User3204

I make sure the machines, will boot in under 2minutes, and then I also make sure that all machines will logon within 2 minutes (from user/pass , to desktop). So this is 4 minutes from cold-boot to usable system. That goes for any machine, on either of our networks. With SIMS .net there's not much I can do to speed up, that wouldn't have already been sorted by quickening the boot / logon times. I've never looked at it, but I guess it takes about 20-30 sec, unless there's an update. What happened when we introduced the online registration, the Senior DH made a list (per day) of all the staff that had failed to do their registers, and sent them a note "reminding" them that they had to do it this way....

I'm at home, where I use OpenOffice, so I don't know if it works the same... although it must be possible... Anyway.. in OpenOffice (ver 2. whatever) If you click on the Tools > Sort > options, you can define a "custom sort order". ..Oh, and you'll have to have predefined a list from Tools > Options > OpenOffice Calc > Sort Lists Dunno about the graphs.

This KBOX System Deployment Appliance - OS Deployment Software Alternative, Desktop Management Software Alternative, Systems Deployment Appliances - KACE It does the whole slipstream/creation image process, no clients needed. It is not cheap, but there is a 40% education discount, and they were willing to do a H/P for it. Runs in VM if you want. I don't use it as it cost too much, although I should upgrade from Powerquest DeployCentre. They also do another unit to keep updates up-to-date, all integrated into AppDeploy.com - The Application Deployment Information Center, which they own.

Yes... I had found this the hard way ... after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And then I discovered I couldn't upload the patch to the server... I'm new to VMWare...

I had an Extricom guy come out and show us the system, and it looks far superior to what we have, it's just a pity we already have Cisco across the site. I did speak to another vendor, who suggested that Trapeze, NonStop Wireless | Trapeze Networks do a similar system, but I've not seen this.

There is this: R & R From ITS, it's very new, apparently they only have about 6 people using it at the moment... not sure if this is a good thing or not. They have been doing MyPC computer booking system for a while, and appear to have branched out. They will happily do a demo online or on-site for you.

We use R-Studio Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows to recover data. Their website is a little confusing nowadays, it's the one on the left called "R-STUDIO 4.2" I have yet had it fail to recover anything. Although it is slightly stupid in that it will only work for the user who installed it on the machine.

I use brother for all my black laser printers. We tend to put out the HL5270N for smaller rooms, and the HL7050N for the larger use rooms, according to the toner box for the 7050, it does 12,000 pages, and I guess the drum should do twice that. We get them from Welcome to Think4 IT Solutions (talk to Alison), they're around the £580 mark. For colour I have been converted to Oki, we have a couple of the C9650's...

Well, first off, Windows does do Quota management natively. Right Click on the D: (or whereever), \ Properties \ and then I think it is "Disk Quotas", you may have to enable it first, and you don't have to restrict them to these amounts. If you want something easier to see then Sequoia View from Technische Universiteit Eindhoven: Info will show in pretty colours etc, it also allows you to see the people who have huge files. We use this, and colour code all audio orange, all video blue, all pictures red, etc, and then you can see what to delete.

We have iDesks, from Welcome to i-desk Solutions LTD, The Worlds First Integrated PC Desk installed in a couple of rooms. If this is what you mean. There are other people who have started doing this too. We have had a few issues with them, but no more than with the normal machines. They look really nice, especially the conference table system, where the monitors can be hidden in the middle...

I dunno about the HP stuff, but I received a brochure from one of my suppliers, about a Lenovo (didn't know they made desktops) device that fits behind a TFT monitor and it supports/holds the Lenovo Thnkcentre machine. I checked with the supplier, she reckons it fits to ANY vesa monitor, but I think it will only fit to certain Lenovo units - referred to as the 4.5 Litre models (yeah by volume). Which are the M57 / M57P, apparently.

If you have the users within the same OU, you can select multiple users and change their settings in the normal AD DSA.msc plugin.

Bugger, I have only ever changed scopes from one range to a completely different range (10.10.y.z went to 10.0.y.z etc) and this works, I kinda assumed it would work. But I expect overlapping ranges on the same server ain't something anyone should do. Do you have another server you could setup as a DHCP ? DHCP doesn't take up a lot of processor on the server, try another DC. If not, you will have to delete the original range to create the new one. Sorry. I have two DHCP servers that can give out IP addresses in the same range, it's setup for redundancy, supposedly.

Will they not provide an unfiltered access proxy (or rather a less filtered proxy access) for the staff ? I realise this may not help, but when we found that our LA was stopping our filtering proxy (Inty Exoserver) from working right, we just paid for an extra broadband connection 8mb/832kb from another company, which does for the filtering and allows a few users to get access to some blocked sites.

You can change the details of multiple users in AD, at the same time, if you select them all and then right-click. ...This won't solve your problem of course.. I had found that some machines had issues with loading GPOs if they had the older version of the network driver, it seemed to be reconnecting the card in windows, at the same time windows was trying to load the GPOs. Check to see if you have the most recent versions. Do you get any errors in the client eventlogs ?

Are you sure that that is the right IP range ? The range 10.8.101.0/22 isn't right, I expect the range has changed to 10.8.100.0/22, which will encompass the old range and the new range from 10.8.100.0 to 10.8.103.255. So you can keep using the old range for a while. Unless they've changed Windows you will have to create a new DHCP scope. Basically: 1. change the subnet masks on the servers to handle the new 255.255.252.0; 2. create a new scope in the DHCP server, but leave it disabled. Copy the details from the existing scope; 3. change the existing scope lease time to 4 hours or something short; 4. at the end of one day disable the old scope, and enable the new one; 5. wait for next day, and hopefully noone screams;

I thought Uniservity had sorted out the integration with Windows AD ? There is an AD provisioning tool from Capita, that gets half the distance. It was one of the things that is supposed to have sold it to our LA... hah! We don't use SCORM on ours.

We have had the Uniservity VLE for a few years now, and it's really only been used as a general website, just advertising the school is what it is used for... Nobody was really interested in supporting it, or promoting the use of it within the school, so it is dying gradually. We don't put new users onto the system, until they complain. So anyone (staff or student) who joined the school since about August 2006 doesn't exist, and no-one has complained, yet. It's a waste of money, but soon it will be a waste of the LEA money, not our schools, I hope they got a good deal.

Google is your friend.. the phrase you wanted to look for was "seize FSMO roles". Using Ntdsutil.exe to transfer or seize FSMO roles to a domain controller Scroll down to "Seize FSMO roles" This works, I have had to do this more times than I should have.

A "simple" way to preview all print jobs is to install a PDF creator on each client, as the only printer, make them put the files into one shared folder, and then to print you have to open the PDFs, and then you can click print (or not) from within the PDF reader. We use PrimoPDF to make PDF docs, but it's not ideal, as the default folder is c:\program files\primopdf... I saw this link before http://maximillianx.blogspot.com/2008/02/network-admin-tip-create-shared-pdf.html somewhere on this site...

That is a useful thing to check.... cheers.. dunno how I missed that when I was looking before. I am currently emplyed as "Technician", but doing the job of "Network Manager". What the Bursar has said is that they've asked me, as whilst the existing ICT controllers, have ideas of who should be doing what, they're both actually leaving their jobs. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure of what they were actually asking me for, so I drew up plans for responsibilities, SLAs and new job descriptions, for the people that are staying, with lots of blurb from the FITS. We also needed a proces for change (urgh, that sounds like a government programme for), from the existing people to the new people... They also seem to think they can go from 5 people to 3 people, without any loss of service... riiigghht.. (okay so 2 of them are part-timers). Does anyone have user groups ? Where you meet up with the staff / students to discuss changes, etc ? This is something that the Bursar is pushing for, the idea being because none of the techs who are staying are teachers, we won't have as much of a handle on techery type stuff.. like SIMS.. this may have been my fault, as I was trying to get out of supporting SIMS.

Hmm... I'm not sure quite where this should go... but this seems as good as anywhere. The ICT management in our school are due to leave, within the next year or so. The bursar has asked me to draw up a proposal to give to the SLT/SMT to assign the new roles and responsibilites for this "new" dept structure. I'm currently the senior ICT tech, if I do this right I will become the ICT Manager (or whatever name I specify). My impression is that they have asked me to produce this report/proposal because they have very little idea, of what we do all day... When they first asked me to do this, I thought, yay! write my own job description, and then I though, boo! write my own job description. I've been flicking through the FITS stuff, but I get the feeling, I need to properly sit down and read the whole damn lot. So, what I am asking is, what the hell do I need to put in, and leave out ? I have some ideas, but I don't want to miss out anything important. It would be useful to know how other people organise themselves, whether officially or unofficially, and what the good/bad points are.. (Typical I get this, just at the same point I have a large OU essay to handin) Cheers...

Sorry I hadn't checked the link, but I have now had a quick lookie through it, and I think you will have to create a whole new Vista MAN file. I can't tell how the OSs will decide which file to use though.... With XP it was just drop into the netlogon share... but this won't work if there is one there for the XP MAN file. It'll stilll be a pain, as you'll have to maintain two MAN files.... (I dumped Win 95).

I have a couple of 500gb Freecom USB disks to use as backups. They actually have network connectors on them, but I find it is slow to backup this way. They cost about £100 each, this is what we use as off-line/off-site backup. We also have as an online backup two servers (one on each network), that copies across a full backup every friday, and an incremental every day. This is just a linux server with a RAID5 disk array, I think we have 1tb on it (in total). The backup is run using a script, on the linux server. HOw cheap to build a server with some large disks in it ?

We've made sure that things are all available. New rooms have images, old rooms have been re-imaged. Laptops, for new staff, are ready, laptops for replacing existing staff, aren't. I have imported no users into the email / web / support databases, but they are all on the logon domains. The network is running on nice new HP gigabit switches, there are nice shiny new fibre converters. I have done none of the configuration on these new devices, so no QOS / routing / filtering. There's still builders in "finishing off", so I haven't managed to get my network cablers in, so they're still working, and may still be in next week.