maniac

1 B/W laser printer per department. If it's a large department or has a specific need, they may get a colour laser as well. These are as centrally located within that department as possible, and are networked and controlled by our print management software. No questions, that's what they get. All inkjets are banned as of last year (Except for one in the library for printing labels on) Works well here, saving a small fortune on toner so far this year. Mike.

Comment 4 on the second link. . . Oh dear.

That's what it's about at the end of the day. I spent many hours work perfecting that way of doing it, so may as well share that knowledge. Mike.

If it was re-wired after 2006, then you should have a part P certification to go with the work that was done, this should be quite detailed and state what was done and who did it. If it was done before then, there was no requirement for this so you may not have it. Unless it was re-wired over 20yrs ago, there's a good chance the wiring is absolutely fine - newer cable doesn't degrade like the older rubber stuff used to so the chances of the wiring actually being dangerous are slim. Yes it may not meet the latest edition of the regs, but it probably won't be that bad - unless of course it's been done by someone that didn't know what they were doing like my house was! Unfortunitely unless it's on paper somewhere, and is subsequently proved to be incorrect, then there's probably not an awful lot you can do. Things that were said verbally have no legal status in situations like this, unless they were independantly witnessed. Well worth reading the Part P regs on the planning site, states in there what work is and is not notifiable - most re-wiring work is, unless it's replacing just a single cable. http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/uploads/br/BR_PDF_ADP_2006.pdf Mike.

Can be done - little bit of scripting magic needed to add it to all students. First, create a new group - call it 'Can E-mail Students' or simelar, also make sure you create an e-mail address for the group or the next step won't work. Next, look at the AD properties for a user, must be on a machine with Exchange management tools installed. Look at the Exchange general tab, and click the button 'delivery restrictions' and down the bottom you can set the restriction of 'Only From' and then add the group you previously created. When set, the student will only be able to receive mail from members of this group - so if you add all your staff to it, then all staff can e-mail students but students can't e-mail each other. But wait, I hear you cry, I've got to make this change to each user individually? Actually no, I've written a VBscript which will do that for you. Const strGroup1 = "CN=Student Mail,OU=Network Operational Groups,OU=Groups,OU=Spires Academy,DC=SPIRES,DC=LOCAL" strOU = "LDAP://OU=YEAR07,OU=Students,OU=Users,OU=Spires Academy,DC=SPIRES,DC=LOCAL" Set objOU = GetObject(strOU) objOU.Filter = Array("user") For Each objUser In objOU objUser.dlmemSubmitPerms = strGroup1 objUser.SetInfo Next wscript.echo "All Done" You need to specify the group you've created at the top as an LDAP string, same for the OU you want to target. You can get the LDAP strings by using LDAP browser and copying and pasting them from there. Simply repeat the block of code between "strOU = ... " and "Next" for every OU you want to set delivery restrictions on. Works like a charm here. Mike.

That's exactly how I would do it, that way all your machine and user accounts wouldn't need re-creating. It's very rare to break active directory and the underpinnings of a domain completely, most underlying problems point to incorrect GPO settings, or corrupted group policy objects so unless you've severely messed with the Active directory structure the underlying workings of the domain should be fine - it just needs an overhaul. Mike.

Go on, who else does this - looks up random stuff on Wikipedia, then spend a while clicking through linked articles? Just spent 10 minutes reading about Lucozade because I brought some for the first time in ages, and for some reason I wondered when they stopped selling it in glass bottles like I remember it being in when I was younger. Often find myself reading the most random stuff on there - it's almost become a hobby now Mike.

If the college are serious about saving money and no reasonable idea will be ignored, then providing you can prove on paper that the college would save £xxxx amount, then there's no harm in talking your boss into re-submitting the proposal - things may have changed significantly since he last mentioned it to senior management.

I've got quite a bit of kit supplied from Stone now. We have 30 All in one PCs brought in September 2008. So far I've had one faulty screen which was replaced within 2 days - would have been next day but they had to order the part for this particular model - still I'm not complaining, was still fixed promptly. One batch of Neo Netbooks brought in July 2009 - so far one problem with them which was a noisy fan which was permanently stuck on high speed as the fan controller had obviously malfunctioned. Swapped out the next day. One batch of 46 Desktop PCs with 19" hardglass TFT screens and wall mounts for the screens - brought in July 2009. They even held onto the order for us in their holding warehouse free of charge until we were ready for it. No problems at all with any of this kit thus far. 4 New servers brought in July 2009, which are all custom built by stone to our exact requirements. All intel based good quality kit, and absolutely no problems at all with any of this thus far. Overland tape changer and tapes supplied to us last month at a very good price. Slight delay in delivery as the courrier messed up, but Stone found out what had happened, and kept me informed -I didn't have to lift a finger, and it was delivered safely a couple of days later. I cannot fault Stone one bit as a supplier, their service is brilliant, their warranty support is on the button, and the kit that I've had off them thus far has proved to be well built and trouble free. I cannot say the same about some of the kit I've had from other manufacturers over the years. Mike.

Flowol and Mimics all installed via supplied MSIa with no problems on my network. Is anything logged in event viewer on the PCs you've tried rolling it out to?? Mike.

Wireless will never ever achieve the reliability and speed of a cabled network. If you can cable them, then do so - even if it through small switches and cables lashed under desks - it'll still be better than wireless anyday. Mike.

You'd miss it if it wasn't there. I can why people disagree with the principal of the TV license, but remember it doesn't just fund the front end of the BBC that we all see, large chunks of that money go to the infrastructure that other companies use to transmit with, and the massive effort to switch to Digital only broadcasting - none of that would have happened without the revenue from TV licenseing propping it up. Also you'll be quite surprised how many other industries the BBC supports, as well as how much other broadcasters rely on the BBC for various reasons - it really is only possible as a result of the way the BBC is funded - they also sponser and support a lot of events. If they were forced to generate their own revenue then it would cease to be in the way is exits now, they simply could not generate the same level of funding privately, and we'd all be a lot worse off as a result. Mike.

This is the order that we setup our new network in, some of it was migrated from the old, but most was a brand new setup so I imagine the steps you want to take are something like: Domain controller running Active Directory, DNS and DHCP as the basis of the network - spend time configuring these services to make sure they are 100% correct. Secondary domain controller next (if you're having one.) Ours runs IAS server to provide RADIUS authentication for our wireless system, and acts as a secondary DNS server as well as authentication. (Once these are done, you have a fully functional domain you can log on and off of and add machines to.) Storage server and necessary shares for Home folders, shared folders, profiles etc. etc. At this point I did our data migration and user account creation Web filtering was established next and tested Then Exchange server for e-mail SIMS came next along with SQL Next came the Server which handled our virus checker management, which also doubles as a webserver for Eclipse and other intranet services Then our print server which also handles WSUS and our nightly backup. Lastly are other minor non-essential services we have running on a couple of older servers. This is not the ideal order, as some of this was limited by when I could decomission the old servers and re-use them for their new purpose. If doing it from scratch I would establish the virus checker management and backup systems as early as possible, you want to backup your nice new domain along the way incase anything goes wrong - you'll kick yourself if you don't and something goes wrong. Of course, this varies a lot depending on what services you're running. Basically the rough guide is Domain Controllers Storage Essential Services Non-essential services

It's actually really really simple. This is a single example. There's one bank of icons which are copied to all our machines, the rest are means tested as follows - this example is for pinnacle studio - I've got about 20 blocks of the same code for different programs in one startup script. Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") If objFSO.FileExists("C:\pinnacle\Program\Programs\Studio.exe") then If Not objFSO.FOLDERExists("C:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS\STARTMENU\PROGRAMS\Pinnacle") then objFSO.CopyFolder "\\SERVER\SHARE$\ICON BANK\Pinnacle" , "C:\icongroups\students\StartMenu\Programs" , OverWriteFiles end if end if What it basically does is look for the .EXE file if it finds it, it checks to see if the relevant subfolder exists in the local students startmenu structure, if it doesn't then it copies it from a central icon depository if it does it moves onto the next one. It only takes mere seconds to run through this process for about 20 different programs. The above example does a whole program group, but it is possible to do individual icons by looking for the .LNK file instead of a folder. The major advantage of this is when you install something on a workstation, the icons automatically appear in the students startmenu, no need to allocate them. I've another part of the script which once every 4 weeks wipes the local copy of the start menu so the whole thing is re-copied from the server just incase it's become corrupted etc.

WSUS seems to work well for us over wireless - you can configure how much bandwidth is used for updates somewhere I seem to remember - although off the top of my head I can't remember where. Set that for a low number and it'll stop update rollouts snarling up your wireless network. Never thought about using Robocopy for doing that before - I've written a VBS script which does the same here - it's intelligent as well I get it to only copy icons for programs which are actually installed, as I've written it to check for the .EXE file, and only copy the icon if it's needed. Mike.

True, I use a tape based system as I like the peace of mind of locking the tapes away in a fire proof safe, and storing one off site once a week - helps me sleep at night!

Blimy, seems quite a few share March 3rd - and I was hoping to be the only one!

I've always used Differential backups as oppose to incremental ones - there's too much chance of data loss with incremental backups as you need the last full backup plus all the incrementals taken since for a full restore, whereas with differential backup you only ever need 2 tapes - the last full backup and the last differential backup. I've just reviewed our backup procedure here, and we now have a nice LTO4 tape changer which completed it's first sucessful backup last night. Took about 3 1/2 hours to backup 450GB. which was a lot quicker than our old AIT3 changer which took practically a whole weekend to do the same. Mike.

Can't believe the level of response to this thread. Maybe we should start a protest group 'No to Blue LED's'

New password then new password again, is it that hard? No not old password, new password - if you look at the boxes the old password is filled in alre . . . . oh too late you've pressed OK, I heard it beep. Now you need to type your old password in the top box. But you just said . . . . I know, but because you did it wrong, you now need to type your old password as well. Then your new password twice. Que fumbling at the end of phone, no that's still not working can you come down. . . . . Hmm, maybe it is going to be a busy morning for you afterall. Mike.

The bottles around the island made me chuckle. Might put that on the office wall.

Why does almost every manufacturer feel it's necessary to abuse my eyesight by putting very bright vivd blue LEDs on everything these days? One of our servers has such a bright one I've put some blutak over it What was wrong with green??

Now there's an idea . . . . .

Our staff get 14 days notice on a 6 week password change requirement. They still let it run right to the last day before changing it, then moan like hell that they can't use any of their previous 4 passwords. Might seem a bit OTT, but we have had instances of students shoulder surfing staff before and stealing passwords, staff are totally oblivious to the problem dispite trying to educate them, so 6 week forced password changes was the solution. Mike.

I only found out about a year ago that if you right hand click 'My Computer' and goto properties, you get the system part of control panel - previously to this I've always gone through control panel for it.