waldronm2000

Shouldn't cause any major problems to delete your PTR records, as they're mostly an optional extra with DNS anyway, unless you happen to be using them as a basis for web filtering etc. If you're concerned about getting them back up quickly you could create a CMD file that just says IPCONFIG /RENEW, stick it in a share everyone has read-only access to, and use the AT command (or Scheduled Tasks) to run it on each PC in turn. The DHCP renewal should prompt the DHCP server to recreate the PTR records (I think), and as there's no /RELEASE connectivity should not be affected. Incidentally, don't delete the PTR records for any statically configured hosts, or if you do then run IPCONFIG /REGISTERDNS on those to recreate the PTR records.

You can use XCOPY with the /D option to copy out the new files you want to keep, then DEL what's left and MOVE the copies back. Note that this will affect the permissions and attributes though.

I think this may be related to secure dynamic updates. If I recall correctly, the ACLs that get created for records in AD-integrated zones only allow the owner of the record to update it. This isn't a problem for forward lookups, as the A record belongs to the PC with that name. However, for reverse lookups, the PTR record is tied to the IP address, and this moves as DHCP reallocates the address to different hosts. This may cause problems if the new owner of the IP tries to update the PTR record originally created by a different host. If this is the problem, the solution is to ensure that only the DHCP server updates the PTR records, not the clients. Then delete all the PTR records to ensure that when DHCP leases are renewed the PTR records are created correctly, and owned by the DHCP server.

If you have students who are genuinely interested in network support to the point where they may want to do it as a future career, then if your school is in a position to become a vendor academy (Microsoft / Cisco / CompTIA) this can provide them with resources and opportunities to learn in a way that needn't compromise the security of your systems.

Not sure, but might be worth checking the MX records for your domain in DNS, just to make sure that if there are multiple entries they all point to valid mail servers for your domain. Multiple records with one correct, one incorrect, would potentially lead to 50% success in delivery.

I did raise the licensing issue with nComputing, as it seemed an obvious flaw in their sales pitch. They said they could send me a link to a Microsoft document that said it was ok as long as you buy a Server licence to cover the XP machine. I have yet to see how this affects the economics of the situation.

Not sure whether this is the correct forum; maybe it's a hardware question, but... I was invited to an N-Computing product demo last week, where I was shown some X-series and L-series devices in action. I was surprisingly impressed with the X-series; less so with the L-series. Is anyone using any of these devices, and if so what are your experiences? My initial thoughts are that I'd like to have spares of everything on site, due to risk of failure causing loss of multiple seats, but apart from that would probably be happy to use the X-series devices.

Don't take it as a bona fide recomendation - I found every point raised by "The Dawkins Delusion" to be total rubbish.

I found it pretty interesting. He makes some good points. As to whether he's out of his depth on theology, I tend to agree with his view that it's a non-subject, so his application of scientific rigour is just as valid as religous dogma. Incidentally, if you want to get a balanced view, or just want a laugh or sneer, you could follow it up with "The Dawkins Delusion", in which every point of logic or science is expertly refuted through the medium of, errmmm, blind dogma. Still, it's a mercifully short book.

If you check whether there's a college in your area that's a Microsoft IT Academy, they may have an MCSE evening class inc books, exams, e-learning, MSDNAA, etc, for a similar or better price. Always worth asking lots of questions before signing up though.

I think A+ and Network+ give a good basic grounding before moving on to MS Certs, depending on how much you already know or how much practical experience you have. My experience of uni was that it was great for theoretical stuff, which is all very well if you were looking to become a software developer, but for tech support the vendor certs give much better coverage of what you actually need to know.

Might be worth checking whether your local colleges are members of the Microsoft IT Academy, Cisco Network Academy or CompTIA E2C programme. If so, they may offer the same courses as private sector training companies, but much cheaper. Before signing up, though, ask about success rates, instructor's previous experience, and if possible speak to current or past students about their experience.

I reckon 452...

You could create a taskpad view in MMC with just the tasks you've delegated, lock it down, and just give them access to that.

I think the limitation is due only to the age of the article, and ZAP files work in XP too (and probably Vista and 7, tho I haven't tried these). Thanks for the link though. As I recall, I created ZAP files in the past based on the sample one in this article, and discovered there's an error - the sample is missing an newline somewhere.

For what it's worth, GPOs can be used to deploy EXEs as well as MSIs, by creating a ZAP file (fairly straightforward as I recall), but that's when they really become inflexible. As long as you're deploying MSIs, then the options on the GPOs allow some flexibility in when installation occurs.

Depends on whether you license per seat or per server. Default is per server, and with only one server on each network that's probably what you're using. With this model you would need 50 CALs on each server, so 100 total. However, you can do a one time only, non-reversible change to per seat (I think they've changed the name to something like "per client or per user", but basically it still means per seat), in which case the same CALs can be used to access both servers, so you would only need 50. At least, that's my understanding...