superatticman

Brilliant additions!!! We had two people similair to your two. One who ended up being nicknamed 'Jabba the Hutt' because he simply didnt move from his desk all day. In my job previous to this, there was a total loner who simply couldnt work as part of the team, kept his cards close to his chest and never documented or passed on tips. Should have been a programmer as his social skills were zilch.

Just a bit of fun although I'm sure you will be nodding your head quite a bit in places! But lets face it, theres definitely several 'types' of IT support person, good and bad. Most good IT teams tend to have a diverse mix of skillsets and personalities. The 'Know All' Yep! We know this type well, don't we? Literally knows it all. Interrupts your troubleshooting conversations because he already knows the answer and the patronises with comments like 'oh come on, thats easy'. But, and its a big but, he really doesnt know that much at all. When the poop hits the fan and it needs everyone pooling resources, he'll go missing. And most annoyingly, when he makes a fundamental mistake, will never own up and points the blame elsewhere. Is usually well qualified for the job and has his uses here and there, but ultimately, more of a hindrance than a help. Tends to move on from one job to another fairly fast. The Hobby Jobbist This is Mr IT. He lives, breathes and fantasizes about computers. Go into his home, and there will usually be a pile of BBC Micros in one corner and load of older PCs running Linux in the other. A total nerd who will probably take his holidays in IT related places such as Reading's Silicon Valley, that place in Ireland where you used to send faulty HDD's under warranty back to, or maybe even the base of Microsoft, Seattle. Ash him about his holiday and he'll tell you how crap the in flight entertainment system was, and how easy it was for him to crack the wireless in the departure lounge. Is usually pale in completion due to lack of sunlight and personal hygiene could be better. For all his quirkiness though, is a valuable member of the team as he's the one who will gladly take any problems home and usually have a solution the next day. The Itchy Feeter Constantly moans about IT support pay and how great it used to be in the 1990s. Is always banging on about moving on to something else, but years down the line will still be performing the same role. Secretly doesnt mind his job although doesnt like admitting to others that he works in IT as he doesnt want to be seen as a geek. Not naturally gifted at troubleshooting, but does his best, knows where to look for answers and usually gets there in the end. Won't ever pretend to be an expert. The sort of bloke who could have been working as a plumber, salesman or electrician but chose to do the IT course instead. Definitely a few of us like that on here! I'm sure theres a few more clearly defined types

Thanks, will give that a go. Generally in XP we have been able to simply access the CSC folder via safe mode and manually delete everything. Currently struggling to even access this folder at the moment, even as an administrator, lots of proverbial head scratching going on.

Hi Is there any way to get rid of offline files easily? In windows XP you could literally 'delete offline files' and it would clear everything out for good. Doesnt seem to work in Windows 7. Any ideas?

Thanks for the above link too. Have set it all up as described, lets see what happens over the next day or two as far as the updating process goes!

Michael Thankyou for this quick link. Have managed to get the console removed and re-installed. Once again, you've been a great help in pointing me the right way Regards

Hiya Have been tasked with fixing a WSUS problem that is affecting a Windows 2003 SP2 Server. Opening the console reveals this: A WSUS console that is totally non functional. Decided to remove and reinstall. However, there is no sign of WSUS in control panel at all. Have tried to reinstall the WSUS executible, it executes: But first of all gives the indication that parts of the installation are present: I select all/none of the components and start the uninstall process: It thinks about it for 10 seconds or so, but returns the following cryptic error: Anyone seen this before or have any idea as to whats going on here? Can always use another server, but really want to get to the bottom of what has happened here. Regards.

Hi We run VDI with Citrix Xendesktop 5 on part of our network. We plan to implement XD5 on the 'admin' side of our domain. Currently, we use Actividentity smarkeys http://www.actividentity.com/enterprise/products/smartkey/ to authenticate onto the admin network. Has anyone on here seen XD5 and these keys work together sucessfully? We are planning on having the 'Desktop appliance lock' in place so users are automatically directed to a virtual PC. Regards

Thanks for the help on this. Very 'green' when it comes to UPS's! Have managed to configure the free version of APC Network edition to do all this. Didn't realise any of the network versions were free. Some misinformation on another forum was responsible for that!

Does the Windows 2003 server include support for batteries managed via a network connection?

Yes. To shutdown the servers gracefully after a period of time should there be a power loss.

Have an APC battery protecting a couple of servers on one of our branch networks. The battery is fully configured and can be managed via web interface etc. Can anyone recommened any free lightweight UPS monitoring and shutdown software? Server is Win2003. Thanks

Hi For the last 10 years we've bought Sanyo branded projectors. I've been informed by another IT related employee at our school that Sanyo are going to be pulling out of the market as far as projectors go. Is this true? If so, whilst these days a number of brands are 'much of a muchness', what brands are currently the most popular and value for money when it comes to projectors? We've been recommended Epson by one of our resellers. Any reason NOT to purchase them? Thanks for reading.

Was moving a HP Proliant floorstanding server this week. Settled it down to its new location, opened the front panel of which swings out on a hinge and dived for cover as a huge, dust covered queen bumble bee came buzzing out clearly not amused! Thankfully no sign of the rest of her clan though. Any other welcome or not so welcome finds?

Hi What minimum specs are we running for our 'thick client' PC's? We are using a Citrix Xen Desktop version 5 solution and up until now have been running HP D530 PC's which are: P4 3ghz HT CPU, 512Mb Ram, 7200rpm 40gb HDD, Win XP. Are going to be stepping down to make some use out of some even older PC's which are: HP D510, P4 2.4ghz, 512Mb Ram, 7200rpm 40gb HDD, Win XP. Have noticed log in time is a little longer but no difference when in full session. In theory you can run VDI on a pentium 2 but I wouldnt like to see this in action! Be interesting to see just how low a spec others have managed to get it to run properly on? Regards

Hi There is an online testing utility of which some on here may have used: ALIS - Assessment - CEM There is a problem in Internet Explorer where the actual test won't function when accessed from a VDI PC. I have contacted them and they admitted there is a problem with this online flash based resource running in a thin client environment. Their answer was to install firefox on the image of which we will only do if no other solution is found. Has anyone else tried this testing software in a VDI environment and managed to get it to work in XP with IE8? Thanks

Bit cheeky as its for home rather than work!! But.... Is there any way of being able to plug a PC into a standard RF home system? I would like to be able to watch what my media PC in the living room is playing in other parts of the house. The PC has VGA out and also a S-Video/composite out. Am obviously not bothered about HD or anything like that.

Hi I want to try and shrink our 'default user' profile down from 92mb to as low as it can go. This is being used on a .VHD for a VDI disk image, so want to speed up the login time. I believe at some point the administrator profile used to create the image was copied across to default user so the settings are inherited by all users logging on. This probably had something to do with the profile size. Have managed to get rid of: Windows MP 11 installer 20mb Some Sun/Java stuff 20mb I know each build is unique so advice on what else to delete is probably worthless! But theres an Adobe folder there containing CS3 stuff of which is about 25mb. I guess if I delete that each user will get a 'first time run' experience with CS3? Or am I okay to delete this? Thanks

Thats what I had planned. There is an article about it here How to Set Up an Out of Office Vacation Auto-Reply in Outlook - About Email After that, then the chances are we will simply move them to another ISP which supports webmail based out of office. Bt Business provide this.

Backup tapes are indeed securely stored. Probably using 'standard' pop3. I think currently my gut feeling is to ensure the power settings are correct and simply leave their PC's on over this period!

Thanks for the swift replies chaps. Indeed we do use an exchange 2010 solution for inside/outside mail access on the main site. The issue here, is that this small site has super confidential information of which they want totally seperated from our main network! They also use a totally different domain name to the main site.

Good Afternoon One of our small branch offices to the main school has a problem we need to solve. They have no connectivity to the main site and will not do in the forseable future. They run a small 5 computer network with a win2003 server acting as a DC, File, App and print. Previously they used popmail via Tiscali, which although has poor tech support and wasnt the most reliable, gave them an 'out of office' feature in the web based mailbox. This was useful as they close down for 6 weeks in the summer. We moved them to plusnet and whilst the service is far improved, they don't have the web based out of office feature. We planned to forward their mx records from plusnet to MS 'Office Live Small Business' and imported the domain in, which would have allowed them to use hotmail as their mail front end allowed them to use the recently restored out of office function. However, this is all changing to Office 365 of which we most definately don't want. Especially as it will cost around £400 a year and most of the features will not be used. So, options: 1) Install Small Business Server 2008 of which I believe comes with Exchange 2010. A PROPER solution with other benefits, although costly for such a small office and definatley overkill for the 'out of office' problem. Bearing in mind we will need to also invest in a backup solution for exchange too. 2) Use an alternative to Exchange. Probably a lot more economical, but does anyone have any experience of these types of mail centre? 3) Use a web based mail solution and forward our mail to this as we planned with MS Live Small Business. Does anyone know if this kind of thing even exists? 4) Backtrack and choose an ISP of who's webmail supports 'out of office'! Not really favoured as plusnet service has been A1. Regards Adam

Hiya We're having some serious performance issues with this piece of software! We're currently running VDI in a Citrix/Xen Desktop environment with most other apps running fairly smoothly. Has anyone else on here played around with Google Sketchup 8 in VDI? Cheers

Nothing in the event logs. And no error message milliseconds before the reboot! I'll retry the chkdsk /f and also try sfc /scannow just to prove a point. A repair install probably rather drastic considering its affecting over 100 computers! Someone has suggested that this has occurred at about the same time when we replaced the 2003 servers with 2008. Surely not a policy?

The reason we need safe mode access is because we use smart keys on our site. Occasionally a computer falls off the domain (more likely when one of the server admins accidently removes the wrong computer account!) and we end up locking ourselves out of the PC altogether. The way in is to access safe mode and modify the appropriate registry key (disable smart key) and then you can get in via user and pwd. Will check the event logs etc