Andie

Thanks for variuos suggestions, folks. The UPS is only 18 months old. I did wonder if the fortnightly self test could have sparked the failure, but have now found the entry in the Event log on the server that says the self test ran fine the day before. The only reason I want to try and get into the PowerChute software is to try and find out what the problem was on the Wednesday. The UPS is connected to the server by USB cable. If there is another way I can look at the UPS in Windows or with free software, can someone give me some instructions? Thanks for the suggestion about installing the software onto a workstation. Am I going to cause any further damage by unplugging the USB connection from the server to put it into the workstation? Would I have to shutdown the server first? Or use the disconnect hardware icon in the System Tray? Or can I just do it?

It's an APC Smart-UPS 1500. I have tried suggested combinations of username and password, and they don't work.

Help! We had a weird UPS failure last week, which sent the server and the UPS down, and the external backup tape drive. I got the UPS going again and rebooted the server, and the lights on the backup drive are fine. I can manually eject and insert tapes, but Backup Exec was reporting the device as Offline. I can check the box in Backup Exec to make the device Online, but that doesn't seem to do a lot. When I try and run any job, the job fails and it reports that it can't find any physical volume library. I have tried stopping and restarting the Backup Exec services, as suggested in the Help for Backup Exec. Backup Exec reports the starting and stopping. I have also turned the device itself off and on again. But still no success when I try to run a job. Am I doing things in the wrong order???

Thanks. At least I know not to bother with that when we put the laptops on the network!!

We had a weird Wednesday this week, when suddenly the network went down and we discovered that both the UPS and the server (because of the UPS) were switched off (ie. no lights, although the plug was still switched on). However, after a lot of crawling around on the floor and checking connections and fuses, all powered up again fine and was no problem at all yesterday. The switch off happened within a clearly defined 20 minute period, as we were happily using the nework beforehand. We don't have a server room, and there were pupils (junior size) in the room at the time. It is vaguely possible that one may have switched off the UPS at the plug and then switched the plug back on. But surely the UPS would have gone into battery backup first, as with a power cut? The event log on the server recorded an unexpected shutdown. The other possibility (from another posting on here) is that we had portable electrical testing about two weeks ago and maybe the plug wasn't replaced properly, but we haven't heard any clicking. If anyone has any ideas on this...??? Otherwise we shall have to wait and see if it happens again... In the meantime, I have another problem. I tried to open the APC PowerChute software to see if that could shed any light on what happened, and it asked me for a username and password. The software was set up by our supplier when the server was set up, and they are no longer around. I have tried various possibilities but have so far been unsuccessful. Is there a way to reset the username and password without logging on properly first (seems unlikely, but worth a stab!!)? Or any other fix for this? I am reluctant to uninstall and reinstall the software as I don't know how it was configured in the first place.

There is a SMARTtech knowledge base article that tells you how to redirect your SMARTboard software to a shared Gallery on your network. I haven't tried it as our SMARTboard laptops are not on the network at the moment, but it would be worth a try rather than editing the registry. The link is below: http://www2.smarttech.com/kbdoc/96765

The desktop icons aren't being controlled by LNM. As far as I know (we use it too), LNM can't do that kind of thing. As Ric said, it is likely to be an issue with mandatory profile and using a share for desktop and start menu shortcuts. See if there is a folder called User Common Folders; you may have your server drive partitioned and the D: drive will have this sort of share on. Or do a search on the server for a folder called Start Menus. You will probably find there is one for pupils (may be called Students) and one for teachers, at least.

The desktop icons aren't being controlled by LNM. As far as I know (we use it too), LNM can't do that kind of thing. As Ric said, it is likely to be an issue with mandatory profile and using a share for desktop and start menu shortcuts. See if there is a folder called User Common Folders; you may have your server drive partitioned and the D: drive will have this sort of share on. Or do a search on the server for a folder called Start Menus. You will probably find there is one for pupils (may be called Students) and one for teachers, at least.

I think the BECTA Primary FITS Toolkit has something available for keeping records of software and licences, but haven't got as far as implementing that bit yet. Presume the secondary FITS toolkit has similar. The link for the primary toolkit is: http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=re&catcode=ss_res_tec_pfits_03 Going on my experience of other bits of the toolkit, you will need to tweak the templates to suit your own purposes, but it would be a starting point.

Must be school holidays...!! I agree with those who are puzzled over the horns. I have to admit I feel a bit uncomfortable having the site up on a computer at the church school I work at! The logo does have the look of a comic book title, but I like it more than the current one. Perhaps if we all had Edugeek t-shirts, leggings, and capes we could be IT superheroes....!

Just thought I would post a bouquet to a company, Utilize plc, that have repaired our laser printers very promptly and without hassle. We first used them in 2004 - we had a problem with the jetdirect card in an HP laser printer. Viglen didn't want to know, as the printer was out of warranty. I trawled the Internet looking for possible repair companies. This company do a fixed rate labour charge. I got next day response, even though we didn't have a support contract. The jetdirect card needed replacing. The second visit to install the card was free, and the very polite engineer (apologised to class teacher for disturbing the class) also rang someone back at his base who talked him through re-configuring the card. Forward to this week when another HP laser printer stopped fusing toner to the paper, and developed noisy feed. One call to the same company, they had kept our records from three years ago, I explained problem, engineer came out next day and replaced part after first going back to the office to check that the price for the part was acceptable, and threw in a service as well. I know all this is quite basic customer service, but my experience of companies and engineers in general has not been good on the whole. To have someone come in, do the job, be polite and helpful, without any hassle is a real breath of fresh air. Two visits in three years isn't a lot to go on maybe, but the fact that I remembered how good they were first time around must count for something. If I'm allowed to add it, their website is: http://www.utilize.co.uk/printerSupport/overview.html

Thank you!

Anybody? I know it is summer hols, but it's good to keep the brain ticking over.....

Wonderful stuff!! The librarian in me thinks this is a great use for technology! It works nicely at home on my Vista pc, but I have yet to test it at school. Very useful resource too. For example, one of our years does illumiated letters for their art lessons. The Lindisfarne gospels will be great.

Maybe the link below will help. If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see that you need to delegate control of userAccountControl to be able to enable/disable accounts. Scroll back up and read from the start for how this was done. http://www.wisesoft.co.uk/Products/PasswordControl/Help/Security.aspx

Just found some possibly relevant stuff in Group Policy on Server 2003, so thought I would add here. I am new to Group Policy settings, so this comes with a warning to test first as some of what I found I haven't tried! Also, sorry if you all know this already!! Firstly, there is a setting to prevent users changing wallpaper using Display Properties in: User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Control Panel>Display>Prevent Changing Wallpaper As far as I can tell, it doesn't stop someone right clicking an image file and choosing Set as Background, though, which is the way most students would change wallpaper. As I said earlier, we use a mandatory profile with a desktop wallpaper set, so any changes made to wallpaper by a pupil or teacher are lost as soon as they logoff. Secondly, there is an Active Desktop setting that appears to allow you to set a wallpaper for a whole group by editing in the name of an image file. You have to have Active Desktop enabled in Group Policy for this to work, I think, and I'm not sure what knock-on effects this would have on other desktop settings so haven't tried it. Also, you would presumably need to store the image file somewhere shared with adequate permissions. I suppose someone could design their own school logo based wallpaper, and put on something to distinguish between user groups to show who was logged on... And if you wanted to have a few different wallpapers to alternate between, then this would make changing them easier. Anyway I thought someone may find this info useful, so it is at: User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Desktop>Active Desktop>Active Desktop Wallpaper (and the setting to enable Active Desktop is in the same section).

Blank screen fault happened again yesterday. Pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del, and nothing, including no light to indicate hard drive activity. Forced shut down, restarted and got a "new" error: "A disk read error has occurred. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart". This is before the Windows screen, at the end of POST. Now, I had this error on another machine from the same batch which has been back twice to the company covering our warranty, and which is still playing up. I looked the error up on the Western Digital website, and it clearly states this is not usually a hard drive fault. There were various solutions, none of which I felt capable of trying (I'll look it up again and post here later). To be sure, I downloaded the hard drive test boot disk and ran it - no errors. Anyway, I re-imaged and ran the virus scan on the hard drive, and nothing was detected. The company we bought the computers from went into liquidation in December. But I will try and get some info from the motherboard website - although I have never flashed BIOS before!!! Can't remember the file it hung on - but I can go though the same process again if it happens before term end (unless I get so fed up that I send them off to our warranty cover company for their holidays! But as they think these are software problems they charge us, so I will have to be very fed up!). I have 31 of these computers. Maybe I should try and boot one of the healthy ones into Safe Mode and see what happens???

I've re-imaged it again, so have to wait for the problem to appear again to try Ctrl-Alt-Del. Think I may have tried this on previous occasions, though, to see if I could force a restart in the old DOS way. If so, nothing appeared on screen. Will update when problem starts again. If it was a BIOS bug, would re-imaging fix the problem temporarily, as it is doing???? I did download the Ulimate Boot CD, and that has some BIOS related progs on, but not sure how to use them and don't want to make things worse!!!!

The problem with the blank screen recurred yesterday. I forced shut down with the power button, restarted and pressed F8. From the list of options, I chose Safe Mode. A whole list of files (drivers?) scrolled down the screen and then stopped, and the machine failed to boot into Safe Mode. I forced shutdown again, restarted, F8, and then chose Enter VGA mode (or similar). Machine started with Windows screen and then rebooted in cycle until I stopped it. I then tried restart, F8, Last Known Good Configuration, and got the same blank screen after Windows screen. So I re-imaged again, and it looks OK so far. But I would prefer not to have to keep doing this every 10 or so days!!!!! Any ideas??

Ok, I see where you are coming from with the resolution thing. You think a child is changing it during boot up. Possible....but we are a junior school not a secondary (perhaps I am too naive..). However, we do have a graphics driver that allows us to Ctrl-Alt-arrow key the display around so maybe their poor keyboard skills are to blame. The display is already set to 1024 x 768, highest, 60 hertz, by the way. We only got the monitors and computers in July last year. They have a built in resolution notifier that detects and sets optimum resolution, and that only pops back up on screen if resolution is reset. At the moment, I am in a between times with this fault, as re-imaging fixes it for a few days. When it re-occurs, I shall try Safe Mode!!

As in monitor cables? I did some swapping of computers/monitors when it first appeared; but this is one of those jobs I end up rushing in-between classes coming in, so may need to repeat this with some consistency (and write it all down!!!). All the cables have been tidied into bundles with cable ties, which means I have to find something to cut the cable ties with first. I will aim swap the monitor cables on one of the faulty machines over permanently this afternoon to see if it makes any difference. A faulty cat 5 from wall socket to computer wouldn't create the blank screen problem, would it???

Success! It is still slow, and the fact that there is no message to say "Loading...Please wait" or something, and the egg timer goes off and on, means that click-happy users are going to load and reload the thing. That is, if anyone gets the time to use it.... But I've done it, and can tick it off!

Thanks. I'll have a look at this, but can't understand why it has only started to happen in the last few months, and then only to two machines out of 31, all with identical images.

It isn't the Default Domain Policy, it's the Domain Policy. It is linked at the top of the tree, to domainname.internal, so I assume that means it applies to the whole domain. Further down, we have user groups (teachers and students) with other GPOs linked to them. Could I take off this particular setting in the Domain Policy, create a separate policy with this setting only and then link it into teachers and students? Or edit the setting into the Teacher and Student policies? Or would that be a stupid thing to do? Is that what @disease is suggesting?

Windows update isn't set to automatically install anything, and I haven't updated any graphic drivers recently. The machines were installed in July 2006. Thanks for the link.