cheesypete

Would suggest to start with (a) see whats running in task manager (even better if you can do it at times of slowdown) - see whats hogging the CPU / RAM (b) check your event viewer logs Also recommend getting hold of Sysinternals Process Explorer (from M$) which gives more detail as to what may be running Apart from it being a DC, is it running anything else? Do you run apps? Does it handle print queues?

Tag: cheesyboosh Currently playing Fifa '09 (when the wife is out!)

Try PNLTools : Tools for IT Professionals (dont know prices, but i've bought a few things from them in the past and reputable)

Sorry for delay in replying Andy - much appreciated for the info. Have emailled the folk concerned about adding me to the lists!

Appreciate the fact that it probably wasnt written for CC3/CC4 compliancy, but for the benefit of others using RM software, it doesnt seem to work - well certainly not on my clients Get the message "Error 1 reading policy registry key. Is Shutdownertron installed properly" (damn you RM!)

Wasnt aware of this - how did you find out? I am fairly new so i may not be "known"!

Was given an ancient RM laptop with a Celeron CPU which was ok for general day to day stuff (email / browsing) but it struggled with anything else Got so fed up I went down to Tescos and bought myself a nice dual core Acer for £379 - I use it as my main machine at home now so i can justify the cost

Login as "sarmstrong" with the password "letmein" more info at Scholabra - Introduction

I think Grumbledook makes a very valid point, and perhaps now via the regional boards, if folk find things out, they could post for others to see. Whilst I havent seen any information regarding Netsweeper et al for Derbyshire schools, its worth ensuring that you are members of the correct DNFL mailings or at the very least ensuring that you get paper copies from those staff that look at them

I think refresher sessions would be extremely worthwhile Until i discovered the local filtering, we had no end of mail being blocked. The ASS one was the most prolific, as it stopped "classes", "assessment", kids who wore "glasses" (!) I think the best one was that a member of staff literally had all her email stopped...turned out she was signing off each email with some kisses ...XXX

remove the bit that links to the .asp page and you'll go straight there

(bit of a moan this one - Monday morning, queue of people at my door!) As Derbyshire schools have to go through the LA rather than having a direct link to Synetrix, I was wondering how other counties fared with Synetrix support. I have now had an ongoing issue with four email accounts not working, since the start of term (so we are approaching four weeks). Now, fairplay to Derbyshire CC, they are tolerating (!) me ringing on a daily basis, but i find it quite incredulous that this issue hasnt been resolved yet. (For the record, these accounts, when posting from/to, come back with the message that a duplicate account exists) Do other counties, find it easier to get issues resolved by being able to communicate directly? Should I simply accept the fact that this is the way things are Would welcome other folks experiences - it may make me feel better

I dont think you're being stupid - i spent a long time looking for something similar and couldnt find anything What i ended up doing (and somewhat painstakingly) was downloading the SIMS.net permission spreadsheet from the Capita forum and then crosschecking user rights against the users on our systems The only flaw here is if you have user defined groups which obviously wont be on the aforementioned spreadsheet

Firstly, I have to go down on record and say what a great move it is to create some specific RBC forums. As someone who has "migrated" from an independant school to one that is encapsulated by the pros / cons of the EMBC, its going to be a great help. So in answer to the questions posed, (1) I cant really pass comment on "where we should be" having only been here a matter of weeks, and perhaps it would be unfair to offer comparisons between an independent school and an LA controlled one. I would however, have expected a stronger grasp of VLEs and yet this is only just starting to happen (this is maybe just our school; i dont wish to generalise as I know some schools have been using Moodle for a long time) (2) In terms of where we should be going, well i'm trying not to laugh / cry, but even in such a short space of time of being here, it beggars belief how much battling has to be done to get positive results. We have had members of staff who have found that their email has stopped working. We are now several weeks into the start of term, and despite daily phonecalls, issues still arent resolved. Websites blocked, unblocked and then blocked again; email filters that wont allow the words "Essex", "assessment" because they contain the words "sex" and "ass" (really clever). So what i would like to see is either better management at the EMBC / Synetrix end, or relinquish this whole "one for all, all for one" level of control (3) I appear to have a very open minded SLT who arent afraid to push the boundaries / be different, so there is a general mood that moving away from EMBC / Synetrix is going to be a positive step. I'm particularly keen to see if / how others have gone about this (separate post ensues!)

Having watched the Zimbra demo it looks fantastic and certainly fits the bill. So has anyone gotten their LA to point the MX records at a Zimbra server? Any issues?

Thanks everyone - that sounds relatively good news. Just need to find the money now!

You'll have to forgive my ignorance on this - i'm two days into new job and already have a major project to undertake! Like most consortium led schools we have email limitations in place (which i believe is 50mb per mailbox) - the Head / Deputy would like to implement an internal Exchange server with the thought that this would "release" the limitation, but at the same time continue to use the services provided by the LA (internet / filtering) as well the email services provided by the county before it hits the new internal server. Would this work? Admittedly i havent put any legwork into this yet but i cant see how this would work unless we completely opted out and did everything independently. Has anyone else done this?

Can i point you in the direction of this website / free bit of software - works wonders for me! http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

The key issue here (i think) is that if the user doesnt have local admin permissions on the machine then the information wont get written to the desktop Do you get an error message? I'm pretty sure there is a workaround, but here at my school, the info only gets written to the desktop when a member of the ICT Staff logs on (who also have local admin rights)

Yep, have used Driver Magic and it works a treat The trial version doesnt let you restore the drivers if i remember rightly, but the whole package isnt that expensive and its worth having as part of your "toolkit"

Thats fair enough, but with no disrepect to primary schools nor their staff, do they have 300+ clients to upgrade in a very short space of time? But why should this be a reason not to consider MSIs? Surely there should be a 100% guaranteed way without any need for ICT staff to attend clients? No matter how many times teaching staff are told, there is always going be the odd impatient one who inevitably "cripples" the machine. ...and dont get me started on simsperm.bat!

To hide the drilling (see post regarding quiet schools!) I've currently got the new Chemical Brothers cd playing on my machine Wondered what everyone is playing on their machines / stereos?

Every summer I think its going to peaceful.... .... and then i discover that contractors are populating the place. Cue - drilling, sawing, paint fumes...

I cant see why the cheap one wouldnt work - we've got a couple of devices from Keyspan which work fine but are of similar price to the official one Keyspan device

I've got a load of 3Com 3300 switches and the engineer who took them out said i'd be lucky to get a tenner for the lot! So dont know if that helps (stop crying!)