_techie_

Well we run trapeze ap's with a trapeze controller which seems to be working fine. Only ever had two problems, one was sorted by a controller reboot (first one in two years), the other by a faulty ap. Its great not having to configure each AP. Downsides - very expensive controller, and installing the management console which needed java (well java was the problem)... Think the latter was probably our issue. Otherwise very pleased!

The new macbook air now ships without flash installed according to macrumours.com... To me this is a BAD thing, though I can understand why they have done it, to make the battery life as good as possible. I do get the impression that: "Steve hates adobe flash", and that by doing this he is shooting himself in the foot at the current time. I guees his counter argument is that to get round this, he is launching the mac app store, so developers could remove the need for the browser to try and do everything online, and have better developed apps that remove the need for browser plugins. The ipad has already shown that developers are making apps that are conventionally browser based, but without the need to use safari. (a good example would be the bbc news app) Others thoughts please...

Hi, Got a pair of refurbed 4250dtn HP laserjets. One works fine, absolutely no problems. Sounds, feels and looks brand new, both of them. One of them prints fine. The other, prints nothing, NADA, blank pages, not even any toner on the page! Have tried all the obvious: Existing and new toner cartridges (yes the seal strip was removed!) Working fuser Cold Reset on printer startup This is all from tray 2 I might add. The rest of the printer behaviour seems fine/normal. I am guessing its some sort of sensor or lead that is not internally plugged in... Any ideas on what it might be before I send it back, as its going to cost us a bomb in postage! Cheers anyone

I think this is something to do with a combination of folder redirection, libraries and the fact that documents is now a master directory to incorporate my music, pictures etc as with xp. As has been mentioned, it appears that you can sort it using group policy. I have noticed that my area became a documents share on the server, and i also lost all the files in my area as well....the folders remained, however, just empty :-(. Yet to address the issue as of yet, as i havent got my 2003 servers configured to accept the admx templates using the central store.

Hi all, We are running an exchange 2007 server, on a 2003 x64 box. Staff are using OWA 2007 in IE7, but we are experiencing a small issue with address book display names. Our head of year staff rotate every year (from Year 10 to 11, and back to Year 10 again), so I have updated AD with the updated display names to be correct. However we are getting a few calls about the cache not updating properly (it seems to be user dependant, so must be some sort of user cache for some auto-complete feature). Is it possible to do some sort of global cache clear, as one of our head of years is complaining that they are getting emails sent to her as HOY for Y10, but she is now Y11.... Any help would be appreciated, and yes I know that using the check names button sorts the problem, but I am beginning to sound like a stuck record mentioning it to teaching and support staff. Cheers Mark

No idea...i guess I would have to do a basic build from a CD to find out... I did add driversigningpolicy=ignore to the inf file, but no use.

Hi folks I have a flat XP SP3 image with some network drivers added into the flat image, which sits on a WDS mixed mode 2003 box. I have a HP 530 laptop. This images fine with the intel network driver (PRO 100/VE) as it goes. No other drivers end up in the image. I then capture the fully setup, completed machine. I have sysprepped the machine, all goes successfully (reseal, mini-setup, shutdown). As part of sysprep, I make it an unattended install, with license key etc etc. This works okay. I can then capture the image as a wim back up to a new x64 2008 r2 WDS server, using WinPE. I have done the same thing with other machines, and no problems! My problem occurs with this laptop, when it tries to do a domain join, it fails, saying it cannot join the domain. I presume that this is because it is missing some network drivers, or something similiar. And yes, I have checked the network connection, thrice! Is there anyway to spoon feed sysprep the network drivers for the laptop, during the sysprep process? Is there anything else worth trying? Cheers _techie_

Sorted it! Just added the Excel.officeUI in the ApplicationData\Microsoft\Office folder in the profile. Thanks,

Hi, I have done a bit of updating of profiles this morning for our Office 2010 rollout. I wanted to customise the ribbon for Excel, and add a new custom group on the data tab, with the 'Forms' tool added. This worked okay. Opened and closed Excel, and the customisations still worked. Closed the profile up, tested the profile, and only some of settings I had changed had worked? The ribbon customisations I added, were lost. Has anyone got this to work yet? I am also struggling to figure out whether it's possible to globally set up the trust center using GPO, but can't seem to find the setting at present. Any help appreciated! Thanks,! _techie_

Just to update this thread, we finally went with a company called securit... They will be providing us with a printer, software, badges, lanyards, etc etc! Hope this helps anyone!

We are not allowing staff/students to download apps from using the apps store on the ipad, but having a controlled environment through itunes as you suggested. You can lock the ipad down using the SDK from Apple. Well worth a look IMO.

Hi, I have been given the task of producing ID Badges for Staff for September 2010. We have SIMS.Net at the moment, and would ideally like new badges to be made inhouse if possible, so that if staff name change, new staff come in etc, we can easily make a badge for said new staff. Cost is not really going to be a problem. Is there an easy way to make badges using a third party software product from SIMS.Net. What type of materials for cards do people use, and would we need a specialist printer to print them on, if it is a credit card style card we use? Because of the nature of schools layout (very open), this is a must for September 2010. Thanks for any pointers/advice/products! I have posted about this in the past, but would ideally like it to be as simple as possible, so that our reception team do not need us for assistance at every step to produce them! Thanks, _techie_

Cheers Dan, muchos appreciated. I tried using Find in AD, but you can only view Operating System Field, not Service Pack.

Cheers guys, I had forgotten about AD!... Is there an easy way to query AD for those machines which have Service Pack 2? Ta

Hi, Is there anyway to remotely discover a workstations Service Pack Level, without resorting to Spiceworks? We just need to find out quickly, since we are doing an inplace upgrade to Office 2010, and it requires Windows XP SP3. Cheers,

We have ordered 1 for our SEN department. We got it as there are some good educational packages on the apps store for it, and it is easy to lock down actually. Obviously the iPad will have to be used under supervision, as it is expensive kit, but surely this should happen with any IT equipment being used in school?

This is a definite case forward for running virtualised servers, and being able to snapshot them, before undertaking massive changes like installing/upgrading exchange. As others have said, I would not recommend running Exchange on a DC box... If I were you, look at going down the route of ESXi if possible (hardware needs to support it). This has been the biggest benefit, since we can try things out, with no real risk of doing any long term damage. HTH a bit...

ABtutor control...2ndid, 3rdid, 4thid... This is the best product I have seen for a while. I wasn't that impressed with version 5, but now on 6.4 and it is working well. It really is excellent for both teaching staff and technicians. You can also set it up to do logging and keyboard monitoring on workstations, which is a godsend for tracking 'dodgy' kids! It has worked wonders for us in cracking down on dodgy stuff.... It is also really easy to block internet on certain workstations etc etc Oh yeah..it can also log onto workstations at the same time :-) The cost was also excellent £140 for one teacher workstation. If you buy 9 or more 'control' programs for teacher desktops, then it comes down to £120! The number of clients is unlimited! Hope this is of some help http://www.abconsulting.com

Hi We use ALICE here (predecessor to Oliver), but are moving to Oliver possibly next year. I am sad to hear that you think the customer support is poor, as I have had very good service from them, with a few minor issues we have had. Considering the ageing technology ALICE is built on, they have had managed to resolve everything we have thrown at them, including a basic rebuild of some corrupted files. I am looking forward to OLIVER, especially as they have been developing some Moodle blocks, which can provide reading lists etc etc.... We will be sticking with Softlink. The person who has helped us in the past was called Simon, who was very helpful. Not too sure if this will help you though. I admit that sometimes you need to..."can I speak to someone a bit more qualified etc" but you normally get through to someone who knows what they are talking about. Cheers _techie_

Hi I am currently in the process of redesigning the school website, and would also like to modernise the technology behind it. The school website will actually be quite basic, but I would like to have the majority of the content that needs updating regularly (such as our newsletter) to be done by somebody else! I was hoping to use RSS as a means by which we can possibly publish the newsletter (rather than a Publisher file printed as a PDF and uploaded as is current). We have Moodle setup in our school, and it is working well. I know you can setup RSS feeds from forums (in Moodle), but has anyone done this, and what are its limitations?? If it helps, we are on 1.9.6 version of moodle (i think..) Thanks,

Hi, We are considering moving over to a shared mandatory profile for some of our admin users soon. Is there anyway that Outlook 2007 connected to exchange server, can be automated, to a user (when using a shared mandatory profile), when they logon? I know normally the exchange configuration is stored in the profile. Could this be done using an ADM template? We are on XP/Server 2003 if it helps. Thanks,

I guess this is not really a problem, when setting up new machines we tend to do this in the holidays. I just think that they have gone a slight step backwards from RIS in this instance, but that is just my opinion... I have found out how to add the computers to the domain first, and also add the GUID, as well as setting WDS to respond only to known clients. How would you go about unattending the computer name, once we move over to pre-staging? Thanks for your help.

Thanks all for your comments. I was thinking that the enevitable of pre-staging accounts in AD was going to be the final and only solution. My only issue with this, is obtaining the GUID information quickly? Is there a way to do this remotely? Would be good if we could. Thanks,

Hi all, we have been playing around with Windows 7 and unattended installs. With much research and reading we are 99% there! We have managed to get WinPE to be totally unattended, apart from being able to select a particular image from a list (I like this option, since it will allow us to choose wim's containing 'difficult' to deploy software (e.g. Prodesktop 8!). We have also managed to automate most of the oobe part of installation with Windows 7, however, we have stumbled across a problem with automating the domain join. We CAN get the ImageUnattend.xml file to auto add the machine to the domain, but we would also like the ability to choose the computer name, (for setting up new classrooms). I do not particularly want to pre-stage the accounts in AD. The machine completes the automated oobe, then when it reboots, looks to have joined the domain. When we try to logon, we get a confusing error message: I think this is due to the timing of naming the computer (which 'I think' occurs after the unattended domain join). The domain join puts an account in AD, after which we type in the computer name which is different to the record in AD, which is causing the problem. Is it possible to setup the computer name during WinPE, or before doing the domain join? Thanks

If you had lots of physical servers, and wanted to consolidate them, when buying new server hardware, you could possibly put more than one windows server onto each box. This has both benefits and downsides which need to be considered (mostly putting all your eggs in one basket scenario). Like others have said, for a primary school, just use Standard. Should be fine. Thanks,