User3204

We run a weekly backup every monday that backs up certain stuff, and then another weekly backup every tuesday, wednesday, thurs, fri... It's a pain to set it up, but then you can just set them to overwrite. Actually, thinking about it, I think we run it as a two week timetable, with the Fridays being backed up once a month (but 4 of them each month). As long as you call the files something obvious, like "Week1_Fri" or "monday", it becomes more obvious which file is which. I think we run ours across the network to a server in another building... but the backups are no longer completely my responsibility. I just take care of the Termly/Yearly ones, which I do onto a couple of 500gb Freecom disks, which I then take home... it's an off-site backup system.

@webman This is the reason that I like the Reg Seeker over the other ones. It gives a list of all the stuff it "suspects" of being dodgy, and then gives you a choice of leaving it all, wiping some, or wiping the lot out. I have installed windows and then run registry cleaners immediately and they've found "suspicious" stuff ! A lot of what they find overlaps with Ad Aware and SpyBot, and I bet you run these things.... I do use Drive Image myself at home, as it cuts out a lot of the stuff.. When I was running Windows 98 I gained speed from recovering the image every 3-4 months... fortunately with XP this has gotten to be a longer time...

Just make sure before doing any reg cleaning on any server, that you have a system state backup. I find the best one is RegSeeker: http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm But it is only intended for personal use, unless you can arrange a license with them. The only problem I have had with it is that it removed all the registry settings that MySQL needed, but that was on the old version, to get it back it creates a backup .REG file that you can re-import.

The parts all seem to be standard items, we have Shuttle machines, and for the ones that are outside their warranty, and the PSUs for these aren't this cheap, but similar in size. The HP server extended warranties are £230 (ish). I'd be inclined to take the £50, and get the "free" PSU under warrantee... We have had an I-Desk PSU replaced, under the warrantee, and the new one didn't fit as well as the old one. I'll have to remember this in two years time.

Have you tried contacting I-Desk ? Our machines all have full 3 year warranties... but this may not be standard. The PSUs look like a standard type, if you get in touch with whomever you get your servers from, they might be able to source the right type... if you tell them it is for a rack server. It isn't going to be cheap.

If you look through any Microsoft software, there is usually a setup.exe (to run), but the installer will just then run the MSI. Alternatiely it is possible, to wrap an .EXE around an .MSI, as this is what Sun do to their Java clients, to deploy the java updates, the instructions given are run the setup EXE file and the MSI and associated files are then dumped in the Temp folder - which I then deploy using the AD Group Policies. If you were to do something similar, then people with the know-how could do this, but no-one else would ever know. I too find life easier deploying installations..... I have deployed 15 different apps onto a new image this PM, whilst I wasn't even in the same room, I'd hate to have to upgrade Encarta/Office any other way.

@psydii: You're a genius.. this sounds right. The only difference I'd want is to 2.iii: I'd want the clients to report back to the (local sims) server, that the update has downloaded successfully (or not). Then you could manaully (or automatically) decide that after so many machines had the update, to push it out, or wait until certain machines had it. I'd also like to stop the installer apparently installing the manuals... as nobody here ever reads them... I don't even know where they are stored locally. We run 100 odd laptops wirelessly, and the updates are irritatingly slow sometimes... possibly because the staff all need to run sims at the same time.

We have been moving to Shuttle machines, which means the box has to go beside it, or as we have in come rooms in a "caddy" hanging underneath the desk. I am getting some new NEC machines, that are slim uprights, so because of the limited space available in the room, I will try to have the box behind the monitor. This shouldn't be hard, they have really deep desks and the monitors are all 19"...

I start all new students off with 150mb, and a lot of them don't use it up. When the users start to fill up their quota I will look at their user folder, and if it looks like mostly work related, I will up it by about 100mb... I keep doing this every so often. There are very few people ove 450mb. There are NO students with over 1gb, although there are few staff that have 2gb/5gb and are using large proportion of it - it's mostly the art teachers. The disk partition is 650gb, but I'm only using about 200gb of it, all in user data, for 1500 students (and 100 teachers). On the staff network, we have a 60gb disk, which is running at about 57gb. I am attempting to convince Management that we need a SAN for these servers, starting at about 1tb.

We have a webmail server located onsite, the software is MDaemon from http://www.altn.com (well their UK distributer). It _can_ integrate usernames and sync passwords with Windows AD (it doesn't because the two domains we have confuses it). All staff an email that matches their staff network username (plus the more obvious aliases), and the students have an email that matches their student network username. We try to make all staff use the webmail function, but a lot insist on using outlook.. dunno why..and the "feature" costs extra. ..This reminds me, I should import the new year 7 onto it, or sort out the sync'ing..

Not sure if MS have done anything special, but, something that you can try, although I never have needed to: 1. install tweakui (or similar), tell it to auto-logon a pre-selected user; 2. find this change in the registry, and export this into a .reg file; 3. use reg2adm (or similar) to make this into an .ADM file; 4. apply this .ADM file to a Group Policy for this room only; 5. reboot (twice); This would also show you which machines aren't processing the AD GPOs properly.

1) We have AM registration seperate from assembly (which is mid-morning), I don't _think_ they do any registration in the actual assembly period. 2) Similar to _Ric, each teacher does the registration for the (double) lessons in the changing room. 3) Dunno, I don't see any teachers doing electronic registers during fire alarms. I suspect it's a paper list.... hmm.. 4) We started it new in September (2005). Things did not go well... we'd rushed in a wireless network, that was (and still is) flakey in some areas. Whole school, everywhere... urgh. The trouble with doing part of the school, would mean that teachers would "forget", they still forget with us, but the DHs get onto them. If you can, roll it out with the computer literate ones first, as they will pick up on the problems and do something about it, whereas the others will just not bother. We now do all lessons, AM and PM registration, there are only a few wireless blindspots left, and only teachers in these areas can get away with not doing them. We have found that the teachers are using their laptops more than they used to, which is mostly good, although it has shortened the lifespan (of the laptops), and increased our storage needs.

The Head of ICT wants to use it for year 9 assessment or something, so we're still doing it. Despite its general flakiness. :markcuk We have it running on Win XP, you should be able to install .net 1.1, 2, and 3 all on the same machine without them "interferring" with eachother.

I've seen errors like that with FMS. I've not been able to install FMS properly for ages, Capita weren't much use when the problem first cropped up. Now, when I need to install again, I run the latest FMS install (6.77 I think), for registry changes shortcuts etc, and then copy a working version from another machine over the top of it. Reboot, and Bob's a monkey!

I used to have keys to the external doors, but they changed them as some of the staff lost them. I still have keys to most of the internal doors, but most importantly I have a key to the cleaners key cabinet! But the school is open 7am to 4pm everyday in the holidays (bank holidays excepted). This is a secondary school, so we have too much scheduled, this week we'd had a guy in repainting ALL the doors, the cleaners are in at their usual times so they can varnish ALL the floors.. If your caretaker lives locally, ask if he will lock you INTO the building, as long as you have access to: phone, toilet, food, his/her mobile number, it shouldn't be a problem.

We have multiple RADIUS authentication rules. One which allows a list of Laptop computers; One which allows a list of Users; If you copy the rule that you use for the computer authentication, but apply it to a group into which you just put the "extra" users (which would have to be created in your AD). You would also have to change some of the logon/authentication on the laptop, there's a tick box that is something like "user logged on username" and "authenticate as computer" which will have to be changed. Then when the laptop/user attempt to connect they get a message about more credentials needed, and they have to type in username / password / domain. -- This is from memory, but I can the details check on friday.

ahem... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a91d2e7-7594-4abb-8239-7a7eca6a6cb1&DisplayLang=en .. but on the whole, yours has more features..

I had a look at the MyPC system a while back, but got frightened off when they quoted massive prices for the PrinterON system (print management s/w) we were alos looking at. The advantage of the MyPC system, was it only allowed the user that had booked the machine(s) to log on. Does anyone elses software do this ?

Can you post the output from "route print" ? I've found that I sometimes have to include the metric, although probably when I specified it when adding it. PS: The only metric of "1" I have is on the 127.0.0.0 and 255.255.255.255

Yeah, we'll be running it, According to the Head of IT, it will provide an introduction to "alternative GUIs". It's certainly easier than installing Linux as a dual boot on some machine.