srochford

I don't think this will be easy. It needs not just a server product but something on the client. For example, Microsoft have their Windows Rights Management Service. You can use this on Windows Server or on Sharepoint as @sukh has said but (as far as I know) this only works with Microsoft Office documents - when the file is served, it's altered in such a way that it can only be opened when Word, Excel etc can contact the RMS server to check that you're allowed to access the file. Other systems are available for other kinds of file - eg © CopySafe PDF Converter - Copy protect Adobe PDF documents is a package that claims to protect PDF files (I've not used it so I don't know how good it is but I've seen similar products where the PDF file is encrypted and can only be read if you have the appropriate client and rights to access the file) For your Solidedge files I think you're going to need something from the manufacturer. I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing exists - your needs are not going to be unique - but it's pretty specialist. I think you'd be best talking to your dealer about how this can be done (but I've got a horrible feeling that it won't be cheap; these sort of things rarely are).

How did you install Adobe Reader (for example)? Did you make any changes to the default user profile - if so, what? (I'm wondering if you've made a change such that users can't write to something in HKCU because it wasn't created by them)

I think you need to try and sort out things which need doing now, things which need doing soon and things which would be nice to get sorted but can wait a bit. Going backwards, the wired network looks basically sound so can wait (dual attached switches; gigabit to the desktop; new fibre runs are long term) The wireless network needs making robust (particularly if you need students to use it soon) but it looks like you've got a plan there - getting a managed wireless network in place will make life much easier. The things to do now are the ones that probably look small but probably take a disproportionate amount of time - eg pushing out updates to machines, getting initial software deployed (not sure what you're putting in your ghost image but it sounds as if there's quite a bit of work to do once that's in place so you're absolutely right to look at ways of improving that) If you understand how to do initial deployments of software with GPO then you're well on the way to getting updates out - set up a test OU (so you don't run a risk of breaking things!), put a machine in it and create a GPO to affect just that machine. You can then look at the options in the GPO to deploy an updated version of the software. If you don't have quotas then this will bite you at some point (if it's not already causing grief!) - applying hard quotas could cause chaos if they're not there from day1 so what you need to do is get a report on the status of your user space and find out who would go over limit if you applied quotas now. You can then deal with those people (either decide they deserve a bigger quota and allow it or get them to remove some files). If you have no special quota software you can just use that built into Windows - there's an option to set quotas but not apply them and this will give you reports of who's using what space. I would also look at backups; at some point you will need to restore vital data and you need to be sure that that is possible. 2Tb of data is not a lot but if you're actually backing it all up each day (ie not just doing differential or incremental backups) then it's going to take ages and again it's a drain on your time (where are the USB discs? Permanently attached to the server? - I do hope not :-)) Good luck with it all - it seems daunting and the key to making it not knock you out is to break it down into achievable bits. You then achieve each bit and suddenly there's nothing left to be daunted by :-)

None of the programs you list should need admin rights so I think you need to try and find out what's going wrong that requires this. Have you tried to lock down permissions on the c: drive? If so, I'm wondering if you've locked down something too much and that's causing the problem. What I would do is use procmon (from here Sysinternals Process Utilities) and try to see what's trying to write/read and being denied.

Depends what you want to do with it - editing video or playing big games will be poor. Checking Facebook, emails, general web surfing, listening to music, watching videos will be fine.

Add in some debugging: Sub InstallFonts on error resume next Const FONTS = &H14 dim , oFSO,oShell, oFolder1, oFolder2, sRoot sRoot="\\server\share\fonts\" Set oShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") set oFSO=createobject("scripting.filesystemobject") set oLog=ofso.createtextfile("c:\windows\temp\fonts.log",true) Set oFolder1 = oShell.Namespace(FONTS) set oFolder2=ofso.getfolder(sRoot) for each oFile in oFolder2.files sName=lcase(oFile.name) oLog.writeLine "found: " & sName if right(sName,4)=".ttf" then if not ofso.fileexists(oFolder1.self.path & "\" & sName) then oLog.writeLine "installing: " & sName oFolder1.copyhere sRoot & sName end if end if next on error goto 0 oLog.close End Sub - add the "olog" lines and it should write a log file to c:\windows\temp\fonts.log with some info about what's happening. If that file doesn't get created then the script just isn't running. If it gets created and it appears to not find any fonts then your script isn't able to read the fonts directory (remember you must have "domain computers" with read access to get that to work)

I'm guessing that the data just isn't available - the same guy has written Live map of London Underground trains which works really well for the Tube. Transport for London make the data available so I'd guess it's (relatively!) easy to map it. If National Rail don't make train data available with a nice API then there's a limit to what you can do and basically, Simon has to just stay on the train all day so we can find out where the trains are :-) I'd also quite like something for buses. LiveBus.org kind of does this (it lets you see when the next bus is coming at any stop it knows about) but it doesn't work at all for London (which is a bit surprising given the work that went into iBus [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/2373.aspx])

I've never done this but a quick google fnds this Monitor Network Services with Nagios - Part 1 (section 2.3) which looks like it describes what you're trying to do. What I would expect to happen is that Nagios talks to a local SMTP server; that then uses normal DNS to find out where it should go to and delivers it. For that to work, you need to allow port 25 outbound on your router so that the internal Postfix machine (or whatever) can connect to the external SMTP server which accepts mail for your domain. If you can't do that (you don't control the router or port 25 is blocked outside your boundary) then I'm not sure what you can do but I hope someone else can help!

Ok; you should be able to get that with CSVDE: csvde -f comps.csv -r "(&(objectclass=computer)(name=maws414*))" -l "name, objectguid,location" this creates a file called comps.csv; restricts the output to computers with a name beginning maws414 and lists the fields name, objectguid and location (you also get the distinguishedname but you can just cut that out in Excel if you don't need it0

What are you trying to do? Is this a new network that you're setting up and you don't want to have to reinstall all the machines? If so, this - Download details: Active Directory Migration Tool v3.0 - might help

Disagree with your last point - I think you're doing a tabloid style misreading of "assess if atomic energy is the future" and assuming that there's only 1 possible outcome of that assessment (ie give up on nuclear) when there are obviously multiple possible outcomes of the assessment ("carry on as we are; current systems are fine", "carry on but add an extra level of containment", etc, etc)

Can't help with questions 2 and 3 but the answer to question 1 is "because iTunes is a pile of ... " One of the reasons I could never buy an iPhone or iPod is because you really need iTunes to use it and I detest that software with a vengeance :-)

This BBC article BBC News - Japan nuclear alert at Fukushima - Q&A is better; see the section headed "Has there been a meltdown?" which is a bit more reasoned.

A few weeks ago, popbitch had an item about horse names which had been banned or should have been banned - there are some good ones in the list A Commentator's Worst Nightmare | Features | Welcome to Love The Races! (but beware that some are probably NSFW) I've never understood why people need usernames (rather than their own name) but I'd guess I'm just boring :-)

Thanks will try that (sounds very plausible; some of the files are >100Gb so there's no room for a temp copy!)

I'm trying to sync the contents of 2 Linux servers using rsync. I've got a series of commands like this: rsync -av --progress --delete server.ic.ac.uk:/datadump2 /datadump2 which work until you run out of space on the server I'm copying to. I'm pretty sure there's enough space - it's just in the wrong place (ie total used on the server I'm copying from is just less than 2Tb and I'm copying to a 2Tb volume. du tells me that the total used should fit but I'm guessing that it's trying to copy new files from the source before it deletes files on the destination which have now been deleted from the source) I'm used to using robocopy in Windows - I'd do something like robocopy /mir /w:1 /r:1 \\server1\datadump2 \datadump2 and this would just try and copy files; it might run out of space on the first pass but would just skip (wait one second; retry once are the switches) and then delete files. The next pass would copy files missed the first time. How can I make rsync carry on if it's out of space? I know there's a "--ignore-errors" switch but as I understand it that let's it carry on if for some reason it loses touch with the source server but this can end up with you deleting everything from the backup server so it's not what I want! (edit: just read the man page a bit more carefully and I wonder if something else is going on; it says that --delete is supposed to do the deletes before it tries to copy)

The MMC method works fine for up to about 6 servers but once you've got more than that it's hard to see what's going on - it won't all fit on the screen. SCOM is the tool to collect everything about everything but might be overkill (and not sure of the price!) For a cheaper (ie free!) method you can use EventCombMT (download here Download details: Account Lockout and Management Tools) It's part of a pack designed to troubleshoot account lockouts and it allows you to search a range of servers for specific events (so it's handy if you want to check for a particular problem; less good if you just want to know "were there any errors") Also free but needing more time is writing your own scripts. The best tool to use is logparser (also free) which can connect to a machine and query the event log based on parameters you give it. A trivial example: LogParser -i:evt "select recordnumber, computername,timegenerated, message, sourcename from \\maws414-01\system where eventtype=1" this gets data from event logs (i:evt) and in this case reads the specified fields from the system log on machine maws414-01 with eventtype 1 (ie an error) As it stands, it writes it to the screen which is not much use but it can also dump it to a CSV file or (better!) a SQL database. If you can use Powershell then it becomes even easier: $yesterday=(get-date) - (new-timespan -day 1) get-winevent -computername maws414-01 -FilterHashTable @{logname='system';level=2;starttime=$yesterday} This works out the time "yesterday" and then connects to the named computer. It retrieves data from the system log with "level" set to 2 (errors) which happened in the past 24 hours. there are loads more examples of powershell to read the event log - Get-WinEvent

Surely that's expected? You're sharing both the up and down with every other user. Most will be downloading so you won't get much bandwidth for your download test but few will be uploading so you get most of the "up" bandwidth? On domestic ADSL that's not going to be the case - you're probably the only user and it is designed to give much bigger down than up.

In short, yes :-) Longer answer really involves what are you doing in each task and how will you know that the previous stage has completed OK? At the simplest level, lets say that you have 3 batch files called batch1.cmd, batch2.cmd and batch3.cmd and each of them will carry out some task and return an errorlevel of 0 if they work and none zero if they fail. A single batch file containing: batch1.cmd && batch2.cmd && batch3.cmd Will run batch1 and, if it succeeds run batch2 and, if that succeeds will run batch3 if you haven't got nice tidy tasks like that to run (and if you can control the tasks to be run it's well worth making sure that they do return an errorlevel so you can do this sort of thing) then you need to have something which checks to see if the task has succeeded. For example, you have a task which is going to create an icon on the "all users" desktop and, assuming that succeeds you want to do something else. That first task is called batch1.cmd, the next one is called batch2.cmd. Your controlling batchfile could then look something like this: start /wait batch1.cmd if not exist c:\users\public\desktop\newshortcut.lnk goto batch1_failed start /wait batch2.cmd goto end :batch1_failed echo Failed to run batch file 1 :end

They annoy me because they're used by some people on every message, not just ones which matter, so as a matter of principle I always click the "No" button when asked if I want to send a read receipt! Ultimately, this is a people issue - I can't imagine that the bulk of staff are regularly not getting messages because they close Outlook while they're logged on - so individuals need to be dealt with. Of course, if the problem is that management are assuming that any email will be read within 15 minutes of it being sent (maybe reasonable for office based staff; not sensible for others!) and think that the failure to read is because Outlook is closed then they need to change the way they work!

I'd disagree. Even on a tiny network, the time will come when you have to replace a server. If you have DFS then you just add in the new server, add it to DFS and let it replicated. You take out the old server when it's all done and nothing has to change for the clients - no worries about mapping drives to a new server, shortcuts not working etc. There are problems with DFS if you have a network with Macs and Linux machines but in a small or big Windows network it's brilliant!

Bit late, but this might help. It assumes you've got a file or database of machine mac addresses, desired names and OUs and then moves the machine to the right OU and renames it. It makes use of netdom (and assumes it's on the path) and needs an account username and password in the script which can rename a computer. it also does a reboot at the end. set oFSO=createobject("scripting.filesystemobject") set oFile=ofso.opentextfile("h:\vbscript\computers.csv") sData=oFile.readall oFile.close 'find the mac address and current hostname - assumes using DHCP Set oWMI = GetObject("WinMGMTS:root\cimv2") sWQL = "SELECT DNSHostName,MacAddress FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration where DHCPEnabled=true" set colResults = oWMI.ExecQuery(sWQL) For Each oNIC In colResults sMac=oNIC.MACAddress sHostname=oNic.DNSHostName Next 'get the details for this MAC address from data file iDataStart=instr(1,sData,sMac,vbTextCompare) 'start searching from beginning and do case insensitive compare if iDataStart<>0 then 'we've got a match iDataEnd=instr(iDataStart,sData,vbcrlf) 'find the end of line sInfo=mid(sData,iDataStart,iDataEnd-iDataStart) sItems=split(sInfo,"|") sNewName=sItems(1) sOu=sItems(2) else wscript.echo "Can't find this PC; ending" wscript.quit end if 'connect to AD Set oRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE") sDNSDomain = oRootDSE.Get("defaultNamingContext") Set ocommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command") Set oConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") oConn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject" oConn.Open "Active Directory Provider" ocommand.ActiveConnection = oConn 'build up a command string sBase = "" sFilter="(&(objectCategory=computer)(cn=" & sHostName & "))" sAttributes = "distinguishedname" sQuery = sBase & ";" & sFilter & ";" & sAttributes & ";subtree" ocommand.CommandText = sQuery 'and search AD Set oRS = ocommand.Execute if oRS.eof then wscript.echo "Can't find this PC in active directory; ending" wscript.quit else sDN=ors(sAttributes).value end if 'bind to the new OU Set ou=getobject("LDAP://" & sOU) 'and move the PC ou.movehere "LDAP://" & sDN,vbNullString 'finally rename it sCmd="netdom /renamecomputer " & sHostname & " /newname:" & sNewName & " /userd:domain\username /passwordd:ReallyS3cr3tPassword! /force /reboot:10" oShell.run sCmd

Too late now but once this is sorted you need to push to get the wiring circuits properly labelled. Not sure if it's now a legal requirement but it's certainly done for all new buildings I've seen in the past 10-15 years and it makes life so much easier! Lack of labelling also suggests the circuits haven't been safety tested for a long time; again, not sure of the legal requirements but testing every 5 years is often an insurance requirement and testing's really hard if you don't know which socket goes where!

It definitely looks like trusted zones - we have something similar to that suggested by @SkreeM1980 in our login script (we also add the home directory server as a trusted location and this makes sure that desktop and quick launch icons are trusted)

I take your point but I don't know how much it really matters - the vast majority of visitors to the UK can read a reasonable amount of English. It's always vaguely depressing to leave here and find that pretty much everyone else speaks English while I struggle to do more than "please" and "thank you" in their native tongue!