Achandler

If you remortgage quickly you will be charged a massive amount most likely. Personally, I would approach a local building society if there is one for you. The one near me offered to do 95% LTV on a variable rate to get the cash to do the house up, then let us do the house up and remortage (as long as it was with them) to a fixed rate at much lower LTV (75%) to allow us to get the much cheaper rate. Bigger places don't allow it.

I have seen heavily modded Skyrim take 3.2GB or RAM by itself. Europa Universalis is also poorly written, and heavily modded willl east over 3GB. And as for Sid Meier's Civilization, I've seen that hog so much RAM that I have had to restart my computer!

There are games that are poorly written that have 1 exe taking up 4 GB of RAM by itself, so for gaming you really can need more RAM

Depending on your servers, check the power wave type, I know a school that had a big APC unit that wasn't giving the right type of power so the servers were shutting down.

It is here: User Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Desktop -> Remove Computer icon on the desktop

Ok, so within the workstations computer policy does it have loopback enabled as well, or is it purely computer settings? People setup things differently. When a user logs into a workstation in your network two things happen, both the Computers Policy and the Users policy applies. When a user logs into the terminal server then the following two things happen the TS_Loopback Policy and the Users Policy (because of loopback) So there are a couple of things that are common, mainly the User Policy, the User Profile. The problem must be within there.

It makes it very difficult to establish what is happening then, without actually seeing it. From what you are syaign basically, no matter what computer you login you are getting extra policies applying that shouldnt be. On your RSOP you said the policy is applying but blank. On your test user in your new OU, you should only have 2 policies applying if you have blocked inheritence on everything, is that much at least true? Or is there more policies then expected appearing?

In your users do you set a remote desktop services profile path? There should be a tab for it within Active Directory, mayeb this is pointing to a different profile then your original and as such is causing you the issues.

That sounds highly inplausible i'm afraid. Group policy updates are virtually instant. Does your test user maybe have a profile setup that contains a start menu amongst other things. Also so there is no group policies applying to either the User OU or the Computer OU?

That policy would only have affect on anything within the OU which it is applied, so check where TS_Loopback policy is applied. The TS_Loopback is merely making User Setting from the User's OU apply, so if you have a user setting that changes the background normally, and it is set on an inidividuals OU, then this setting would also apply to the Terminal Server, because the loopback applies user settings.

The policy isn't standard No. It has been named liek that by a predecessor. This User Group Policy loopback processing mode is Enabled and set to Merge means that User policies set, I.e the polciies you have set for each individual user, probably at OU level within the students and staff parts of your setup, will get merged into any policies that are set on the Terminal Server, it is a way to force User Policies onto a person logging into a specific computer (or terminal server in your case). From what you have said you will need this enabled, so that your staff and students are locked down appropiately.

ATI graphics cards are better bang for buck at almost all levels, so don't change it. As for future proofing, if your motherboard has enough RAM slots then you cna buy more RAM if and when its needed. No point stacking RAM now if it isn't actually be used. Intel instead of AMD is worth the change if it can be afforded.

I have a trick i like to use which si copy the finance folder from a working computer onto a broken one, usually it fixes it

Having a .local domain also makes it slower but it shoudls till be fast enough not to cause disruption.

I have upgraded our P4500 live (it was the holidays though), the P4500 are usually set up to replicate each other, so one being down is no problem.

The Play 3 and Play 5 don't need a bridge, they have network ports in the back of them. Only "Need" a bridge with Play:1 or if there is no network point near the bigger brother speakers

Rabbie The way it works (according to them), is that you plug in one device into an Ethernet port, then each device broadcasts on a hidden SSID called Sonosnet (or similar). All the speakers communicate via this ad-hoc peer to peer wifi and not actually via your own network. I have Sonos at home and it is good but it is a hosue so the wifi doesn't have to reach to far from each speaker, to be within range of another one etc. There isn't any broadcasting protocol like bonjoru that I am aware of. If your school is compact you could easily work it out, or if you are using it ina single area then it should also work fine.

You realise in Steam you can set multiple install locations, then just install them to either location, you can also tell it to move the game across.

Ahh the fun of buying a house/ or selling for them. If the vendor isn't in the position where they have to sell then they might not be willing to negogiate on the price, especially if you have already knocked money off. Remember, any house you buy will need work no matter what, you might get one whose electrics are tested and are fine, only to discover 3 months later that although they all test out fine, actually they were installed illegally etc. You realise the worse thing about the full re-wire isn't actually the cost of it financially really, yeah its expensive (though I paid on £1600 for it in a 3 bed house (including fuse board)). It is money well spent in the end either way. However, remember it is a really messy job which means floorbooards up and plaster everywhere from chasing out the walls, also ask the electricians if they are gonna plaster the chasing back in (though the job they do will be garbage no doubt. Buy bascially full rewire is usually followed by full re-decorate, you might be doign that anyway, but jsut a heads up.

That was really easy. But then the only colour I ever disagree on with people are some navy blues and dark purples

As far as I was told. Tou can license your RDS/ Xendesktop hosted sessions by FTE as long as your device they are connecting from has a valid Windows OS on it (or a VDA license). So if you have XenDesktop hosts, 60 FTE but 150 ThinClients (running a none Windows OS), you would need to license the FTE RDS licenses (60), this would also cover students) and also then 150 VDA licenses (which aren't cheap). if you had Windows thinclients then you would only need the 60 FTE. This is as always a bit of a minefield and the above way might not even be the cheapest if you have huge numbers of devices that require a VDA license then it is very expensive and there might be a better method, our VDA to student ratio si quite low now though. Also it does depend on if you allow external access, as for external access each student and FTE would need an RDS CAL (which might be why you needed to go down that route).

If your hosts have datacenter on then you don't license your virtual servers as well, so I don't thinky ou need 16 standard licenses + the licenses on the VMs. You can use FTE to license RDS cals and User CALs, so you can have 50 FTE RDS and User CALs. Then it depends on the endpoint devices accessing the Xenapp servers and what you provide the end user with as to whether you need to get VDA licenses. That is my interpretation of the rules from speaking to a MS reseller very recently with similar requirements to yours.

I haven't personally used thinstation. So I'm not fully know to be honest. There are people who know alot more then me about it or will likely be more able to help you.

Why are you converting it? What are you connecting your thin clients to? You can download some software that replaces the windows explorer shell, so it just boots up and onnects directly to your thin client software, or you cna replace the whole OS on the PC.

Honestly buy fat clients. Thin clients aren't great for flash videos, you tube etc etc. Clients can end up being nearly as expensive as fat clients to as initial cost.