cheesypete

Finding it to be a pain to install / run It seems that you need to be a local admin to run the software properly but am totally loathe to grant staff higher level perms than they need. Wondered if anyone else has come across this software and know how to get around the security issues (BTW having contacted the company, they recommend using the software on a standalone laptop to get around this - I feel this isnt particularly useful!)

Gamertag: cheesypete69 Currently grinding through the Borderlands DLC before Borderlands 2 (yay!) comes out - anyone up for a bit of Moxxi Underdome - ruddy impossible on single player!! Up for Fifa / MW2 / BFBC2 ... whatever really!

In the same boat Andy and is potentially holding up our W7 rollout over Summer I agree about the company - i've actually got through to them but get excuse after excuse - currently moving office!! The bizarre thing is we actually got it working at one point and more bizarre was the way we did it - we discovered that the machines actually needed something plugged in to both the headphone and mic ports to stop the crashing. Figured it was something to do with the onboard detection; unfortunately for whatever reason, this solution doesnt work now. Grrr!! Sorry if this doesnt help you but its indicative of what I would call a flaky bit of software - you might also like to investigate permissions on the folders (TEMP and install) - cant help but feel its trying to write back to something

Think thats a fair point to make, and one which i havent undertaken @ Hightower - mmm interesting thought but I guess i should have also pointed out, which may sway this discussion, is that its not all about the filtering - its all about having some sort of backup connection in the very unlikely event of major downtime

Starting to look into what will be the best way to implement a secondary internet line into school Currently have the main feed via county but the Deputy Head wants our Y12/Y13 to have "unfiltered" access in the library (filtering to be handled inhouse, rather than by overzealous EMBC filters!) So, at the most we are talking 10 desktops using this line; standard ADSL or is there another alternative? Leased line - way off the scale for what we want!

Stuart Was the reason it stopped working due to expiry date of licence or actually Visionsoft going bust? My X4 licence doesnt expire (think we took out one of their lifetime subs) Alternatives? Well i use Spiceworks as well as X4 - i agree not as good but obviously free!

I am in the position where school policy denotes that all KS5 students can bring their own wireless devices into school and connect to the internet (as part of their studies is very much debatable!) What i have tried to do, to ensure that only KS5 students were on the system was to get them to come down to ICT Support get the key put in and the details of the device noted on a spreadsheet eg. user / mac address etc Have reached a point where i feel its all futile - Windows 7 allows you to see what the key is by simply ticking a box; sites like Nirsoft allow you to download software to a laptop and pick out the keys from the registry. Whichever way, having given the key to only 9 students this term, you look at the DHCP and theres 35 devices!! Its fairly obvious whats going on! Whats the solution here - shall i just admit defeat?

Replying to my own post! Literally having spent 5 days fiddling with it and then posting a request - i open it!! The power of Edugeek! (if anyone needs to know..... )

I walked away before the end of a SERCO demo, but they were handing out these small plastic boxes which MAYBE contained a prize. (They were going to tell folk how to open it at the end of the demo) Anyone know how to do it (before i get the hammer to mine!!)

Don't know if this is possible / feasible but have had a couple of requests from different departments, both wanting the same sort of thing... We currently have a "shared area" on our LAN, which is split into two folders - Staff and Student The Staff folder, is obviously for staff ONLY The Student folder, is accessible by all, but only staff can write to it - students can only pick out / read the files that are in there This has worked well for aeons, but now some staff want folders setting up per teaching group, whereby the students they teach in these groups can save work into the folder but they cant be allowed access to others work (plagiarism / messing etc) Now before somone shouts "Learning Platforms (!)" , after many hours of paper diagrams I know that this is pretty much what we are looking at, but we are a long way off getting ours off the ground and it opens up a quagmire of staff training etc My head is now too bogged down with folder permissions - is there something out there that will do what i want? An online dropbox could work, but ideally we need something sitting on our LAN which is readily available from a mapped drive / shortcut and with minimum setting up If i'm being asked too much (which i think i am!) then i need someone to tell me!!!

Bit of a pain this one Updated some client workstations over Summer - one of which is used by an admin member who has an OMR machine attached The new machine DIDNT come with a serial port (necessary for OMR) so PCI serial card bought / fitted / installed However, due to it being an external card, Windows picks up the ports as COM 3 and COM 4. The software for the OMR only accepts COM 1 and COM 2 Is there anyway of mapping COM 3 > COM 1? I know the base address is different but i think COM 1/3 share the same IRQ?

Just a plea for help really - school just bought a SonicWall 2000 VPN device, and am having issues seeing the device outside of school (which is obviously the reason for its purchase!) Wondering if any school in EMBC had one configured and would be able to ping me some example config details - have followed the manual but am losing the will to live

We currently use Room Booking Software Cyberforth Room Booking System Home Personally i find it very fiddly when setting up timetabled rooms but this is down to the fact that we run a two week timetable at school and holidays influence which week we start back on (it doesnt carry on from what we ended on!!!) Because of this we have to (re)create the timetable structure every term Obviously any room booking system would suffer because of this, but I have used the Devizes one at a previous and it is a darn sight easier to manage/administer IMHO

Thanks for all the comments everyone I too, thought it a little strange that we would need to go to such lengths - particularly as we have every intention of utilising the equipment and not disposing of it I will pass your comments on and will dutifully respond to this thread if i hear anything Pete

Here's an interesting one which maybe someone else has come across... Have been offered 80 + desktops from a school that I have close links with (ie my wife is a teacher there and that was my previous employer!) However as its an independent school (with a business "ethos") they require us (an LA school) to have a WEEE certificate in place so that they can hand them over for a minimal fee Whilst its not amazing kit (Pentium D @ 3ghz) it would certainly help me replace kit that seems to have been in place since the start of the millennium! Looking at the Environmental Agency sites and Government related pages, i can only really find information about becoming a WEEE certified "treatment" centre. I guess loosely, thats what we would be but theres references to site visits to check the storage of equipment etc and at the end of the day, there is going to be an annual fee depending on the amount of "waste" that gets recycled Could this potentially mean that schools will no longer be able to pass old kit to feeder schools etc? (Kind of duplicating a question posed by JAMMAN960 in a previous thread, so not unique in my questionning!)

Apparently two years ago, Cancer Research approached her to see whether she'd donate some of her "hard earned cash" She apparently told them to "**** off, what will i get out of it?" Oh the irony

Its the old chestnut of students finding proxies, but Yahoo Answers seems to be the central point of obtaining lists of new anonymous proxy servers For those using Netsweeper, are you aware of a way of blocking questions regarding proxies, whilst still leaving yahoo answers enabled? The Safe search and Search Keywords categories only appear to work on the top level search engine pages eg / uk.yahoo.com Wondered if you could perform some sort of boolean logic on the keyword categories eg \ yahoo + answers + proxies (it doesnt work though!)

Thanks for the replies everyone - have just sat down at my desk and seen the responses Just to confirm the current settings [*]Vanilla OU has inheritance blocked and doesnt apply the Default Domain Policy (not that that does much anyway) [*]The GPO has been set to user loopback processing (replace) so that only computer policies are applied Jose - appreciate the last response, thats something i havent looked at The second domain aspect is something i have literally just discussed with my ICT techs. Will have another crack at this tomorrow

This post is linked to the one regarding the move from CC3 to a vanilla one, but i felt this warranted a separate thread as its a specific request for help! To summarise from the start, we are looking to migrate from a CC3 network to a vanilla one but its going to be a gradual process, rather than my desired "lets pull the pug and start from scratch!" Therefore, we have created a room of vanilla clients, and have created OUs / GPOs outside of the RM CC3 active directory structure. Have set the GPOs to use loopback processing with replace to stop RM GPOs from applying to the clients (as informed by Jose and Piqueaboo in aforementioned thread) The thing is, we are still experiencing certain "non-vanilla" settings - for example Synchronise runs upon the user logging out..this is definitely disabled in the GPO Interestingly if we create a completely new user using the standard Windows 2003 ADUC everything works fine...UNTIL...a user created using the RM management console logs on. This seems to "pull across" RM settings to the XP machine which then also apply to the "vanilla" user eg\synchronisation occurs, icons disappear In effect the machine kind of becomes an RM client Does this sound familiar to anyone? Any advice?

Jose We are probably following the same path as you, by having one ICT room as "vanilla" - how did this work in terms of user experience? Having created an OU outside of the Establishment structure, and blocking inheritance, we still find that the user GPOs are still being applied (ie RM User Types such as Standard / Advanced Staff). In reality we actually wanted the security settings to be taken across, but we are experiencing such strange issues we kind of want a fresh start! Did you have any problems using the same user accounts for both RM and Vanilla? If you did, how did you get around them? Pete

For the record T4 will no longer be supported after Feb 09, which, in a typical roadmap sense, will force timetablersto start using T6 Doesnt mean that schools will stop using it though, as its actually incredibly useful for "non-timetabling" staff to print lists, see who is on cover etc. Whilst Capita have integrated the same data into SIMS.net, its very cumbersome trying to locate what you look for - T4, click a few buttons and bang - you have what you need.

Does anyone know / have any idea, as to when RM are going to pull the plug on CC3 and in effect force them move to CC4? Its probably a strange question for most, but i'm sat here looking at an order for some CC3 licences, thinking "potentially that money would buy me a nice new server"! Obviously with CC4 now available, its a quagmire of decision making. I could buy these licences only to find that support for CC3 expires next year, in which case do we look at upgrading to CC4 now...

After attending the SIMS User Group (Derbyshire) a few weeks ago, we were told that the Nov release was being pushed out in a couple of days. Havent heard anything since - does anyone know when Derbyshire is pushing this out?

In my group of friends, there are two "Petes" - everyone got fed up shouting "Pete" and both of us turning around Because i never stop smiling one friend decided to call me "Cheesy" after the grinning Cheshire Cat ....I must stress its not a hygiene issue!

Just to go off at a slight angle, MS have announced that Office 14 will be available either as a series of advert funded web apps (free?) or via a subscription model Obviously competing with Google Apps but may mean that folk stick with Microsoft