netadmin

Thanks for the tips so far. We don't have interactive whiteboards yet (just the projectors and basic wall screens), so we don't have licenses for ActivStudio software, unfortunately. I'll look into the Autoit script.

Some of our teachers have asked me for a computer application that will display a full screen clock (these computers are connected to a projector). I was able to write a PHP script to display what I need, but then I figured out if I could get this in a windows application (other than IE), I could setup the video card (Nvidia chipset) to only display the application on the second display, allowing the teacher to use their computer screen like normal, while the secondary video output (goes to the projector) displays the full screen clock. Attached is a basic screenshot of what I am trying to get the clock to look like in the end (picture it full screen, centered). Is anyone familiar with a freeware program that can do this, or do you have any other tips in creating a simple script to do this? Thanks!

I run two logon scripts. It is the only way I have found so far to always delete them. See attached files. delete ms doc writer.txt delete ms xps doc writer.txt

I redirect all folders except the programs folder. I have folder shortcuts for commonly used applications above the all programs link (See attached screenshot), and use the program folder only for locally installed applications (like Photoshop). I have one start menu for students, one for staff, one for school administrators, then a fourth one for computer administrators. The screenshot shown is the computer administrators start menu. OK, the script should be attached in text format. Just save it as a vbscript and it should run. You may have to modify the list of folders to delete, depending on which applications you have installed on your system. Right now, I run this script nightly as a scheduled task. I had it as a logon script, but moved it to a nightly scheduled task to speed up the logon process a little. cleanprograms.txt

I use redirected start menus. It seems to work well. To get rid of system tools and accessories folders, I use a vbscript to delete these folders. If you want this vbscript, let me know. The teachers needed a few shortcuts that got deleted, so I simply added the shortcuts back to the redirected start menu for teachers.

Thank you, FN-Greatermanchester. That was very helpful! I'll start working on this next week. I'll post back if I run into problems. Thanks again!

I have a Windows 2003 Standard domain controller that I need to replace soon. The current DC runs the following services: -Active Directory -DNS -DHCP -VPN What is the easiest way to migrate to the new server with little network downtime? I was thinking about adding the new server to active directory as a member server. From what I have read, this should migrate user and computer accounts. After that point, I am lost. Thank you for any advice!

I had this exact problem recently on a number of machines. For me, it was a DNS issue--for some reason, the computers had a bad DHCP address which did not point to the DC DNS server. A simple release renew of the ip address solved the issue for me (except for one machine that had to be rejoined to the domain for unknown reasons). Have you tried ipconfig/ release and ipconfig/ renew yet?

OK, it makes sense now. Thanks for the help!

Yes, this is exactly why I was confused! If anyone knows which package on the nagiosexchange website is the correct one, or if anyone has a newer URL to use, please let me know. This would be a huge help!

I was reading the Edugeek wiki, trying to get Nagios windows client setup. I was a little confused on the following section: "Download the latest version of the plugins from http://nagiospluginsnt.getproactivenow.com/download/releases/ - make sure you get the 'bin' version " Are there specific plugins that are required for the windows client? Thanks (I am new to Nagios).

Yes, the motherboard with the P4 is almost exactly the same as the motherboard with the Celeron. Thanks for your help! I'll try to image to the P4 this week.

Norphy, that makes sense. Thank you! I do have a few Acers (same series) with a Pentium 4 processor instead of the Celeron. Do you think I will be able to use this uniprocessor image on those systems also?

We have a number of Acer desktop computers on our network, all with Celeron D processors. The OEM Acer image shows the ACPI Multiprocessor computer type. However, on one machine, Windows XP crashed and needed a reinstall. I decided it was time to make a new image and used our XP Volume License media to install. Once XP was installed, it showed the ACPI Uniprocessor computer type. Will this have any major performance issues? If so, any ideas on how to correct this? Thanks.

FreeNAS works decently well for storage. I belive it can do raid. I know it can be accessed as a standard share.

We use PDFCreator now. We used to use Primo PDF, but it started having ads in the free version, so I tried PDFCreator. It seems to produce better quality PDFs than Primo PDF, in my opinion.

Screenhunter is a free program that takes screenshots. The following page has a list of command line switches that are supported by the program. This sounds like it might be what you are looking for. http://wisdom-soft.com/kb/faq_sh.htm

Thanks, limbo. That would be great. I will send you a PM next week.

I use psPrint as a logon script. It works great, it auto installs printers depending on the machine name, and even sets the default printer.

I had a similar issue, but never found out what caused it. The solution that worked for me was to "Revert to last known good configuration." It lost a few setting changes, but worked just fine.

Thanks for all the help so far. I am not really needing a front end or any reporting tools for this system. I am wanting to use mySQL because I am wanting to copy the user data from our online portal system to Active Directory. This online portal system runs on mySQL. I know LDAP would be better, but I'm still hoping this will work. Limbo, that system sounds almost exactly like what I was thinking of. It sounds amazing! I'm sure the automated system does save a lot of time during the summer. Is there any chance you might be able to email me some code samples from this VB app? I am just getting started with VB...

Does anyone know of a way to update Active Directory user information (name, username, password) with data from a mySQL table? My future goal is to have Active Directory automatically synchronize with mySQL (which is located on a remote server) once per day, during the night. I hope to set it up so that if the user exists in mySQL but not in Active Directory, it will add the user to Active Directory. If the user already exists, it will update the fields in Active Directory with the data from mySQL. Are there any free scripts that do this? If not, does anyone have any tips on how to start writing a script like this? Thanks.

That was the only Vista machine we had. I ended up just reinstalling Windows XP this past weekend. It now works perfectly.

I had forgotten to mention, that when I installed the new VMWare image, it defaulted to using two virtual network cards. I have configured one network card to be a static IP (192.168.2.2). By typing this address in the browser, I can successfully access the web config pages for Smoothwall. I have configured the other network card to be DHCP. My router registers this "computer" separately from my physical machine and gives it a valid IP address. When I set it to be DHCP, it removed the option to set DNS. I was hoping that Smoothwall might be able to work with the two virtual network cards. Do you think this will work? Does anyone have any tips on reconfiguring the network cards? If it helps, I also noticed that with the new version of Smoothwall, unless I have a remote proxy defined in the config, when I try to access a page (like Google), the browser takes about 30 seconds to load a Squid style error message. The error code is timeout. Thanks for your help.

OK. I installed the 3.0 VMWare image. It runs much faster, but is still having the same error. I'm guessing some network setting in either Smootwall or VMWare is incorrect. Any thoughts?