3s-gtech

Have you gone through: https://oofhours.com/2024/12/17/capturing-a-windows-11-image-with-mdt/

Can you create a new TS for testing?

I’ve never used Capture, but I would guess so.

You need to rebuild and deploy the boot images.

Hmmmm. When the question of it maybe being DNS at fault, it's usually DNS at fault. Combine that with DHCP. How are your DNS scavenging, refresh and do not refresh timings, and how do they compare to your DHCP leases?

Aye, that sounds different, but better! Snapshot is well advised - I had to roll back when I in-placed our SIMS server OS years back.

You don't so much 'in place' SQL, as install the new version alongside the old, unmount the DB, then re-mount it in the new version. There are a few other bits, like single-user mode to stop anyone modifying the DB while you try and work. From my distant memory it's fairly painless but I can't offer much more detail - we're on Connected now.

You can check replication by opening the sysvol on both, dive into the Policies folder, and make a text file on one. Check to see if it appears on the other. Then repeat the other way round.

How many DCs and DFS-R replicas for the sysvol? Is DFS-R replicating correctly? Is DNS happy?

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with CC, but if the drive mappings work like they do for vanilla, has one or the other got the equivalent of Item-level targeting set? So basically, a programmatic if statement applying on mapping - perhaps 'if user is member of X, apply drive M:, if user is not member of Y, apply drive T:'

In-place update?

Try OpenCore on it as mentioned, you may be pleasantly surprised. It makes MacOS 15 run on some right old clunkers - yours will be fine.

Two years in for us - no, it hasn’t improved much. When it goes, it goes hard. It pays to have a plan B.

We still use Word, but there is an ever growing list of GP settings and registry hacks to get it right, and if pushed it still may not be resilient enough. The familiarity of it for students is good, but short of it having an Exams Mode it is a bodge.

For complex projects, nothing beats proper CAD software but for most school stuff the web ones seem to tick all of the boxes now. We stopped deploying SolidWorks some time back - we hit the specs okay with cheap gaming GPUs but it was all overkill.

Perpetual license won't work for this purpose, because it'll still reach EOL in October next year for support, even if it's still validly licensed. I'm also pushing out Office 2024 without it, and 2021 where staff need a window to convert. They have been told repeatedly, and next October Office 2024 will be installed automatically. I have my PC here for conversion duties, but I can't do that forever! We have a few copies of Affinity Publisher out there but no compatibility sadly.

They're not fully featured, no. I can't tell you the full set of changes - it's probably available online - but when I've tried I think it has been formating and things like that. Decent, but not complete. Chromebooks are pretty good from an admin point of view. They won't halve anything, but even from me with MS and Mac OS experience they were pretty easy to work into the mix. You may need A3 still, so look at what your needs will be from M365. We use quite a lot of A3 licensed bits now, so that guides my hand to the full FTE count. You can't change part way through your 3 years though. Can't advise on OVS-ES or EES or anything there, I lost track of that years ago.

Yes, but is it a license for the extended support through some mechanism (I don't know how that'd work!) per device, or a Windows Product Key? Probably the latter. Yeah, VAMT would probably be the only way - years since I've run it!

Could be the Windows key, could be a support key of some sort (perhaps added via a reg entry)? We can dream.

I've just cable tied the windows shut in rooms with air con. Opening the windows involves standing on the tables. I'm waiting for a union complaint of it being a health and safety risk to lock the (top hung) windows. The counter is "It's a lot riskier standing on the tables. Stop opening the windows, you sponge."

Got my quote today. £1 per device, doubling yearly. Plus VAT. Licence key for each device. Don’t know how they work yet.

Just done the usual walk of sweaty pits to check how many of our units have been set to heat mode. More than one. Old buildings mostly here, which are good, apart from one south-facing block which is a grim sweatbox. We need to fix this.

Those are just DMX patch panels. You can plug a controller in there, or an addressable fixture. There must be a set of dimmer packs. Any indications of 'Stage Lighting' in the dis board?

We have managed to remain open after an outage, for a few hours. The battery backups for the fire alarm and school bell held out. Longer than that, no. Servers/net down, so paper registers, but we'd start to lose things like door controls, extraction systems, hot water, and most importantly, access to coffee. We'd need that.

I don't tend to go for the earlier stuff. SFII is about the earliest I enjoy - I just find a lot of the 80s stuff a bit dull now. I played them plenty then, and I'm not very nostalgic. Virtua Racing, Sega Rally, Daytona USA - the big early 90s stuff is still pretty appealling. Doesn't have to be in a huge cabinet either! Spent many hours playing stand up Virtua Racing.