maniac

Just out of interest, any chance you could tell me how much RAM it uses at runtime? I'm just interested, as I've worked really hard in this school to remove un-necessary tasks running in the background so I'm wondering if I'll be back at square 1 with regards to memory useage on my machines. Mike.

It might be possible with the use of VBscript and scheduled tasks to get a popup message to appear every 5 minutes or something, that would probably start to irritate them enough to return the books. :D

Well managed to put them off this system until now, but the powers that be have decided they want it as apparently it's being funded by Kent for now. Dispite not wanting to put any more overheads on the system than we have already, my objections were ignored, they wouldn't even give me time to test it properly, just a 'we're having it' So does anyone actually have this up and running at their school and if so, can anyone give me any real account of how well it works, what affect (if any) it has on workstation performance and how much time it takes to maintain and run it? Mike.

We block access to the entire system tray, which stop the student accessing the wireless configuration.

I can't help you, but having dealt with the CMIS backend in the past, all I say is be very very very careful if you're poking through your database it's a sensitive creature!

I never had any luck teaming intel NICs, it never worked properly. I think it was down to the switch being set wrong, but no matter what I did it never worked. Might have another bash at it sometime, see if I can suss it out this time round. Intel have their own utility to do it, should come with the network drivers for that NIC if it supports teaming. Mike.

I'm glad someone else said it, there's been a lot of people ripped off by aerial installers over the last few years. My parents have an age old aerial on their house with proper old cable as well and they get an almost perfect signal on their digital TV. Mike.

Looks like Edugeek's going from strength to strength. Can't be a bad thing really, getting too many hits for your servers to cope!

I only allow music clips of up to 30 seconds on my network, which you are allowed to use copyright free. Several members of staff have Itunes and media player setup to store music (people like the dance department who use music a lot) but these are setup to store the music on the local laptop. I was quite astounded other day when I discovered a member of staff had a selection of music on our public drive, and was letting the kids copy it down to their home areas for use in presentations and the like - that in my mind is blatent copyright infringement as we're copying the music. When I explained it to them they were OK about it, and I'm letting the tracks remain until the end of this week when that module is complete and then they'll be going. It is a massive gray area, as I've never found the definitive answer, as one auhority will say one thing, and someone else something completely different, so I always go on the cautious side and say no to all music on the network. Same goes for lengthy video clips and the like, even found one student with complete feature films in his home area once Mike.

The 2524 switches aren't that bad, even if they a little old now. I doubt that changing them will solve your problems unless they are faulty, as Ric says above, you'll still only have a GB uplink. Buy a new module for it, and double the uplink if you can. Mike.

For future reference when troubleshooting fibre problems, I often find two people each with a radio or mobile phone and a little torch useful. You can shine it down each fibre in turn, and have the person at the other end look for the corresponding light coming from the patch panel. Quick and dirty test to make sure there's no breaks in the fibre. Also if the patch leads are different to the installed fibre (i.e if one is 50/125 and one 62.5/125) then they will still work, but you will get lots of data transmission errors. I had some connections cabled up like this for ages becuase we couldn't get hold of the correct patch leads, and the performance was fine, just the switch reported errors every so often. Mike.

Ha ha, classic! The only thing I know that will get it out for sure is Cellulose Thinners - nasty stuff but it will do the job. Halfords or most good motorfactors will sell it. Mike.

Something is sending output the to page before it should, more than likely as simple as a blank line at the start or end of one of the PHP scripts, but you'll have to look at them to see if that's the case. The PHP error reporting is usually right with the file although in my experience it does get line numbers wrong sometimes, so examine the file bbpress-integration.php carefully, it might also be something else called from within that script.

You have to have powerpoint installed on the XIBO client machine for it to work and have to allow it to open embeded content in Internet Explorer, then it works flawlessly. I have 4 screens controlled by XIBO now, and they all works pretty well considering it's opensource. Mike.

There's also a rather stunning set of pictures from this place here; Report - El Caminito del Rey (The Kings Walkway), Spain - Feb 09' - UK Urban Exploration Forums Mike.

Too late for me, brought a house 4 weeks ago, list of things I want to do are now all renovation jobs.

Hey, it says 'Folder' when you create a new one doesn't it

Was a pleasure to meet you this morning, even if I did have a slight hangover I'm just glad they're going on to have a new lease of life, they've been sitting in a cupboard since August and we've been scratching our heads trying to work out what to do with them as I really didn't want to send them to our normal recyclers - so it's a win all round I think. I wish you all the best with the trip out there, and I'll be sure to be in touch when we have more items that might be of use. Mike.

Super mandatory profiles stop users logging on when the server is un-available. With a normal mandatory profile a user may still be able to logon if the authenticating server isn't there if their details are cached on the local machine, a super mandatory profile stops this. From this article on the MSDN Mandatory User Profiles Mike.

Firstly don't have the my documents folder within the profile folder, or it will copy it to and from the workstation everytime a student logs on or off, which makes logon times unbarable. I have two shares to handle roaming profiles, which we only use for staff here - students use a super mandatory profile. \\storage\staffprofiles$\username - stores the profile information \\storage\staffhome$\username - is where mydocuments is re-directed to \\sotrage\staffhome$\username\desktop - is where I redirect desktop folders to. It's all done through one share, much easier that way than sharing each folder individually. Also one massive tip if you're using roaming profiles, make sure you enable the computer policy 'allow administrative access to userprofiles' or when it creates the profiles it locks everyone out of it except the user who created it, which can cause all sorts of problems managing them. Mike.

The really obvious one is using a filing cabinet to explain how folders work in windows - (oh yes there are still people who regularly use computers that don't understand the concepts of folders.)

I'm 99% sure it only has to be fitted, not necessarily moulded. If that was the case, the latest batch of computers we've just brought would be wrong as well.

We use UPAY, run by uniware who provide our catering system. Totally hassle free as uniware run it all for us. Currently only accepts payments into our catering system, but I think it has the ability to provide payments for other items as well. Upay ? a Uniware initiative, designed for smart loading of your cashless account, Uniware Hospitality & Retail EPoS, Stock Control & Cashless Payment Solutions, Flexible Benefits, Smart Card & Kiosk Solutions - Index Mike.

Not sure what will scare the kids more, the facepainting or the shirt . . . . . (edit: Doh, just realised someone already said that. Must remember: Read entire thread before posting reply.)

When we had people for work experience in the past, we just got them to shadow one or other of us around the school when we responded to support calls, and talked them through a little about what we were doing (if we could) when we were there. Also got to help out with the usual tidy office, tidy storeroom, sort out stuff that's been boxed up since 1993 - that sort of thing. Mike.