Bev

Currently, our staff laptops are all protected by Symantec Anti-Virus. It's 'Client Security' but they are unmanaged clients and pick up liveupdates daily. We seem to pick up lots of Malware - particularly fake 'Antivirus' programs. Todays is 'XP Antispyware' but I've seen many varients. I can generally clean them up with Malware Bytes, but I'm wondering why Symantec lets them through, and if it's worth buying MalwareBytes Pro to try and prevent them getting infecting? I must get 1 or 2 a month and we are only a very small school. The machines which stay in school seem to be ok, so I presume the council's firewall blocks them but when they go home, they are getting through.

I get to go on loads. Have been to Paris for a week twice, and last Friday I spent the day at Beamish. As I don't need to be replaced with supply, I am considered a cheap option to send on trips so get asked quite often.

For future reference, safeshare is quite handy, you can put in the youtube URL and it will give you an unblocked version. It works about half the time.

I use a Powerpoint presentation, and some free software called 'ShowPoint', after looking at numerous complicated solutions this was really easy and cheap. i am sure i picked it up from a thread on here.

Thanks for all teh suggestions. I am about to leave for Easter break, so I will be revisiting this in 2 weeks. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of it then thanks agani

OK, I tried safe mode and got a message 'failed to open wave device', and then it ran apparantly ok.

It does happen everytime, although I haven't tried safe mode - I will give that a go.

I am at a copmlete loss as to what is happening here. I've got RM Maths installed on a stand-alone PC, it picks up the database from a shared drive on the server. It has been worknig but then it started causing the machine to reboot when you run it - by which I mean you click the icon and the screen goes black and then you get the Acer startup screen. I removed the software, reinstalled it and it ran fine. Rebooted the machine and we are back to the reboot situation. i don't even know what could cause hte machine to reboot. There are a couple of strange errors in the log, but they don't seem to occur at the same time as the crash, so not sure if relevant or not. Error code 1000007f, parameter1 00000008, parameter2 80042000, parameter3 00000000, parameter4 00000000. Windows saved user SUPPORT-WALL\Support Room registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use. This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.

Well Stone have finally delivered, just 6 weeks after I placed the order. To be honest, I was starting to hope they wouldn't so that I could start afresh with another supplier.

yes, that's the same guy I deal with. Small world! I've just had an email from Stone to say my machines will arrive on Monday. This is the 4th or 5th time that has been promised, so I will see if they do arrive or not. If not, I am cancelling and looking elsewhere.

Stone supplied our IT suite (before I worked here), and there after sales service is pretty good. If I have a problem they are normally out the following day. However, I am not impressed with their sales service, they are the recommended supplier but they have been fobbing me off about a delivery since half term. I am also in Newcastle (well, N. Tyneside), I wonder if we have the same PCWB account rep? He was much easier to deal with.

Our LEA are still using Windows XP. I don't think I am obliged to use what they say, but it seems to be strongly encouraged. When I first encountered this issue, their advice was to use Stone.

I am more than capable, but I need a license and I prefer to use the XP disk supplied by the manufacturer. I used to buy Toshiba laptops which came with Vista installed but they had an XP disk in the box. I don't know the legal or technical ramifications of using the Toshiba disk to install XP on HP desktops that came with Windows 7?

I was using PCWB, who contrary to all the bad press, were brilliant, good prices and very quick delivery. However, they can no longer offer me a desktop with XP. The LEA recommended we use Stone, and I placed an order with them on 28th Jan, but there is no sign of the machines ever arriving and I'm getting sick of waiting now. Do you know anywhere else do XP Desktops? I only need 5 or 6 for teachers to use to run smartboards.

I've downloaded Visual Studio Express - the deciding factors being: it's free and I've found a step by step 'getting started' tutorial here

So are you suggesting I set up the database, stick that on the server, and then stick a local copy of the application on each machine? I didn't realise you could do that, but that makes sense.

It may be that Access is the best option? I have used it for stand alone applications quite often and it's worked well, but wasn't so sure about something that worked across the network. The one advantage Access does have, is that I know how to access it. If you use mysql what do you use for a development environment. (

I need to set up a small database to monitor student behaviour. I can do this in Access, but I'd prefer something different as Access is a little clunky, and I'd like the opportunity to try something new. Any suggestions for a platform that would be suitable for this? I am quite comfortable with coding and designing a database, but am completely out of the loop as regards current languages (I was a mainframe programmer for many years - the concepts don't change but the technology certainly has!)

We are a small school, with one ICT suite and one ICT Technician/Network Manager (ie me). My Office is adjacent to the Suite, (as it is infact the classroom cupboard) so whilst I am not in lessons, I am always immediately available. I do find that different members of staff view my role in different ways, and the head of ICT would like me to spend more of my time in ICT lessons, but it really isn't the best use of my time.

We use HomeContact. When I looked into it it was the most reasonably priced, and it's very easy to use. It doesn't have any bells or whistles, but we can send texts and emails quite easily. Our LEA are pushing us to use SchoolComms but we are already established with HomeContact and can't see any reason to change at the moment.

We have some like this http://hillscomponents.com/pics/wo1704949.jpg from Ash distribution. They have lasted a bit better than the previous lot but we have still lost about 25% of them. I would love to ask students to provide their own, but the IT teacher is not happy with that option.

Thank you! It sounds like a little light reading is in order

I just added teacher name to the marksheet - not clever but it does the trick.

I use AM for all our data tracking and reporting and am pretty comfortable with most aspects, but haven't ventured into the analsyis side of things at all. I've been asked to create a graph for each child, which will show their expected 'flight path' and their actual progress. So, based on KS1, QCA3, QCA 4 data we would predict KS2 SATs and QCA 7/8 results and plot actual results against this. (we are a middle school Y5-8). I think I need to use trend and/or progression lines for this, but I can't find any documentation and when I've just experimented with is, I am getting results for the entire year group rather than for an individual child. I have looked at SupportNet but I didn't see anything. Can anyone point me in the direction of documentation, or suggest which feature I need to look at within SIMS. Thanks Bev

The kids think it's very humourous to leave the screens upside down, I know it's Cntl-Alt-Arrow Key to do it, but it only seems to work when logged in, which is hard to do when the screen is upside down, although I am getting quite adept at using the mouse upside down Is there any way to block this 'feature', I am using ranger if that helps thanks bev