_techie_

In AD, you can set the user to only allow logon to X workstations/servers. We have done this with one of our students, since he was being a pain, and we wanted to keep an eye on him. It was also made clear that teaching staff should not allow him to use a computer in any other than the specified room. In AD, select the user account you wish to use, then right click, properties, Account tab, and logon to button. You can then specify which machines/servers the account is able to logon to. We have a server account esp for this. HTH Mark

Yep been there...so infuriating. Also been there with the 'must have someone in the office at all times' malarky. Just gets me down eventually. Its not like I am swanning around school, lounging in the staffroom and drinking endless cups of coffee is it? (unlike some other members of staff).

Welcome to the fun world of dealing with laptops for both home use and domain use! I am constantly trying to keep our laptop numbers down to keep them manageable. Seems to me like you have managed to keep it simple enough at the time being. Good luck!

Thank god we use mandatory profiles LOL!!!

Recently installed a HP Procurve 24 port 2610-24 which was fanless. Its silent, supports VLANS, and is pretty good IMO. You could stack two together, and create a 2GB trunk on the first switch? HTH Mark

We use it here...never had any javascript problems tbh. I do tend to hold back on Java RE upgrades when possible. Cheers,

HP for us, although our latest bunch got hammered by using Cat6 patch cords, which destroyed the network sockets. This is hardly HP's fault though!! Good support, once you register on the HP UK website, and do all warranty claims through the online system. I do not like laptops as they do not stand up to the abuse half as well as desktops do, and repairs are ardous IMO compared to changing a keyboard or mouse on a desktop for example. Oh, and I wouldn't touch acer with a bargepole, after previous experience with them. Their support is truly awful IMO, and we had stuff sent off to be repaired, and never got sent back as it got "lost"!!! This was with both laptops and projectors! HTH

I had this a few years back with Google Earth. Kids and staff were installing it, but as soon as the machine was restarted, the software seemed to disappear from control panel, and also the msi database on the clients. I gave up worrying, and spent the time blocking exe's on users home directories etc etc. HTH _techie_

The MSI I downloaded (don't have the exact version in front of me) didn't register the ocx file properly when installed by MSI GRRR!!!! I had to write a little script to do this, but Michael's version may be fine. This was an upgrade from 9 which I had to do before Xmas. Good luck!

Yeah we use BackupExec, and its pretty good. Occasionally, had problems with backup to tape, but mostly through our own fault. We are looking to go to 12.5 and backup our VM's to a massive NAS soon. Should be a major improvment. :D

Still no joy with this (moodle kindly provided an error message [an expected ID was not found]....I have been working in IT for schools for 5 years, and have not seen anything that is so difficult to setup...Their vle instructions IMO need serious improvement! Will send a polite email to them now! Thanks all for your help so far, will report back soon!

Hit a brick wall, there is a 128MB Limit on the uploads... :( Cheers anyway, I will look at an alternative method...

Many thanks... Will give it a try. Cheers _techie_

Hi, I am fairly new to moodle, but have been given some Go Science! LiveText CD's (Heinemann) by our science department. There are two types of CD's: 1) CD for network deployment (via MSI) 2) CD for VLE integration. However, the instructions on how to import the contents of the CD for VLE integration are somewhat, 'sparse'. They do not even mention moodle, so I am unsure if the software is going to be a waste of time... Has anyone ever done this, and was it difficult? So far I am struggling with this! I am considering installing the network version to my machine, then copying the contents of the folder to an internal webserver (they are mostly html front end - just pointing to documents (Word and PDF)), and using it that way. Is this a sensible idea? Cheers, _techie_

Hi all, Is it just me, or do computer activities with students and headphones/mic's rarely work? Half the time, the headphones just get broken, students plug them into the wrong sockets, the system sound settings get changed/muted by students in the lesson previously, and even if I lock them down, the students find a way around the restrictions to fiddle with the sound settings. Sorry for the rant, but getting to the end of my tether here! We have bought robust headphones which cost more, but they still get broken, and we then end up getting cheap headphones, and replacing them very often, and at great cost to the school! If someone else has had similiar problems, speak up and let me know. Thanks.

Sorted w00p!! Was the "lock computer" button greyed out in another GPO after all! Thanks chaps!

I think it might be something to do with another policy, which is causing a conflict. We currently have "lock computer" greyed out for staff, something to do with this might be causing the problem. Will investigate and report back.

How would you go about checking this? Never heard of RSoP before, and cannot check gpresult, when logged on as a staff member, since they do not have access to the command prompt... Thanks for all your help so far! Mark

Just tried specifying a screensaver that was in system32. Will try this first, before anything else. It might be worth noting, that our teaching staff are "Domain Users", which could be causing a problem.

Hi We are rolling out SIMS.Net in September, and a member of our leadership group has requested that the machine is locked out after resuming from the screensaver. This is to secure the machine should a member of staff move leave the machine open (with SIMS open), and walk away from it. We initially set this up to work on a User OU in AD as a new policy. Unfortunately, the lockout does not work, but the change we made in the timing of the screensaver is applying from the policy? Had a quick google, and even tried a reg hack from Microsoft, but this didnt work either... Has anyone else had this problem. We are running XP SP3 btw... We have also checked other policies above this one, there are not any which concern this setting in the GPO though. Thanks Mark

Thanks, will try some of the other solutions, never had this problem when making the SP2 image for the machine. Might just try removing any of the older files from the flat image, then adding the ones I aleady have. Thanks again.

Hi, Have a strange RIS issue with a HP dc5700 machine with broadcom netextreme onboard network driver. Have a WIN XP SP3 Flat image. Have added the inf,sys, and cat files to the flat image (std files go into i386, and altered inf file and others go into $oem$\$1\Drivers\Nic folder) as per the included instructions included from the HP driver and support website, and can flat image the machine no problem. Install graphics drivers, and audio driver, machine looks clean, and install a few other apps, and fonts as I normally would. Then Riprep machine, which completes successfully. Add requested information to the sif file for the rip-repped image for driver location, and oempreinstall = yes. Then try and re-image machine with rip-repped image, but get no joy (text mode "network drivers not installed" blah). Thinks maybe need to add $oem$ folder to the rip-repped image....did so, restarted WDS on server, and start over, but still no joy. I guess I need to add some files to the i386 folder to the rip-repped image (which I also tried, but still no luck - must be wrong ones or some configuration issue). Not too urgent as I have a SP2 image working, just annoying. Anyone had similiar problem, and how did you solve it? Thanks

Hi, We are using squirrel mail (which has been provided by our county council), for email, but are in the testing phase of migrating from squirrel to exchange. We have setup all the mailboxes in Exhange 2007 mail console, and have added the squirrelmail email address to each users mailbox (which is causing a problem as follows:) When a migrated user (to exchange) uses the GAL, and sends an email to a non-migrated user (on squirrel), the email ends up sitting in the recipitents exchange mailbox, because we setup exchange to recognise the squirrel address). Is there anyway to setup global forwarding or something like that in exchange 2007 console, so that the GAL can still be used by migrated exchange users to send email to squirrel users, during our migration period? Cheers

Hi.. I am trying to convert a large quantity of cdr files to something useful like png's.... Tried using irfranview, but it just gives you the converted files from the preview mode (very poor quality). Aside from opening them all up in coreldraw one by one, and saving them as something else, is there a silver bullet out there that will do this? Cheers

Is it possible to do this after we have setup Exchange? I presume not, since you mention DomainPrep, which the first part of the pre-exchange install. The 2007 management console can control AD directly (able to delete user accounts totally!). Thanks Mark