Andie

It's great to be able to read a serious thread and get some serious light relief at the same time It certainly is. Jake (and everyone else out there who provide serious light relief), please don't go! Your light relief helps to keep things in perspective. Besides, I'm sure you all do your bit and help us lesser techies out with our problems. This forum just wouldn't be the same without you.

We have a very similar setup as you, including redirected Favourites, but only one DC and we are running Learning network Manager. I changed our proxy settings by GPO and forced update a few weeks ago. It all appears to have worked, but our Internet servcie is so poor at the moment (one of the reasons we were trying another proxy) that staff may not be able to tell the difference. If I get time, I'll randomly check out a few workstations around the school to see if my proxy change really has worked. Also, (I'm only in work this afternoon) I'll look at where in the GPO heirarchy we have applied the proxy settings.

Thanks, Jack. It did indeed work. And saved a lot of time.

Tried the MS website and a search on here, but it could take me all night - so: Can you use the %USERNAME% variable in the Connect to box on the Profile tab of user properties in AD (Server 2k3)? I have just imported my first batch of users who all have home folders connected to S: drive, and I could do without editing each one individually!

And, boy, is that going to be a BIG issue!!! :twisted: But thanks for raising the question. I shall try and look at this stuff myself. It might help plug a few gaps. And good luck with the issue!

Ok, thanks to all those who have reponded so far. Perhaps I should have said that I have sysprepped machines a lot already using inf files created by the ICT providers, first under the Viglen 2000 setup and then dealing with the XP machines on the Win2k3 vanilla setup. My problem is how to deal with the Win2k machines on the Win2k3 server. And no longer having an ICT provider to sort this out for me... And... I have been digging around a bit, using this information as a starter. I managed to locate setupmgr in the SYSPREP folder on a share on the server. (This is the folder I have to copy across to the root of the client before running SYSPREP). From the Microsoft website, I established that there is more info on the Sysprep/Setupmgr process in a file called deploy.chm which would normally be on the Server 2003 CD, but has been helpfully installed into the SYSPREP folder on the share. To run deploy.chm, I have to copy it to my client and then double click it. And, lo and behold, under "Using Sysprep" it states: "You can use this version of Sysprep only on Windows XP installations. You cannot use this version of Sysprep on a Windows 2000 installation." So I think I am probably going ahead with advice from altecsole (thanks!) and using the old Syprep version that came with Windows 2000. And I will have another look at editing the Sysprep.inf file myself, using Notepad. It is mainly the issue of the section beginning: ;The following key is only supported by Sysprep v1.1. ;This section allows a SYSPREP image to install on a machine ;with any of the drive controller types matching the ;plug and play IDs of the lines below. ; ;Format of this section is: ; = ; ;Any lines ending in MSHDC.INF are for IDE drive support. ;Any lines ending in SCSI.INF are for SCSI drive support. that is still bothering me. I don't want to uninstall drivers by mistake. Thanks again for your help. Further comments very welcome.

Attached is a primary list, mostly KS2. Bit late for SATs revision this year, I'm afraid. Probably no surprises in here, but will do for starters. NB. The BBC Skillwise websites should be used under supervision. They are primarily designed for adults seeking to improve basic skills. Therefore, some of the content of the games may be considered unsuitable for young children. primary_website_list.pdf

We moved from Viglen Classlink 2000 last summer, though on a much smaller scale (one 2k3 server). We got advice from a local secondary school network manager on our server spec, and sent out quite detailed info on what we currently had and what we wanted to at least 6 companies, some big, some small. It was interesting to receive a wide variety of responses back - some had obviously given us their off-the-shelf one-size-fits-all response. Some had redefined our server spec. Ergo was one of these; although we were open to listening to them as to why their server spec was better than ours, this one didn't make sense to us and they seemed to have underestimated the number of clients we would be running despite the details we had given them. On the other hand, unlike Grumbledook, we have had good experiences with laptops from Ergo, and a good account manager for that to date. No experience of Ramyses, I'm afraid.

Ok, further query. What would be the impact on the machine/network if I make a mess of taking this one image from a Win2k machine? Previously, if my memory serves me right, when I have sysprepped these under the Viglen Win2k server setup, the workstation that I sysprep and take the image from then has to have the image restored to it before it will work. So am I potentially going to break a machine? or worse???

Will this work with Win2k machines? Which version of the actual Sysprep utility would I need to then run on the win2k machines? Is there any further help available on setupmgr? I really am new to this!

WITCH, I know you said you'd gone through permissions thoroughly already, which probably means you know all this, but it may help someone else anyway. I've used two utilities called Filemon and Regmon in the past with my Win2k workstations to diagnose problems with permissions in software when the obvious things didn't work. Looking on the net for where to download these, I have found that these two have recently been replaced for operating systems post-2k SP4. There is now one utility called Process Monitor. I haven't tried it yet, but the blurb indicates it does the same thing as Filemon and Regmon only better. The link below has information on how to use it and a link to download it: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/processesandthreads/processmonitor.mspx There are also links from here to downloads for Filemon and Regmon; or you can Google these to get them. With Filemon and Regmon, you would set them up to be run as an administrator. Then log in as a pupil, start Filemon/Regmon, type in the admin password to get them running, then start the problem software. At the point it stops running, you halt Filemon/Regmon and capture the data. You can then search for Access Denied on any of the lines produced, which gives you an idea of where permission problems may lie. Sorry if this is a bit vague - it's a while since I've run these. But hopefully the link will help.

I would appreciate some help from any sysprep experts out there! Answers in Newbie basic please! We are running a mixed workstation setup, with Win2000 and WinXP clients all running from a Win2k3 server with Learning Network Manager installed. Currently, with the XP machines, software installs are done in bulk to one machine, then I sysprep that machine before booting from LAN (pressing F12 key) and taking an image. The sysprep.inf file was set up for me by the ICT provider for these machines and runs the Windows setup unattended except for prompting for the Computer Name. I need to take an image from our Win2000 machines, but am not at all confident about the sysprep.inf that I should use. Viglen created the sysprep.inf file that relates to these when we had the Classlink 2000 network. I have printed off both the new (WinXP) and the old (Win2000) sysprep.inf files to compare. I can see some obvious changes that need to be made to the old one, such as admin passwords, but am not sure about others. In particular: a)Does the line beginning ProductID contain the product key for the workstation operating system? b)Do I still need the following section beginning: ;The following key is only supported by Sysprep v1.1. ;This section allows a SYSPREP image to install on a machine ;with any of the drive controller types matching the ;plug and play IDs of the lines below. ; ;Format of this section is: ; = ; ;Any lines ending in MSHDC.INF are for IDE drive support. ;Any lines ending in SCSI.INF are for SCSI drive support. Also, am I right in thinking that I would still need to run the older version of the actual sysprep utility on the Win2k machines? I don’t have any test machine to practice with.

This is the link to the news article I mentioned, regarding the use of illegal software in schools: http://www.ukauthority.com/articles/story1608.asp It is about a year old, and I can't personally verify the source, but I have a copy filed in the front of my software licence file for use in difficult circumstances! Quote from this: "The government has given us the tools to support this initiative with the Copyright, etc. and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002 which increased the penalties for certain copyright offences from two years to ten years to underline the seriousness of copyright offences and strengthened search warrant provisions. The message is clear: if head teachers, schools governors and even LEAs allow the use of illegal software then it may be fast track to a criminal record." Does the trick here anyway!

Wait until they discover that you could be useful for teaching ICT to release staff for PPA time, and offer you the chance to go for HLTA status!!! :twisted: How many hours do you do? For the same reason, our staff laptops don't get checked as often as they should do. I hit a problem with Senior Management suggesting we should just install a certain Microsoft program on a few laptops that had missed out on it when they were purchased, using one of the discs we had but without paying for extra licences. Fortunately I found a news article that someone at the LEA had circulated and I have filed at the front of my software licence file, showed it to them, and that seemed to solve the problem. I'm at home at the moment, but will look it up when I get in and post the link here. Mind you, does anyone really understand all the licensing options that Microsoft offer...???

Thanks, folks. We are running server 2003 so it looks like it will be as simple as multiple selecting all the new accounts and changing them all at once, with the %username% variable. Yippee!! We have LNM, so I can input the users in bulk from a csv file. But the idea of changing all the user properties one-by-one was giving me sleepless nights...

I have to bite the bullet and change our user account policy of having one user account and password per class (primary school setup) to having each child with their own user account and password. I have software that will allow me to import users in bulk from a csv file(and it will also generate a separate medium complexity password for each user), but that will only set things up at a fairly basic level. I anticipate that each of these will need changes to their Profile tab in AD at least. There must be a way to do this other than having to go into the Properties of every single new user one at a time, mustn't there?? I guess this is something other primary school techies will be facing soon too. Help! Please!

Just a word of warning from past experience: We used something installed on our Viglen Classlink network called Remote Learning. I think this is just a bundle of a third party product. We used this product for a few years to demonstrate application software from the teacher's machine to all of the pupils' machines (only a small classroom of 11 PCs in total). There were a few problems with this graphics-wise on the pupils' machines - Powerpoint slides would appear with diagonal bars of colour rather than the actual background, bizarrely Encarta icons for sound, video, etc all became one type of icon so that they all appeared to be video links, Lego Robolab colour scheme changed completely and didn't change back when the demo session was ended. Viglen were very puzzled and didn't believe me at first. I ended up asking a techie from our LEA to test the same setup at another Viglen school in our area, and then Viglen sent out an engineer who witnessed the fault at first hand. We were then told they would work on it. But in the following 12 months we were never notified of a fix, and we have since gone our separate ways. In the grand scheme of things, this may be a trivial problem, and it may hopefully have been fixed by the third party supplier or it may have been a fault with the Viglen setup. But if you are buying this sort of software to use for demonstration purposes in particular, it may be worth checking out how complex Powerpoint slides look on the pupil machines before committing yourself. It makes for an interesting lesson when the teacher is merrily talking about what he thinks the pupils can see, and they are all muttering "what????!!".

Are you primary or secondary?

Thank you, Paul. I should perhaps have looked at the case studies first! I have done now, and found it encouraging to read that schools have adapted the model, rather than taking it as prescriptive. I was a bit confused by the Parson Street Primary comments, saying in one place that they were working with volunteer parents and governors to provide first level support (!!) and then further on that the first level support person can become overworked and lose their main job role (??). I would still value any information from Edugeekers about their experience, rather than just contacting schools through yourself. I think a lot of the experience of implementing something like this varies with the skill and support of those implementing it, and that will vary from school to school quite dramatically.

Does anyone have experience of the Primary FITS? I know this is quite new, but I wondered if anyone is in the process of implementing it or has started using bits from the toolkit. Our LEA are currently running workshops for Heads and ICT Co-ordinators about this, and I am interested in finding out about other people's experiences so I can get an idea of what to expect...!! For anyone who hasn't seen the Primary FITS yet, the link is: http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=re&catcode=ss_res_tec_pfits_03 I've downloaded the toolkit and had a brief look. I have to admit, as someone who has been unsuccessfully trying to get teachers to write down things (ie. log their incidents!) as they happen on forms I have produced and given them for a few years now, I think this may take some serious pushing from the top to get it to work (which is what is supposed to happen, but...).

Is it possible to force Publisher 2003 to save files in an older format? We run a mixed 2003 and 2000 setup for Office. I have set up the mandatory profiles so that Word and excel save in the older fomat by default, using Tools>Options. But can't seem to find a way of doing this in Publisher.

We have a mixture of laptops that have been bought through Laptops for Teachers. Some of the old RMs are still going strong. The newest ones (last 18 months approximately) have been purchased from Ergo and have been fine so far.

OK, I'm a newbie and this is probably just stupid, but.... Have you linked the policy to the OU? I spent a long time with a much more experienced person puzzling over the same kind of problem, and it eventually dawned on him that we just hadn't linked the policy to the OU so it wasn't being applied. OK, I'll go back in the box now....

For those of you that like a happy ending: I set aside Wednesday last week to begin resetting the admin passwords, still not knowing the currently set password, and still, despite all your reassurances, a bit anxious that I might just do something bad to a machine (only techie and currently no backup if things go wrong, you see). Then I had a belated moment of inspiration on the Monday beforehand. I tried typing in password as the password, and (fanfare) it worked! So come Wednesday I could breathe easy and have now reset all my machines with a new local admin password the nice and safe way. Just have to edit the sysprep inf file to match the new password and everything will be as it should be. No idea how the password got set to password. I didn't set the machines up in the first place, but the people who did asked me for the password I wanted to use and put that into the sysprep inf file for me, which is why I was very confused when it didn't work. But every cloud has a silver lining, and I now know a lot more about admin passwords and sysprep as a result of all your help! Thanks again!

I may have been wrong about the specifics of the pay scale. It is probably just a general pay scale, which also happens to apply to TAs. I really meant that I share the same pay conditions as the TAs at my school, so don't get paid for breaks and lunch hour. I've never looked into it to be honest. My job title is ICT Teaching Assistant and ICT Technician anyway, and other jobs advertised in primary schools here are same job title and pay on the same scale.