OK. And still all green after switching to Kerberos. I don’t have any user-specific policies, so OK. I don’t have any usernames with spaces, so OK. I don’t have any local users, so OK. Java on websites is becoming increasingly scarce, and I can’t think of any Java applications we have. May have to cross this bridge when I come to it. Any applications that struggle with authentication (e.g. Securenet), used another port to bypass authentication anyway. So They shouldn't be affected byswitching to Kerberos. Office 2013 is now working without any annoyong proxy authentication messages.

What exactly did you do to switch Smoothwall over to Kerberos? I'm looking at Web proxy » Authentication » Manage policies. Do I just change the non-transparent auth from NTLM (TS compatible) to Kerberos (TS compatible)? Is there anything else? Thanks.

Thanks! Downloading now. I used Arthur's direct link, as the Download Manager never works with our firewall.

I know Hyper-V is a role on Server 2012, but that's not what I want. I want the free standalone edition, installed from an ISO.

I can't find Hyper-V Server 2012 standalone download anywhere, despite lots of references saying it's been available for a few months. Download.microsoft.com only has docs for Hyper-V 2012, but not the ISO. Am I being dim? Thanks.

Thanks FN-GM, but I'd already seen that. I tweaked the Office 2010 .bat file below. The process for deploying Office 2013 is largely the same as 2010. Unpack the .iso to an administrative share (the path and name must not contain spaces) Run setup.exe /admin to run the OCT and create a .MSP file for silent install. Copy this file to the \updates\ folder. Run the script, either manually or as a GPO startup script. setlocal REM ********************************************************************* REM Environment customization begins here. Modify variables below. REM ********************************************************************* REM Get ProductName from the Office product's core Setup.xml file, and then add "office15." as a prefix. set ProductName=Office15.PROPLUS REM Set DeployServer to a network-accessible location containing the Office source files. set DeployServer=\\server\share\MS_Office_Professional_Plus_2013_32Bit REM Set ConfigFile to the configuration file to be used for deployment (required) set ConfigFile=\\server\share\MS_Office_Professional_Plus_2013_32Bit\ProPlus.WW\config.xml REM Set LogLocation to a central directory to collect log files. set LogLocation=\\server\share\MS_Office_Professional_Plus_2013_32Bit\Office2013LogFiles REM ********************************************************************* REM Deployment code begins here. Do not modify anything below this line. REM ********************************************************************* IF NOT "%ProgramFiles(x86)%"=="" (goto ARP64) else (goto ARP86) REM Operating system is X64. Check for 32 bit Office in emulated Wow6432 uninstall key :ARP64 reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432NODE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\%ProductName% if NOT %errorlevel%==1 (goto End) REM Check for 32 and 64 bit versions of Office 2013 in regular uninstall key.(Office 64bit would also appear here on a 64bit OS) :ARP86 reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\%ProductName% if %errorlevel%==1 (goto DeployOffice) else (goto End) REM If 1 returned, the product was not found. Run setup here. :DeployOffice start /wait %DeployServer%\setup.exe /config %ConfigFile% echo %date% %time% Setup ended with error code %errorlevel%. >> %LogLocation%\%computername%.txt REM If 0 or other was returned, the product was found or another error occurred. Do nothing. :End Endlocal

That would explain why Comparex cold-called me just as my Insight contract was about to end. I can't say I'm that impressed with either of them.

Oh dear... I moved from Insight to Comparex for MS EES licening in March because they were so cheap. The EES license I bought from them were processed quickly and arrived in my VLSC portal no problem. I ordered Student Option licenses from them a month ago and they still haven't appeared. But then again, it took Insight 2 months to process a similar order for Student Option when I was with them.

Does anyone have a startup batch file to install Office 2013? There was one (on Technet I think) for installing Office 2010 - I'll try just modifying that. The official Deployment Guide for Office 2013 just tells you to write your own script. How hard would it have been to put an example in? As far as I can see, it's the same process as for Office 2010: copy to administrative share, use the OCT to create MSP file in the /updates folder, use startup script to deploy. Except MS don't provide the script.

The Office 2010 and 2013 keys are separate. I've just upgraded my Office 2010 KMS host to do Office 2013 and added the key. Looking on the Volume Activation Management Tool 2.0, the server now has 2 Office keys: one for Office 2010 and one for 2013. So it would explain why the activation count is separate.

I installed Kodu a few weeks ago, just put a brief note on out Intranet, and left them to it. Some of them are developing their own games now with no input from me or teachers. Great! I hadn't heard about Adventure Game Studio. I may do the same with that. I'm thinking of doing an informal after-school programming club with things like this. I've just bought my 9-year-old son an old Lego Mindstorms RCX robotics set. After 2 days he's already programming in C. It's amazing what they can do if they're left to it.

This explains it. It's not updated for 2012, but I think it's still the same. Server Standard/Enterprise editions are class B in the heirarchy, so they will activate anything below. How to Choose the Right Volume License Key for Windows

If you have volume licensing and access to the VLSC, you should be able to get a Server 2012 KMS key from there, even though you're might not be licensed to actually install Server 2012. I can see a 2012 KMS key on mine, even though I haven't bought any licenses (is it just me?). Someone please shout if I've got this wrong.

I would have loved Elite, but I could never dock, so never got far.

We had a paid-for VLE forced on us by the LA. Staff made an effort with it in the first year but it fell out of use when we were badly let down by the vendor's poor support. We now have locally hosted Moodle, which is used frequently by the one teacher who wanted it. It runs on a VM and maintenance by me is minimal. Some staff are using Live@Edu. There are so many free alternatives to VLEs out there now that staff can choose what best suits them (without involving tech support much). The day of the VLE is over, I think. I groan when I get sales calls from increasingly desperate VLE vendors. Pete10141748 sums it up well.

Memory hazy now but here's what I remember:- * Spiceworks has to send SMTP email to our local SMTP relay (in our case a Smoothwall box). Spiceworks email settings are, protocol: SMTP, server: (local SMTP relay address), port: 25. * Smoothwall then uses DNS lookup to find address of the mail server for Live@Edu. If your DNS servers host your external domain as well as your internal domain then you'll need to create an MX record it it. Use MX Lookup Tool - Check your DNS MX Records online - MxToolbox to find your Live@Edu MX address. (When I did this and our county support did this, we got diffferent answers - the address I got didn't work, and the address they got did work. I don't understand why). I think that's basically it. I got stuck because my Smoothwall box didn't know where to relay mail to.

Found Office University 2010 in the Dreamspark Special Offers tab. £70! Last year they could have got Office Professional Pro 2010 via Student Option for about 16 quid! Pity only 10 of them took it up Well, they had their chance. I've just read John's grumblings on the same subject and I understand what he means now. Has Student Option been scrapped?

How do I sell MS Office to students through the Student Option? My supplier are no help! They just say that I can set it up throught the VLSC without involving them - but I can't! I've set up a Dreamspark webstore and can distribute free software to students. I've also set up the Staff HUP where staff can buy Office. I have an EES license. I thought the simplest way would be to just add the Student Option to the Dreamspark Webstore, but nothing here is simple. How does everyone else do this?

I agree. We have a Samsung MagicInfo and creating a display just to run a powerpoint is very fiddly and time-consuming. I'm now working on wiping the built-in HDD and putting Win7 + Xibo on it, if it will fit.

The problem has returned! .swf files don't have a an associated application to open them. I think the Flash plugin isn't registered with IE. To deploy Flash, I've just pushed out the msi without any mst modifications. I remember with earlier verions, we had to create an mst to set a property IEXPLORE=1 (or something like that), but I can't find any details on the web. Anyone know the answer?