srochford

Surely they'll still work OK; they'll just take a bit longer to start up (but you can press Escape when they start the PXE process) Why not set them to boot from disc and then just use F12 (or whichever key) to do a network boot when you actually need to PXE them?

If you've got someone who can put up a good, strong shelf then that should do. You used to be able to buy wall mounting secure steel cabinets that would take a tower server but I can't find them just looking quickly (it's nearly 10 years since I last used them!)

Does the file ISA_Fill_URL_Set.vbs not do what you want? It will take a set of URLs either from a text file or a web site and add them to a specified URL set on the server.

We used Magicard at my last place and the printers worked well (we'd typically print > 20,000 cards per year on 3-4 printers)

You are buying scarily expensive instant coffee if it comes to anywhere near 26p a cup (and that's forgetting the huge cost of the machine) It is still cheaper than going out for coffee and better because you can drink it without being tempted to get a pastry as well :-)

You're really asking the wrong people:-) We'll all have opinions but the people who need to have an opinion are your senior management. The only real technical decision is can you allow certain groups to use it and block others because management may say staff can use it but anyone abusing it will be blocked. If you can't block some and allow others then you may have to block all of them. I'm sure there will be good teaching uses for it; there will also be perfectly valid personal uses for it outside working hours and it's not a technical decision. I think Twitter is also rather different from things like Facebook, iPlayer etc which have a potential to clog up bandwidth. Tweets of a few hundred bytes don't really have that problem.

Nescafe Alta Rica is probably the best instant coffee :-) (The trouble with recommending anything to with taste is that people like different things; people buy Birds Mellow blend, for example, and yet there's more coffee taste in the average washing up water!!)

Are you trying to launch it from a script or similar? If so, try running "cmd /c ftype etc etc etc" Because ftype is an intrinsic command you need to launch cmd in order to run it.

If what you want is people to unbox machines, stick them on desks and do a fairly automated imaging process then any of the temp agencies should be able to help. Take care that you make clear what sort of person you want; some agencies just take the first person on the list and they may not be appropriate so you need to make sure that you can go back to the agency and say "not this one; you're not getting paid unless they match the description I've given you" In my last place I think we paid about £10-£12 an hour for this sort of work.

Safest way to do it is to upgrade your test/training database first and see what breaks :-( From past experience, the only other thing to do is to read through the scripts (I'm guessing they're T-SQL so they're reasonably readable!) and try to see what changes they're making. You can then decide if it matters. Do make sure you've got a good backup before you start and (just as important!) know how to restore it if necessary.

"professional" doesn't just mean using longer words! If the person answers the phone quickly, knows what you're asking for and can sort it then that (to me!) would mean they're being professional. I appreciate this isn't always what happens (you get 2 minutes of "happy to help" type stuff before you can get started) but it ought to be what happens :-)

procmon is the "grown up" version of filemon/procmon - combines both and more besides. Almost certainly, you've given rights to teachers which pupils don't have (are they in power users?) Run procmon and set the filter to only monitor the pinnacle process. Get its name from task manager or from procexp (another superb sysinternals tool) which will also tell you child processes of the parent. Look for "access denied" results and you should find what you need.

If everything is off then I can't see any problems. When you bring the servers back up, bring up the PDCE first and then the others; check event logs as you go. Problems can arise when one domain controller is off for a long time (although I think it's more than 5 weeks; 60 days comes to mind) and it won't then synch properly with the other DCs (items which have been deleted on the working server are still present on the server which has been off and they magically come back to life etc)

The other quick and dirty trick is "ping -a a.b.c.d" which should give you the name of the machine you're pinging (although it does rely on your reverse lookup working in DNS)

No problem - it won't mess up the original software settings (that's kind of the point of a repair install!) but it will roll it back to SP2. You can make a CD with SP3 slipstreamed into it - it's always handy to have!

What you may be able to do is set up the machine and then do a repair install of XP on it - this will often fix disc driver problems.

The numbering makes sense if you look at the "professional" versions of Windows; 1, 2 and 3 were only "professional" (no real home users). NT started at 3.1; it was roughly the same time as Windows 3.1 and was followed by 3.5 and 4. Windows 2000 and Windows XP had internal version numbers of 5.0 and 5.1 and then Vista was internally version 6 so it makes sense (sort of!) that the next number is 7 Of course it's not that easy (for some value of easy!) - to make sure some crap software doesn't break, I think Windows 7 returns 6 as its major version number. See, completely obvious numbering for Windows as long as you leave out all the complicated bits :-)

Turn on "userenv debug logging" - you'll then get a log file telling you what's happening.

and on XP. It's been recommended by Microsoft for quite a long time!

We've got DC7900s here; they work well. The quad core machines are very fast!

Might just be worth doing a reset of the IP settings: netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt The logfile contains lots of info which is probably not helpful but this has fixed a few odd problems for me in the past.

I'd guess that means we'll see posts from you soon about "How can I get a job as a consultant" :-)

The idea of using outside consultants needn't necessarily be bad - it's good to get a fresh look at things - but sadly it often is. I've rarely met a good consultant (possibly never but I don't want to be totally negative); too many of them really haven't got a clue. It's not just education or public sector that spends a fortune on consultancy - many private companies do the same. There seems to be a real aversion to making decisions so you bring in a consultant to make the decision for you and take a shed load of cash in the process!

Looks like they're not letting any more people get it:

Can you give us the address and then we can have a look?