superatticman

Diesels have their place, especially if you are up and down the motorway all day. However, around town, my comfy old 1999 3 litre Accord Coupe returns only slightly less fuel consumption than my previous MG ZT 2 litre diesel (which was running perfectly healthy Large petrol engines tend to warm up extremely quickly and are efficient within minutes. The diesel was usually just getting to operating temp when I was pulling into the car park at work.

Was this with the Universal Print Driver downloaded from HP's website? (which covers both 32 and 64 bit versions) Or from the 4100 64 bit PCL6 driver included in 2008 R2?

Will give these suggestions a go. Out of interest, when installing the printer via 'look for driver online', do you get both X64 and X86 drivers? Obviously the printer requires the X64 driver on 2008 R2, but we have been adding the X86 driver as an additional driver.

Hiya We still run a number of HP Laser 4100 printers on our network. They are slightly old hat now, but have proved to be extremely reliable and reasonably economical. We have just upgraded our printserver to 2008 R2. Only problem is, HP only produce a 'Universal Print Driver' for this printer and OS. This driver seems to work fine on the 4200 series but is very erratic on the 4100 series. Sometimes pages print from certain applications, at other times they don't. Have had a dig around elsewhere and it would seem the majority of suggestions centre around replacing what are now fairly old printers. Anyone else have this combination and have you managed to get it reliable? Regards

Never mind what has been, I see Obama and Cameron are promising a "serious response" if Chemical weapons are proven to have been used in Syria. One would have to assume this will be some kind of military action. Not really appropriate for the UK considering we have cut back our armed forces further since our last little foray into Libya? We may well have the capability to take on the entire Syrian armed forces with what we have no matter how diminished we are. However that would more or less leave the UK defenceless given the slight chance that the conflict escalates into a full scale global conflict. Recent history suggests that these 'World Policing' scenarios do not escalate but you can never rule it out.

I'd say the two major reasons why most of us are happy to live in the Western World are: Standard of living for the majority Quality of life for the majority I really don't think the ethics of Government are any real concern providing that the majority have a roof over their heads, access to healthcare, a chance to build a career etc. There will probably always be a small section of society that is marginalised. Sometimes this is courtesy of their own agenda, ie religious fanatics. Sometimes this is because of flaws in the 'system'. Either way most Western Countries provide a 'safety net' or an alternative path for those who are marginalised.

You could say the 'Iron Fist' of Dictators has been more successful at keeping certain countries in order than Western style governments have. As far as assisting them goes this is a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. Sit by and let the bloodshed continue and you are failing to do your bit to save humanity. However, get involved, then you are a warmonger and the resultant effect, even when the military action is over, is usually ever more bloodshed than before as there is no one about to stop armed gangs forming in the struggle for power. Of course if you do hang about with a large force, then you are accused of trying to bring back colonialism! Either way, I'd much rather live in a Western Democracy, even if it does have its flaws.

Not such a clear photograph as this was sitting in a tree about 3 foot above me, but this is the previously posted insect's partner in crime, the male version with closer together eyes. Looks mean, but totally harmless.

I believe 'desktop hardware engineer' was a fairly well paid and respected job until the mid-late 1990s. You actually had to know your stuff back then, and there wasn't the plethora of information available on the internet either. Any issues had to generally be resolved by speaking to the manufacturer or supplier direct. I'd love to see a page full of advertised IT jobs and salaries from the period 1990-1998

True, but what constitutes 'us' is open to interpretation. 'us' covers from junior techies to Senior Network managers.

Between our dept we estimated we were 30% overbooked with projects to complete by September. And so it has proved to be the case. The less important ones are already being deferred until HT and Christmas. We have managed to get to the situation where about 15% of them will not have been started by September. It would have been around our original 30% estimation, but we were given consent by the Head and Bursar to totally drop support for teachers during the summer period. A harsh way of dealing with things but the only way in this case.

Must admit I find myself nodding my head to a lot of the comments on here. I do believe we are heading to the situation where the jobs of Network manager, Senior support analyst and those 'mid level' jobs will be heading for the cloud. This can easily mean outsourcing these jobs to countries where they can get away with paying in western terms a pittance but local terms a decent salary. Of course this will even itself out in the long run if that economy strengthens and it becomes less attractive proposition. I do believe in 10 years time your 'on site' IT support will be low paid techies to do the hands on stuff with mobile devices, printers and PC's. Then a giant gap up to Senior Management who will work in partnership with cloud computing companies to do the higher skilled back end stuff. The foreign based cloud computer companies will compromise of technicians, senior technicians and network managers. There will probably be consultants, project managers etc but they will be UK based. Definitely think its make up your mind time.

Very wise indeed. This is pretty much the stage I am now.

Agree with all of the above. In my experience a hardcore IT enthusiast in charge of a large network can be to the detriment of the end user. Solutions are often delivered due to an interest in the technology rather than the other factors of which should be taken into consideration. In fact we even had someone own up to this on here when inflicting VDI onto their users without consultation or actually deciding whether it was going to improve the user experience or provide any kind of advantage for IT admins.

That's fine by me. I really do think we are on the cusp of major change in the nature of IT support. I really enjoy management of projects and have already had some hands on experience delivering facilities at my semi pro football club. All voluntarily, but have learned some vital fundamentals whilst applying what in my view is common sense and basic organisational skills! I guess IT project management could be the perfect job for some people who want to remain in IT but try their hands at something different?

The above has just been the final motivation to enroll on a PRINCE2 foundation course!!! Agree though, the job of ICT support has changed massively in just 10 years. I don't like the direction is it going but there's sweet FA I or anyone can do about it!!!

Hi We are in the process of moving our SIMS server from server A to server B. We will need to change the drive mappings for our 'M' drive to reflect the change so users pickup the new server. Have made the relevant change in this 'Drive Maps' area here. All seems ok but the drive is still being mapped to the old location even after several reboots. NM who usually deals with this is away. Is there anything obvious that I may have missed? Ie does it need to be set elsewhere? Regards

Hi The sql database is running fine as an application that uses it is functioning perfectly. This is the process I am using to gain access. We also need to start backing this database up so I need the credentials for the backup software. This is what alerted me to the password issue as I could not gain access via arcserv Standard screen you get when opening management studio Sometimes, this screen appears first, which suggests that the 'sa' and blank password may be hitting a problem elsewhere This is the error which I get the majority of the time when entering the above credentials and various other standard passwords which we use. Plus when attempting to log in using windows authentication.

Hi I am unable to access a database via the management studio. I have tried logging in using windows authentication and SQL authentication. I believe the default SQL user name is SA and a blank password. The problem we have is that this was set up by a 3rd party who we are now officially in dispute with and they simply aren't talking to us at the moment. We usually set up our SQL databases to use windows authentication but my gut feeling is that they have used sql authentication and a non standard password. Is there any way we can access this or at least confirm the level of authentication used? Any assistance with this would be greatly received! Cheers

Gold star for Geoff here. Definitely a species of hoverfly. The pic below was taken from a website depicting several species. Glad its harmless as I was getting a bit nervous when getting close to snap it! Must admit I thought hoverflies were all very small harmless looking things. http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/assets/0612/0000/0033/hoverfly.jpg Hornets can be pretty mean looking and their sting is pretty bad as I once found out to my cost.

Snapped this in the garden yesterday. Very large, bumble bee size and quite mean looking!! Pretty sure its not a hornet though.

Hi Can anyone recommend a decent free SSID and computer name regenerator? Sysprep encompasses all of this but we use 3rd party imaging and just want a lightweight utility that can deal with this need. cheers

To be honest I've little interest in the real nitty gritty of IT. However, I enjoy providing solutions through IT and enjoy managing projects and overseeing stuff in general. I'm content working in IT, but certainly wouldn't find me staying late running through some hideous powershell commands all for the love of it!! I know what you are getting at though. Those genuine enthusiasts who put in all kinds of extra hours because its some kind of busman's holiday should not expect others to do so. The admin staff, builders etc certainly won't stay late for no reward so that should apply to IT too!

Hi We currently use third party imaging software to image our laptops and desktops. At the moment we are using CD and USB boot devices to access the images on a network share. We would like to take an image of the Tablet as it is, load it up with software, take an image with the software installed. And then deploy this image to the rest of our tablets using our 3rd party imaging software. Would appear that there is no boot from CD/USB unless its a USB boot device with a windows 8 PE and image on! Has anyone else ran into this problem and if so, how can it be resolved? Thanks.

I guess you could also look at filtering out files that are older than a certain period. I'm pretty sure Arcserve allows this as a filter option. Or maybe even filtering out files of a certain type that are a year old for example. But if you are going to start excluding older stuff, then a solid tape retention strategy is going to be required just incase.