naturalbornchaos

hey Stevnw, there is a way to roll back. If you contact smart support they "should' be able to help you out. They have instructions as well as some utilites for removal and registry cleaning. I say 'should" because they still have not resolved the issue. I have done everything they asked several times, no change. Even on a clean install of XP (from CD) and Office (from CD) with NOTHING else on the laptop the problem persists. Smart supports admits that there seems to be a problem with the ink aware layer but are unwilling or unable to fix it. Good luck!

Yet another vote for ImgBurn

At the school I work for in the States, we are a mostly Lenovo shop (~700) with a few Acers (~100). The Lenovos are a little more pricey than Dells or HPs, but don't give us to many issues. We pay a few hundred USD a year to be a Self-Maintainer so we get better access to support and parts next day usually. Plus we get paid for every warranty repair we do. So it all evens out. We wipe the machines and put our custom image on. A few years back I was helping out at a much smaller school that had a mix of about 10 different generic whiteboxes. It was a nightmare. HW issues, driver issues, warranty issues, you name it.

I thought I would update this thread, although I don't have a resolution yet. I spent about 3 hours on the phone w/ Smarttech tech support, and had them remotely to one of our laptops a few weeks ago. All of their suggestions for fixing this issue failed. They acknowledge that there is an issue, and claim to have experienced it on their end, but don't have a solution. So today I wiped a laptop and did a clean install of XP, all updates, Office 2K3 and updates. That was it, nothing else. I then installed the Smart Classroom Suite, thinking (hoping) that the newest version on a clean install would not exhibit the slowness in PowerPoint. But of course, it did. I'm 99.9% sure it is not the Board, as it works fine with a laptop that has the older version of the software on it. I still think it has something to do with the latest version of Smart Response (see my post above). I'm not sure that Smarttech even reads my e-mails. When I explained the problnem I was having on a laptop with a clean install, their suggestion was to run a utility to remove any previous versions of the Smartboard software. This is very frustrating, I need to get this ironed out a.s.a.p. as I am in the process of building my images for next year.

I too am looking for a new classroom management software. We currently use Synchroneyes 7.0 (the older version of SMART Sync). We've got it in ~8 labs, on about 200 machines. It seems to work fairly well. The teachers understand it, they can see the desktops, take control, block IE & Firefox, etc. The issues I have are: 1) It is easily bypassed. All the kids have to do is yank the network cable, wait a few seconds, then plug it back in. Their connection is restored but the Synchroneyes "Teacher' does not recognize the interruption, so the thumbnail stays "frozen" at whatever was on the student's desktop before the cable was pulled. 2) It is a pain to install. I can't make it part of a Ghost image, and I can't push it out using Prism Deploy. So I have to manually install the "Teacher", then install the clients on the lab machines. And that requires a reboot, allowing the app access through the firewall, deleting the icon the program insists on putting in All Users > Desktop etc. How does AB handle any attempts by students to get around it? Is there an easy way to push it out from a central location? We are a Windows Domain, workstations will be XP for one more year. Thanks

I've looked at WDS and thought it was just a little too complicated. And I am not a newb, I've got about 10 years experience. I personally found it much easier to make an image with Ghost. Then I run the UIU (Univeral Imaging Utility) on it. I've now got one hardware-idependent image, as opposed to about 20 different images last year. The image works on old laptops, new laptops, old desktops, new desktops, etc. I use another app to push any applications that aren't part of my base image. Just my two cents. From the original post I got the impression that the posters skill level was not all that high. I think Ghost would be the easiest to figure out. Also, UIU is not free. I've calculated that for my District it paid for itself in one year, but that might be different for you.

Found it while searching for some help for an issue I was having with a Smartboard and Powerpoint.

I thought I'd add my two cents. I work in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate NY. NY state is kind of weird in that the state is split into regions (12 I think) that are called BOCES. A BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) is basically a way for smaller Districts to share resources. I work for the Info Tech Division of a BOCES. I split my time between two Districts. One is a small one (K-12 all in one building) with maybe 200 PCS. I am there one day a week. That District has their own Tech, so my job is basically to help him out with anything that he can't handle. The other four days I am in a much larger District, approx. 1800 students and 250 staff. That District has a Network Admin, an A/V aide, a Help Desk person, and a Tech Coordinator who does all of the planning and budgeting. I handle all of the Desktop Support, Hardware/Software issues/installs, image building, image deployment for approx. 750 computers. I also do some Network Admin stuff, and am getting up to speed on VMware as we are just rolling that out. So I am a little busy. I think the only way I am able to keep on top of that many PCs and users is that convinced the District to purchase some programs that have really helped me out. I use the Universal Imaging Utility in conjunction with Ghost so I have one HW independent image (down from about 20 images last year). I use Prism Deploy to push out any software that is not part of my base image. I'm not a sales rep for those companies, and I have had some issues with both products. But overall they have really helped streamline my work. We have pretty much the same issues as everyone else: budgeting, staffing, students causing mischief, staff who are computer illiterate, etc Back to work for now.

Just stumbled upon this looking for something else. I've only read the first book in the series, but thought it was very good. It seemed to be a lot 'darker' than a lot of fantasy work. I may have to subscribe to HBO just for this.

OK, we may have narrowed it down. I have another user experencing the same issue. Everything was working fine this a.m. He was running SmartReponse version 2.1.307.0. He was prompted to upgrade. Upgraded to SmartResponse v2.5.39.0 Immediately[/u] after the upgrade he began experiencing problems with PowerPoint. Specifically while it is in Presentation mode. It seems to be an issue with something in the Ink layer. I have yet another e-mail into Smarttech. Hopefully they will actually read this one.

I've had issue with one user and Powerpoint. Not sure if is the same issue you are having. When she was trying to write on a PP presentation on the Smartboard, there was a 3-5 second delay before the "ink" would show up (if it did at all). To make a long story short, I rolled back to an older verision of the Notebook software and it works fine. I've got a post about it on this forum somewhere.

Yes, it would have been nice to have known that little bit of info before I posted.

You don't have to be sorry. I appreciate you taking the time to look at this issue, and your input. As for it working for "other users", let this be a lesson NOT to take someone else's word when they look at an issue like this. Today was the first day I could sit down at the computer, and when I logged in as a domain admin (not the teacher) I experienced the dreadful slowness on the smartboard. Now, maybe something is goofed up with that profile, or the default user profile on the machine. Or maybe the person doing the troubleshooting was not totally accurate in what they were telling me. Oh well, thanks again. Cheers!

As of right now, it looks like the fix is to roll back the software to an older version.

One thing I would like to clarify. When I say that her profile was deleted, I mean that one that gets created in C:\Documents and Settings on the workstation.

Her account is a member of our AD Group "Teachers" which is a member of the Administrators Group on the machine. (I know, that is not a good idea. But that was not my decision). If we test the same file on her computer while logged in another teacher, or as a domain admin, it works fine. I could possibly add her to the Domain Admins group for testing, but I'm not sure if that would make a difference as the Domain Admins group is also part of local Administrators. Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. This is def. a weird one.

I know it seems to be profile related, that' what I can't figure out. No way is she getting a roaming profile. I checked her setup, Group membership, etc against some other teachers, she's the same. I thought maybe it was a video driver issue as I just reimaged her laptop for another reason a month or so ago, but if that was the case I'd think it would affect all users. I don't know. I am stumped. If it IS profile related, then'll it probably come back after a reimage. Whacking her profile didn't fix the problem.

I've only spent 20 minutes or so on this. I had someone else do all the grunt work after I gave them a few suggestions via e-mail while I was in VMWare training. I would like to know what is going on, if possible, because we are adding 75 more of these Smartboards bringing us to over 125 total. I feel perfectly justified in trying to figure out what is going on as I currently have the time. I support 900 workstations/laptops working 30 hours week at this District. I think I know what I'm doing. Sorry ff this sounded harsh, it was not meant to be.

One of our HS science teachers is having a problem with the SmartBoard but it only seems to exist when using MS PowerPoint (2003). Her desktop OS is XP Pro, all patches. She is running the most current version of SNB, and drivers are all up to date. There is a significant delay when attempting to change slides in PPT or making annotations - sometimes 3-5 seconds and sometimes it does not fully recognize contact with the board. Here are the steps we have taken so far: 1. Tested other applications outside of PPT including Smart Notebook, Internet Explorer, MS Word, Excell, Desktop, and all work normally. 2. Uninstalled and reinstalled the SmartBoard drivers. 3. Replaced the USB cable, no change. 4. Tried her PowerPoint presentations on another teacher's station and SmartBoard logged in with a generic teacher account - worked fine. 5. Tried her PowerPoint presentations on her station logged in as a different user - admin and generic account - they worked fine. 6. Connected another laptop to her SmartBoard and had her login and run the presentations - issue still existed. 7. Deleted her local user profile, had her log in again - issue still existed. 8. Deleted the Smart Technologies and Smart Notebook folders in her user space thinking that there may be some temporary file in there causing the issues. No change. 9. Uninstall the Smart NoteBook software, and reinstall. The issue seems to be related to her profile somehow, but I'm not sure how. We don't use roaming profiles in our District. My first thought was the there was a registry entry that was causing a problem, but since the issue occured when she was logged on to a different laptop that can't be it. The only thing I can thing of to try next is to uninstall everything, go through the registry and delete any reference to SMART Technologies, delete her profile, and start from scratch. Or I could reimage it. Is there anything I missed? I've seen some posts out there where other users have had issues with PowerPoint, but haven't really found a solution. Thanks, Joe