Twearden

Hi Dawn, is it possible to convert these to a working version of ChromeOS Flex? I've installed it but the touchscreen drivers aren't playing ball. They're a little too slow running Windows for what we need.

Hi guys, We've got a bunch of BNIB iPads from the DfE rollout over lockdown which we haven't even touched yet! Currently the school runs some original iPad Mini & Mini 2's, using one Apple ID for the lot, each one manually configured, and predating my arrival in the school. For the new ones, I'm looking into various options to manage them, much more intelligently than the old ones! We have a Meraki MDM account (which doesn't currently get used for anything) and I've enrolled us into Apple School Manager (but yet to enroll the devices on it). Would be really interested to hear a few opinions on how I should set these up/how other people have them set up. It'll be for classroom use in a primary school, for Y3-4 and we have enough for 1 whole class set (to be shared between 4-5 classes). Any advice would be very much appreciated. Tim

This did it! Thanks so much. I'll take some time to explore the windows tools and alternatives to Roaming Profiles that I can implement in future - thanks everybody.

Really appreciate this, thank you so much.

I actually didn't know that, my only network experience is this school's janky setup that I inherited when joining in December. We still had about 20 Windows 7 machines around the school at that point! It's one of those things where what we really need is a full overhaul, but don't have the money. The server itself crashes on a daily basis (on further reading, I believe the roaming profiles may well be a cause of this!). We also have a server running 2008r2 which I'm desperate to get rid of. We also currently manage our user accounts through LGFL. Anyway, slightly back on topic: how do you guys have your user profiles set up? Do you have any recommendations if I were to do a budget friendly overhaul of our current system?

Thanks for your reply. I've had a play with these settings and compared them to other, working profiles and had no joy. I need her to have a roaming profile, though it seems to definitely be a problem with the "Home Folder", as when I remove this, the profile will login, albeit without the users docs & desktop connected.

Thanks. Couple of follow ups: 1. Does this apply to individual users or machines? As other user accounts work fine on every computer, on which I've had problems with the "faulty" user. 2. Could you point me in the right direction for this? Is there a specific GPO to change?

Hi thanks for your helpful reply - I was able to speed up this users login with your help as above (turned out her profile was quite large!) however about a month later, the same user's profile now won't log in at all. I get the "Preparing Windows" loading page followed by "We've logged you in with a temporary profile". Any ideas? I'm a bit stumped!

Depending on budget, I can very highly recommend Toshiba/Dynabook Satellite Pros. They support USB C docking with power delivery and are great bang for buck.

Thanks Griff, agreed this place is my saving grace, so glad I found it! I've got everything pretty much working as planned except for the Voip phones I was trying to fix in the first place! The reason I embarked on this journey of changing subnet mask was so the subnet mask matched on both servers, as the phones taking IP addresses from Server 1 can reach the PBX but those using Server 2 sadly wouldn't. As far as I can tell, they still don't! Any ideas? I'm just restarting/installing updates on Server 1 so I'll give it another quick try after that's done. I think ultimately I'll try to handle DHCP all from one server, as it's not a big enough network to need two DCs - that can be one for the summer though!

Yeah no joy doing it automatically at all, even if I only use sections of the txt file. I've nearly finished configuring manually based on the txt file. There's one configurable option "51 DWORD" that I can't seem to find in scope properties. It's also renamed my scope to 10.176.176.0, where the range is 10.176.178.20-200 - this shouldn't matter right? Might even have been my problem running the txt file in the first place? As the scope in the txt file is definitely called 10.176.178.0. As you can no doubt tell, I'm quite new to networking, so really really appreciate all of your help!

I will see if I can find a way of using powershell with the txt file instead of an xml file. I totally agree, no offence taken! I started in this place a couple of months ago and I've basically been decommissioning old hardware ever since! Doubt this server will run anything newer, but I'm going to totally replace it once I get the budget to properly upgrade our main server (which is running 2016, so 8 years in the right direction, at least) I'll post again if I get stuck. Thanks for your help!

Hi All, I've been following this https://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0001177 to change the subnet mask of our second storage server, running Windows Server 2008 R2. I've successfully exported and edited the txt file, but I'm unable to import it. If I use netsh exec c:/dhcp.txt I get "DHCP Server Add Scope Failed. Parameters passed are either incomplete or invalid." and then multiple lines of "The command needs a valid Scope IP Address" If I use netsh dhcp server import c:/dhcp.txt all I get "The request is not supported". I have the great fortune of being in the build alone so I have until tomorrow to sort this out! Any ideas? If not I'll start rebuilding DHCP from scratch. Cheers, Tim

Hi guys, I'm running Windows Server 2016 and one of my users is experiencing up to half an hour loading times on every computer in the network, including those which she has used before (so with cached settings). I'm pretty new to network admin, so I'm not even sure where to begin with troubleshooting this particular issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Best, Tim

Thanks! So just to clarify, is the fact that my two servers are currently using different subnet masks, likely to be causing the main issue with my VoIP phones?

Should my two servers both have the same subnet mask?

Hi guys, Thanks for your helpful replies - I've revisited this issue in advance of the children and teachers returning next week and have more info. We have two servers here, both running DHCP for different ranges, but over the same network. IP Phones with DHCP from Server1 work, IP Phones with DHCP from Server2 don't. Am I right in thinking that having two Servers running DHCP in one network is a BAD idea? I didn't set it up and this is the first network I've managed, but it doesn't seem right to me. Anyone got any ideas that could help me, both short term and long term? Tim

It's an internal PBX and internal phones, but I believe the network is also hooked up through the firewall. Could very well be wrong! It's a physical PBX rather than a virtual/hosted one (if that's what you were asking?) The firewall is on the same subnet. The addresses for the PBX and firewall are excluded in DHCP, so I'm guessing that means we're possibly not using it for the phones. Sorry I do realise I'm doing a terrible job of describing the issue! T

Hi all, This might be a stupid question, or may be the wrong place to post it - forgive me I'm a newbie to both the site and the role of IT Technician. We recently switched our phone system onto a new, separate internet line, with a new firewall in front of it. Ever since, around half of the network-based phones are unable to find the PBX. I believe I need a way of routing the IP address for the PBX x.x.x.254 via the new firewall x.x.x.1 - we're running DHCP through Microsoft Server 2016 on the school server. Any help would be much appreciated on this! Tim

Hi all, new to this job and this website - this thread is great, I'm just working through 60+ laptops that arrived yesterday! Thanks so much, I may post some questions if I get stuck. T