maniac

I've scrapped about 20-30 Dell D510 laptops in the last year because of this problem. It's all down to the power plug on the motherboard basically wearing out, we've tried repairing them in house and we did manage to do it by replacing the plug with one from another Dell laptop, but it was damn awkward to do so we didn't bothered fixing the rest as it just wasn't worthwhile considering the age of the machines. Mike.

I've worn glasses since I was about 13, I actually quite like wearing them as I have a slightly (ok a majorly) receeding hair line, and the glasses break up my face a bit. Pain the the backside sometimes thou, I managed to lose a pair in a crowd at a festival once - got knocked straight off my face. Not only did that make it very difficult to find my way round (as I'm seriuously blind without them) but I had to find a way of getting a new pair before the festival ended as I had to drive home - that was not much fun! There's a moral to that story - if you need them for driving, keep a spare pair in your glovebox! Mike.

Have you taken the 'on error resume next' statement out and seen what errors it produces?

I will share my PHP/MYSQL creation if anyone wants it, but it was never written for distribution and was developed in situ on the system it's currently running on, so there's a lot of references that point directly to parts of our system, very sloppy programming, but it works for us and I've never been bothered to go through and tidy the code up. Therefore it would be an absolute nightmare to get working on any other configuration.

As an alturnative to a ping, which I never got working properly in VB script for some reason, create a single hidden read only share on the server with just a txt file in it, then you can simply use an "if file exists" statement with the full UNC path to see if the script can see the share, and thus the server - I use this to determine whether a member of staffs laptop is on the school network or not when they logon, and thus change the proxy settings accordingly. Mike.

I have an in house solution that latches into our assets management which was also written by me in house, all PHP and SQL based. Anything on the assets database marked as a printer automatically appears in the toner management system, and then you can tell it what consumables each type of printer needs - you only have to do this once for each model. Whenever you change a toner in a printer, get the asset number off the back, look it up on the list, click change toner - if it's a colour one there's an additional step to select which one, job done! It knocks one of the stock file and logs a toner change against that printer. It's dead handy for seeing how much toner a particular printer gets through. On the front screen it alerts us to low stock scinarios, which it does by looking at the history of toner changes for that cartridge type, ad the number of printers requiring that cartridge and estimating how many we need in stock to cover us for the next 4 weeks - if there's less than 4 weeks worth in stock it alerts us. It's not 100% accurate yet, I'm still tweeking the algorithm for this. There's also a simple booking in system for when we get deliveries and a stock checking system as well. Does the job for us! Mike.

I use FOG for imaging all my machines, it just works! Imaged over 600 machines with it, takes about 6 minutes to pull down a 11GB image. For a quick and dirty imaging solution, you can use PING - http://ping.windowsdream.com/ which will backup/restore from a USB hard drive or memorystick, and boot from the same. Mike.

Not true, my tech is paid almost that - although that's mainly because I pushed management for a decent wage for him.

You sir are officially a legend, that worked a treat! I've been scratching my head for almost a day trying to solve that one, and you come up with the solution in 5 minutes, brilliant! Mike.

Market conditions will dictate the salary that is offered for a job, if the school can sucessfully fill the post advertising the job at that salary then they are going to do so, it's a simple questions of economics. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the way the jobs market works. If I was out of work and desperate for a job, I'd apply for it even thouigh I know it's way under par for the job, but needs must. Certain people like Teachers, Police offices, Firemen etc. etc. are priveliged to have carefully negotiated salary deals with government, but it also caps what they can earn as well so it works both ways. Personally I wouldn't like to be in that situation, I like to think I'm paid what I'm worth and not what some piece of paper says I must be paid - if I'm any good then the reward will be forthcoming and if it isn't, then I go elsewhere.

OK, this one has me stumped. Windows XP, Server 2003 based network - old but reliable up until now that is! I seem to have some issues surrounding group policies applying properly at machine startup, but only on my nice new batch of desktops. The odd thing is it's only doing it on some of them and not all of them, it really is the most odd problem. There are no problems for any of the other workstations on my system, other machines in the same room are fine while other are not. The error I get at machine startup is this. Together with this. The odd thing is as soon as the logon prompt comes up, I'm able to logon to a domain account with no problems. It's also processing some of my group policies as my startup scrripts run fine, and all the user group policies process fine at logon. Has anyone got any ideas? There are no DNS issues on my system, both domain controllers are running ok with no errors reported on them and I've re-booted them for good measure as well, no cabling issues I've tried other network ports and switches just incase it was a duff switch or something like that, and all other workstations in the school are fine apart from this small selection of new ones. Indeed 6 out of this batch of 20 new workstations are also fine, it's really most odd. Any help much appreciated Mike.

It does depend on the system. Things like our learning platform I made the decision to host externally, mainly because once you'd factored in the cost of the server, plus keeping it running, maintained and replacing it every 3 years plus our time spent applying upgrades, troubleshooting it if it didn't work etc. it worked out better value. Generally thou, I do prefer to keep things in house. The service level agreement from the supplier, their previous reliability record and how critical the system is factor heavily into the decision making process, as does the reliability of our internet connection - ours is exceedingly good, one thing I cannot fault Kent LEA for in the slightest, we've only had a tiny portion of proper downtime in the 2 years at my current school. Mike.

There's a group policy setting to do with allowing users to install printers, it's somewhere in the security settings I think. That may be your problem. My network uses a script to map the printers insted, but it didn't work properly until this policy was changed so it could be the same issue for you maybe? Mike.

Can you do an ARP lookup to get the hardware address, then look up the routing tables on your switch(s) to pin point the offending bit of hardware (assuming you have managed switches of course) that might help you find it. It's likely it will just return the ligitimate servers address, but there's always a chance. P-dave's suggestion is also a good one, I do this as a matter of course every now and then, particularly when we get a lot of new hardware and chuck a lot of old stuff - it stops old bits of hardware hanging onto reservations and causes no harm.

A friend of mine has a lock up garage over the road from his house, slightly staggered - probably about 50 metres distance from the house to the lockup. There's a clear line of sight from the house to the lockup. He recently asked me about the possibility of getting a broadband link over there, but we can't run cables unfortunitely as there's a road in the way, and the power to the place is on a entirely seperate supply so those plug in things won't work either. What I'd like to do for him is setup a good reliable wireless link - the current wireless router in his house can be picked up just, but does not connect properly - we've tried re-positioning it in the house but the signal is just not strong enough with the other wireless traffic in the area. Does anyone know of a way of achieving a reliable wireless link between the two buildings on a budget. He hasn't got a lot to spend, total cost under £100 if possible. I was looking at the cheap gear that seems to be available from a company called TP-Link - you can get an external antenna for about £12 and a wireless AP/bridge for about £20, so the whole lot would only cost £60-£70. Anyone tried this cheap gear before, is it any good? Any advice appreciated. Cheers, Mike.

I had exactly that scinario when I started where I am now 2 years ago. The whole infrastructure was in a state of disarray with no proper structure or replacement or upgrading program in place. First thing I did was a complete audit of all the ICT resources in the school, then I made a list of everything that needed changing, replacing or upgrading, then divided that list into essential works, things that can wait a while and the nice to have but not essential. I then wrote this list into a full proposal justifying each change as I went with the benefits and also the possible outcome if the recomendations wern't followed. I then put this in front of the head and business manager who accepted it pretty quickly, and we went from there. Some of the sections were servers/server room equipment, staff desktops/laptops, student desktops/laptops, switch gear, cabling and a few other bits and pieces like licensing. Even if you don't do it that way, the very first thing really is to find out exactly what you've got and go from there. You might find simply by re-allocating equipment properly you can make substantial improvements without spending any money - we had all sorts of decent equipment either tucked away in cupboards or well underused. Ultimately thou you need a 3-5 year development plan that is reviwed often (we do ours every 6 months) as technology changes. Mike.

I got a reasonable deal on a 99 plate Vauxhall astra, 69k on the clock with reasonable service history for £1100 - Got £50 part exchange on old cavalier which I wasn't fussed about - I'd had it 3 years and only paid £300 for it so it owed me nothing. It has just cost me £300 on the MOT admitedly, most of that was for a new exhaust system - it needed the whole thing which I wasn't expecting - I knew there was a blow, but assumed it was just the back box (I trust my garage so I know they would have only done the back box if that's all it needed) and two new tyres which I should have spotted at the time of sale, but all in all I was pretty happy. Mike.

We cable tie the wires, but we use extra big cable ties - does the trick for us.

2 things to check that I've heard can cause that error; 1. that the move the contents to the new location option is unchecked 2. that the 'grant user exclusive rights to folder' option is unchecked I know the second one is counter intuative, as you do want the user to have exclusive rights, but if the folder security options are set correctly anyway unchecking this option simply means the policy won't make any changes to the folder security. Mike.

Have you run a resultent set of policy emulation thingy (can't remember the exat term) using Group Policy mangement console. It will run through all the GPO's and emulate it being applied to a workstation, then provide you with a comprehensive report of what is and isn't working, e.g where settings are being over ridden by other settings elsewhere in the policy etc. Invaluable tool for solving any problems like this as it should also tell you if folder redirection was successful or not. Mike.

I really don't know, I've only been informed that it's likely that at some point KCC will have to start charging schools for the basic connection. I'm pretty sure that they will need to give schools some notice of this, so I'd be surprised if it was from September, but from April could be a real possibility.

Speaking to KCC a couple of weeks ago, they were already talking about the possibility of having to charge schools for the 'free' broadband link currently provided. If more money's been cut from that pot, which is the very one used to fund it, I'd say it was almost a definite now.

I've always used foam cleaner for absolutely everything. It says not to use on LCD screens, but it's never seemed to do any harm, and it's probably better for them than the horrid build up of sticky finger marks than practically any laptop gets in a school (including staff ones!) It cleans IWB's pretty good as well, and one can lasts ages! Detol is probably avery good idea for the keyboards, who knows what nasties may be on those keys! <-- Yes this smilie is actually in the edugeek selection! Mike.

I used to keep gerbils when I was younger, we had loads of them at different times - probably to do with the fact my dad worked in a school and the science department used to keep some, of course they bred very quickly and the school had too many. We used to keep them in an old fish tank half filled with garden centre compost mixed with woodshavings, they loved it and would dig burrows round the tank. Makes a right old mess, but it's quite cool to see tunnels all round the edge of the glass and where they begin and end on the surface. Sometimes the silly things would undermine the whole tank, and it would all cave in on them - they always dug themselves out OK thou. Used to sit and watch them for hours and get them out for a run round the front room every now and then - this was ok until one of them chewed through a speaker cable, we were more cautious after that! Mike.

I use the UNC path e.g \\SERVER\SHARE$\%username%\DESKTOP that seems to work for me. Mike.