maniac

They do have full control, as that's how windows sets the home folders up by default when you let Active Directory create them. This makes little difference as they can't get to the securty tab for any folders, so they can't change permissions and they can still compress the folder with just modify rights anyway, so it doesn't solve the problem. I'm looking for a registry hack that might remove the compression option from the properties window, or a way of removing access to the properties page for students, or a way of turning off compression on the server if possible. So far I've drawn a blank searching for any of them. Mike.

Most of the way through building our nice shiny new Group policies for our new Domain, and I'm in the process of testing the students profile for flaws. So far all the issues I've found I've found a fix to, except this one. Is there a way to stop the students ticking the 'compress drive to save disk space' option on their home area properties? I can't stop access to the file menu or context menu in explorer because these are used to teach the students to create new folders etc. I've managed to get rid of all the other tabs on the folder properties window except the general one which still has the compress these files/folders option. I'd really like to stop them doing this, some of the brighter ones already do this on our existing system which I'd rather they didn't if it can be prevented. Anyone found a solution to this? Many thanks, Mike.

You only have one! You lucky person - we have 13 trollys of laptops here, but if you've got a good enterprise standard wireless system to run them through, then they present very few problems and infact I've grown to like working with laptops - so much easier to move around the building, store and setup. They're here to stay whatever we think of them, so may as well embrase the technology and make the most of it. Anyhow, in answer to your question a standard 13a plug is fine, but watch it when they are swiched on as 30 low voltage adapters all turning on at once can cause RCD's to trip. Not because of overload, but because of the tiny earth leakage that occurs with these type of adapters. If they are going to be based in one place, I would recommend if there is an RCD in the circuit, getting it changed to a 'C' rated one which has a slightly higher trip rating and is designed for circuits running ICT equipment. (Standard RCDs trip at 30ma and are rated 'B') this will prevent any problems occuring relating to circuits tripping out when they are plugged in. Saying that, it's not always the case as a large number of our cabinets are perfectally ok on normal RCDs, it seems to be that certain makes that are more sensitive to this than others. Mike.

Play.com have it at the moment Play.com (UK) : Mysterious Cities Of Gold (6 Discs) : DVD - Free Delivery I think it was released about 18months ago funny enough. I know it was a VERY long time coming. I had it on pre order for months when it was announced! While we're on childrens TV themes as well, one of my favourites was always [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjp7D0SW-9k]YouTube - Round the Twist[/ame] And who could forget this (this is the full version and it's brilliant! the end of the cartoon had a 1 minute clip of this tune) [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLVe1NkQA78&feature=related]YouTube - The Raccoons Theme Song Run With Us Music Video[/ame]

Have a look at this page, I think it should help you. Domain Name Disputes (BitLaw) Mike.

Do they share the same cabling? If so, FOG will just pickup a number from the admin DHCP server for its purpose. Providing the FOG server is in the same subnet it will just work. It's irrelevant which IP range the machines will eventually end up in, as the imaging process is entirely separate to the OS. If they don't share the same cabling, then FOG has the ability to act as a DHCP server which you could turn on just for the times when you're imaging. It doesn't function without DHCP, as you need DHCP in order to PXE boot the client. Mike.

It wasn't CGI thou, it pre-dated major use of computers in television, and used Chromakey very cleverly in conjunction with Airbrushed backdrops that were superimposed over the TV image to create the illusion of rooms. The only CGI in the early programs was the life indicator, and in later series they had a small amount of CGI for some other bits, but essentially it still used the same technique right up till its demise. It was waaaaay ahread of its time and I wish someone would consider reviving it using up-to-date techniques, I think it would be brilliant! Mike.

Now that was a quality show, I have the box set DVD. U often have planet rock on streaming over the net in our office, quite often get weird looks from the kids because none of them apart from a few of the musical types know any of the music on there. Had one the other day thou recognise Pink Floyd so I let him stay in the office till the end of the track! and does anyone remember knightmare, now that was brilliant! Mike.

Main reason we're re-imaging is because we're changing our domain and removing RM CC3 from the building, but we would probably re-image most of the machines anyway as it's always good to have a level playing field to start from at the beginning of the year, and there are certain patches (Windows genuine validation anyone?) that WSUS can't install. Also if you have major software changes it's often more efficient to re-image than rolling them out via MSI. I also think a lot of schools look at re-imaging as a sort of insurance policy to make sure everything works when the staff get back in September, because if it doesn't then questions will be asked. If you've re-imaged every machine in the school then you've basically done everything you can to ensure it runs smoothly in September. Mike.

I've got 2TB of storage to partition up, which will be used for Staff home areas and profiles, Student home areas and shared areas of the network. I've got two options one is to make one big partition for everything to go on, and the other is making seperate partitions for the different things, i.e one for the staff home areas, one for the student home areas and one for the shared drives etc. Which way would people recommend? Mike.

There's 3 of us. some of the work like the Projector installations and cabling is contracted in, and I've also got an engineer for 2 days to set up my Exchange server as I'm not that good with exchange at that level. Apart from those jobs, everything else is being done in house.

Parts of our school flood in heavy rain because some of the surface water drains drain into a sump, which quickly fills up then the water backs up into the quad and floods some of the rooms in that area. Hasn't happened for a while, but as soon as winter hits and we get a prolonged period of rain I expect it will! Mike.

OK, here goes. RM CC3 going out, 4 brand new servers coming in and vanilla network being setup (already started) New business and enterprise area being created with brand new cabling being put in for 3 ICT areas. 30 brand new workstations for our new Business and Enterprise area coming in Another 30 moving from the current ICT areas upstairs to the new business and enterprise area 30 new laptops for business and enterprise area 15 new laptops for performing arts 30 netbooks for Humanities 20 new laptops for staff 60 Dell GX60 workstations having RAM upgrades and being given to the maths department (15 per room for the 4 rooms they have) All exisiting laptops need re-imaging onto the new network (around 300 machines) Learning platform coming on-line in september, preparations for that New projector and whiteboard installations in 2 rooms Lots of AV work in the new business and enterprise area Disposal of all CRT monitors in the school (hooray!) And a ton of other stuff as well! We've already started some of this work.

Cheers for that piece of advice it is something I'm acutely aware of and we would never go completely thin client, but we could certainly achieve about 80% I think. A majority of our machines we have at present are just used in individual departments for a bit of word processing or net browsing, so a thin client solution is absolutely ideal for this scenario! Mike.

My first car was a 1.3CL 1983 Golf. It cost £175 with a years MOT. It cost a further £75 to tax it for 6 months. It then cost me £83 a month to insure it, 3rd party fire and theft only. That's a grand total of just under £1000 to insure a car worth £175. This was 10 years ago, things are much worse now - my friend recently paid £1400 to insure a 1.0 litre Peugeot 106. Out of interest we also got a quote for the same golf that I insured all those years ago. Over £2000! He lives in the same street as I did at the time, so that's over a 100% rise in 10 years! Luckily my current wreck of a car only costs me £250 a year to insure fully comp with no claims bonus protection and legal cover as well, but for new drivers it's a joke these days! Mike.

Some ittle w***** sole mine last night. OK, so it was only an old metal coat hanger poking out what remained of the aerial, but it worked!

Well I've had a big stategy meeting today with various people about the medium to long term ICT plans for the academy and I put forward that we should be concentrating on web based and thin client technologies and providing remote desktop connections to users off the school site (as well as other things) Our Sponsors ICT people were very much on my train of thought, and after explaing how the technology differers from a traditional network, and the long term benefits of adopting this approach the principal also now sees the advantages as well. Infact it was a very positive meeting so positive that the principal is considering this approach for both the academies that are under his control providing it proves to be cost effective as a solution. The main motivation for this is we are just commensing the process of our new build, and we will have a large injection of funding to spend on ICT. Problem is we need to have an ICT proposal on the table pretty soon so we can convince the governors and other academy sponsors that this is the right way forwards, and not the dreded managed services route. So I now need to obtain proposals for a full terminal server type system including remote access from home via a web browser etc. for costing purposes and he would also like me to arrange to see 1 or 2 schools who are sucessfully using this sort of technology already. (Also if anyone is using it on a multi site configuration over a WAN that would be even better.) So firstly can anyone recommend some companies to approach for a total solution for this sort of technology? Any pros and cons of the different systems on the market - the ones I know of are Citrix, Sun global desktop or just plain Microsoft Terminal sevices on its own. And lastly is anyone who's using this sort of technology in a big way willing to let myself, our principal and probably one or two other people associated with the academy come and visit your school to see what you're doing and have a chat with you. This would be sometime in September I think. Cheers in anticipation, Mike. edit: And yes I have asked this question before, but I'm in a different school now and we're one year further on so I though we'd start a fresh.

If I recall correctly, it's important to use Veritas's own drivers for your drive, and not the OEM ones that come with it. Why I have no idea, but we had a similar issue with a Quantum superloader 3 and Backupexec 11d, and changing the drivers sorted it out! I think Symantec do them as a bundle, and the 32bit version of the file can be found here; Backup Exec 12.0 for Windows Servers revision 1364 hotfix 305849, Device Driver Installer DDI20080815 (August 15th, 2008) - 32bit download. Mike.

Canterbury just had some very heavy rain, but we seemed to miss out on the thunder and lighting. Now it's horribly humid and I can't concentrate on anything as the office is like an oven! Might go and sit in the server room for a bit

Re-direct application data and desktop folders to the member of staffs home folder, makes a world of difference to the speed the profile loads at. The main reason for slow logins is teachers saving anything and everything to their desktop, because the desktop is normally part of the profile and few people re-direct it, whenever you logon or logoff it drags the entire folder over the network.

By far the easiest method of doing this (if you don't want to shell out for a network card for your UPS that is) is to set the APC software to launch a batch file before the server is shutdown (it can do this) then just write the shutdown commands in that batchfile shutdown -s -f -m \\servername And it will trigger all your servers to shutdown. Don't forget to power your core switch through the UPS as well, as the machines need to communicate through it in order for this to work. Mike.

In my current school we are about 200:1 at the moment, with more computers coming. We cope very well thou, as generally the technology is very reliable and although we have a lot of computers, we are a relatively small school with only 80 staff and 400 students at the moment.

One reason I came to work in an Academy, they offer a higher salery than doing the equivalent job working for a KCC school and have much more freedom to move on that. Their pay scales also differ to that of the county and are generally higher. Mike

Adobe do Deployment packages for their products which overcome this, and allow you to install the software silently over the network after your machines have been imaged, I would suspect if you contact their support this is what they would recommend using and I doubt they support any other method of distributing their software. Mike.

I recently evaluated a lot of these programs, and settled on Lanschool (who sponsor part of this forum) as my product of choice, not least of all because they will sell you a site license for a one off fee, but it also works really well. ABtutor was good, but was a tad more expensive. Mike.