maniac

Look at Endsleigh, they did very good policies when I lived in a shared house a while back. Whatever you do make sure the insurance company know it is a shared house because you could find your cover is void if you take out 'normal' contents insurance as most companies have different policies for shared houses. Unfortunitely these are more expensive owing to the higher risk, but it's important to make sure you have the right cover. Mike.

Well if that solution works then I would stick with it. You could write a very simple script using XCACLS to change the permissions on this file at workstation startup, that would save you logging onto every machine and doing the change manually.

Next they'll be putting plastic cutlery in the canteen because the kids might hurt themselves with the metal ones. Oh hang on, wait, sorry my bad I think we might have done this already . . . . . .

I'm waiting before buying a new TV, as there been so many new developments recently, I'm waiting for prices of the HD TVs to start coming down to realistic levels. In the mean time my massive Sony 28" CRT TV will do me fine, plus it's only 6 years old - plenty of life in it yet! Mike.

This is the script which reads machines OUs and will copy a different set of icons depending on OU membership. It should work, but I've cut it out of our much larger station startup script so apologies if it's missing anything it needs. Run it as a workstation startup script. Quite self explanatory, creates a folder called 'icon groups' on the C:\ of the machine and then copies across relevant folders from the net logon share. It also sets a marker flag in the way of a simple file, so it only copies over the icons if the marker flag on the machine is different from the script, this cuts down on un-necessary network traffic at machine startup, it's only really necessary to copy them if they've changed, and how often do you actually change the icons on your workstations? You can add as many case statements as you want to the script, up to the number of different OU's that you have. You may need to combine this script with XCACLS to set the permissions on the folder, depending on how your permissions to the C:\ are setup, or you can end up with the students saving things to the desktop folder if you're not careful. Const OverWriteFiles = True Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") dim strfile 'ICON DELIVERY 'Set Version number ' ##################### ' # To Copy new icons # ' # Increment the # ' # value Below. # ' ##################### strfile="v1.11" ' ### DO NOT MODIFY BELOW THIS LINE ### ' ### Check to see if version file exists. If it does no action is taken as should be latest icon set already. ### If Not objFSO.FileExists("c:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS\" & strfile) then '### Check to see is Icon folders exist, if not create folder ### If Not objFSO.FolderExists("c:\ICONGROUPS") then objFSO.CreateFolder("c:\ICONGROUPS") end if '### Delete old icon cache if it exists ### If objFSO.FolderExists("c:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS") then objFSO.DeleteFolder("C:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS"),TRUE end if '#### Copy icon cache from server ### objFSO.CopyFolder "\\SERVER\netlogon\ICON BANK\MAIN" , "C:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS" , OverWriteFiles '### Setup for reading machine OU and copy extra icons according to OU membership. ### Set objWshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") Set objAdsSystemInfo = CreateObject("adsysteminfo") Set objComputerName = GetObject("LDAP://" & objAdsSystemInfo.ComputerName) Set objOU = GetObject(objComputerName.Parent) strOU = replace(objOU.Name,"OU=","") '### For each case statement, as seperate folder can exist ### Select Case strOU Case "Enterprise Area 1" objFSO.CopyFolder "\\SERVER\netlogon\ICON BANK\Enterprise" , "C:\icongroups\students" , OverWriteFiles Case "Enterprise Area 2" objFSO.CopyFolder "\\SERVER\netlogon\ICON BANK\Enterprise" , "C:\icongroups\students" , OverWriteFiles Case "Room 22" objFSO.CopyFolder "\\SERVER\netlogon\ICON BANK\Room22" , "C:\icongroups\students" , OverWriteFiles End Select '### Create version number txt file ### Set objFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile("c:\ICONGROUPS\STUDENTS\" & strFile) END IF Mike

It's not to hard to achieve with VB script, my start menus are built locally on the machine at workstation startup by copying icons from various icon banks on the netlogon share depending on the workstations OU. The students startmenu is then directed to this local icon cache, which works very well. I've also written another version which tests the workstation to see if the executable is present before copying the shortcut. This means shortcuts would be automatically distributed as soon as a particular piece of software was installed on a machine, but I'm still in testing with that script as there's some bugs in it at the moment, I've also written a VB.NET program to assist with building the script to achieve this which I will release on here eventually. Mike.

We have a 'buzzer' in our school which was installed sometime in the 1960's I think. We now only have it sounding at the beginning of the day, at the beginning and end of lunch and break, and the end of school, but no in-between lesson buzzers. Staff have been told to use the computer clocks as a reliable time source, as they are all in sync to the domain, which is in turn synced to an NTP time server so it's probably the most accurate time source in the school. Mike.

Whoooa, loads of questions. 1. A web-based helpdesk system of some sort, if managed properly, can do wonders for your fault logging and day-to-day management. I use mylittle helpdesk as do many other users on this site, but there are plenty of other products out there. - they don't cost the earth and some of them are free, but you will need to familurise yourself with webserver technologies in order to run them. 2. Mandatory profiles are a good way of ensureing students environment is as consistant as possible, it also can speed up login speed if setup correctly, plus should save you a load of disc space with less profiles to store and elliminates problems with corrupted profiles. However it doesn't cache it locally, it will still download it from the server everytime a user logs on, but you can optimise them to be very small - ours is about 4MB as it only has the absolute essentials within it. 3. Not familure with server 2008, but there's plenty of information on it on the net, the microsoft site its self has a good run down of the extra features in 2008 r2. 4. No need for anything too fancy for a school website - ours is plain old HTML with a flash menu system in it. As has already been said content is far more important. 5. There are ways of doing this, but no 'proper' way exists. These include using VB scripts to copy over only relevant icons for a particular machine to a local icon cache and directing the startmenu and desktop to this local cache (which is what I do) or editing the 'all users' icon group on a machine to include the icons for software installed only on that machine, with a network based 'global' icon set which all machines use - the two can be merged at logon if Group Policy is setup to allow this to happen. There's also a way of utlising the 'loopback' GPO to achieve this I think - never tried that. 6. No idea, don't use Frog, but it does get very favourable comments on this site. 7. DDR1 ram is still available easily, we just upgraded 60 machines from 256MB to 1GB to make them a lot more useable, we paid about £9 per 512mb module. Whether it's better to change the machines very much depends on what they're going to be used for, and what your budget is like. I have to ask thou why upgrade them purely to run windows 7? XP is perfectally fine for a majority of use in school. I certainly never intend to run windows 7 on my older hardware, I will phase it in slowly and run a mixed environment for a while and slowly phase out XP over 2 - 3 years starting next academic year. 8. Student laptops, well we have about 350 of them school wide, but we do have a relatively good Cisco wireless network to support them. If you only have one bank of laptops with their own access point, there could be some milage in having a second one on a totally seperate channel at the other end of the room. The main thing you can do to improve the speed is cut down on the amount of data going to and from the network by having locally hosted startmenus and desktops and streamlined profiles. Our login times over wireless is not much different to our cabled desktops. 9. Quicktime was part of our build, so never tried distributing it. Check the error logs of a workstation that's attempted installation for clues, there could be all sorts of reasons why it's not actually installed. 10. Not sure, but most VLE's include a facility to do 'e-portfolios' 11. ICT room bookings is done mnually here by a lasy in our main office in a big diary. If it ain't in the diary it ain't been booked! We tried an electronic booking system but it didn't work for us. 12. with Group Policy the more settings you apply the slower the policy will be to apply, so best to keep it as simple as possible. It's very easy to go overkill and lock everything down, but you'll be surprised at how small a number of policies you actually need to set to secure a workstation if you chose them carefully. 13. If a driver update is available from Windows Update you can use WSUS (if you run it) to distribute drivers, or if you're lucky the manufacturer may have an MSI or a Silent install option. 14. Mandatory profiles will stop these settings being saved, so they'll soon get bored of doing it every time the logon. Same for re-arranging desktop icons, changing default settings etc. You say you really want windows 7 deployed because XP is un-reliable. I have to say that windows XP in my school is extreemly stable, and if setup well there's no reason why it shouldn't be. I'm actually dreading starting to have windows 7 workstaions on my network as it introduces a whole new set of problems and means re-training myself and my technicians, working out how to deploy it etc. etc. Hope that's of some help! Mike.

Funny enough, I upgraded one of our staff laptops to the latest K-Lite codec pack today, and the problems disappeared. We formerly had version 4.9 on them all, version 5.1 seemed to solve the problem. Now all I need is a way to automatically roll it out. Mike.

We had all our staff machines in summer just gone, but this was because we totally changed the domain, and there was no alturnative option really. 180 machines is a lot to deal with in one go, I would try and go for the phased roll out option if possible. We found just dealing with 80 machines was difficult, finding space to store them, making sure they were labelled and named properly and making sure they were all given back to the right people, then dealing with the silly complaints about not having the same charger as they had last year etc. When you've got 20+ members of staff all queueing up at your office waiting for their machine back it's no easy task, particularly if you're also dealing with problems at the same time. If I could find an alturnative way to collecting in all the machines, I definitely would! Mike

That's pretty good uptime. I've had a windows server 2003 box up for over a year before, but needed a re-boot after some of the dreded windows updates! Currently re-start my entire server infrastucture every holiday just to give it the best chance of a problem free term Mike.

Becasue I'm bored, have a googley earth type link. dungeness - Google Maps House is Right hand side of Image, Powerstations take up the rest Mike.

It is massive in comparison thou, I've been pretty much up to that cottage, and you can't comprehend the size of that powerstation in comparison until you get that close to it, it is absolutely massive! It's not the view that would annoy me, it's the noise of the place, there's a constant drone from it. Mike.

I've had two members of staff recently with problems playing DVDs in VLC, but media player worked fine for both of them.

I remember hearing about this about a year ago, but seem to remember there were a lot of problems getting it 'E' approved due to the fragile nature of the design, not sure if they ever managed it or not.

Precisely the reason ANY I.C.T purchase has to be counter signed by me in this place, stops problems like this occuring. Unfrotunitely not had the oppertunity to use this piece of software, but if they're siming it at schools, then they need to change their activation process by the sounds of it. Mike.

I think the happy medium is in the right mixture of technologies in the right places, the idea that schools could go totally open source is nonsense, as it the idea that schools can remain chained to Microsoft for eternity. There are elements of a system which have viable open source alturnatives which are good, even in some cases better than the paid for alturnatives, but at the end of the day we have to look at what we require the systems to do, as well as user familuarity with certain systems. (I'm talking staff here, students just pick up anything you give them and adapt at a remarkable pace) I run Adobe CS4 because that's what's expected and is required to complete the course the school runs, and it's also the product that students are most likely to use in the 'real world' which is the same reason I have Microsoft office and other paid for programs. But I also have open office on all my PCs and various other open source programs, I just made them available there was no big introduction, but I observed some of the students and quite a number of them are actually chosing to use it - I asked a few why they were chosing it instead of the Microsoft program, and the answer was because they have it at home. So that's a big plus for open source, anyone from anywhere can use it, it's no longer about who can afford it, and in a school like ours in a 'deprived' area I guess that makes a big difference. I also use a mixture of different server systems, Microsoft for my main directory services and storage, Linux for my imaging system (fog) , Xibo for my Digital signage, Apache for my Web services etc. and the reason I chose the open source programs was not entirely cost based, it was because they were the best tool for the job. Part of it is also about attitudes towards the technologies. I've always been a big fan of opensource in the right places, but it's taken me a whole year to talk my technicians round to opensource thinking, they were very much of the attitude that because it was free meant it was poor, unsupported and wouldn't work well. After a year of using FOG, both of them have very different attitudes when I mention the next big project based on opensource technology. RE: cloud computing as it's come into the discussion, I think we're a long way off seeing this replacing a traditonal network in a school environment, there will always be the need for PCs in schools in the foreseeable future for such programs as photohop, and video editing etc. Eventually this may be possible in this sort of environment, but I think that's a long way off yet in my opinion. Without a doubt we will slowly become more and more reliant on browser based apps, you only have to look at websites like 'my maths' to see how things have developed, only a few years ago something like 'my maths' would have been a program loaded onto the PC's, now it's available in a browser at the click of a button. Learning platforms are also maybe a glimpse of the future, as many have Wordprocessing facilities, video and sound recording all built into them which is essentially cloud computing as it's all saved within the platform it's self, totally un-reliant on the host viewing it. However it's still a long way from being the mainstay of computing use, the traditional programs will hold that position for a while yet! Mike.

So far this has wasted an entire day of my time. All I want to do is stop the laptops going on standby when the lid is closed. A simple setting in windows, when you change it as an administrator, it changes it globally for the laptop. Brilliant, I'll run Regshot and find out what registry settings it's changing when I make the change. I identified 4 different parts of the registry which change, so I make these into a single .REG file, script it to run at startup and test it, and as you've probably guessed, it doesn't work The registry file is being applied correctly, I've verrified that by checking the registry remotely before and after the script has run, and the settings are being applied to the registry, but the laptop still goes to sleep when you close the lid. I've spent the best part of a day now changing various registry settings in the hope of getting the right combination to force this setting to change via a startup script, but I just can't get it to work whatever I do, the only way it changes is if I logon as administrator and make the change manually. There must be a way of doing this, I can't believe there isn't, so can anyone tell me what part of the registry it changes for that particular global setting because I really can't find it! Mike.

That's what I thought, although I was going to check this morning. When you install .NET 3.5 it wipes out all references to .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 in add/remove programs so I've always thought of it as an 'upgrade' rather than needing all the different versions. .NET 1.1 is different, although I've never really been sure why. mike.

Off the top of my head, Flash Player Shockwave Player MS Silverlight (It's going to start being used more and more, so may as well include it) Real Alturnative (Instead of Real Player) Quicktime (or the alturnative one) VLC Player (as it will play anything!) A Codec pack of some description, the one we've always used is the K-Lite Codec Pack. Adobe Reader .NET 1.1 and 3.5 JAVA runtime I'm sure someone else will come along in a minute and add some other bits to that list. Mike.

Sounds like a relatively small system to me, so as said you should be fine with SIMS and Exchange co-existing on the same server. What I would be tempted to do is to buy a second server, and make that into a second Domain Controller for your domain with DNS services as well. Then split your user accounts home areas between the two. That way not only are you solving the storage problems, but you're also introducing some fault tollerance into your domain which can't be a bad thing. With that number of users, assuming a maximum of half of them are likely to be using the network at once, I don't see a problem with the Domain controllers also acting as the storage servers as well. Mike.

Assuming your existing servers are all working OK, what I would do if you think you're going to run out of space is 1 of 2 things. Either; 1. Expand the storage in the existing server, and keep things setup as they are. 2. Purchase a new server to use as a storage server and move all the file storage onto this, or split it 50/50 with the existing server. You don't say how big the network is as a whole, or how many users in total so this would have to be taken into consideration as well as the age of the existing servers - if they are all getting on a bit it could be an ideal opportunity for a mass re-design of the servers and their roles, as some of the systems i.e exchange should really be on their own dedicated server, but it all depends on the size of the network and number of users using it. Mike.

They are fire doors, i.e approved to various regulations, but normal internal ones and not external ones. Admitedly they are nicely made, but that's a lot of money just for doors - I know they could have spent less and achieved the same end result, and what's more annoying really is they were encouraging me to save a few thousend on the PCs that went into that area, when all along they could have saved money on the doors and let me spend a little more on the PCs. Mike.

That whole report is interesting reading actually. I keep going on about 'value for money' at my school and seem to be the only one who really does, as I've seen some shocking wastes of money in the last year - I think the doors that cost £2500 each is possibly about the worst I've seen. There's no doubt about it, schools are going to feel the pinch of the financial crsis eventually and there's going to be a lot of changes over the next 12-24 months I feel. Mike.

Well I got my post in a school with no previous experience, infact I didn't even work in the IT industry at the time, I worked in retail and did IT as a bit of a hobby almost, so it is possible to get appointed with no previous experience. Have a read of the job description and person specification if there is one, and decide if you fit them, if you do then make sure you engineer your CV to cover the points in the job description and where your past experience is relevant to them. Once you get an interview, you can get the chance to expand on those points, so don't be tempted to put too much information in. Schools tend to be lively fast paced environments, so your personality can count for as much as your skills, so make sure you sound enthusiastic about the post, and come across as an approachable person as well. Do some background reading about the school, find out about their past, and where they're heading in the future and read the summary of the last ofstead report, this will give you a broad understanding of the school as a whole, which can be good to know, particularly if you can drop a few bits of it into the interview if you get one to show you've done your research. If I was serious about a job I'd seen advertised, I would do all the above and probably more. Good luck! Mike.