maniac

I have no idea what the course was, I wasn't directly involved myself in that particular 'project' and I've since left that school, so I can't really find out now. It could well have been an industry qualification of some sort. Mike.

Why is it always such a hassle to do the simplest things with RM, I had the same problem myself and eventually by speaking to our account manager managed to get them to send me a list of all the servers they had ever sold our school with the serial numbers and spec so I could match up the serial numbers to the servers spec and make my own stickers for the ones missing them. Apparently there should be a sticker on the back of all of them, but our most recent RM servers have no such sticker anywhere on their chassis!

Actually we had this last year for part of a course, although don't ask me which one it was. We created one special username which all the kids used that had a specially written group policy that allowed them to do what they needed. This was setup to only log on in one specific room, and enabled only at the time they needed it. One of us also supervised the lesson when they did these activities and watched for kids doing things that wern't on the course. It worked ok, apart from us having to re-adjust screen resolutions back to what they used to be, as part of the course was changing the screen settings. Mike.

Normally the root of the profiles share I have Domain Users: read/write. The reason for that is the users profile is automatically generated when the user logs on for the first time, so the user needs write permissions to the root of the profile share to create the directory and save the profile back to the server correctly. Profiles are still safe as windows sets each users folder so only the user (and administrator if you have the right GPO setting) can access them, so if a user did stray across the share the only profile they could access would be their own. Mike.

I had exactly the same setup at a previous school, it worked like a charm and also stopped the missing startmenu and desktop problems you can get on wireless laptops using a redirected startmenu when the wireless signal drops. My simple script deleted the existing local copy and re-copied the start menu from the server everytime the machine started up. As it's only a handful of shortcuts it really didn't take too long to do, and extra time taken at startup is out weighed by the benefits in my opinion. This script also examines the OU the computer account is in, and copies over additional icons for each set of workstations if you want it to, as defined by the case statement. That means you no longer have dead links on your start menu for programs only installed in a certain area of the school. Hopefully the rest of it is fairly self explanatory. on error resume next Const OverWriteFiles = True Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") objFSO.DeleteFolder("C:\settings\startmenu") objFSO.CopyFolder "\\DOMAIN\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\Basicicons" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles 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=","") Select Case strOU Case "room 1" objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm1" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles Case "Room 3" objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm3" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles Case "Room 10 laptops" objFSO.CopyFolder "\\school\netlogon\students\Shortcuts\rm10LT" , "C:\settings\menu" , OverWriteFiles End Select You can then point your group policy redirect at c:\settings\menu and the machine will use the local start menu from that location Mike.

Nope, but this post on the MSDN contains as much information as I've been able to find on offline files for windows XP. Jonathan Hardwick : User comments about offline files There's a very long post about halfway down with lots of registry hacks and other useful information in. Incidently, how did you find out that SP3 stops that reg hack working, or did you just try it and get no change in what was happening? Mike.

Bugger, didn't realise SP3 stopped it working. Most of our staff machines are also on SP3, so that puts pay to that idea. I didn't get the chance to try it myself as cashless catering took over my life today! Mike.

Believe me if it works I'll also be very happy, as I've been looking for a solution to this problem for a while now. It's one of my most annoying problems at work, I had just accepted it as a flaw in the offlines files system and had previously googled for the solution with no results! I'll hopefully get the time to try it tomorrow, although the cashless catering system goes live tomorrow, so depends on how smoothly that goes! Mike.

I've been googling and turned up this. Forced silent auto reconnection: When a server has been unavailable (offline mode) and then becomes available again for connection, Offline Files Client Side Caching tries to transition that server to online mode if all the following conditions are true: # • There are no offline changes for that server on the local computer. • There are no open file handles for that server on the local computer. • The server is accessed over a “fast” link. You can adjust the definition of “slow” and “fast” by using the SlowLinkSpeed Offline Files policy. With this hotfix, you can configure Offline Files Client Side Caching to ignore these conditions and transition the server to online mode regardless of whether these conditions exist. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Click Start, click Run, type REGEDIT, and then click OK. 2. Locate and click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\NetCache 3. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value. 4. Type SilentForcedAutoReconnect, and then press ENTER to name the value. 5. Double-click SilentForcedAutoReconnect. 6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK. Source Going to try that tomorow. Mike.

I have the same issue with offline files, teachers laptops are set to use offline files for their home folders, as I want them to have these available off the network for obvious reasons. Quite often staff move around the building and the wireless signal drops out as they move, triggering the laptop into offline mode. It always requires a manual syncronisation to get the folder back online, even if the wireless has restored itself. I've played with group policy endlessly trying to get the folders to automatically come back online when the network is restored without much joy. If anyone does have any ideas on how to achieve this, I'd be really grateful too! For your shared area if you don't want this to be available offline at all, you can set this on the share properties. There's an option for never make these files available offline which might solve your problem. You can also use the GPO setting 'don't use offline files for these files or folders' and specify the relevant share. Mike.

Have you actually tried putting your server URL in a browser to see if OWA is installed, as AFAIK it is by default. Just bung in http://yourexchangeserver/exchange into a browser inside the school network and see what happens. And as far as I know if you are on a schools agreement the license to use exchange web access is included in the exchange license purchased through this agreement, at least that's what Pugh computers told me when I enquired. Tell you what, it would be a good idea to collate accurate information on licensing and what each type of agreement entitles you to do, when you may need to buy additional licenses etc. somewhere on this website, as it's something which a lot of people find confusing, and it's really difficult to find the right information sometimes. Mike.

so far I've not had many technical problems either, but we've had over 60 helpdesk calls in the last 2 days, mainly for silly problems, lost passwords etc. Considering the helpdesk was only launched 2 days ago to staff, I'm impressed that many are using it! Most of my time has been spent assisting the admin team in getting all the kids enrolled onto the biometric cashless catering system, about 80% there now, only year 7 to go

We pay around £2200 per board fully installed from SMARTvisual Ltd - Projectors, Interactive Whiteboards, Computers and Notebooks they don't do the electrics however, you have to make sure plug sockets are in the right places. They're not the absolute best, as we've had to have engineers back to re-do some sloppy workmanship that we only noticed when a couple of the boards were taken down recently to paint; the wiring behind them was aweful. OK it's out of sight, but when you take the board down and this birds nest of wiring falls out from behind it, you do have to wonder. Saying that, a majority of their installations are very good, virtually all of them in this school have been done by them, and the panel that they terminate to is good, as it has a proper USB socket on it for the board. Most installations I've seen have terminations for the VGA and sound+video but the boards USB connection is usually a trailing cable coming straight from the board.

Try here Global Variable List Think that's pretty comprehensive. Mike.

Oh dear, not ironing again! Seems to be the second favourite topic on these boards next to IT. I vote for no iron, the creases soon drop out after you've worn them for a while! On the dryer front, do be aware that they consume a LOT of electricity. We got rid of ours, and it saved us a small fortune in power! Mike.

WOW a Whole 7 of us!

I'd be straight on the phone to my rep, and if they failed to turn up at any point on the first day I'd cancel the order and go elsewhere. It's amazing how other companies can pull something out the bag when they know they're stealing business from another company! Did exactly that at my school when I first started, the company was taking an age just to quote for a job we needed doing, so I went elsewhere for a quote in the end, even thou the school had a long standing relationship with this company. I got an engineer visit the same day, quote was e-mailed to me the next day, and the work was booked in to be done the week after, I now use that contractor for all my cabling work as they are reliable and do a good job! Other company lost out because they were sloppy. Remember when booking contractors, you are effectively the boss, they are working for you, if you're not happy then you can put your business elsewhere. Mike.

I found this VB script, but I havn't personally tested it, so use it with caution. It seems to do what you want, as long as the username is exactly the same as the folder name you're changing. You can change the CACLS command line to totally replace the ACL if your ACLs are totally broken, follow the help attached to the CACLS program to find out what switches you need to change. You will also need to add in the other users you want to have access e.g adminstrator to the end of the CACLS line if you do this. Running it in its current form edits the ACL and adds in the necessary permissions for the matching user only. Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") strPath = "\\Server\HomefolerPath" '<--- Homefolder UNC path Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(strPath) Set colSubfolders = objFolder.Subfolders For Each objSubfolder in colSubfolders strFolderName = objSubFolder.Name Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell") strExec = objShell.Run("%COMSPEC% /c Echo Y| cacls " _ & strFolderName & " /E /T /P " & strFolderName & ":F ", 2, True) '<--- 1st "strFolderName" reflects the homefolder name. 2nd "strFolderName" reflects Username If strExec <> 0 Then MsgBox "Error with " & strFolderName & " and folder: " & strFolderName End If Next If running it on the server, which I would recommend you do, and not from a workstation across the network, change from using the UNC path to the local path insted. hope that's of help. Mike.

Well so far; We've completed re-imaging of all our laptops (340 or so machines) just got to replace the power cords on some of the cabinets where they've been badly pulled, and PAT test them all and they can go into their respective classrooms. Network infrastructure improvements have gone well, contractor took exactly the length of time they quoted for, and did a few other odd jobs for me while they were on site, which was good of them! CCTV improvements also complete. New staff laptop image created, and new GPOs written and tested for staff machines (which took me longer than expected.) I've also setup an ICT helpdesk system, some new library software which is web accessible all over the site and is very good, you'd hardly know it's web based it runs that well! I've also established a staff and student intranet to give a good starting point for internet use, built all our new office furniture , currently setting up 2 new workstations for video editing use in IT. I've also renamed most of our student accounts to make the naming convention more consistant, archived all the old YR11 work and removed the accounts, done some housekeeping on the servers, moved student home areas around a bit to make better use of our server space etc. Still to go: New SIMS server has arrived and is being installed by the LEA next week Gonna have some fun with printers getting them all where they need to be Couple of small cabling jobs to be done Desktop PCs to be setup in English once the premises team have built the worktop for it. Couple of bits of new software that arrived on my desk last week, would have been nice to have had them before the holidays! Revise our backup procedures as it's overly complecated at the moment! Clear out and tidy up our store room Turn the old SIMS server into a WSUS server (or something else equally as useful) Lots of other little jobs! Mike.

Definitely check the event log, it should give you an code recorded when the error message is displayed. I've seen this sort of problem before, but I can't for the life of me remember how we solved it, I think it may have been a driver issue. Mike.

Best thing you can do is look at speeding up your servers network interface (teaming NICS etc) and your network backbone links, as these are probably the 'weak' link in the chain. We regulalry maxed out our 1GB backbones using WDS on more than about 15 machines or so at once. Mike.

That's precisely what we do here. Tip from me, make sure you create a completely new OU for all your staff machines and users, and disable policy inheritance on it. That way you won't get any of the RM GPOs clogging up your setup. Also it's worth creating your own security groups as well, and not using the RM default ones, that way you know what they all do and can allocate them to resources as you feel necessary. Mike.

Put the server on the same IP address as the old server and I expect it will work, as long as all your other settings are correct! Your router will be configured to route SMTP traffic to a certain address, and I expect the mail server your outbound mail forwards to is setup to only receive mail from a specific address within your organisation, so as to stop open mail relay and possible abuse of the e-mail server(s). Mike.

For wall boxes and faceplates you can't beat these guys, little on the expensive side, but they do every combination imaginable! The pre-wired ones are handy for DIY whiteboard installs. http://www.avrio.co.uk/acatalog/AV_Wall_Plates.html Mike.

I have a old bosch machine that's doing well, and it gets a hammering in this house! My parents have an AEG machine that's a good 8 years old and still going strong. My Grandad always has to show every one else up and has an AEG machine that's god knows how old, at least 20 years! So yes definitely something to be said for german engineering! Mike.