tigerstar

Thanks. I assume that's only in Salamander Integration Suite - we already use the free Salamander utility for SDS, but if we need the Integration Suite to do it, then that's what I'll report back to SMT.

I've had a request from SMT to have distribution groups in 365 so that if staff need to email the teachers for a particular student (if they're absent and need work setting, etc.), it goes only to those teachers instead of just using the "All Staff" or "All Teachers" distribution groups. We currently use SDS to create groups for classes, but this is going the "other way" - take a student, find all the people who teach them, then create a distribution list containing all those people. Obviously this would need to be automated as much as possible, ideally pulling its data from SIMS or deriving it from the SDS data in some way. Any ideas?

Graphics driver issue is the usual suspect here - PowerPoint uses graphics acceleration for slideshow and editing, and on some devices it can act weirdly. Try disabling it in Options > Advanced > Display > Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration. If this causes the problem to go away, try updating/changing the graphics driver and re-enabling.

Yes, provided you set up HTTPS inspection (Google sites all default to HTTPS nowadays). It should also flag up safeguarding alerts if those are set up.

Hi all, I'm trying to find a suitable piece of remote desktop/VNC software that we can use to allow a visually-impaired student to view the teacher workstation on their own laptop (a domain-joined laptop). Ideally free, or at least pretty cheap. I've been through several different packages but nothing is fitting the bill quite right. Ease of use is the main priority here. All the VNC programs I'm familiar with require entering the host name manually, or finding it on a list of machines; what would be better is if the student just sees "Room 1" "Room 12" or whatever. Data protection is also a major concern - we need it so staff can see when someone is connected (or ideally have to give explicit permission to connect), and freeze/pause/stop the session easily if they need to do something that requires privacy (e.g. taking the register, reading an email). I've tried out several web-based VNC programs; the free version of ThinVNC is too basic. The commercial offshoot of it (Thinfinity Remote Desktop) looked like it had promise (you could even block certain programs from being shown, while keeping the rest of the screen visible), but today I discovered it has a serious security flaw, so that's off the table for now. Screentask is okay, if a bit basic, but requires elevated privileges for non-admin users to run. Any suggestions?

Yes, we've been testing it out. The improved Group Policies for Edge (like being able to set the default search engine) are a real boon.

Yep. All settings in Computer Config > Policies > Adm. Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update Configure Automatic Updates - Enabled, and in options choose 4 (Auto download and schedule), and set the scheduled install day to 0 (every day), and the time as desired. Specify intranet Microsoft update service location - Enabled, set to the location of your WSUS server, obviously. Allow non-administrators to receive update notifications - Enabled. I also like to enable "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates", as that avoids the forced auto-restart dialogue that can be inconvenient for the users, and "Allow Automatic Updates immediate installation", as that automatically installs any updates that don't require a restart immediately.

Are you deploying lots of clients at once? Unless you're using multicasting, every additional client you deploy simultaneously will slow down the others because they're all trying to fetch the image independently (e.g. 20 clients deploying a 20GB image will be 400GB, and if there's a 100Mbps link somewhere between your WDS server and wherever you're deploying the clients, you're looking at a transfer time of 10 hours or more). I had this problem deploying Windows 7 in an external building last year - while all the switches in our main building and server room are Gigabit, the older gear in the outlying areas was just daisy-chained at 100Mbps, introducing a severe bottleneck and meaning I could only deploy 5 or so clients at once else everything slowed to a crawl. To make things go faster, you've got a few choices: * Set up a multicast transmission (done via the WDS server console). * Deploy only a few clients at once in batches. Slower, but at least you're not waiting overnight for everything to finish. * Ensure your WDS server and clients are only connected via Gigabit ethernet or faster.

Have a look in the driver options and see if it has a "mopier" (no, that's not a typo) option enabled. I've had this happen a number of times, mostly with HP printers - it's intended for printers that have hard disks installed - and turning off mopier mode has always fixed it. Admittedly it was doing it to all users, not just non-admins, but that'd be where I'd start looking.

Insight (uk.insight.com) carries a wide range of APC battery cartridges. It's where we buy ours from, and we've had no problems.

Are you opening them from a network share (i.e. a mapped network drive or UNC path), or from a web server? If it's the former, make sure you've got "Allow active content to run in files on My Computer" enabled (Internet Options > Advanced > Security). If it's the latter, try adding the web server's address to the Trusted Sites zone.

Honestly that looks more like the results of a corrupted FAT than a trojan to me. It could be from the ill-timed removal of the drive while the FAT was being written (rare, but I've seen it happen), or the drive itself dying. You might be able to get some stuff back with Testdisk or your file recovery program of choice. I'd also suggest drilling the staff not to use USB drives as their sole storage medium - I've seen so many lose their only copy of their work to corrupted flash memory, snapped connectors and washing machines. They're great for storage and transport, but reliable they ain't.

It should generate a random key and display it on the computer in the Bluetooth wizard when you try and pair the devices. This is assuming you're on Windows 7, of course.

It's not possible even with a VPN in this scenario, because SBS doesn't support domain trusts.

A computer can't be a member of two different, unrelated domains. Joining a different domain revokes its access to the old one.

You'll want to be in the user section of a GPO that applies only to staff users. Sites are added to zones in User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page > Site to Zone Assignment List. Add the domains you want to the list with a value of "2" to specify the Trusted Sites Zone. The policy to always allow ActiveX controls in the Trusted zone is in: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page > Trusted Sites Zone > Download signed ActiveX controls You may also need to enable: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page > Trusted Sites Zone > Download unsigned ActiveX controls

You mean to avoid the old yellow "Allow this ActiveX control" bar in IE? Just add the site to the Trusted zone (and have the Trusted zone set to allow ActiveX controls) in the staff GPO.

Obvious question, but have you tried disconnecting the mouse and keyboard. All it takes is a little jitter from a cheap or malfunctioning mouse, for example, to prevent screensavers, sleep mode, etc. kicking in.

VideoPad is decent, if a bit of a pain to install and configure on a school network. It doesn't make it clear the version you install is a trial, and then starts popping up nag dialogues after 14 days unless you go into Add/Remove Programs and downgrade it to the free version after installation. It supports a wide range of codecs and formats for input and output, but these need to be individually downloaded and installed (from NCH Software Components Download) separately, otherwise it'll ask the user to do it when they try and import or export in a particular format. It also sprays a bunch of useless links over the Start menu, makes itself the default program for opening a huge range of file extensions (including .wmv, .avi, .mp4 and more), and unless you do a bit registry jiggery-pokery it opens up the website with adverts for their other products after exiting following its first use. Once you wrestle it into behaving itself though, it's a very good program.

Have you made sure you've added the inetres.adm template to the GPO? Also, make sure it's an up-to-date version, as the InPrivate settings only apply from IE8 onwards. I know 2008 R2 ships with IE8 installed already, but if your GPOs were created on older versions of Server you might still be using an outdated template.

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > InPrivate > Turn off InPrivate Browsing

Skipped right over it, for the most part. "Down"graded to XP on any new machines that came with it at the time. Our techs and I had it on our machines for a while but jumped ship for 7 pretty much at RTM time.

Smoothwall does do caching, but it's very basic - Guardian 2 had a "do not cache" list and that was it, and as far as I can tell this is gone in Guardian 3 (it still caches, but there are no manual controls). We used to have a Cachepilot appliance, which had a very fine degree of control - you could pre-cache sites to a schedule, for instance - but it was retired when we moved to Smoothwall.

I've done that with a number of things - running plasma displays, home server, etc. - and no problems.

The lowest-tech fix I've ever performed is to move a book an inch to the left. Got a call complaining about menus and dialogue boxes closing almost as soon as clicked on, and when I arrived the teacher had their desk piled with papers and other clutter, with a book resting on the escape key. I only fell for that one once - I've "fixed" the same problem on the phone a dozen or more times since.