talksr

Hi there, In the past at our school, we have asked staff such as teachers and teaching assistants to record their faults in a folder. This can be a pest as the folder can go missing or the teacher's views on how to record a fault leave a lot to be desired. An example being: My projector is not working - No room number, no staff name, no further description of what has been tried etc I think it is about time we took our fault log digital and was wondering what some people use? We are a three form primary school with an RM CC4 network and a Windows 2008 R2 vanilla network. Ideally, I would like something where a technician can add comments such that they could find out further info on a problem without having to keep bothering the teacher in class to get to the bottom of something.

Thanks again for the posts, yes reliability is certainly something I would like to be considered. I would not say I am pro iPad, but I do know exactly how to manage and set these up. I am not convinced iPads are right for this school, but if the prices are sub £200 then it may be easier for them to just increase their existing pool. The trouble is, whatever they get, they then need to further invest in infrastructure/equipment to manage them in the form of solid wireless, syncing and storage equipment etc etc.

Hmm, yes did consider, never used, thought they 'should' work better, but is their budget not well under the cost of a surface?

Thanks for both pads, I agree they need a proper plan before they go into things. I had looked at learnpads and my only reservation was would they be around in 3-4 years time? And how robust would their devices be? Generally the Apples are pretty solid and easy enough to get repaired. Thanks again for your suggestions and advice.

Good morning, I have recently been helping a small primary school who purchased a set of 10 iPads. They are very happy with them and would like to purchase more tablets but they are under the impression that with iPads you are paying only for the name. They would like their new tablets to link up with the school network such that not only can they go on the internet but they can also browse network shares (something which is possible with an iPad, but they had never implemented it). They had initially thought of purchasing (via Tesco?!) some Huddl's. I am really not sure on this idea as I doubt there is any way to effectively manage these devices. They had shown interest in Samsung tablets also. Can anyone give me some advice or guidance on how we can move this school along? They are interested in purchasing around 30 new devices and don't want to spend more than around £100-120 per unit. Obviously, in addition to this they will need some syncing and storage equipment. They have good wireless but really need something which can appropriately manage the devices. With Apple there are various ways, I am not so sure with Samsung or other makes. Any help would be wonderful.

Hi there, quick update. Thanks for all of your help guys. I went to currys and got a great deal on a pair of powerline plugs from Netgear for around £12.00. They are only 200mbps but this is ample for my 500-1mb broadband. I have just set them up now and so far so good. One of them is running off of one of those extension power adaptors with 4 plugs (which really should make the signal weak), but it is running very solidly! I am up and running and my vpn to the school is working very smoothly! Thanks again

Not sure about the electrics, but know it was done to a very high standard. Only a 3 bed house, so would expect wiring to be quite basic, nothing out of the ordinary in this place. This has all happened because EE believe I will get a faster bb connection speed if the router is connected directly to the bt socket and not the extension one in my work room. So far, there has been an improvement, but can't keep everything on wireless, not an ideal solution. Also signal is only 2 or so bars. The EE routers are nothing special, don't even have visible antennas on them.

Thanks everyone for your help. Will try homeplugs first (recently had entire house rewired, so wiring should be at its best). If this does not work, I will have to do the ethernet cable. Would rather not as I hate having to put the plugs on the end, it is so fiddly.

This is a personal home question, not work related, but since I do lots of my work from home remotely, hopefully someone can help. To cut a long story short, I have had real woes with EE, and basically get about 256kb for my 'broadband' connection as a down speed. It has been so bad, we have had to move the EE router to right next to the telephone socket, rather than use the extension line up where my workstations are. As a result, I now have to access the internet via my wireless connection as my ethernet cable will not stretch all the way downstairs. My question is, so far so good with the broadband, but I am often accessing my NAS boxes and copying and pasting various large files (such as virtual image files) between my workstations. Wireless is not going to be worth using for this. What is my best way forward for ensuring that my current systems and NAS are able to talk via the existing ethernet, but my internet is provided wirelessly? Obviously, by default, my computers are now using the wifi as the default connection. The NICs for ethernet have all lost their DHCP lease and are on 169 addresses. Would I be best to set each system with a static address on the ethernet such that they can still communicate? But how would the DNS work as effectively, I have two networks? Maybe it would be better to set one system up as a server which shares internet among other things? Any ideas would be good!

Ah ok sorry. Yes I understand, so it is a colour which takes the same toners as the NW, the only thing it doesn't do is ethernet connection at the rear, it just has local usb slot?

Thanks for your reply. It is so annoying as we have toner for them. I wish HP could keep a model current for a set number of years. Does the mono one that you do have in stock take the mono toner as the CE866A?

That is the one, thanks for your help! @Millgate 3x CE866A is what I am after!!

Hi, ideally we would like the NW model. Not sure of the CE number but it would be called: HP Color LaserJet Pro 100 Colour Laser M175NW.

Can anyone help? We have a small number of HP Color LaserJet Pro 100 Colour Laser M175 lasers. They work really well as small personal printers for our small offices, however we have recently suffered two broke ones which need replacement. I have so far approached: Misco Insight and Dabs and all are unable to supply as its going EOL. Does anyone know of any other companies who are stocking the printer and will allow a school to order via Purchase Order? We really want to keep this model as we already have toners and drums for them. Thanks in advance

Thanks everyone for your posts. It is a 27" iMac. Not sure on the specs, but I do have the serial no and have checked on one of the online spec websites, the following is shown: Thought the processor would be better, but hdd does not look all that bad.....

I have literally just installed 2008 R2 after a server failiure, so would rather not have to upgrade to 2012 just yet, however I do have a spare HP ML350 G6 which supports 2012. Is it possible to migrate from one 2008r2 physical server to a new 2012 physical server? Would I just make the 2012 a secondary dc? Would rather keep with the times and keep IE 11 if I can.

Hi, I have a 2008 R2 server and I am trying to set the default home page for my Windows 7 client machines which are running IE 11. On the group policy, I have gone to: User Config, Prefereces, Control Panel, Internet Settings. From here, I am able to set Internet Explorer 8 or lower settings, but IE 11 does not show. I have configured IE 8 settings such that the homepage is Google, but this does not appear to be working. How can I over come this problem?

Hi there, I have been working on a 2011 iMac which has Windows 7 installed on it. The iMac is very high spec, but I am surprised by how sluggish Windows 7 seems to run on it. I have ran a defrag, malware, spyware and av scan and nothing suspect. The Windows 7 OS is fully up to date with Windows Updates. It is run via BootCamp. Would it be worth me running any OSX updates? Would this help the Windows 7 partition in anyway? I am assuming not, but can't understand why it is not running to its full potential. Any ideas would be really appreciated!

Hmm it has been working well but random computers are now showing as disconnected just on that drive. When I check, it says Logon falure: unknown username or bad password. The details I entered in the GPO are correct. Any ideas?

Working very well. Thanks again

Thanks ok. Yes all makese sense. I am using AD/GP on the FRDC but not on the other server which is just a W2008R2 on its own, no domain, no anything just sharing a folder and some IIS. I will give it a test now and see if it works via Drive Maps on the policy I have set up. Thanks for your help

Hi, I have a 2008 R2 FRDC server. It has a small number of mapped drives for users such as home folder, and public. We also have another server which is responsible for the school MIS. I need to map to a folder on this server so that all users on my 2008 server get access to the folder. What is the best way for me to do this such that it just maps without the need for users to enter in user names and passwords? I am aware I can do it via the netlogon, but usually this prompts for a password when it executes at user logon.

Hi, thanks for the advice. My only question is that the array was not showing a fault, the hdd lights are flashing away green very happily, so I am surprised it could be the disk. I swear the HP G6's have SMART tests on bootup and nothing has been identified. Unfortunately, I am off site for now, so I am going to build a second FRDC 2008r server on an old G5 and use that for now whilst I try and sort this mess out. Still need to get backup exec working on another server so I can restore the backups.

It has RAID1, mirror.

Got to say, I am surprised as its a G6 hp so not that old and the raid flagged nothing up. Hopefully I can find the correct guide on restoring the files from the location the backups are stored. I am assuming, my other option would be to stick in replacement hdds in the server, reinstall 2008 r2, and then be2012 and do a full restore (as my backups do system state too).