RSoP_Robbers

Hi Snuffkins, It's been fab! I did jump in with both feet and investigate how some other people have been running a project similar to ours but we've all shared feedback in the end. Great site, great ideas and great folk! :-) @Danielle FUP = Fair Usage Policy AUP = Acceptable Use Policy

Vyvyan perhaps? Corn... FLAKES!

That's the only problem that we have. We've moved from two separate IT departments into a single and since having a brand new set of images last summer, a lot of changes took place (oh joy!) which require a lot of specific updates and hotfixes for certain packages and programs to work which obviously were not included in the images. We'd have to wait a couple of days for WSUS to distro the updates or move the computer to a different OU to disable the auto install at a specific time setting to install when I say so, to then log in, install the updates over several reboots to then move it back. By which time, it would have been quicker to log on and run Windows Update several times..... We have a lot of projects that we want to get up and running so at the moment, we are redesigning the deployment system as well as analysing what is required for the next set of images. This for us is an interim solution.

Wahoooop! Acceptance! Haha! Hi! :-) I shall upload my Fair Usage Policy and Health Warning later!

Most of the hotfixes tend to have the same wrapper. I think the page that you supplied is out of date however, the program in that page looks rather handy! In our scenario, if a workstation is down in a classroom, we try to re-image it as soon as possible to reduce the effect on teachy and learny. The one problem with this obviously is "busy fingers". We have a couple of batch scripts that have a little bit of detection in the event that the script has already run etc and also in the event that a student presses the reset button. It appears that program has a better grasp of that scenario but also has a mahoosive screen telling people to keep their fingers in their pockets, relaxing and watch the blinking lights. I think I'm going to take another look at things tomorrow now. I shall keep reporting back!

It would mean a little more manual work or use of the Concatenate feature in Excel but if you went onto the Microsoft Catalog (The web based directory version of Windows Update), you could download all of the updates that you want to a network share. Although it may not work for all, you can extract each of the .exe update files into the expanded packages. From there, you could run the updates that you want for each of the machines in a script, (perhaps run from your sysprep config or Group Policy - depending which you have access to) along with command line switches to accept the EULA. Again, not all updates allow the acceptance of the EULA. I do also think that some of the newer updates actually allow silent install in the compressed form. I'm currently doing the same at the moment so I'll share some ideas or samples if you like.

Do you have a managed service or is it an in hour affair? If you have a service contract etc, I would perhaps get the company in to take a look. It sounds like a DNS configuration issue however, once that is fixed, repairing the replication can be a nightmare. I'm guessing you are seriously suffering with group policy issues? I would do as Galway has suggested and get as much information as possible before you try anything!

Hi all, Sorry for a belated hi! - I joined and was a little off colour amongst a busy time at work. I'm Rob or as my geek crew call me RSoP for reasons to be explained at some other time! I'm Network Co-Ordinator at a school in Conisbrough, outer Doncaster which has recently become an Academy. I love my job and even missed the Muse home coming gig at Teignmouth last year to build a new network for us..... But that shall be fixed this September........ So yes, I'm a complete geek and have posters in the office to prove it..... I'm also the annoying person that went to the Frog stand at BETT in my Frog hoodie...... The looks that I got were priceless! So, erm, hi everyone! :-)

Belated Hello to all! Job Title: Network Co-Ordinator School Type: Secondary (Soon 6th Form) - One of a family of schools - SPT School Size: Lots of people for such a small building Network Type: New vanilla network W2K8 SRV (Built by us) SIMS MIS, Frog VLE, Linksys L2 Council Managed Switches. Soon to be proud members of Live@Edu.

Hi armadillo, I think that the consultant has made quite a bold statement there however, he could be correct if users just logged in and didn't launch any programs or at worst, Calculator / Internet Explorer. (Just don't set Calculator to scientific mode ) What spec is the TS server? I've been testing a TS Farm with Windows 2008 Server on Quad Core classroom machines with 2Gig of RAM and to be honest, with the optimisations and changes to Terminal Services, it's quite nippy! I'm making some changes following some of the tests that I've done but I have intentions of getting an ICT class to try it out and put some load on it for the acid test. I'm a little on the fence with that statement though......... Is the server 32 or 64bit?

Thats great news Pete! Sadly, I still have a week or so to wait for a chap at our LEA to return to wait a few more weeks for some final decisions to be made....

I can also say its one hell of a game! Hoping that some downloadable content comes rather quickly to keep the story alive! I can't wait forever!

My first question is how bothered can ISP's be? Just because what their customers may be using their connection for may not be legal, the customer is still paying the ISP x amount on a monthly or quarterly basis. Say the user goes a little nuts one month, that could mean that the ISP makes an extra £5 a month for going over their cap. How far do / can ISP's follow trails? No matter what anyone does, there IS a trail left behind. ISPs obviously monitor their customers usage in order to throttle bandwidth for certain users according to their usage patterns or alternatively place port restrictions to encourage users to stay within their FUP.... Again, I have noticed that FUP tends to be used more than T&C / contracts of late. So that's great! ISP's can slow the speed at which customers illegally download. If a user is uncloaked, they can also do what they perhaps hate the most and cancel their contract or begin a ban. So say a customer uses a VPN connection of some description. What happens then? The ISP can see the customer is using a VPN connection, has a high data throughput on this connection, can throttle their connection so the download is even slower but they can't legally see anything due to encryption other than the endpoint to which the customer is connected. So what happens now? Do they break the law to uphold the law? In fact, whilst on the subject of VPNs or more specifically, encryption, what would any of this matter anyway if everything is to be encrypted? I'm also sure that I heard something when 21CN was first announced about the transports to be used and how the legal agencies would have large issues monitoring lines for suspicious activities and ensure country wide security? No matter what, innocent people are going to end up getting hurt with this one way or another! We need a law givvar! Bring in Judge Dread! *Facepalm*

Hiya guys! It's my week off and I've still ended up with support calls and couldn't stay away from here! What can I say! Our provider is YHGFL and to be honest, it has been like pulling teeth! We have everything sat waiting to run as a pilot but YHGFL insist that this is a mass security breach. On the flip side, the level of web filtering that we have to go to is ridiculous as everything comes through YHGFL so "security" was not a sensible excuse to use...... So, still waiting to get this working sadly! :-( I've set this up with someone at another site who is sending me hardware performance stats based on usage so I can see what our overall hardware requirements will be on our site according to our user base. Just trying to keep it alive really! The current plan running around my head is try and get some terminals and plonk them around the site for use in classrooms where basic word processing or internet access is required. Good work though Albert! Good luck Pete! I know how you feel!

Hi! Have you made any progress on this matter? I have currently got a project on the go which works in the sand box environment. We are simply waiting for clearance / go ahead for the project to go life as well as final tests / preparations.

Got to agree with Matt40k. I tried the early beta of 7 with it and UAC was a little iffy (This was before any SIMS support for W7 (to my knowledge anyway with it being a beta - I could be wrong!) ). I am not sure if I was connected to the domain or not at the time. I shall check my notes!

Could someone please direct me to the thread where I can be correctly tutored in regaining some normality? 55.02959% - Extreme Geek

Thanks for the replies guys! I shall find out about the updated AD provisioning route as ideally we would have to use the official software but I don't see why the command reporter tool can't be used meanwhile.... I'll take a look at that tomorrow! :-) Thanks guys! :-)

Hi guys, I don't mean to steal the thread! I made my own .Net app to create Active Directory user accounts from data exported from SIMS. It works great and I have had no problems besides fine tweaking. The thing is, it requires human intervention.... Now, I don't mind doing it and to be honest, sometimes I will make user accounts manually rather than exporting a single user however, I was hoping to improve the consistency and also cover all eventualities for example, I am off site or busy. I was hoping with SIMS being the "leading" (Hides for cover!) MIS, there was some tool for this. I have heard about an Active Directory Provisioning tool and believe that I have seen an installation file in the "setups" directory however have left it as I am not the SIMS System Manager, I'm not overly savvy with SIMS and I was hoping to read up a little more about it before I end up just finding my own way of integrating our AD with SIMS. Is the tool any good or does it do what it is believed to do? Is an extra license required? Does it use a fixed naming convention etc for usernames and data paths or is it reasonably customizable? (I have already had hell and high water with Frog not liking the data paths :-( Manual export and re-import saves the day!) Is there a way of scheduling tasks in SIMS such as data exports on a basic level etc? (If I was to find my own way). I'm picking pieces up about SIMS by myself as it's new to me and as I am a highly restricted user and have a restraining order against it despite managing the server that it runs on..... I'm getting there! :-P Again, sorry for bursting in!