Zourous

Here is the background, I was at home with my son (3 years old) and my wife was at work. The last time I saw it was around midday when I specifically remember un-pausing my son's TV channel so he could continue watching cebeebies. He had just come back from my mum's as usual on a Sunday and I was getting together some food for his lunch. Now I don't generally lose things, nor do I go off carrying something around the house for no good reason. I also have a very visual memory. I might forget a lot of things people tell me, but I can remember things that I've done quite well. At worst, I would just place it down on a surface randomly which I would find again later within a minute or two. I know, what about my son, he doesn't tend to pickup anything to then go and hide it somewhere, also he was barely out my sight for more than a few minutes until I discovered it was lost just some 2-3 hours later whilst he was asleep on the sofa. After just a few minutes of searching I had a bad feeling about this. I've lost something and I haven't found it within the usual few minutes. So I start the usual surface checking, looking at the most obvious places, but I still can't find it. Ok, stop now, do something else for a bit and it will turn up. The wife returns home and I tell her the story. At this stage she heavily suspects me, who wouldn't. We both search and find nothing. Ok, time to move the searching onto the next level and leave no stone unturned as she wants to watch TV. Sofa's are pulled out and all crevasses checked multiple times, toys in the room checked, in fact every conceivable space in the room checked even really stupid places are checked. Recheck some regular places just for the sheer hell of it, you never know. I've even shown my son a picture of the remote on the ipad and he just looks at me blankly. I've been through the all the emotions: initial frustration then give-up and think who needs TV anyway and then sometime later think, I'll watch something on TV, oh b*gger, no I can't. I don't understand where it has gone! It isn't the smallest of remotes and it appears to have just vapourised! It disappeared whilst I was in the house (lounge \ kitchen) within a 2-3 hour period, there is nowhere else to check. I'm struggling to find a logical explanation to where it could have gone! It's been 2 days now and still no remote. I've looked on ebay, "buy it now" £20 or take a chance on an auction and wait the best part of a week, great! You just know the moment I order one, it will turn up somewhere but it's almost at that stage. Thanks for listening, I feel a bit better now.

I almost give up with keeping teachers desk areas tidy from cables. Too many times rooms have been painted without our knowledge, and everything is pulled out or teachers just yank the desk around to a new position also without asking us. They then seem surprised when something is suddenly not working due to disconnections

Try using a company called Silicon Alley. Been using them for about 4 years now. They have these benefits: They have all the cartridges for all the printers that we use in the school Free delivery on toners Loyality points You don't pay for cartridges until they are used, meaning if a single model printer breaks you can send the toners in stock back Online ordering system, just do a stock check once a month They collect used cartridges free of charge Faulty cartridges, even if they fail with 5% toner left in it, are collected and replaced with a full one If a faulty cartridge damages a printer, they will sort out the printer repairs for you by cleaning or replacing it (This did happen to us once and they sorted it) In fact if you go with them, let me know as I get points for referral

your password is reset to "iamapillock"

oh yes, we had brothers with exactly the same names. I don't know how they got on at home. It was a regular sight to see them appear at the door plus an unsuspecting teacher, and you didn't have to even ask. oh no here we go again.

Back in my last place, we had to expain to students who didn't speak that much english that we've reset your password to "password". The reply was usually, yes I need a password!

Don't you just hate these. You know full well their account is fine and they are either pulling a fast one on the teacher or they can't type to save their lives. I refuse to go over to the classroom in question, and just attempt to login with their account on a laptop in the office and then respond on the helpdesk with "the login account is fine, please try again"

Hi Kendr01, Interesting theory and I won't completely discount it, but I still think the problem lies with the PSU. When the problem first appears it is very intermittant. Yes, you can try different things and you think you've fixed it because the problems goes away. When it first started to happen to us, a simple power off, wait a few seconds and then power back on resolved the problem. Then some time down the line the problem becomes more frequent to the point where a simple power off and on doesn't work anymore and you have to leave the system unplugged for some time before it will eventually power back on again. I've had several PC's that would do this almost every day when booted. I change the power supply over for a new one, and now after a couple of months absolutley no problems. Good luck with yours, and no the quick reply is fine for me.

Aside from your main issue, did you know these laptops have a dodgy bios where students can assign a password to the boot and it isn't locked out by the main admin password? There was only someone on here earlier in the week that had just discovered this after a laptop had been passworded and locked out. I can forward my old post on here if required.

I don't know about the latest version but I do know that the smart software is always riddled with bugs and problems. I always stay on old trusted versions now due to the number of times I've been stiched up by this software. It's not like the new versions offer anything groundbreakingly new.

Yes, I would guess it is something to do with the USB cable. Try a short USB running it loose whilst holding a laptop, might prove if it's something to do with it.

Sounds familar, see my previous post below. I don't think there is a good answer unless they've released a newer bios revision?? which I doubt http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/101381-flipping-great-cant-lock-down-bios.html

Have to disagree with this. I put everything on the image that I can (licenses permitting). Trying to work out what teachers need or want is a nightmare. Even if you email them they won't neccessarily reply and then you get those days where they just want a bit of software that is normally in one room working in a different room. With the size of hard disks these days you might as well install what you can so that it is accessible to them and this will reduce the number of urgent support calls.

You should be alright with 1gb. If anything W7 works better than XP on the same hardware and obviously XP will be end of life come end of April. Anyone please correct me if they disgree?

I have a similar model Fujitsu's and seem to remember a bios update that had a fix for simething network card related. Might be worth with a check. Also I would get yourself onto W7 if there's a choice in the matter.

I believe there is a group policy you can turn on to allow the teachers to install drivers, so this may help, although drivers running from an exe still wouldn't work this way. If anyone wants anything installed that they can't do themselves, we make them bring their laptop in and we'll install it for them. We've had teachers laptops for almost 2 years now and there hasn't been a problem so far sticking to this method. There is a local admin account that they could use in an emergency, but I've refrained from telling anyone about it so far, and I think i've actually forgotten the password now.

:) Made me chuckle

Ok, this is the second year it has happened to me. I'm 39 years of age and I'm finding it difficult to sleep during the xmas break of 2 weeks off work. I am simply not tired and feel so awake. Only slept a couple of hours last night when usually on a normal work day I can sleep a good 6-7 hours. Admittedly I'm not doing much and I am well rested, but I also can't easily go out as I don't drive and have a 3 year old son to look after at home. Even if I could go out the weather is crap most of the time. Is this normal does anyone know? It is quite frustrating

Thanks guys, I brought a cheap one originally but that one is now playing up (after over a year of it working fine) so it made me think twice. Strangly the HDMI from my tv to my HDMI splitter was failing to work properly but feeding the same cable direct to my freeview box or pc worked fine . I thought it must be the splitter, but no. I tried another splitter and the same thing happened. In the end I had to take the tv off my wall to try it with a shorter spare HDMI plus the splitter and that all worked fine. I will now buy a new cheap 12m HDMI to correct this strange issue.

Does anyone know why HDMI cables differ in price so much for what seems like essentially the same thing? I'm after a12m one which I can get as cheap as £7 or as much £25+. Is it a build quality thing? It doesn't seem to make any sense.

Sounds like you need to install a graphics driver for the laptop. Reinstall windows again and specify the graphics driver as you install.

I'm afraid you won't find genuine fans for these. I was in the same situation and tried everywhere. Best hope is if someone has an old one knocking around somewhere that has failed for a different reason. The top fan is normally the number one thing to go on these projectors which you have to do something with due to the screeching noise they all eventually make. If you've managed to get another fan working, then all good and well.

If you test without the printer, remember to not only delete the printer but also the printer drivers otherwise it could still cause an issue.

I may be wrong, but the pnp bit in the error makes me think the driver is looking locally for the printer and this is causing the delay when it can't find it. How you resolve this I don't know, but you might get somewhere if you dig around. In my instance I used another driver, but still had to remove a regkey that removed a bidirectional part to get it working normally. Sometimes I think the drivers are not written with print servers in mind.

I had a similar problem once and it turned out to be the printer drivers. On the wired PC's the problem was masked, but the wireless laptops were slow. Which model printers are you using? Printer drivers really can be quite buggy especially HP ones.