monkey_boy

No we don't! 1 hour per school per week, for 46 weeks per year is a whole week and a bit at each school! what do mean you haven't got all the systems tip-top and ship-shape by easter? it's just not good enough!

Try and identify whether it is time based or action based. This would give you a better indication towards either bad hardware or a heat issue. If its a heat problem then in theory the time between reboots should get shorter each time, because the processor won't cool down enough. If it's action based look for what causes it to reboot. If it's a RAM problem, you might get a blue screen flash up that says memory dump for instance. If it's graphics RAM, the screen might not redraw correctly just before it dies, or it could be none of the above and we'll have to keep guessing! But look out for the smaller details is what i'm saying I guess.

As above, STP is the key to what you want. Look at the HP ProCurve 2650. It has 2 uplink ports to daisy-chain switches, and both ports have the option of using either copper or fibre. The console is okay and will tell you what you want to know. And they come wih a lifetime warranty.

Hmm, the dell utility seems to everything that net stumbler does, but i cant lock on to an individual ap and give it a thorough testing, using either. Has anybody got any experience of AutoCell from Propagate Networks? We have the firmware installed and working, but the viewing/managing app costs £300!!

As per the title really... How can/should it be done. Are there any tools out there that can connect to an individual access point and then test it thoroughly? We're using Netgear WG302s all over the site, and there's normally 3 within reach of any classroom. Any ideas??

My gripe isn't with the client software but the console - just for clarity...

The idea is good and when everything works, its a really useful tool. Currently waiting for the next software update though. The weblog feature isn't working at the min, even though it was before :S. The custom reports feature is poor too. I think the company is fairly young and new, and what they've come up with so far is a good concept with a few bugs, and the support is very good, so we'll be hanging on to it for a while yet.

I'll vouch for the HP LJ1010!

We have a 10 meg line. And in fairness, it's very good- I have 10 meg at home and can *never* reap the full benefits because of contention at the exchange and at the ISP. Even so, i don't believe the contention even at peak times amounts to the same reduction in service as 600 people all using the 10 meg uncontended line at our place. Considering the massive push on e-learning and intergrating the web in all its various forms into education, 10 meg is pants. Having said that, 2 meg is 5 times worse! so i'll stop whinging!!

White inside??? Is that a good suprise?? RACIST!!!! :P

If we enforced licences and there weren't enough to cover everyone that needed one, all we'd get from The Management is "Make it work". in which case we'd just unplug the licence enforcing software, and we're back to square one. If you've made your superiors aware of what ought to be done in regards to licences and they blance the pros vs cons and decide not to act why must you do all you can to bend them over a barrel and force them to spend money they may not have on licences?

Ok that's all well and good, but why?

It must be possible to supply machines with either no software or no-cost software. http://www.overclockers.co.uk do it, although they're not really the education supplier type.

Ghost the whole drive, and when you restore the image you can set the partition sizes there. You could have it done easily in under an hour.

I saw in a thread earlier (I forget now, which one it was) that said you can send out a default user profile by putting a known good one in the netlogon folder. What I would like to do, is to be able to set which PCs pick up a certain default user profile so that the printer settings for each room can be defined, and subsequently changed remotely. Is this possible, and how??? Cheers, MB

We use bromcom quite successfully, using WinFolder and WinFolderPK. We don't get many techinical problems with it, but i understand from the data admin people that it leaves a lot to be desired. Also, the customer service isn't great. We stuck with it because we had their 2g wnet wireless version and were familiar with it, but i think the SIMS system is definitly worth a look. especially if you're using a few other modules in SIMS.

We use Netgear. I'd reccommend them.

They are an excellent company. I'd really reccommend them. Excellent PC prices, with good, long warranties. They will come out and replace components quickly and without fuss and they will even give you the option of sending the parts out for you to fit if you prefer. The sales staff are okay for sales people, but the real quality lies with the speed of service, quality and speed of support and the fact that the people you deal with are good, chatty, knowledgable people. We've been using them for over 4 summers now (when we do our big buys), and we've only had one problem i can remember, which was fully resolved within a week. MB

We have had people using various helpful utilities for their wireless at home, but once we disable it and set up the wireless profiles in windows (XP SP2) then we don't tend to get many problems. Not a direct response to the OP but we tend to just show them how to turn the proxy on and off, and tell them they need to turn in back on when they get to school, or the internet won't work. MB

Hi, It's a shame this is my first post, but I thought it'd be a shame to let it slide by... We started using D Link equipment a few years ago (4-5). Just over 3 years ago we 33 out 75 PCMCIA a/b standard cards that were faulty. Not broken, by abuse/misuse, but definitly faulty. Some would disconnect and reconnect intermitently and others would faintly light up their LEDs but wouldn't fully power up and couldn't be recognised by windows. We were also using D Link Access points around the site, and a similar percentage of those developed faults. Some of them could be temporarily be fixed (2-3 days) by a reset, and others just died. Around half of the faulty equipment was still under warranty, and so I was tasked with getting them replaced under warranty. Getting them to even be looked at or even acknowledged was a challenge to say the least. I would spend literally 40 minutes at a time on hold, and normally got through to someone who's english was a *very* weak second language. By and large the accents of the people i was getting through to were German. And these guys were the absolute opposite of helpful. They insisted on logging a new call for each item, as in hanging up, and ringing back. I fell for it a couple of times, and after waiting the obligatory 40 mins, i would get through and they would say that there was already a call logged and when i explained the situation i was repeatedly told that the call had already been logged. I was given false numbers to call to get things escalated, they wouldn't give their names or they gave fake names, they wouldn't even pass me to a supervisor. The service i received was abismal to say the least. The equipment was... abismal... to say the least. Foolishly about 6 months later i bought a consumer wireless kit for home, made by D Link that was on offer at PC World at the time. 3 Months later the very same happened to both pieces of equipment. Fortunatly PC World took it back, so i didn't have to battle with D Link direct. I can't think of any manufacturer off the top of my head that i would reccommend LESS than D Link. I can safely say that they will never be on my networks again, and that I will try my best to dissuade anyone (unless i dislike them intensly) from buying anything from them. Anyway, sorry to get off on a negative on the site. I'm sure my future posts will be more positive! MB