maniac

Well, I'l tell you. Contractors have been knocking down walls to create our new open plan learning space. http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-24.jpg http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-27.jpg I've been assured it will be finished in time for us to put the computers in, electrics are all done, carpets going down tomorrow and friday, network cabling is being done Mon, Tue, Weds next week and desks are arriving Thursday next week leaving us 1 week to put the machines in place! They've also been knocking down walls to create a flexible learning space in the two classrooms nextdoor http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-20.jpg http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-22.jpg And knocking down part of a partition wall to make a big opening into the Learning Resource Centre, which currently looks like a bomb site. http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-16.jpg And we've been getting exciting deliveries of lots of new kit, courtesy of Stone computers who delivered at precisely the time and date they said they would. The staff room is our temporary warehouse http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-11.jpg And stock piling all our old kit ready for recycling, or anyone else who wants it! (No not the apple macs in the background silly) http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-06.jpg http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/Image-01.jpg On top of that we've completely renewed all the main network servers, and are re-imaging all 600 computers in the school as we've ditched RM CC3 this year, we now have a completely vanilla windows based network which touch wood has behaved its self impeccably for the last 2 weeks. Oh and we have 30 new laptops being delivered tomorrow, and 28 netbooks being delivered next week. So yes, busy busy busy here, just thought I'd share it with you all. Mike.

I don't share users folders individually, I have one root share which all students can read, and all the users home folders as sub directories of this. Their home folder is mapped to their sub directory \\SERVER\SHARE\USERNAME The only flaw with this is there's always a few bright sparks that ocassionally find themselves in the root share, but the security permissions stop users getting into each others folders, so they can't do any harm. The best bit about doing it this way is Active directory itself will create the home folders and set the security on them, even if they are on another server, so no need for fancy scripts or programs. IIRC this is actually the recommended method of doing home folder shares, and not to create an individual share for each user, as managing more individual shares uses more server resources I seem to remember reading somewhere. Mike.

Hello! We use a public calendar in Outlook for a school calendar, which is all very well and good except public folders are so damned awkward to access in Outlook. I've made it as easy as I can by making the folder list button available at the top of the shortcuts list for all staff, but you still have to expand the public folders tree to actually see it. What I'd really like to do is make Outlook open on the school calendar page every time a member of staff opens it, thus forcing them to see it. I know you can choose any local folder you like for outlook to open on, but you can't select public folders. Anyone know of a registry hack or simelar which might allow me to do this? Mike.

My goodness, so they do go wrong . . . . . .

Well after much frustration, I went back to the windows recovery console again just on the off chance and I was amazed when it actually recognised the C:\ this time. I think it was pure luck to be honest. I was then able to run windows CHKDSK with the repair option, it took about 2 hours to do a comple scan and I think it fixed lots of errors. After that was complete the damn thing booted up fine, I then coipied all the data off straight away while it was running just incase it decided to go wrong again. Finally got to bed about 2:00am! Thanks for all the suggestions on this one guys, there's certainly a few things there that i will keep for future reference, as it won't be the last time I'll have to do that I'm sure. Mike.

That's a brillient set of instructions there thanks for that. However it's not an SATA drive, it's an old Dell Inspiron laptop with an IDE drive. The recovery console does not read the drive, it doesn't think there's a C:\ there, it gets listed as an 'unrecognised format' in windows setup, although it knows the partition size etc. It also does not read in any other computers, I've tried it in my external Hard drive enclosure, and windows does not recognise the drive. Yet windows starts to boot from the drive, so it is being read by something at bootup, that's what I can't get my head round. (By the way, the smiley list for this site has got silly now, I can never find the ones I want! )

Yes, I ran out of ideas about 9:00 tonight, after trying since 6:00pm to get some sense out of the drive. I still can't understand why windows attempts to start, meaning the drive must be readable, but yet I can't actually read the drive in anything, it's most odd. Ah well, I'll keep trying until I fall asleep tonight, then we'll go for a re-format tomorrow if nothing turns up, unless she wants to send the drive to a data recovery firm.

Yes, stuck it in my external HDD enclosure, Windows won't even mount the partition, it's in an unrecognised format

Should have mentioned, I've already tried that - it doesn't get any sense out of it. It mounts the partition, but won't read anything from it. I'm verging on re-formatting it, but my friend would really like some of her data from it, as she has a lot of digital photos of her daughter on there that aren't backed up, so I'm really hopeful at finding something that will read the drive! Mike.

I don't want to do a format at all if I can help it, I want to try and repair the windows installation that's on the drive, or read it in some way as to recover the files, then I'll format it and re-install. It's weird, because windows starts to boot, so the data is obviously still there somewhere, I just can't get at it! Those file recovery tools won't work as I can't even mount the partition in windows, and Linux mounts it, but can't get any sense out of it, yet Windows start to boot from the drive but blue screens after 5 seconds, so the data must be on the drive in some sort of readable way as if the drive was totally corrupt, surely windows wouldn't start to boot? Mike.

Very strange set of circumstances this one. I have a laptop that belongs to a friend which is blue screening during windows boot up. No problem I thought, I'll pop an XP disc in and run a repair installation, as that normally solves the problem 90% of the time, or at least enough so that you can copy the data off and re-format. Problem was, there was no repair option available as XP setup knew the partition was there, but said it was in an unrecognised format. Oh dear, looks like the worst has happened and your Hard drives had it. Before I called it a day, I ran the Dell diagnostics tool and got it to scan the drive, expecting it to find errors of some description, it found none absolutely none. I then ran several drive scanning tools from the Ultimate boot CD, and every single one of them says there's nothing wrong with the drive. Question is, what's happened then? Windows attempts to boot, but blue screens after about 5 seconds of loading, so there's obviously still life in it, but XP setup doesn't recognise the drive to run a repair. I also can't read the drive in other computers, it just says the drive isn't formatted. All the drive diagnostics come back saying there's nothing wrong, even an in depth scan came back 100% OK. It's a weird one, as normally I find when HDD's go wrong in this way the diagnostic tools pick up bad sectors on the drive or similar, but this drive appears to be functioning all OK according all all the diagnostic tools. Anyone got any idea how I may be able to recover the data on this drive? Cheers Mike.

Didn't know about that command, even easier than the method I was suggesting!

Those custom variables are held in the registry [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment] You could write a VB script which will add them at logon, or use REGEDIT in silent mode to import a .REG file with the necessary additions in. Mike.

A friend of mine used to work for a popular beer distribution company and used to drive the forklifts. He regularly had to lift full pallets of bottled beer from the top level of their warehouse racking onto the waiting lorries. This racking consisted of two runs of parallel steel poles which the pallets rested on, perfectly safe in normal operation, until one day whilst not paying attention quite as much as he should have been, he managed to get the forks underneath one of the supporting rails rather than the full pallet of bottled larger that he was meant to be lifting. I expect most of you can imagine the end result - lots of broken glass, a shower of beer for my friend and at least one off license now short on its beer delivery. There were exactly 2 unbroken bottles found during the clear up which were duly cleaned up in a traditional way. Unfortunitely camera phones had yet to be invented when this happened, so we never got any pictures. Mike.

As the title says, those that still use tape backups like me, do you run a backup on Saturday and Sunday nights? We run a full backup on a Friday which uses about 4 tapes on our old but functional AIT3 changer, and then we do differential backups on a Monday-Thursday which just uses a single tape normally. This is the best backup routine I could come up with with the technology we have available as I ran out of money for a new backup device this year, it will be happening next year however so I won't need quite so many tapes for a full backup, but for now it will have to do. Just wondering thou if I really should be running a backup on a saturday and sunday night as well. What do you do? Mike.

I looked into building my own house seriously about a year or so ago, but after some extensive research, I concluded that down here in the SE at least it's just not economical, as the initial price of the land, the planning permission and archetects offset any saving you might make on the actual build. True you end up with a house which you designed yourself to your specification, but at the moment at least in the SE corner of britain, you don't really save any money by going down this road. I'm actually in the process of buying my first house at the moment, only a little 2 up 2 down victorian end of terrace, although it does have a garage and driveway which is a bonus. It's a doer-upper which suits me fine. Mortgage was easy to get but you do need minimum of 10% deposit at the moment. Apparently mortgages for self builds are even harder to get at the moment, needing a much higher deposit to secure them. Mike.

Just knocked this up for you and tested it on my home machine, it appears to do what you need it to. Const HKCU=&H80000001 Set oReg=GetObject("winmgmts:!root/default:StdRegProv") oReg.CreateKey HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop" oReg.SetDWORDValue HKCU,"Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop","NoChangingWallpaper",1 Save it as anything.VBS and add it as a logon script and it will change that registry key at logon. Please test it first, it is offered with no warranty or guarantee. Mike EDIT: Classic, two different ways of achieving the same thing Arthur!

It doesn't grey out the option, but I believe if you click it, it comes up with a message saying this has been prevented due to restrictions in effect on this machine, or words to that effect. I've always used VBS scripts to change registry keys that aren't in Group Policy, as I've never had any luck at all at creating a custom ADM file for Group policy management. Doing this change as part of a logon script is very easy, I'll post up the code if you want it. Also if it's for your students and you run a mandatory profile, you could change this key in your mandatory profile instead of using a Group Policy. Mike.

I will do next time we're ordering (which won't be for a few months as we're well stocked at the moment) as long as you are able to offer free next day delivery, and the office basics range have the same capacities as the HP originals like the inkrite ones do. I've had bad experiences with compatibles, so it was a leap of faith for me to order any to start with. I did a lot of reading on the different brands available and actually chose inkrite because of a large number of positive reviews and a smaller number of negative ones, it was just by chance that Misco sold them and we had an account with them already. Mike.

Surely they should be BS 6206 approved, and should shatter in a safe way

Depends how much you want to spend. I have one of these Sony STR DB 940 QS Amplifier on eBay (end time 07-Aug-09 20:00:00 BST) which has as many inputs as you could ever want. It also switches the vision as well as the sound, so you only need one AV input on the TV and you can hook everything else into the AV box - simples You can then select speakers of your choice (I have 4 B&W 601 speakers and a Kef Q95 centre speaker) and a sub woofer if you'd like one (not essential, but does give films that 'wow' factor, totally useless for listening to music with thou.) Total cost second hand for a reasonable set-up, about £300 if you hunt around. Probably more than you'd want to spend, but trust me you'll never look back! I've had my system about 5 years, and it still sounds as awesome as the day I brought it. You can do it a lot cheaper than that by the way, those AV amps start at a lot less - some of the lower powered ones only sell for £30 or so on e-bay, but as a result they have lower outputs and less inputs. Mike.

If you're buying compatibles and not originals, I've found Misco to be very keen on their pricing - they sell the inkrite range of compatibles which I've found to be very good. For HP originals, it's anyone's bet as the prices are changing all the time. We've just switched to using compatibles as original cartridge prices have gone through the roof in recent months. Mike.

Just been playing around with this today, as we have 4 screens going in at the moment. We were just going to run Powerpoints on them, but this seems to fit the bill perfectally for controlling them, it even runs on the old tablet PCs we were going to use to control the screens with - perfect! Only took me an hour to get working, and just playing around with templates and trying out the different bits of it. First impressions are good Mike.

That's fair enough, so do we now which is why I've got about 60+ CRT monitors going to be recycled shortly. DaveP if you want just the base units, then you are more than welcome to them, they are only going to be recycled otherwise as they are no use to me any longer. I'm based in Canterbury, and you're welcome to collect them as soon as you like. Also Correction to the numbers, I only have 18 of them and not 20 as I originally thought. Mike.

Does it have to be a formula, as the easiest way is to change the formatting of the cell to custom and type ddmmyy into the type box. I've just used this to generate my new users passwords, as we're using DOB this year for the new Y7's as their initial password in that format. Mike.