srochford

Would once have said that "reasonable" and "PC World" don't belong in the same sentence! Not always true now, but that price is £20 more than Argos which is quite a difference (ie 40% more expensive!)

Key thing with robocopy is to include the /b switch. This makes it run in "backup mode" and will bypass any security issues (eg where a user has taken ownership of their files and removed administrator etc). Add the /sec switch if you think the permissions are currently good and want to preserve them or leave it off and use something like subinacl to put them right when the files have been copied

yes! You need variety in schools but note (as dhicks has said) the word "school" here probably means university but even there we should have teaching which is not mind-numbing and Powerpoint has a role to play. I work at a university (Imperial College) and I've seen some superb lecture materials using PP where essentially it's just an aid to the lecture (a quick way of bring in a collection of animations, for example) and the lecture would have been poorer without it. It's like cream cakes really; a little is good but too much is bad for you :-)

Sadly, that's not always the case - I've come across a few things where the same GUID is used for different versions of the package. This is a real pain when you want to uninstall version 1 and install version 2 for example!

This can happen when the path is too long - the user who created it probably had a drive mapped at the same sort of level as you and had no problems but working directly on the server you have a longer path (eg d:\home\username\folder1\folder2\f3\f4 but they see n:\folder1\folder2\f3\f4) When you do the mapping you get that shorter path and it all works. Another way to get round that is to start at the bottom and work up (so instead of trying to delete folder1, you delete f4, then f3 and so on up) Finally (at last - why does he never shut up!!!) you can use subst on the server (subst q: d:\home\username or whatever) and you can also net use on the server (net use q: \\server\home\username) - no need for a VM or other external machine.

A good (and relatively local firm for this) is http://www.brightcode.co.uk/ - contact details on the website but putting together intranet and internet sites is a good part of their business.

and probably "can't" and "aren't" and "didn't" but I've now given up spell checking - I stopped teaching word processing many years ago :-)

Thanks - I've got almost what I wanted now by just bashing my head against the wall a few times :-) for folder in `find . -type d -iname '*.pds' -maxdepth 1` do find $folder -iname ntuser.dat -printf "%h %TY-%Tm-%Td\n" du $folder -hc | grep total | awk '{printf $1 "\n"}' done Just some notes for me to find later ... first line finds all the directories matching "*.pds", only going down 1 level and sets up a loop to process them next find statement searches from that folder using a case insensitive search for files called ntuser.dat When it finds them, it prints the name of the parent directory then the year, month and day on which the file was last modified du shows the folder size(s) from $folder down; the grep command just finds the one which says "total" and the awk statement returns field 1 only (just loses the word "total" to make it a bit tidier) I end up with output looking like this: ./spmoon.pds 2008-10-24 2.0M ./jstoppa.pds 2008-08-19 3.4M which is probably good enough for now.

Thanks for that; it helps (need to replace the "." with $folder inside the loop so it starts at the right location and I've added -maxdepth 1 because the only ntuser.dat is going to be at the top level of the profile) but what I think I want (and it's a bit vague because this is a very messy project!) is to get a report of everything and then extract the old ones so they can be deleted/archived/whatever. As it stands, this will give me a list that shows old ntuser.dat files and then no details when the file is newish and that will probably do. I think the awk method is probably the right way to go to clean up the output - I'll keep playing :-)

"The biggest resistance to Mr. Bowen's ideas has come from students, some of whom have groused about taking a more active role during those 50-minute class periods. The lecture model is pretty comfortable for both students and professors, " Definition of a lecture: the transfer of information from the teacher's notes to the student's notes without it passing through the brain of either :-) I'm sure there's a place for lots of variety in teaching; some should be Powerpoint, some other computer based but lecturer guided, some old fashioned "chalk and talk" and so on.

Grand :-) I would always leave at least one machine logged on when you're doing things like this as a "just in case" If you were able to log on to a machine in the virtual domain (even as a non-admin) I think you might have been able to do a "runas" to start an elevated command prompt (I think blocking interactive login only blocks pressing CTRL ALT Del to login, not things like web access or process elevation). You could then run up group policy editor and make the changes or use regedit to blank out the policy settings on that machine. Provided you logged off/on quickly you ought to be able to get in as an admin before policy is re-enforced. One last point for the OP - if you absolutely must stop admins logging on to workstations then it's likely to be hard. If you just want to remind them that it's a really bad idea then just popping up a message and logging them off would probably do the trick!

Do they? It's a genuine question; I don't know the answer but an awful lot of high earners do everything they can to avoid paying tax. It will almost always be legal (tax avoidance rather than tax evasion) but for people that do it, it means that they're not paying their fair share.

Another useful tool is procexp Process Explorer This does lots of stuff; basically, it shows you all the processes running and lets you see what they have in use (registry, files, etc, etc). If you find you can't delete folder abc123 you open up procexp, do a search for "abc123" and it will tell you what process is using that folder. You might be able to close or kill that process (but don't kill it if the process is called winlogon ...)

It's also worth having a look at the (free) Microsoft tools to do this - I think they give more info although it can be overwhelming. There are details of how to go about troubleshooting stop errors here Download details: Windows Server 2003 Troubleshooting Stop Errors and that doc has links to download windbg (windows debugger) and the symbols that help make more sense of it all.

Can I just hijack this because I've been doing something a bit related to this and started with a loop and then realised that find did more or less what I want? I've got a set of users whose Windows roaming profiles are stored on a Linux server. I'm trying to find those who haven't used the profile for (say) 90 days. Each profile has a folder called .pds What I've got so far is: for folder in `find . -type d -name '*.pds' -maxdepth 1` do echo $folder du $folder -hc | grep total find $folder -name 'ntuser.dat' -ls done This kind of works but it's messy - I get output looking like this: ./cbm.pds 1.4M total 472818 772 -rwxr--r-- 1 cbm stats 786432 Jul 17 2008 ./cbm.pds/ntuser.dat I can live with the first two lines - it wouldn't be a big deal to process those but I'd really like to just get the date on the third line. I *think* I need to take the output of the second find command and pipe it through "cut" but I can't work out how to do that - the exec command looks promising but I can't make sense of how to use it. Any offers?? Even if it's "start again, this is rubbish" :-)

Yes, if it's a volume license but it's a very low impact service and you can put it pretty much anywhere. The systems activated from your KMS check back in every 7 days and if the KMS is unavailable then they'll keep re-trying, only de-activating if they fail to make contact within 180 days (not sure of the exact numbers but they're about right). This means that even if someone takes the computer off network, provided they come back every few months it will still work fine (so teacher laptops need to come in about once a term)

If this is the "administrator" domain account I suspect there's no clean way of blocking it (and even if there is, the administrator can just reverse the changes - they're got god rights in the domain!) If you're running a login script then you could easily put a check to see if the user is domain admin and, if so, log them out.

Just taking @leco's a bit further, if you need the leading zeros then: =TEXT(DAY(A1),"00") & TEXT(MONTH(A1),"00") & TEXT(YEAR(A1),"0000") should do what you need. "&" is quicker to type than "concatenate" but you can also do: =CONCATENATE(TEXT(DAY(A1),"00"),TEXT(MONTH(A1),"00"),TEXT(YEAR(A1),"0000"))

I reckon you've got the gist of it which is pretty good! It took our trainer 3 days to cover the same stuff but I'd guess I slowed him down by telling him about the "real world" which upset him a bit :-)

He only "owns the car already" because he's bought it! You're right to say that public transport should be attractive to car users; the trouble is, that people don't make fair comparisons. They say things like "it costs £5 on the train but it's free if I drive" and it looks stupidly expensive to take the train. It isn't easy to to make complete comparisons but to be fair you've got to look at the total cost of travelling by car compared to using public transport (including taxis) and occasionally hiring a car. As localzuk says in many places you can now do this for just a few hours while you're moving a large PC (although I've twice recently shifted HP D530 machines on the bus because it was easier than driving in to work)

Seems pretty late to me - shouldn't you be snugly tucked up in bed before that :-) I don't know why that happens; in some places there's too little demand to run buses, trains, metros etc after a certain time. In other places there's no night transport because there's never been night transport and that's just the way life is ... London does make it easier; tubes run till after midnight and then there are night buses (or 24 hour bus routes) to keep you going after that. The bus past my place runs to/from central London about every 10-15 minutes through the night and costs £1 (although I have a bus pass for work so effectively there's no extra cost)

It's fairly easy to protect resident parking areas by just introducing controlled parking - that doesn't have to mean a huge charge for residents and it brings other benefits because the parking charges pay for someone to walk along the road checking that vehicles are not just parked properly but have valid tax etc. It's always going to be the case that people like investment bankers get paid more than bank clerks - whether that's just because they get a higher salary or because they get more perks; it may not be nice but that's just the way people get paid unless you have some kind of communist dictatorship which says "everyone will get paid £xx per hour no matter what job they do" Completely agree with the comment that there's no need to impose city type solutions on areas outside cities. If congestion isn't a problem then you don't need to do anything to minimise it; you only need to think about policies like charging for parking when you've got to try and ration a limited amount of space on the roads etc. Improving public transport in towns and cities makes sense; in areas of low population density it probably doesn't make sense to have buses every 3-4 minutes!

I don't think the article says that at all. The link you're quoting from says "a worry that ... an excessive use ..." - which is very different from saying "IT is to blame for ..." I think that social networking etc does change the way people communicate - in some cases, that will be a good thing; communication is enhanced but in others it will be poorer than face to face talk. I certainly think someone like the Archbishop of Westminster has a right (perhaps even a duty!) to comment on such things. I think the anonymity is also an area which could have benefits but can also cause problems. On this site, for example, I'd guess about half the people post anonymously. I don't know if it matters in the grand scheme of things but I personally don't like the fact that I don't even know the names of the people posting. Interestingly, the Archdiocese of Westminster uses Twitter: Westminster Diocese (RCWestminster) on Twitter

Your car was free? Costs nothing to service? Never needs insuring? If you're comparing costs, you need to compare the total cost - it may still be that driving is cheaper (and there are obviously other benefits for you) but your numbers are simply wrong.

You might as well say "Don't let Tesco hear that; they already make those who PAY for their shopping pay for shoplifting" that's the way the world works - some people always try and rip off the system and those of us who are honest have to pick up the pieces.