srochford

A number of companies have let slip that they will start shipping Windows 7 to retail on 23 October. As far as I can tell, Microsoft aren't saying "no, this isn't going to happen" so I suspect that is the retail launch. Vista had a retail launch sometime late in January 2007; I'm pretty sure that the volume license version was at the end of November 2006 so on that basis we'd expect VL Windows 7 in late August; is anyone going to push it out for September :-) @binky - hadn't realised that Windows 7 Enterprise was going to include Media Centre. Not sure how important that is but it's quite nice to have.

The other thing you need to be really careful with is checking who can get to this page to upload - if it's open to the world then the world will use it. In no time at all, you'll find your ftp space full of "warez" or just a denial of service attack mounted against you!

I don't think you'll be able to use any kind of MSI to install Visio - it uses the Installer Service and you can't get one MSI running another one (you get to the situation which I often get when I impatiently try and run two installs at the same time where Windows says "you can't do this because another setup is in progress"

Err; no!!! Might be true to say that group policies don't slow down logons much but they certainly can slow them down! You might create the GP using a text file (the .adm or .admx file) but that's not what gets processed by the workstation - most of the settings end up as values in the registry which is most definitely not a set of text files! You can find out exactly how long it takes to process the group policies by turning on "userenv debug logging" If you have mandatory profiles and a lot of separate settings then you will slow down the logon compared to not having lots of GPO settings (every setting will be processed at every logon because Windows knows that this profile has not processed these policy settings) You're right to say that large profiles can dramatically slow down logons but if you've set up mandatory profiles (and many schools do for pupils) then you're probably able to get them small and keep them small. A quick search of the MS web site finds quite a few articles on ways in which GPO settings can slow down logon.

Except that if the 16 bit software is needed then you're not going to be able to do it at all! Presumably, the XP virtualisation stuff will allow you to keep running the 16 bit stuff?

If you just want a more attractive login, try the FrontMotion Login This uses Flash and you can create your own SWF files to go with it. It's free for personal use. The web site says "For permission on commercial use and customized distribution please email" - not sure where an education institution comes.

HP and Dell computers can certainly have their BIOS settings changed remotely - I think you can do this with vPro but you don't need it. For the HP it's a simple exe file which reads a text file listing the settings you want. You need admin rights to run it which reduces the risk of remote attack and there are a few BIOS settings you can't change. For HP it's part of SSM for other machines you're looking for "SMBIOS" tools.

In my present job we only use some of Viglen's more specialist equipment but at my last place we had a lot of Viglen PCs (I think we bought about 1000 in the last year I was there). The service we had was excellent; the machines were excellent and I'd happily recommend them to anyone. If you've not looked at Viglen equipment for a few years then take another look - there machines use Intel motherboards and are made to a very high standard but don't have a very high price to match.

Could they have fiddled in the BIOS settings? If so, check to see if they've turned on (or off!) SATA AHCI; changing this will break XP and you will get a 7B error. if you do need to restore and none of the F keys give you access to the recovery you could boot from a Linux CD or Ultimate Boot CD and change the partitions so that the "other" one is set active. Restart the machine and it should boot from it and run the recovery process but be careful because this normally just wipes and reinstalls everything.

Agreed. I'm old enough to remember the days when everyone was dead set against the idea of people bringing their own calculators into school; no-one could see value in them, they were just a waste of time, money etc etc. Not sure that anyone takes that view any longer. Users will need to use their own equipment in school. It will be difficult to do and it will cost money (but maybe not much) and I think anyone whose attitude is just a blanket "no" is going the wrong way. As others have said, 802.1x will make it possible to trace who is connecting to your network and where. Windows Server Network Access Protection makes it possible to control which machines get access to what on the network.

Just checked my modem - it's looking good :-) Not sure what I'll do with the extra bandwidth; 2 Mbit has never seemed like a problem but I'm sure that in a few years time I'll wonder how I ever managed with such a slow speed (and is it really only 20 years ago that modems were running at less than one thousandth of that speed)! Cable Modem Operation Configuration Maximum Downstream Data Rate : 10242000 Maximum Upstream Data Rate : 514000

if they're SNMP enabled then you can use that to monitor them. If not, what I've done in the past is write a script to grab the web status page and parse out the info from that.

I can understand that what you've done has worked but you definitely don't need to add the printers through a startup script - one of the major features of Windows is that a connection to a network printer is made on a user basis and the user doesn't need to have any special rights to install the printer. I can't be sure if that's true for all printers (wouldn't surprise me if HP managed to break that rule!!) but any user ought to be able to browse to \\server\printer and just connect; a script which does "addwindowsprinterconnection" ought to do the same thing!

Just went to the website posted by @lionsl2005 - it says I have a modem which can handle 10Mbit so they will auto-upgrade within the next few days. All very painless (except that I'd forgotten my ntlworld username and password but even sorting that out was pretty easy and completely automatic) So far so good ...

If you do C:\Shortcutmsg.vbs -HebronClientLauncher then WScript.Arguments.Item(0) gives you "-HebronClientLauncher" - not the "-" so if you're just checking for the text it won't work (and your script will error if there's no argument at all) If you do: C:\Shortcutmsg.vbs /name:HebronClientLauncher and then in code do: sName=wscript.arguments.named("name") then sName will be set to HebronClientLauncher (or whatever) and no error if there's no argument.

Don't think you can and I think this is part of the new security model for Vista.

unfortunately, no. Even if you have a non-network machine, the first time a user logs on a copy of the default user profile is made for them to use. What you can do is make sure that the profile they get is as small as possible and does as little setting up as possible. You don't say what sort of profile the user is picking up (could be just using default user from the C: drive; default user from netlogon on a domain or a specific mandatory profile) but the principle is the same. Look at the profile that's going to be used. What's in it that could go? Is there anything under "local settings"? If so, lose it all - it's not supposed to roam so it's not really a loss. What's under "application data"? Is there stuff that could be removed? Try to capture the profile of a user that's logged on and use that as your default - this should mean that any "first run" stuff won't have to be re-run.

Yes!!!! I've seen too many people blundering along, not prepared to say "I'm not sure what to do here; I'm going to have to ask for help" It's not a sign of failure or weakness to say "I don't know everything" In a school or other educational establishment it ought to be absolutely accepted that that's the way people work and it should be the norm everywhere.

Is that the wrong set of regulations? This document says "What equipment is covered by the Regulations? Generally, any equipment which is used by an employee at work is covered, for example hammers, knives, ladders, drilling machines, power presses, circular saws, photocopiers, lifting equipment (including lifts), dumper trucks and motor vehicles." and it stops there. I obviously can't second guess what was in the mind of the people who drafted it, but it doesn't look like it was intended to cover IT equipment. This document on the IET web site says "There are no set statutory periods for formal visual inspection and test. The maintenance regime should be appropriate to the environment and duty for which the equipment is used. Electrical testing in a low risk area (eg in an office) would be less frequent than in a harsh industrial environment" It also talks about the three kinds of check - user check, formal visual inspection and combined inspection and testing. It's the last of these that's generally referred to as "portable appliance testing"; for a computer in an office it's probably only needed every 4 years (so possibly never if you have a 4 year replacement cycle). What would be appropriate with new equipment is a visual inspection - is anything damaged? Are wires sticking out? Is there any charring? The whole of health and safety law is about being reasonable - it is reasonable to assume that there are no safety faults in something like a PC but it's not reasonable to assume that it couldn't have been damaged during manufacture or delivery.

I'd very much agree with jcollings - I think I'd rate people skills and experience pretty much equal first and qualifications some way behind (degree, GNVQ, MCSE, whatever) That's not to say quals aren't important but they tell me different things - eg if you have a degree then it shows that you can do a reasonable amount of work under some pressure and stick at it for 3 years (I know there are exceptions but that's generally going to be true). If you've done a GNVQ in the evenings then that also tells me something about you as a person. I think the best person I ever took on came with no real IT experience (he was the guy in the office that people turned to for IT help but it wasn't his job) and no qualifications other than a degree in something completely irrelevant. He turned out to be one of those people who just learned stuff; was excellent at troubleshooting and had brilliant people skills!

Run Windows Media Encoder on the machine and you can then pick up a stream from this. It may not give you the quality you need but it's free so it's worth a try!

Can I talk about punched cards as a way of programming a computer? You young folk just don't realise how lucky you are :-)

It's really hard to say "Dell is cheaper than HP" or vice versa - it depends on loads of factors. Both companies (and many others) will go all out in terms of getting business to get your business, particularly if they think that you're not going for a one-off but likely to bring in regular business (and it almost doesn't matter if that's 10 computers a month or 1000 computers a month; regular is good!) Remember to look at the whole package when you're working out the cost - eg if Dell give 3 year on site warranty but HP do 1 year and the price is close then the Dell is probably a better deal. Also ask about things like imaging - most companies will let you have a machine on loan so you can prepare an image and then put that image on the machine. Some will do this for free; others will completely rip you off (they've got to put an image on it to test it - how much extra does it really cost to put "your" image on it??) Some companies will deliver to desk - ie they will unpack and plug in. Doesn't really matter if you're doing 20 but is a big deal if you've got hundreds!

You should be able to turn off the accessibility scheme just by pressing the buttons again - certainly works here. You don't need to worry about getting the "right" values for the colour codes - just delete the whole key, reboot and Windows will put back the defaults

One of the things that can be really confusing in programming in VBScript is the use of variable names; people generally have their own way of naming things but the growth of the internet has meant that most people copy bits of code and edit it - this seems to have lead to certain variables gaining dominance so it looks as if the name matters. In a statement like: set oNet = CreateObject("wscript.network") the bit that matters is on the right - you're working with that specific object but you can call it oNet, Network, objNetwork, tom, dick or harry but once you've chosen the name you need to stick with that name while you work with it. set oFSO=createobject("scripting.filesystemobject") set oFile1=ofso.opentextfile("c:\temp\data.txt") set oFile2=ofso.opentextfile("c:\temp\data.txt") sLine1=oFile1.readline wscript.echo sLine oFile1.close sLine2=oFile2.readline oFile2.close In the example above, oFile1 and oFile2 are both file objects; they both refer to the same file on disc but they're not the same thing - when I read a line from oFile1 it doesn't do anything to oFile2. When I close oFile1 it doesn't affect oFile2 etc.