srochford

OK; try this: sFolder="c:\temp\test\" set oFSO=createobject("scripting.filesystemobject") set oFolder=ofso.getfolder(sFolder) for each oFile in oFolder.files sExt=lcase(ofso.getextensionname(oFile)) if sExt="pdf" then'it is a PDF file, get more info sName=lcase(ofso.getbasename(oFile)) 'get the name without path and extension sNameBits=split(sName,"_") 'split the name into parts using the _ as separator sNumber=sNameBits(2) 'count from zero so the number will be item number 2 in the array sStart=left(sNumber,len(sNumber)-1) 'take everything but the last digit (eg 123 gives 12; 95 gives 9) sEnd=right(sNumber,1) 'and take the last digit sNewName="Textbook" & sStart & "." & sEnd & ".pdf" 'build the new name oFSO.movefile sFolder & oFile.name, sFolder & sNewName 'rename it end if next I've added some comments so I hope it makes sense but shout if not :-)

Can't see anything wrong! Log on as your test user, go to a command prompt and type: net user dgrams /domain You'll get all the info about your user account - does that say that the home directory is set? If so, try typing: net use g: /home - does that connect the drive properly? If so, that tells you the AD stuff is correct but there's something weird about the logon process. You haven't by any chance got something like a USB card reader taking drive letter G:?? Do you have more than one domain controller? It's possible that replication isn't working properly so you're updating AD on one DC but being logged on by the other (out of date) DC. If you do have more than 1 DC, use AD Users and Computers to connect to a different DC - check that the user has been updated as expected.

Everything is possible with a script. Are all the names of the form _something__.pdf and you want to extract just the number and stick "textbook" in front of it? Are there always going to be 2 underscores before the number?

The answer (as others have said) is "not much damage" Realistically, if they're going to do damage, they'll do it without the programming tools and access to the command prompt. Do you, for example, remove the VBA environment from Word, Excel etc? If not, you're at exactly the same level of risk and I suspect that VBA is present for most users. I know we have school and college students on this forum - perhaps one of them would like to explain what they can do when they have access to a programming environment. I suspect that they're able to do very little that they shouldn't be able to do if the network is reasonably well locked down.

One other thing which is absolutely critical with backups - make sure you know how to restore! This is true for any backup but it's a bit more complex with Exchange. Since 2003, it's been possible to restore to a recovery storage group. This makes it quite easy to restore mail for a single user but it's not as easy as just restoring a few files and choosing a separate folder so you don't overwrite.

If you've got time then it does no harm to do the verify but it's less useful when you're backing up to disc than tape (I think tape goes wrong far, far more often than disc!) The way the backup works, it will either complete and log the fact followed by deleting the log files or it won't complete - you shouldn't ever be in a situation where you think you've got a backup but it's not really there. No real problem with backing up to the F: drive (assuming you've got space). It might be a bit slower but if you've got time in your overnight tasks then that's no big deal.

Download the eval copy of 2008 server (free!) and build yourself a virtual network Try and setup some of the things you'll see described here - user accounts, group policies, software installations, login scripts, redirected start menus, quotas etc etc Do the course as well if you want but if you can write in your CV that you've set up a real test network it shows quite a bit of dedication. It also means you've got something to experiment with so you can try things out and you can talk about what you've done at interview.

A starting point is Google - Google Translate It's by no means perfect but it might help and it is free.

Well, for some values of "good" ... At minimum, I'd want you to use the DNS name for the printer - that makes it possible to change the IP at some time in the future without having to revisit every laptop. It also means you lose any kind of queue control on the printer - if 2 people try to print at the same time then one will lose and there's no nice tidy way of queuing jobs for later. You've also got no way of charging users - the job is going straight to the printer and bypassing any quota software etc. If none of those things is an issue then it's a good way to work :-)

I think it depends on how you're running it. If you run it as a service then I thought that it wouldn't work (services are not allowed to interact with the desktop except by popping up a message saying "process X wants your attention" but if you run it as a user then it should be OK (eg you have a shortcut to vnc.exe in the startup group)

If you use Edugeek by starting at the home page and working your way through the menus then it's easy to avoid sections that don't interest or affect you. If you just hit "new posts" then you get to see everything that's new - they're all in there together - and that obviously includes Mac, Netware, MIS as well as general chat, red door and so on. Perhaps when you sign up you should have to say "only show me stuff in forums a,b,c" and from then on you'll never get to see the other stuff unless you go looking for it.

Yes, your backup isn't working ... I've not used Backup Exec for ages (I grew to hate it, mainly because of its price and licensing) but with NTBackup it's fairly easy. Launch ntbackup on the Exchange server, work out what you're going to backup on the Exchange store(s) and then save the settings - they're saved as a .BKS file - c:\temp\exchangesettings.bks in the example below. You can then schedule a task to run: ntbackup.exe backup "@c:\temp\exchangesettings.bks" /v:no /r:no /rs:no /m normal /j "daily" /l:s /f "c:\backupfolder\backupfile.bak" The final file name is where you want the backup writing - it obviously makes sense to put it on a machine other than the Exchange server. Run the task as a user who can connect to another server and then use a UNC path to the backup. @m25man - you're right in the things to monitor. I'd guess I'm thinking of maintenance as things that need doing regularly to keep it working and monitoring as things you need to check to make sure it is working - your items go in my monitoring list rather than maintenance :-)

If you can do it with devcon then why not just put that in a machine startup script? The only tricky thing is that you only want it to run once but that can be done by either setting a registry value or writing a flag file to say "driver installed": if exist %windir%\usb_driver1_installed goto end \\server\share\devcon echo installed > %windir%\usb_driver1_installed :end

I'd be very surprised if it's anything at all to do with the SID. The reason that NewSID is being (has been?) discontinued is because it's not necessary - Mark Russinovich (who write NewSID) has a blog post about this - Mark's Blog : The Machine SID Duplication Myth Given that replication isn't working properly between the 2 DCs I think you need to establish which of the DCs are holding which FSMO roles. Move them all to the machine you want to be "correct" and once that's done wait an hour or so for things to settle down (not needed if the FSMO roles are all on your main DC) Once you've got that sorted, run dcpromo on the other server; this will stop it being a DC and leave the first server as the only DC. That may fix all the problems - if machines are trying to authenticate against DC2 but for some reason it's not being found or its database is not in sync then moving to a single DC will fix the problems. Check that your one DC points to itself for DNS - the network card properties MUST NOT refer to any DNS other than itself (you resolve external names by setting the DNS service itself to either use root hints or to forward to your ISP DNS). Do another dcdiag - you may well still see frs errors but check the times - they should be before you wiped the other DC settings (nothing to replicate in a single DC setup!) Once you're confident that your one DC is running OK you can promote the other one. First of all, make sure that it is pointing to your other DC for DNS; again, there must be no reference to external DNS Run dcpromo and follow the prompts to make it a DC in an existing domain. Finally, check the DHCP settings - again, they must not give out any DNS other than that of your main DC. (It's a really common mistake to have clients getting 2 DNS addresses, one is the internal DNS, the second is external. It looks like a good idea but IT'S WRONG!!) (apologies for shouting; it's just such a common mistake!!)

Apart from backing it up and making sure you install MS updates you don't really need to do any maintenance of Exchange. You obviously need to delete users from AD when they're no longer needed - this will automatically get rid of the mailbox (there's a time when they are detached but not deleted but this is completely automatic) It does automatic defragmentation of the store overnight so you don't really need to worry about that. If you delete a large number of mailboxes at the same time you will get spare white space in the database but this is generally not a problem unless you're short of space (in a school type environment you'll have a batch of students leave at the end of the year. You delete their mailboxes and this causes white space. The new students start and their mail just tidily fills up the white space) Backing up is critical - you should check that it works (you shouldn't see any log files left which are older than your last backup; if there are log files then it means that the backup didn't work properly)

"Sky will be looking to run trials of fibre-optic broadband" looks like a really positive commitment! Also, not quite sure why it's being described as fibre-optic? The text also says "engineer ... visit your home to upgrade your phone socket, set up your modem/router and check your internet connection" which rather sounds like the signal is still being delivered over good old twisted pair copper - the only fibre is going to be that at the exchange unless I've completely misunderstood this!

Only downside is that a standard rack mount server is longer than the table but you could easily just use 2 tables. Not sure our network guys would approve - the specs for our cabinets don't seem to allow for Ikea tables instead :-)

Well, as you started it ... When I was in Westfield just before Christmas they had a toothpaste promotion on (for the new foaming gel things) and you could have a go. It seemed to work quite well (and you did get to keep the toothbrush you used!) but as it's about £4 a tube I reckon I'm not going to be using it soon :-)

Turn on user enviroment debug logging - How to enable user environment debug logging in retail builds of Windows. You'll get a log file which tells you what's going on and you can see which stages are slow.

If you don't yet have an AUP and you're effectively trying to draft one then I think you can start with big things - eg you mustn't use the laptop to do anything illegal or potentially illegal (so no torrents or P2P software) and you mustn't do anything which could bring the school into disrepute (so no porn, even if it's legal!) Next big thing is that the user must not remove any software such as virus scanners etc, they mustn't turn off automatic updates and so on. Is it reasonable to use the laptop for (say) booking a holiday, personal banking, shopping online etc? I think most people would say that's fine - it's unlikely to cause a problem or break the laptop. If something does go wrong with the laptop then it's easy to wipe and reinstall - the user won't lose anything (backup is a whole other can of worms, however) What about iPlayer, Spotify and similar? Again, shouldn't cause a problem - they shouldn't stop the machine working and, if somehow they do then again it's a wipe and restore. You're then looking at things which are reasonable but could cause problems - eg if I put all my personal digital photos on the laptop it's not really going to cause a problem unless I fill the disc or something goes wrong. If the laptop goes wrong and I've got all my personal data on it then there's a potential problem - as a technician, I want to just wipe and restore the machine. As Joe User, I don't want to lose all my photos or whatever - this is where you need management backing to say that (say) users can store personal stuff on the machine but it's the user's responsibility to back this up to an external drive - the technician will repair the machine but is not responsible for recovering data. I'd guess I can't ignore backup any longer :-) If the machine is being used for school work then it's likely to have stuff on it which does need to be saved if the machine goes wrong. I would expect to have a good backup system provided for the user which is as simple to use as possible and, ideally, reports back to the IT staff so that they know if the user data is not being backed up. Ultimately, "reasonable" is one of those weasel words used by solicitors to keep them in business!

I'd guess the best thing of all is that Smarties are one of the many foods which James doesn't like - looks like you will have to share them out after all :-)

On the machine that's playing up, take a look in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR - you'll see a list of keys for different USB storage devices which have been plugged in. If you can recognise the particular key for the USB pen then delete that key. This should force a hardware redection when it's next plugged in. If you're not sure which key it is (eg mine is showing things like "usb_disk_2" as well as more recognisable names) you can safely delete all the keys - they get recreated if you plug the USB pens etc back in.

You definitely want to look at either PHP or ASP/ASP.Net for the web page. Also, what currently happens to the data which is received by email? I'm guessing someone then keys it into a database. If you write your web page properly it will just put the data straight into a database, saving re-keying. You would need to add some human validation (to stop people entering "Mickey Mouse" etc) but this can be as simple as having a field which says "checked" - the web page sets this to false, the human checking just sets it to true and you only deal with ones where checked equals true.

What I've done in the past is work out which script is going to run last (if you have multiple startup scripts) and then add code to look at the time the script finishes and the time the eventlog says Windows started. That's not a perfect guide to how long the machine took to start up but it's a good guide. stTime=dateadd("n",-30,now) dt=year(date)&right("00"&month(date),2)&right("00"&day(date),2) atb = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\ActiveTimeBias" sOffset=right("000" & oShell.RegRead(atb)*-1,3) stTime=dt & right("0" & hour(stTime),2)& right("0" & minute(stTime),2) & "00.000000+" & sOffset sql="SELECT * FROM Win32_NTLogEvent WHERE Logfile = 'system' and eventcode=6005 and timegenerated>='" & stTime & "'" Set wbemobjectset = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.").ExecQuery(sql) For Each wbemObject In wbemObjectSet sTime=wbemObject.TimeGenerated Next if sTime<>"" then sTime=left(sTime,4) & "-" & mid(sTime,5,2) & "-" & mid(sTime,7,2) & " " & (mid(sTime,9,2) & ":" & mid(sTime,11,2) & ":" & mid(sTime,13,2)) else sTime="1900-01-01 00:00:00" end if ScriptRunTime=datediff("s",sTime,now) At the end of that bit, ScriptRunTime will be the number of seconds between the machine recording the 6005 "Windows is starting" event and the end of the script. It uses a WMI query to read the event log - I couldn't find a way to say "find the most recent startup event" so I get all startup events in the past 30 minutes and step through them; the last one is treated as the actual machine on time. If you log this to a database then you've got a record of how long each machine takes to start up (and also gives you a log of each time the machine boots)

Try downloading the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (Use the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility to remove Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003 - page refers to Office but it works for any MSI package). If that cleans up a machine then you can use MSIZap (Msizap.exe (Windows)) in a machine startup script to automate the removal.