fafster

My card is currently running games without any trouble at all. Once I feel the need to upgrade (hopefully over a year from now) then fingers crossed my card would be a lot cheaper, making more sense to increase the performance that way.

The 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB are the final cards in the 8800 line. The next along now are the 9600GT (roughly 8800GT performance for £40 less, or about £100) and 9800GTX. Don't confuse the 8800GTS 320/640MB with the GTS 512MB - they're completely different cards, with the 512MB version being newer and a hell of a lot better than both. AFAIK they're all single-slot due to the 65nm process, and as such they all run cooler. This means that they should all be pretty easy to overclock. The best value for money right now is the 9600GT, but if you want more speed, then go for the 8800GTS 512MB or wait a little longer for the 9800GTX. I own the 8800GT, and instead of buying another replacement card in future I'll simply plug in another in SLI.

Mitsubishi Colt 1.5 DI-D. It has a reassuring amount of power there for when you feel the need to race 18 year olds in their Novas.

Cheers for the offer, but I've found a pretty nice solution. 2X ThinClientServer and ThinClientOS are what I'm playing with at the moment. ThinClientServer comes with it's own DHCP server but I can't set bindings, so I'm using MS's one and providing the IP and image name. It's all working perfectly except at the moment the image won't load up within VMWare. Loads so far but then freezes. Definitely making progress, too. Plus I think you can configure printers from within the software.

You should shove some flak down their throats. Once they're humiliated they'll stop playing.

How would round robin DNS work on Server 2003? Does this idea sound plausible: If I had two servers, they would both have to sit between the classroom and the rest of the network. They would both have DHCP and DNS set up, but on one it would be disabled. If the one running the services failed, I'd just simply enable them on the other whilst it's being repaired. What kind of specifications am I realistically looking at?

No, please do! The more ammunition I get for this, the more likely it will be that it's going to succeed. I guess I'll start that other printing thread

If it's as simple as a script then I can't see any reason for not going ahead with this. I think I'll create a virtual network to play with, and also to give a demonstration of how it'll work. But yeah, if you have the code I'd be very grateful for a copy. How do you find your server's performance? I've build a custom spec on Dell for a 2xQuad Core Xeon 1.8GHz setup with 4GB of memory and it comes to ~£1000 with 3Yr warranty.

Sorry for hijacking the thread! I'm interested in learning a little more about your setup. What did you use on the machines themselves? Thinstation looks like a good candidate, and I'm contemplating the possibility of removing the hard drives and putting compact flash cards in. What applications do you run on the terminals? The room we're thinking of using has 24 workstations, and they run some 2D drawing programs, but nothing complex. How have you set up printing? Currently each row of machines has an A3 printer which is shared via the end station. If the machines were shared via a print server, would it be possible to have various machines only printing to certain printers? Thanks for your time.

Now that's exactly what I'm looking for! Cheers Ric. Now to create another thread on thin clients

I can always utilise the switch already in place for the class. It's just that I want to place something between that switch and the link back to the backbone. In an LTSP setup (like your Edubuntu server) that's all taken care of. I was just wondering if the same thing's possible in Server 2003.

I don't have access to the switches. I don't know if you saw my FFS thread, but the LEA won't be of any help. Each time we ask for something we're turned down. Maybe I'll try something like smoothwall...

How would I got about setting up Server 2003 to act as a gateway between a room of thin clients and the rest of the network? It's the default setup for LTSP but all the Windows solutions I've heard of broadcast the boot server details over the whole network. Unfortunately we can't do that, so we're restricted to a single room. I've looked at going down the Edubuntu route, but it's going to cause headaches from the number of applications that need to be run. Thoughts?

I had a copy of Trinity Rescue Kit on me so used the winpass tool on that. Worked a treat, but thanks for the suggestions. I'll definitely look into them for future reference!

Cheers for the response people! I've managed to clear the BIOS password by using a default one. went through a list of about ten of them before it worked. Now on to the password reset!

But there's no way to alter the boot priority in the BIOS because I can't get in there!

Here's the problem: I removed a machine from the domain in Active Directory so that I could reinstall Windows on it. It's at the other side of the school and is the only machine there, so I decided to be lazy and jump the gun. The trouble is, it turns out it doesn't need to be rebuilt, but I'm going to have to rejoin it. Here's where the trouble starts. The machine doesn't have the default local admin password. I can't log in as a domain admin because it's no longer on the domain (and I've not logged in before, so it's not cached). It then gets even better because it doesn't have the default bios password, and the company who built it have gone bust, so I can't phone them and ask for it. I've reset the BIOS, but it's built into the ROM. There's no way to boot from CD either, as it goes to the hard drive by default and I've tried the usual combinations of Esc/F2/F10/F12 to bring up a boot menu to no avail. Any thoughts?

Promethean boards used to have issues with the USB drivers being unsigned. If the teacher unplugged the board and put it into a different port then it'll try and use the default HID driver. And fail. Go into device manager and have a look to see if it's picked up as a Human Interface Device. If so, manually select the promethean driver. To be on the safe side I'd do this with every USB port on the computer.....

Well I have one teacher on board who popped in to my office this morning with a request. After a polite explanation of the system, along with good humour and my charming personality, she went back to her room and did just that. It seems a smile goes a long way.

I'm having a bitch of a time getting staff to use the helpdesk system we have in place in the school. It's not complex - all they need to login is their staff email address. There are only two fields, a summary and description. What methods have you used to get people to use such a system?

We're currently looking at thin client solutions at our school. A £35 terminal would be immensely attractive.

Never mind, it seems that HP lock the registers that allow you to enable AMD-V after boot. I guess they're basically stopping anyone using a beefy workstation to run VMs and forcing them to pay the extra for a 'proper' server. I think I'll put together my own test machine....

Would installing XenServer onto the machine solve the problem then? If it's available but not enabled, would Xen be able to switch it on?

You can create the OU wherever you like - it just makes it easier to manage if you place it somewhere that makes logical sense. Directly under the root would be fine though, yeah. Creating a test OU is a good idea, then when you confirm it as working you can link the GPO into the other OUs where you want it applied. You can put multiple installs under one GPO, but it's better practice to create a new one for each application - much easier to manage.

It won't ask you for the password if the user you're logged on as has a corresponding user on the other machine, both with identical passwords.