maniac

I've always liked HP printers, but have to admit the quality of them is not what it was, flimsy plastic parts that break too easily. We've got quite a large number of them in my school covering several years, and the older models are definitely much better constructed. Take a look at Xerox printers, we brought one of these for our staffroom about a year ago, and I'm seriously impressed with it - well made sturdy construction, the toners last forever in it and not one single problem with it in over a year now. It just works. Can't say the same for most of the other printers in the place. Mike.

I'm guessing from your post that you have one PC setup with FOG that you take to all the different schools you work in, is that right? It really wouldn't be that hard to have a FOG server in each school, the hardware requirements of it are not high, as long as you've got a good network card in it, a normal workstation will run it. You could even set it up as a virtual machine on an existing server and only turn it on when needed, although this would depend on available storage of course. When we were first experimenting with FOG on our network, I loaded it onto an old Dell GX260 workstation, which was just a 2GHz P4 with 512MB ram and a 40GB HDD, and it ran perfectally happily. It could have stayed this way if necessary, but we ended up with a spare server after we replaced our SIMs server with a brand new one, so we put it on that where it resides to this day. I use a lot of the features of FOG, specifically the user tracking is a damn handy feature, as well as the machine renaming ability - dead useful if you move a machine into a different room, or have to re-number a set of machines, the whole lot can be achieved remotely if you use the FOG client. The user cleanup option is also good, it removes all the little bits of profiles which windows leaves behind. We also use the auto logoff feature and the 'Green Fog' feature which turns all our machines off for us at the end of the day. All in all it is a brillant system when setup properly on a network, so much more than just an imaging solution, it does all those little tasks which windows lacks a built in option for by default. Mike.

I bet someone will lose their job over that one. I'm worried that they even ship that sort of information around by e-mail, when will they learn that e-mail is not a secure way of communicating! We've got strict guidelines in our school on what sort of information may and may not be sent by e-mail, I'd like to think that banks would have the same sort of guidelines in place! Mike.

We've recently started using compatibles, but I've so far had quite varied experiences. All the B/W cartridges for HP2015, 3005 printers and the like seem absolutely fine. However all the colour ones we've had problems with in the HP2700 and 3505 printers we have, so I may be going back to origenal cartridges for these. We've recently introduced a print quota system in the academy, which just 3 weeks into term has dramatically reduced wastage, so hopefully we will be able to return to using origenal cartridges without hitting the budget too hard. Mike.

You have to use a combination of SYSPREP and the Fog client to get the best out of FOG. The Fog client will rename the host at first startup then re-boot it, then join to domain on the second startup, then re-boot it again. Then the client is ready for use. Using SYSPREP will ensure hardware is installed properly if there's slight differences between machines, and of course generate unique SID's for every machine - which is the important bit on a network. In your sysprep answer file, just leave the computer name blank so it choses a random one, and don't fill in the part for joining a domain - fog will sort this out after it's renamed the workstations. I've just used FOG to image over 500 machines, and it worked absolutely brilliantly. The other things you have to make sure you do is fill in the Active Directory part of the Fog system correctly, not forgetting that the password has to be encrypted using the FogCrypt program for it to work properly - this is a common mistake to make if you're not used it before. Also ensure that the windows support tools are installed on the machine (or more specifically the netdom untility) as the fog client uses this for renaming the machine and joining the domain, and of course ensure you've installed the FOG client before you take your image! Mike.

I have loads of HP tablet Restore discs, but they will work on other machines with the a correct CDkey. You're welcome to one of those. Infact, I need to mail one to another member on here, just rememberd about that. If you want one let me know. Mike.

I'll have to ask John who designed it, I'm sure he won't mind. Mke.

My how I'd love to do that, but internet access is seen as more of a 'right' than a 'priveledge' as is access to a computer to start with, so no banning in this school. We do try and educate them to do this, and also educate the staff to check them before they let the students go, but it rarely happens. There are one or two departments who are excellent at this, but some of them are very poor at looking after equipment - mainly happens when we have cover teachers taking the lessons it has to be said. Mike.

The template that's been designed has our academy logo on it in the corner and in the background, but could probably do a version without. It's nothing special really thou, just a few boxes on a blue background with a few effects to make it look the part. This is what it looks like http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/digitalsignagebackground.jpg Mike.

Ah, that will be because by default if you use the built in part of VB.NET that allows you ro save settings, like I have with this, it saves it in part of the user profile. If you add that file to the mandatory profile it should pick up the settings from there. If it doesn't let me know, and I may change the way it saves settings to a file in the same directory as the executable, it's just a bit more work to program it like that. It's an XML file, and is located in a directory called C:\Documents and Settings\userprofile\Local Settings\Application Data\mike_redman unfortunitely it's used my name for some reason, it must be programmed into VB.NET somewhere. I think I'll try and change that for the next release. There's also a bug on the save settings where it always expects there to be something in the OU field, if you're not using that setting, just put a . in or something, it will then save settings properly. I'll correct this in the next version as well. Mike.

It's written in VB.NET 2008 and I believe there are issues running .NET programs from shared drives, however it works for me running it from a shared drive, but doesn't on some of our other machines, and I've not worked out why yet! Mike.

I've added a few extra bits to my program since I posted the first version. There's a facility for setting a runtime password for a bit of extra security There's a way of getting it to display users in a particular OU instead of the default way it is setup You can now choose the default settings yourself, and decide if change password at next login is applied or not. It now reads the SAMAccountName field rather than the cn field when searching for users in active directory. And some other changes. Please note the custom settings bit doesn't work yet as I've not written the code for it, but it won't be long until it does. Any feedback welcome, we're using it quite happily in our school at the moment and it's working well.

That's not quite true, there's 100's of free templates out there if you look around, and some of them look quite good. For ours one of my Techs knocked up a background in about half hour, which we now use on all the screens for a uniform look and feel. Mike.

I'm using Xibo Open Source Digital Signage we're currently running 3 screens around the academy using it, and it's brillient, does everything we need it to, and best of all it's opensource For the clients, we've used old Laptops that have broken screens that have been un-economic to fix, but the VGA output on them works a treat. Just chuck them above the ceiling tiles, and they run perfectally happily with a scheduled re-boot once a week. As the server, I recycled one of our old RMCC3 servers and put Ubuntu on it - does the job nicely. It only took me a morning to get it all working. Mike.

It's a mandatory profile on my Netlogon share, which is a fixed size of 4.45MB, and can't grow because it's mandatory and read only Mike.

When we moved to our new network at the start of the summer, I created a completely blank shared drive, and shared the contents of the old drive as read only on a temporary drive letter. Our new shared drives have a folder for each subject area in the root, and folders for various other things that are needed. Only network admins can create folders in the root, so that keeps it relatively well organised. I've also structured it differently, as I hate having loads of drive letters, so students and staff both get a P:\ - the staffs P:\ is divided P:\STAFF and P:\STUDENTS the students P:\ starts at the 'Students' level. This keeps it all on one drive letter, much neater

My mandatory profile for students it stored on the Netlogon share, seems to function fine from that location, never really had any issues. Staff Roaming profiles are on my storage server in a share called staffprofiles, they seem to work perfectally happily from this location. Mike.

We've been given a rather old, but pretty good condition HP 8550 A3 colour Laser printer. It works reasonably well, but it could do with a service. It's making a bit of a raket when it prints, and it jams up every now and then as well. We don't mind paying for a proper service as the printer was given to us, it's worth paying a bit to get it working properly as buying a replacement to do the same job would cost a fair bit. Can anyone recommend us a good HP service agent who would come to our school and fully service this printer for us? I've never had a printer serviced before, as normally it's not economic to do so, but on this ocassion it just might be worth it. Mike.

Some Dell laptops have an option for 'LCD panel expansion' in the BIOS which is supposed to shrink the image to fit the panels native resolution when displaying images in a lower than normal resolution. Just wondering if this feature is turned on, but is outputting the small picture to the VGA plug as well as the LCD panel? Mike.

We've just rebuilt our domain onto new hardware, but I stuck with server 2003 purely because I know it's stable, and we're running an exclusive XP environment so there was no point in the additional expense of Server 2008, and all the associated licensing. We will probably upgrade next year, when I invisige having to introduce some Vista/windows 7 clients to the network on account of not being able to obtain XP licenses anymore, but until then Server 2003 does me absolutely fine, it's quick, effiecient, reliable and I know all its quirks and features pretty well. I haven't even used 2008, Vista or Windows 7 yet, and I won't until I absolutely need to. Mike.

Stone computers offer an imaging service, so not only could they provide them with XP on, but if you provide them with a master image with all your software installed, they'll all be duplicated with that as well - dead handy and best of all it's free when you buy PCs from them Mike.

We lose the phone system anyway, as the switchboard is in one of the offices on the wall, and is hard wired in so couldn't really be put on a UPS. We have 3 emergency analogue lines in stratigic places through out the building for use when the power fails, these serve the purpose fine. Mike.

I've always got a couple of spare switches knocking about that I could swap out in an emergency situation.

Have to admit, I've not used windows 7 yet or Vista at all. XP all the way for me at the moment. However I will need to embrace one of them soon, as we're not going to be able to get any more XP licenses after they stop selling Vista Business licenses with downgrade rights to XP, damn it! Suppose I should move on really, but XP is like a pair of slippers with a hole in, yes it's old and maybe slightly flawed in places, but it's comfortable Mike.

My core switch has a duel power supply. One of these is connected into the main server room UPS to keep it running for a short while in the event of a power failure, mainly so the servers can still communicate with the UPS, as they all run network shutdown and rely on the switch for communication. On the rest of my cabinets, never seen the point. If there's a powercut then the network is useless anyway, and as for surge protection all my HP procurve switches have a lifetime warranty so no worries there Mike.