Jamo

check_mk cacti nagios ^^ those are some good free ones, check_mk is particularly detailed in what it can do. There are also graphite/grafana which are a slightly different type of thing but equally good in their own way

Note i haven't tested the script below!!! In powershell though you can use variables to collect the output of commands, I think its so much clearer to read I've not done the acl part before using powershell though... but try this... again not tested

All right then I'll rephrase. The OS is completely unusable with less than 4. Remember when xp used to run with 256mb? It was rubbish pure rubbish! I have a load of w10 compute sticks with similar hardware they are just unusable.

I think this is a good example of the fractured admin GUIs MS have been churning out though, granted a lot of the functionality is now in the Win+X menu, but really.... what happened to the original menu items people were used to using, the whole idea of having that menu seems to be to get around the hideous GUI that gets slapped on every new MS OS. Also come on... are you seriously suggesting that you haven't been bitten by Windows trying to search bing??????? Or been frustrated by the lack of privilege escalation from the command prompt? Want more reasons? You still can't run Windows on less than 4GB of RAM, I can still run Linux servers with 384MB RAM... The Windows bloat is also just getting worse and I can't see that changing any time soon. There are too many compelling reasons to look else where (WHERE POSSIBLE!). I'm not saying there is no place for Windows, some of the features are just brilliant (the dedup feature is amazing IMHO, and .NET) but Windows just doesn't belong everywhere in IT these days. Add to that the fact that MS are CLEARLY doing everything possible to force people into their subscription models (Software Assurance etc) Those prices are current for education yeah? Isn't this what this thread is about? Saying goodbye to those prices? Still on the bright side at least you won't have to pay commercial rates...

Docker currently runs in a linux VM on windows though - you are still using linux just that you don't know it... My opinion, is that the MS model of licencing hell has just got out of hand. Now there are so many clauses, like the VDI licencing, VDA licences, remote working exclusions, it requires a person dedicated to keep up with the licencing. MS Office is hidiously overpriced as well.

And this is compared to the open command prompt. Type slmgr.vbs /ipk new-key-goes-here Oh wait didn't run as admin. Close said cmd prompt. Search for cmd again in the god awful GUI, Windows searches Bing becuase you typed cdm by accident. Wait for Windows to finish doing 'its thing' whilst hammering delete. Type cmd. Search again, right click cmd, run as admin. Type the same command again, yay it works! This is compared to the linux commands which have already finished, updated the entire system (which doesn't require a reboot...) the linux admin is now sitting at home stroking his newly developed beard and feeling very happy. The Windows admin just realised Windows update has just given his machine a countdown. Time to reboot again

Be mindful of changing the subnet mask without knowing what you are doing. Make sure your router is also configured with a matching mask else you risk losing all broadcast traffic to your stations. Also make sure the range is capable of addressing all clients else you will end up with address starvation

Not strictly true as the clients would assume the server is within their subnet they would send the traffic directly to the server IP which would resolve using ARP. The server in turn, if the client is out of its subnet, would forward the request to its default gateway, which I'm assuming would be the same router which the rest of the clients would attach to. This would then work, but it is however.... weird. A /8 subnet is just huge, again it will work, but its just wasteful from a VLAN perspective.

Just want to add here TCP is a connection oriented protocol, so there is only one connection made, from a random high numbered port (the source port) to a single listening port (the dest port), the dest port does not connect back as it can already talk via the existing connection stream, all transmissions are then dealt with by this connection. There is only one rule required which is basically to allow 3389 from the restricted network into the main network, no other rule is required for RDP. The other services, such as DNS, NTP, AD integration, if required will also each need their own rules, so UDP and TCP port 53 for example for DNS. (With UDP you may have to open both ways depending on the firewall as its not connection based) What type of firewall is this?

So you want these stations to only be able to RDP? then in the FW just allow the dest port 3389 to your destinations and let the default deny all tule clobber all other traffic. If they shouldnt talk to eachother then use te windows firewall,block ping etc

Yeah agreed, its a feature of tcp that the source port will be picked from a pool of available ports. You dont normally do source port rules for tcp, whats the reasoning behind wanting to do that?

Try https://obsproject.com/ Used by a lot of youtubers to capture game footage

I'm not so convinced about the cost of cloud. The cost comparisons I've seen equate to around a pretty standard 3 to 5 year product replacement schedule, the difference being with perpetual if you are really need to hold off a year for replacement you can where as with cloud you are tied in as you have no product to fall back on.

This surely is a time to look at Libre Office - for the office component at least? It's hard to justify Office at the normal prices!! Especially when you need MS Access as well, Pro Plus is crazy money.

If its the only DC it may make restore a viable option - is it a VM and when was the last good backup?

Deleting an OU is quite different from deleting a GPO. It will trash any users or computers which were also resident in that location. Deleting an OU from GPMC is the same as deleting the OU from ADUC. Sounds like you have basically deleted your user - and any others under that OU. You can't do anything really without an admin account. Backup is your only option I would have said, that's if you can log on to the backup server to actually get to any backups that is. Even if you can get to the backups without an account to actually make any changes to the AD you can't do anything with a backup unless you can restore the entire server and basically recreate the last good domain state. - This may require extra work if it is a multi DC setup. I would be surprised if there wasn't another admin account, usually in the Users container (not an OU) and by default called Administrator. - Try that with some known passwords (bearing in mind the normal lockout policy may only let you choose a few before it locks you out for a period of time)

Are you sure the NICs are being picked up correctly in WinPE, even if it gets an IP in PXE it can get into PE and fail to get a DHCP lease either because of dodgy or simply non existent drivers. Try pressing F8 once in PE it should bring up a command prompt where you can run ipconfig and other commands to see if you can ping default gateways and do simple network tests to begin with.

My worst experience with Macs on a network in general was the server OS. It was truly, truly awful. The Apple remote desktop is (well was at least 2.5 yrs ago) terrible, the stability of the server OS is questionable (we had it lock solid and on numerous occasions had errors such as the keyboard stopping working, or unable to log on at all). Also the server literally has all kinds of Apple software which have no place on a server (iTunes for one!?!?!) also enormous updates, on par with Windows there I think! Not going to preach Windows reliability, especially recently, the new releases IMHO have been poor (mainly the interfaces are just becoming cumbersome, server manager/mangler is now just so clunky and slow) but Windows is just so much more solid in the enterprise arena. Macs just don't even come close, and quite honestly I don't believe Apple really cares!

Use OBS, its by far the smoothest recording tool I've used, it doesn't suffer from the lag the others seem to have. It's used a lot on youtube for recording game screens so it needs to be capable of converting a lot of FPS into a useable video. Plus its free and not full of dodgy stuff!

Yeah I'd say it would appear relatively quickly I would have thought. General broadcast happens relatively frequently (ARP, NETBIOS and common) on networks and if there was a loop it would soon become incredibly noisy. Any logs on the switches?

Worth pointing out a deny takes precedence over an allow as well

Don't suppose you have sophos? https://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/122573.aspx

How to configure Windows to create MiniDump files on BSOD Make sure the minidumps are enabled to see the dump files. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/d29ad7fe-ded5-4a98-9fd8-fcb1d6ec3876/blue-screen-win-7?forum=w7itproperf What we are hoping to see is something like the posts on this forum. Basically it will tell you the binary which caused the exception, it's most likely a driver, so you would see a .sys file or something. This will point at the manufacturer of the device which is causing the problem at which point a more targeted approach to updating the drivers can be followed!

Blue screen of death (STOP error) information in dump files. Download the BSOD viewer and bring up the last blue screen and paste its contents in. The BSOD will hopefully tell you which component driver/application caused the fault. It's not going to be the school causing the issue as such, it will be hardware, which as others have said, is only present at school, or even just the fact that the laptops are much more frequently used at school so they just don't a chance to exhibit the behaviour at home. Either way the BSOD codes are needed else its just fumbling in the dark

In that case it may be the routing tables on your two cores are done statically (and incorrectly by the sound of it). Just a guess though, as FN-GM has said would really need to see routing tables to be able to manually trace the traffic path to work out whats going on.