nsherin

As a rule of thumb, I give all printers and servers static IPs (I'm pretty sure the Epson AcuLasers pretty much require this). Some admin PCs that use thin-client via Citrix to our local authority's finance system, plus all IT office machines are provided with fixed IPs, the rest are given DHCP. Wireless access points don't apply at our place, as we're not using wireless.

Oh joy! I've got four of these being shipped out to us in the next week or so and was definately planning on using Ghost to build one up and image the rest. Doesn't sound good at a rate of 2-5MB/Min - rather painful if you ask me.

Thanks PiqueABoo - I'll have a look on my workstation and see if any w32time errors are kicking up and check out what you suggest.

This should be an essential bit of kit in every IT Technician's office to get through the stresses of the day with users, software and equipment: http://news.softpedia.com/images//news2/Calculatorul-dozator-de-bere-2.jpg Fill mine up with Old Speckled Hen or London Pride thanks! Wonder if you can get 'em with E-Learning Credits? A tempting idea.....

I would also run Memtest to carry out a complete memory checkup. When I first joined the school, our SIMS .net server had been installed on a bog standard desktop machine with 512MB of RAM. For months it suffered from random reboots and once a proper server arrived, I moved the SIMS install over to the new box. Out of curiosity (too much time on my hands perhaps), I ran memtest on the temporary box after we'd decommissioned it and sure enough, it did have duff memory, which was IMHO causing the random reboots.

Not used the FS-2000 printers myself, but have got lots of Kyocera kit at work - the previous FS-1920 is rather good, as is the FS-1800, FS-38x0 and FS-3900 series, so I can't see any reason not to go for the FS-2000.

Any luck so far? What I've done is to set our DC with the correct time, then push out a net time command via login scripts. I'll try and look up the exact syntax I've used when I'm back in the office tomorrow morning and get back to you.

Not found them too hot for work use - they seemed to take ages to get some basic items like blank CD-Rs and floppy disks to us as part of a bigger delivery. Have always used them for home use, as they have the biggest selection in the area and the choices of components have improved a lot over the years - especially the selection of motherboards, as for personal use, I'm a big fan of Asus boards. I also use them on behalf of customers when I do a bit of private It support work as a sideline. Prices are pretty decent as well - not much in it between them and other online stores, plus they are local for returns if need be. Not great for returning stuff - long queues and they sometimes can hold onto things for quite a while - this is all according to friends, as I've never personally had a problem.

We use the Access version and haven't had any major issues with it to be honest. A dead finger print reader a while back, but that was sorted. Seems to do the job.

Most USB wireless adapters will work with Server 2003 (using the XP/2000 drivers. However, if you have Active Directory installed/configured, be prepared to wait a long time at the 'Preparing Network Connections....' stage. And yep, I'd double-checked and triple-checked that DNS was configured correctly. This was with a D-Link wireless adapter, which has never been 100% reliable in terms of connection/range when connecting to my D-Link ADSL router/WAP. FWIW, I've now switched over to the Belkin USB adapter mentioned above and the performance is excellent - surprising, as I thought it was best not to mix vendors of wireless kit.

Simple .bat files do the job for us here.

Is that the one where if you open a PDF via Internet Explorer that the acrord32.exe process is still running in Task Manafer even when you close the relevant IE window? If so, I've also had that problem for ages - since Windows 2000 and Acrobat 5 days IIRC.

Thanks John. I'll have a look at my patch lead next time I'm in the main comms cabinet - I'm sure at least one of the, will have it printed on.

Righty, I can confirm that Adobe Encore 1.5 installs without any problems if you enable XP Service Pack 2 compatiblity mode and 'Run as Administrator' on the setup.exe properties. That was my main showstopper, as I can get a codec for DVD playback. Media Studio, I don't really use, it was just an alternative to Adobe. Might well install RC2 on real hardware on my home PC this weekend - after creating a Ghost image of the XP install first of course!

Got that joy (or more likely torture) to endure tomorrow morning when I run the upgrade at our place.

ChrisH - thanks - I'll keep an eye out and see if the details are printed on any of the runs.

Thanks for the quick replies guys - much appreciated. Ben - dunno why I didn't think of just using new patch leads. It would also reducce the chaces of signal problems that could crop up if I go for the couplers and at less than £5 each for duplexs, they don't exactly break the bank. Cybernerd - thanks, I'll make sure that I check the core sizes before buying. For what it's worth, I don't seem to be able to lay my hands on any documentation of the fibre we've got. Is there a quick way to work out what corre size we are using already?

Pulled down the ISO for RC2 on Saturday night and have just built up a Vista RC2 virtual machine. On first, brief looks, performance is a bit more sprightly I'm assuming that all the apps that I tested in RC1 still work, so will just be looking at the real troublesome ones from the previous test. Apps that also work in RC2 are: Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 Apps that still don't work are: Adobe Encore - first time I installed it, it then uninstalled itself. Second time round, all the shortcuts were put in, but on running the program, it complained about not being able to find any editing modes. This could be because I installed it before Premiere. After installing Premiere, I then went for the Repair option, which not fix things. Uninstalled Encore totally and reinstalled it, to which it uninstalled itself. Same thing happened fourth time round. Fifth time round, same again. Sixth time round, I set the properties for setup.exe to run in XP SP2 compatibility mode and as administrator. Still no joy, so I bailed out. Bottem line is I think Encore 2.0 / Vista RC2 do not get along together. Ahead Nero 7.2.7.0 - Same issue as before:Setup runs but then displays an error statng that Vista is not supported. Clicking OK exits setup. Not really a showstopper, as I can use version 6.6.0.14. Ulead Media Studio 8 - Installs OK, but apps crash on launch Intervideo WinDVD - Installer crashes at end of install, but appears to install OK. Activation crashes though.

Pulled down the ISO for RC2 on Saturday night and have just built up a Vista RC2 virtual machine. On first, brief looks, performance is a bit more sprightly I'm assuming that all the apps that I tested in RC1 still work, so will just be looking at the real troublesome ones from the previous test. Apps that also work in RC2 are: Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 Apps that still don't work are: Adobe Encore - first time I installed it, it then uninstalled itself. Second time round, all the shortcuts were put in, but on running the program, it complained about not being able to find any editing modes. This could be because I installed it before Premiere. After installing Premiere, I then went for the Repair option, which not fix things. Uninstalled Encore totally and reinstalled it, to which it uninstalled itself. Same thing happened fourth time round. Fifth time round, same again. Sixth time round, I set the properties for setup.exe to run in XP SP2 compatibility mode and as administrator. Still no joy, so I bailed out. Bottem line is I think Encore 2.0 / Vista RC2 do not get along together. Ahead Nero 7.2.7.0 - Same issue as before:Setup runs but then displays an error statng that Vista is not supported. Clicking OK exits setup. Not really a showstopper, as I can use version 6.6.0.14. Ulead Media Studio 8 - Installs OK, but apps crash on launch Intervideo WinDVD - Installer crashes at end of install, but appears to install OK. Activation crashes though.

Hi, We've got quite a number of fibre links within the school that are terminated with ST connectiions. In order to push our speeds up to Gigabit, from the current 100mb/s, I notice that media converters are only available with SC connections. Can I use an ST to SC coupler and then simply run an SC patch cable to the new media converter from the SC end of the coupler? Thanks, Neil

*Edited title/attachement to correct build number* Hi all, Finally got a chance to sit down and play again with Vista RC1. Pervious experiences with Beta 2 and the earlier RC1 (build 5600) were not particularly favourable from the perspective of application compatibility. So today, I built up a test VMWare Virtual machine with Vista RC1 build 5782 and carried out application installation testing. The list is a 'typical build' that I'd do on my home PC. Performance was not too bad considering it was carried out in a VM, but the idea of the excercise was to llok at what programs installed, not what the speed was like. For reference, the host hardware was an AMD Athlon 64 3000 with 2GB of RAM running Windows XP Pro SP2 and VMWare Workstation 5.5. 1GB of RAM was assigned to the virtual machine and 16GB of disk space which was definately pushing it - I had to turn off system restore in the VM to get enough disk space to finish up the testing. The table is in PDF format (was orginally Excel). Not a comprehensive list by any means, but I thought it might be useful to some, plus it's good to put something back into what is an excellent resource for us school IT techies! Cheers, Neil

Interesting document - thanks! Any ideas what will happen to schools who are run by an LEA under a unitary authority - e.g. Portsmouth? Duh! I must learn to read - we're in Wave E, so hopefully safe for a few years yet.

NetworkGeezer - I do hear what you're saying and you do have a point. The main people who use SIMS - our SIMS office always log out before I carry out the upgrade, so we don't run that risk. Same as our General/Finance office - they also log out a few minutes before the upgrade. The problem is year heads and others who leave their PCs left logged in - often not even locked, which is a security risk in itself - depsite my attempts to advise them!

Not done this yet - I'm waiting till the LEA post their upgrade notes on our CLC/VLE before going ahead or start asking for us to run the upgrade. Not going to rock the boat whilst things are calm!

What I normally do during a SIMS upgrade, as there is normally some twerp who hasn't read my note and logged off from SIMS is to simply drop the Subnet mask down to 255.255.255.0 before I start, - i.e. only in the subnet of our IP range where the servers are, as the SIMS box needs to be online to pull down updates via SOLUS. When the upgrade is done, I then reset the mask back. This works a treat, rather than chasing around the school like a blue-arsed fly to see which idiot left themselves logged into SIMS. And more than often you can't get into all the Year Head Offices etc, as they are locked! Quick, simple and effective - as they can't access the server whilst the upgrade is underway.