jamesfed

I used to use *.internal...sch.uk for our internal only DNS, easily possible to setup as others have said above just by putting the records in on your DNS server.

Just further to previous my file structure looks like this- \\UNC Path\GPO-MSI \Java \v7-u17 \v7-u23 \Flash \v11-6 \v11-7 and so on...

Yep same process to upgrade - the GPMC should pick it up as a newer version and when you look in the 'Upgrades' tab the previous version should be listed there. I just leave the old files still in place (along with the old version) that way if for whatever odd reason you need to revert back (and believe me on occasion you will) its there and ready to go.

The Java installer will overwrite any previous updates of the same version number (e.g. v7 Update 17 will get rid of v7 Update 15) however I'm afraid I've never looked into doing something where you get rid of say Java v6.

I found these sites very useful when setting up DA in 2012- The F5 Guy » Direct Access – Corrupt NRPT Fix 'Real World' Direct Access installation using Windows Server 2012 - Canberra Premier Field Engineering: Team Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs UAG DirectAccess: Network Location Server (NLS) | Concurrency, Inc. Its an Amazing bit of kit and well worth the time putting it in place!

and for anyone who has ever gone and used a server path when they should have used a DFS path...Changing the path to a MSI in Group Policy Software Installation | my world of IT

Thought I would leave us all with something nice for the weekend, as some may know I started at a new place last month and the first thing that I thought was 'wow time to do some plugin upgrades'. This time I decided to make guides as I went along so below are the links to deploy Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash and Java in a nice 'clean' way with no unneeded shortcuts and no auto update prompts. Deploying Adobe Reader 11 to the Enterprise via GPO | my world of IT Deploying Flash 11 to the Enterprise via GPO | my world of IT Deploying Java 7 to the Enterprise via GPO | my world of IT Hope this helps someone!

Surface with Windows RT if she can run things through the Remote Desktop Portal or a Surface Pro when it comes out. Go with type cover instead of touch cover if its going to be used regularly.

Just as an update to this in the end I found another build of APC that worked in my enviroment (I'm afraid I've already lost the URL I got it from). I would imagine that the normal builds will work fine for most but given the slightly odd enviroment (Apache on Windows) I guess thats why I was having issues. Either way I can't wait for the summer and the new build IIS server!

Well it looks like my old job is being advertised again after some no shows last time round (big shame because its an AMAZING place to work) and the details are now up here- Current vacancies Pay scale is £19,621 - £24,646 and a new starter can begin right away. Plainly and simply Fitzharrys has, RDS, Remote Working Systems (proper remote working through Direct Access/VPN no VLE rubbish), Thin Client tech, Lync 2010 for VoIP/IM, Windows 7 almost site wide (RDS is filling in the gaps), SharePoint 2013, Hyper-V and lots more! Just like last time - RM won't help you here!

USB Network adapter with the driver for it in your boot image does the trick in most cases with ultrabooks/tablets without a LAN port.

I fail to see why it would be a problem? All you do is turn off secure boot in the UEFI setup....

I saw a BBC thingy a while back about the whole 'do not use anything during take off/landing' and they deduced that mobile devices couldn't kick out enough of anything to interfere with cockpit equipment. The thing that they did say though (and I agree) that the take off/landing is when the plane is at its most venerable and if something were to go wrong surely the passengers should be ready to react and not fiddling with their mobiles/headsets.

I fly up to Newcastle each month with my Surface RT and Xbox 360 controller out playing hydro thunder on the plane (flight mode on and everything away during take off and landing) with no issues

Every PC that runs Windows will be x86 because thats the instruction set a PC uses, you want to see if a PC is x86-32 or x86-64. Now if you ran the same test on a Windows RT tablet you would find its ARM-32...

Sounds like you are after something that will play Crysis 3 but only have the budget to buy something that will play the first age of empires. All the same you need to think about spending something closer to £350-£450 if you want anything half decent that will last and meet the video editing requirements.

All the same its an attack vector...might as well close off as many of the vectors as possible, just because its the boot process it doesn't mean that it can't be a route to turn your PC into part of a botnet. Either way the argument is null and void - just turn off secure boot

You might expect though that users who know how to downgrade their OS to something else would be tech savvy enough to turn off something that's pretty easy in UEFI. Secure boot makes things safer by making sure that no malware interferes with the boot process.

A few clicks in the UEFI settings on most PCs? what on earth are they on about!

Just out of intrest what if you use a UNC path instead of a network drive path?

Maybe set your servers as a intranet Zone? Although not the same we had something that sounds similar when we put in place DFS - Files in DFS FQDN paths open with security warning | my world of IT

While not a fix to your particular situation I do think the term 'SSO' (single sign on) should be supplemented by SISO (single instance sign on) whereby the user only has to login once to access a range of services and where SSO just makes sure you don't have to remember multiple usernames/password for different services.

If you need more than WDS and don't want to fork out for System Centre Config Manager the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit is pretty darn good. You feed it your pre sysprepped image and it then carrys out a 'Task Sequence' which adds the required drivers for the PC you are imaging (no need to look after separate images for different hardware) and can also install applications once the PC is imaged which helps with the AV products out there which don't like sysprep.

We had a go at a MX90 at my old place and after just 30 minutes of using it decided it would be our firewall/filter for the future (not buying until at least 6 months later though) - such a wonderfully simple interface and quite intuitive to use with lots of cool features (traffic shaping and Layer 7 filtering). I think a MX90 might be a bit overkill for a primary (we were looking at the MX80) but it’s worth getting a loan.

One note on my Windows Phone, Surface and SkyDrive web app works just fine for me