User3204

to increase icon size 1. click on the desktop 2. press shift 3. use mouse scroll wheel up and down to get the right size. dunno about the fonts

I use Group Policy for this too, what we have is each room split into an OU, and then in the GPO that applies to all the users, open up User config > Preferences > control panel > printers firstly create one that drops all the printers, it only does network ones, so don't worry, then create the printer, mapped, select whether it is default or not, and then in the "common" tab click "targetting" and change the filtering to apply to the OU where the computer is located. do all of them this way, all the mappings in one OU, that applies to all users, but maps the drive based upon where the computer is in the AD. You may need to add the drivers for some incalcitrant printers to the desktop machines, we add all the printer drivers to all the images we have, we do this the easy way, open \\printserver\ select all the printers and click enter, it will connect to the lot and load any drivers needed, as we used to have issues with students not having the rights to install drivers.

This drove me nuts last summer, when we tried to upgrade to Win 7 So I cheated somewhat. In the GPO assigned to the computer I created a reg key in GP Preferences: "Common Desktop" in "HKLM\Software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\explorer\user shell folders" to \\server\share\desktop "Common Start Menu" in "HKLM\Software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\explorer\user shell folders" to \\server\share\startmenu Then I also did in the GPO for the use: "Desktop" in "HKCU\Software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\explorer\user shell folders" to "p:\profile\desktop" "Start Menu" in "HKCU\Software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\explorer\user shell folders" to "p:\profile\startmenu" What I didn't do was redirect the "Startup" at any point though, so this still runs from the local machine, so we can load stuff up if necessary. This gives them the "public" desktop and start menu, which is the shared one I control. They also get their own desktop, and get to dump stuff in it the usual way they do at home.

I used this Administratively Create and Modify Windows 7 Libraries - The Grim Admin to edit the libraries. Although I have stopped using them, as I found it was just a lot easier to create one pointed towards "p:\docs", and then copy this over the top of the ones in %userprofile%\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\libraries\ There isn't a folder in the "default" user account, so I didn't trust it to copy over right.

We run ours within the VM ESX vsphere cluster, it's been given 4 processors, and 8gb ram. We have about the same number of staff, and 1500 students. It runs okay, I've never seen SIMS run fast though. I'm not sure what the underlying server specs are for the hosts, OTOH, they're three years old though. The disks it uses are a SAS based SAN, with 12 disks in RAID6+1 arrangement, no special access to this for SIMS. I think I did give the SIMS server more "shares" but this was before the upgrade from ESX 3, done by an external engineer, so I don't know if this was transferred across.

Well, I thought we'd managed to avoid Vista, but it's either Vista or XP. We have a couple of Mustek A3 scanners, that DT want to use, unfortunately there is no Windows 7 drivers, and the Vista ones don't work on Windows 7. I either use these two scanners, or buy a new one at £500 ! ha ! no chance. So anyway, plugged in, I loaded Vista into my WDS server, and deployed it onto a machine, but it fails to load the computer side GPOs. The user ones are fine. Does anyone have any suggestions ? I can't see any errors in the eventvwr, it's in the right OU (the same as the Windows 7 machines that work), all the devices in devmgmt seem happy. We skipped from XP to 7, so I have no idea what I'm doing with it. I've tried reboot, reboot, reboot, gpupdate, reboot - which always used to make XP work.

The 28 students are the ones that we have issued with a laptop for the duration of their studies. It belongs to us, but as I understand the rules (errr) because we want to allow them to purchase it at the end of the course without having to remove all the software. It was not a typo it really is 28 not 280, or 2800 students. They're "special", although I think one or two have left since August.. meh! As I understood the TS\RDS licenses, because you're only running the software within you servers on site (even though they can access it remotely) you don't have to count the students. Check with your retailers... or ask the new Microsoft man, who's name I can't remember.

And now I have found the proper quote, it was just a touch over £7k I had 163 Staff Enterprise at £32 each, and 28 students at £16. I also had a bunch of other stuff, the more I added the cheaper the per person prices went. You still have to count your Windows servers, SQL, blah, DPM servers, sharepoint, blah, as separate items.

Check your staff numbers, it's only counts people who use the computer as part of their job. So probably not the cleaners... For the 160 staff plus 30 student issued computers... we paid about £7500 OTOH. We don't currently have any use for TS, so this may be extra, or may be included. Last year for 650 computers we paid nearly £20k.

I've set them to be blank, there's a setting in GPO to do this, I think... Also using the "apply the default picture...". Then we change the default background to be one we've made specially, although we've had to make individual ones for each screen resolution.

I've been using them for a couple of years now. They've been consistantly cheaper for MS and Mcafee licenses than anyone else. Their Microsoft prices was the only one under £20k (this was the pre-EES costs, for about 650 machines), they're still a bit cheaper on the EES, but this is in the region of £7.5k rather than £8k-9k from the othe quotes I had. Dunno about their hardware prices.

My boss / the bursar, has been getting at me (admittedly due to my errors), because we've had some unscheduled downtime (IE the network/servers broke), one due to my buggering around with switches, and one due to config being set wrong on the VM cluster (two years ago). But she sees them as the same problems: 1. my lack of planning (okay fair due). 2. my lack of any tessting network. 3. the fact that I'm the only one who knows how some stuff works, so the other techs can't fix what I've broken. So, a multipart question for you: How do you test network changes ? As I haven't found a good way of testing for 60 odd (or normal) students logging into computers over a 2 minute period.... How do you go about making sure the rest of the techs / engineers, know how stuff works ? I know documentation helps, but it's the troubleshooting aspect of it that is slowing stuff down. I've started writing a list of "If X, then try Y, else do Z". But these are supposedly intelligent people, they KNOW this stuff, it's the complicated stuff that stops them/me (nobody likes restarting the Server cluster, as it takes abotu 2 hours to come back up, but this fixes ALL problems). Actually, if I'm not careful this'll turn into a bit of a rant, as one of the tech has just left and there's no plan to replace, so it's up to me to arrange some process for overcoming the understaffing problems that will ensue (and the fact we no longer have all the expertise we need). Moan, moan, moan.

I have a bunch of Allied Telesyn ones.. they're good and reliable. I just don't need them anymore since I upgraded to GBIC / SFP Gigabit links. I think I have about 30 of them, mostly 100mbit.

My router/gateway can't see the internet. So when people try to get around our filtering proxy, they actually get no internet. In terms of Software Restriction policies, you need to know where ALL the software you have runs from, BEFORE you implement it. I do mine with a completely separate GPO, for in case I need to disable it. I have it set to block everything, except all the allowed areas: c:\program files\*\* c:\windows\ g:\ [where I store some network applications] \\domain\netlogon [where the logon.cmd is located] There's others, but not that I can think of off the top of my head.

I use RAID6 +1 Hot spare. RAID6 is just RAID5 with an extra parity check. It means the Array I have is 12 disks pretending to be 9 disks. I suspect RAID5 +1 would have been fine.

Is the server fully patched and up to date ?

Get hold of sequioa view or the other one like it... If you run this against the drive where the files are, it will graphically show where all the files are, and their size.

hmm s'funny, times are hard and money needs to be saved, so I'm thinking of moving from PC desktops to Citrix Xen...

Talk to someone at Core ECS CORE Education and Consulting Solutions (UK) Ltd - CORE ECS they do a whole sharepoint integration system, with plugins for email, moodle if you want it, SIMS LG, and their own Sharepointy VLE, which seems quite good. We're looking at this at the moment, I think it may come down to the budget we get this year. It's not cheap... They offer ongoing support.

A few years back some of our users were made into "Brothers"! I'm guessing a monk, rather than anything else, oh, and they were all female.

We have a copy of Disk Recovery Software and Hard Drive Recovery tool for Windows which has saved us quite a few times. The licensing was a bit wierd when we bought it, per technician... huh ? It will recover files when you can't access the partition, and will recover files from previously deleted partitions too. You need to install it onto another machine, and connect the disks through USB or similar. Oh, and while I think about it, if you have Vista/7 you can sometimes fix disk faults on the boot drive, by connecting them to another machine and running chkdsk against them.

Aye. We ended up going with them in the end, as the whole deal including the phone system cost less than the others. And the switches are all fine. I've even gotten used to the different CLI config on the switches, to the extent I now get confused when I have to use the two non-enterasys switches (an 8 port Netgear, and a 24 port HP for the iSCSI).

I've been looking at LACP between an HP and an Enterasys switch, I found that both ends are in what they call "LACP Passive", so if you plug in something that is LACP on the other end the switch will work it out. So what you need to do is set one end up to be LACP active... first, and then the other end goes with the flow. So for the HP I have (an 2810), I will type: "int e 21,23 lacp active" and then save the config.... plug in the other ends and see if it all crashes... I'm doing this as part of a cabinet re-patch this week, so I should get back to you with yay or nay.

AVG are doing a business package that will cost me the same for 3 years as I pay to Mcafee for 1 year. They're doing a bunch of deals to get there, the important one being 3 years for the price of 2. Currently I pay Mcafee about £2800 for upto 1000 "nodes" per year AVG will charge about £1400 for 700 computers (I have about 670, but they sell then in blocks of 25). They will also: 1. send a man in to install 2. buy you out of the remainder of your existing contract...

Do you have to pay your RBC for connectivity this year? Yes, and we have always had to, as it was matched to the HT money which was passed to us... What RBC are you with? Oh, wait, dunno, through Wirral, not sure if they link to the North West RBC thing, never seen any evidence of this. How much are they asking? Last year was £7131 for 10mb, but due to budget slashings they dropped this to £6500. They are upgrading to 100mb for an extra £2400 (ish, I don't have the figures on me). What speed will you get for that? See above. But they only guarantee the link to their Core, NOT the internet. Are you considering leaving or staying with your RBC in the future because of its pricing? I looked about, but no-one comes close to these prices, as the LA are paying for all the install costs. The only way to do it is via an EFM over copper for about £3k, but this gives a best level of 10mb, I understand it would give the same speed as ADSL which gives us about 6mb. Have you already left your RBC and for what reasons? The LA have promised better service levels....