talksr

Hello, I am writing to get a little advice on switches and general network topologies within schools. We have a three form entry primary school. When I joined, there was a large mixture of small hubs and switches linking off of other hubs and switches which all went back to a core network cab which had 2 x 48 port managed 100mbps switches. It was all a bit of a mess. The school has around 125 systems, not sure on the number of users. Since starting, I first concentrated on the main cab, replacing the older managed switches with a stack of 3 x 48 port managed 1000mbps switches and 1 x 24 port 1000mbps switch. I then tried to ensure that all rooms had dedicated wiring to the switch. I have noticed that still there are rooms which are using mini switches. My main question is, are these mini switches good for a network? From my point of view, >It adds an extra break in the network >We have purchased considerably expensive 48 port managed switches to deal with network traffic so having these smaller switches also on the network, deciding what to do with their traffic is wasteful and not needed as the bigger, more expensive ones can deal with that. >It is not very secure having odd 5 port switches free as any one can plug a system in and the switch can't block the mac as multiple systems use it. Any advice or help would be great.

Ah don't worry, i found it. it was in Csc in a folder but the folder did not have admin permission. Changed permissions by taking ownership and found straight away! Wohoo off to lunch for me!!

Hi, I have a bit of a problem. A colleague of mine was asked to remove Windows offline sync from the sen computer at his school. He did so, but the SEN staff member has now noticed that a very important document she was working on when the pc was offline, has now gone. I have been sent in to try and find this. Is there a different location that Windows 7 stores offline files? It always used to be c:\windows\csc When I go here, there is nothing. Any help would be great. I am not expecting to find this as it looks like the cache for offline files is now empty.

It turned out that the firewall was not switched on in services. I have switched the services on and disabled firewall for now and advised the ideas you mention above. Thanks for all of your help

I am on the pc at the moment. There appears to be three shares: Finance Head Teacher's Documents and Data There are three computers which link to these three shares (that makes 9) but I wonder if the master system would also count? In which case, that would make 12. I have had a look on the system logs for the master computer, and there are loads of the following errors: "DCOM was unable to communicate with the computer MASTERPC using any of the configured protocols." I thought I would check on the firewall settings first. The service appears to be disabled, if I try and switch it on, it fails. I am wondering if there could actually be some issues on the master pc. There appear to be a lot of services which are currently disabled. hmmmm

Ah interesting. In that case, that may well explain it. As I have not come across a single admin dpt that only had one mapped drive per pc. There is usaully Public and at least Finance shared areas.

Very good idea! Thanks for that. That would actually be a real use.

Thanks for your posts. I would have thought this, but I am sure there are not 10 systems on the admin network. If there were, I would suspect they would have had the budget for a proper server. I don't actually know how many systems they do have, but I would be surprised if they did have 10. The school is not massive (only a 1 form entry primary), so 10 potential admin staff would be pretty large. I don't deal with the admin side of things (until tomorrow) but will report back. Thanks again for your suggestions

Hi, A colleague of mine is having trouble in the school office. They have a p2p network and have one master computer. This master computer has a couple of shared drives which the other office computers connect to via manually created net maps. He has reported that frequently, the network maps fail and the only way he can get them to work again is to restart the computer browser, server and workstation services. Does anyone know what could be causing this? He thinks the system will need an over the top install of windows. I am going to head down there tomorrow and take a look. Any ideas and suggestions would be great

Thanks for all of the posts. I wrote a lengthy reply to this thread last week and when I hit submit, it never added it on. aghhhh!! SMT are well aware, I have been logging and updating them at every point. However we are at the stage now where we can't just keep saying, you have messed the pcs up so we are going to put the repair work to the bottom of the pile. Mainly because the children are missing out on using them and it is a key part of their learning. There is just not enough time for me to chase around and keep repeating the same jobs. All computers were and are usually set up in the holidays as there is a lot more time then to complete such tasks. But the fact of the matter is, we cannot continue to rebuild, it is wasteful and just not right! The school had been very behind with ICT (things like this show me why), we are spending a great deal on improving and modernising. So there simply isn't the time to keep repeating these menial jobs. I wondered if maybe getting someone in just to rebuild computers, might have more of an effect as it will highlight a very direct cost of rebuilding each pc. At the moment, no one really appreciates how long it might take to rebuild 15 or so systems. Call me fussy, but I like my systems to be perfect. No missing updates, no missing software, up to date flash, reader x etc, you get the picture. To get just one system to that point takes an age let alone 15! So I was thinking, that if we had someone in, a little like a window...if you break it, you need to then wait for the window man to come and replace it, and then bill you. Maybe that would put people off of letting the kids run riot. But then on the flip side, it will have quite an effect on our budget for ICT. Thanks again for all of your posts. I will be looking into the software mentioned and see what I can come up with.

Thanks for your posts. I was not aware that W7 came with a decoder ..... silly me I did notice the VLC blueprint a few months back, and put that straight on. But for some reason, the VLC player does not always play sound. It appears to be due to the USB smart speakers we have. Some apps like VLC appear to default to the standard green plug audio (on the mboard) and not the usb. This results in no sound. Because RM is quite well locked down, staff are unable to get to sound settings on the control panel & rightly so, imagine the havoc they could cause!

Hi, we have a CC4 network and Windows 7 client systems. We created a package for PowerDVD and sent this out to all computers via RMMC. However, we have found that on many client computers, when playing a dvd on a non-administrator account, the playback is extremely jittery for any dvd. I have since removed this from use on the network as I was being swamped with reports of problems on afternoons when maybe 6 or so classes all tried playing dvds at the same time. Is there anything any other forum guys use or know of which will work on CC4, maybe even has a blue print? I would go with media player, but I would still need a decoder to play the disks. Any help would be great

Thanks, I am on the page now. My only concern would be, if I used Deep Freeze and I had the systems on the domain (CC4) as they are at the moment, would this have an effect each time they are rebooted? Or would it just go back to a specific point defined by the administrator? So I could tell it to go back to the point it was at when I had added to domain, done all updates etc?

Have never heard of this! I am looking it up as I type.. thanks.

Tried the keyboards and mice, they just switch it off. - The trouble is they all have pc's at home these days, so they know what buttons to press. Could take a look for the keyboards you describe though.

Sorry, couldn't think of a suitable title. I work in a large primary school in London and for the past year, I have been plagued by problems with computers in the early years class rooms. The children are trashing the systems on a weekly basis. We run CC4 and Windows 7 clients. CC4 is reasonably robust, and I believe the kids are managing to trash the systems by pressing every button on the keyboard during boot up. The computer then boots to rm restore mode, there they continue pressing every button they can, and then from there god knows. The bottom line is, again I have around 15 machines totally trashed and I am struggling to find the time to re-build them. If I leave a system re-building in the room, the kids will come over and press more buttons, despite me asking the teachers to please not let them near, it is just a nightmare. The staff don't have a clue, some of them are just pulling the plug when a system is doing updates, pulling it after I have left it doing an image...the whole situation is just ridiculous. I can't physically remove every computer and take it to my room to work on as it would be a logistical nightmare. Does any one have any suggestions as to things I can do to prevent this? >Ask the teachers to keep an eye on the kids - no tried this. Some teachers are great, and we have had no problems, but unfortunately its the same classrooms which keep having the same problems. >Can I remove RM restore from the boot up process? At the moment, you have to press both shift keys. >Could I maybe just stick xp on, lock it down, take a copy on clonezilla and then each time they trash, just run a new image down from the server? Any help or suggestions would be really great. It is only the early years I am having trouble with, the other year groups are fine, they are using the system well and are finding it fantastic. There are just a number of classrooms which are incapable of looking after their computers. Thanks

Thanks all. I have sorted it now via the admin kit. Thanks again!

@AlexB, thank you that did the trick. I left it disabled and they all appeared. Perfect! Thanks again! @Chunks_ the link you provided was very useful. I have bookmarked that. Thanks to everyone else who posted. Problem now solved.

Thanks @AlexB for your post. But would I need to re-install Office on each system to use these templates? I can see a share on the server called Office2010 which appears to have some of these templates and files.

Good morning, I have inherited a network of vanilla systems where somehow Office 2010 Pro has been deployed, I am guessing via group policy to all of the Windows 7 client systems as I can see evidence of this in the policy. There are quite a few systems and whilst Office is working well on all of the systems, a quick check of File>Options>Save.... reveals that the install of office by default has a default save location of c:\users\%username%\Documents. This is no good, as each user has their My Documents stored in N:\ Each time they save, they are having to select save as and browse to N:\ Is there a script I could make which would run at logon on each system to change this default save path or is there no option but to re-install via gpol?

@cromertech to be honest, it has been such a while I don't know if I authored the admx files or not. I remember using a couple of guidance sites. I am going to take a look today and see what my notes say... if anything!

True, but we are in London and on LGFL like most schools in this area. A little bit of knowledge and Google searching would soon reveal the famous proxy1.equinox poxy details currently used in most London schools. That's the internet taken care of. But true, they would not get access to any other resources, as Marci said, you would require auth details.

Thanks for your post, I will look into the whitelist filter or radius.

Hi, thanks for your post. All ethernet ports run through a gigabit stack. I have looked for the mac on the stack and there is nothing in any of the logs. Also the hostname "xyz's-iphone" was a hint it had to be wireless. As far as I know, iPhones can't connect via ethernet. Although you could easily change your hostname on a pc to "robs-iphone" I guess. I have made a duff reservation for it's mac as mentioned above. Not had a chance to check the dhcp leases yet!

Hi, we have a Windows Server 2008 R2 FRD and Windows 7 Clients. One of the noticeable problems with Windows 7 on a domain is the annoying library options which show on the left hand side of an explorer window. It causes chaos for users as they are able to save work in local libraries rather than their shared network drives. I made the necessary changes via Group Policy to get shot of the libraries. - See below.. http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/talksr/rm/gpol.png When a system which has the policy applied, is logged in, this is what they see in their explorer window.... http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g179/talksr/rm/folders.png Perfect! But, the head is not happy with the way she now has to browse her folders. The management team would rather they are able to browse at least their my documents (network share N:\) from the old fashioned windows xp'ish tree view which would also be in the same area on the left as the now blank libraries area. Is there a way to add this just for their N:\ drive? Any info/help would be really great