Halfmad

I seriously doubt they're used daily by 5 million students. I'll let you know when I see even ONE student using an IWB!!

I've done the old "screenshot of desktop and hide icons" malarky on a poor chap I use to work with. In addition I had his autoexec calling a batch file that was hidden well within the windows sub directories and call something rather important. This batch file: 1. Added a shortcut to his desktop upon each bootup entitled "My porn" and with a internet explorer icon. 2. ran a registry key that set the screensaver to scrolling marque and the text set to "I love working here, almost as much as I love toothache." 3. added in porn links to his IE favourites. He never did find out how to fix it as he was always terrified of editing the autoexec and config.sys files. What was really amusing was that he would do a file search to try and find the IE and desktop shortcuts but these were actually stored as different names and renamed after being copied. Even if he'd managed it, we'd have put them back seeing as we'd shared out his C Drive as well Oddly enough the symptoms came back even after reinstalling windows, just as soon as he'd connected it to the network..

I'll be putting the winexit screensaver out to all computers with a time out of either 20 or 40 mins. What I'd just thought of (daft since I'm at home!) is some sort of count down that appears next to the clock. Anyone know if this sort of thing is possible? I thought it'd be quite handy.. they can't really complain if they're being warned constantly!

In my authority they give all teachers moving here from another autority £2000 cash to help with moving, 6 months rent or mortgage paid and a free Dell D620 laptop.

I don't mean to be nasty but I have never seen the point in many of the "features" that are added onto mobiles, menu systems could be improved (iPhone might do this) but cameras, mp3 players, data storage, video calling etc are things I have never really used on any of mine. I have a SE W810i at the moment, I've used the camera twice, the rest of the time I use it for recieving calls and texting. I just plain do not understand people who need everything on a mobile. I want a TINY mobile phone, I'd love one I could wear as a watch and of a similar size but I don't need these "features" which frankly I'd call gimmicks. If I want to take pictures I'll use a digital camera, if I want to listen to MP3s I'll use my MP3 player and if I want to video call, I'll jus speak to them face to face!! My best mate always has the latest GPS mobile, no doubt he'll be given an iPhone free by the local mobile shop that he does tech support for. He always ties to show them off to me and sighs in frustration because I'm just never, ever impressed

I keep two spare projectors in the school in case one of our 25 breaks or needs a lamp I don't have although I have plenty of spares at the moment for all 3 types. I've purposely kept the model of projectors down to a minimum for this reason!

I don't mean to be nasty people but you are there to HELP staff.. I get the feeling that some of you are less than helpful in some situations. If it's a percieved problem with IT and staff are really at fault then it's up to YOU to communicate this to them, I've done so in the past and have never had any of the problems mentioned. I do however attend departmental meetings etc, I try to involve myself in the teaching side as much as possible so I know how to improve IT use for the teachers. You have to be flexible, yes backup etc is there as a disaster recovery but without a kids documents being recovered quickly it stalls a class. The expectations of staff are high, but that just means that value you! they know they NEED you and if you communicate with them I'm sure you'd work out a partnership that really enhances the IT use in the schools and does away with this resentment.

Nope, I am "the" IT department. I've never heard a bad word against me and neither have any of my teacher spies I would be very worried if I thought that staff in particular didn't approve of what I was doing, I see my job as helping them do their job and if I'm not doing my work properly the chances are it'd be interfering with their duties. Which would make the senior management wonder why they employ me!

yeah I think your limited to less fish and only certain types, was a while ago I used it

Isn't it common sense? Not like they sit at home staring into lightbulbs

7 - Don't worry I've got backup copies, I've sold the original Vista disks at the sunday market in town.

We're currently using local profiles and I'm tempted to (if I get time) move to roaming profiles. I'm just curious as to what problems people have encountered when doing this in the past. Anyone had any specific problems or horror stories to tell? I have a very limited amount of time this summer to do something like this so I don't really want to mess it up! Any advice greatly appreciated!

A member of staff is moving into a small room over the summer, no network point in the room so I was going to setup a wireless access point nearby (not in the room - obviously) and make her desktop wireless. She called me this morning and stated: 1. She didn't want wireless as it's dangerous to be near a wireless access point. 2. Her husband will be in over the summer to install a network point. 3. The deputy head has OK'd this - so we're good to go. I stated that: 1. Her husband wouldn't be touching the network. 2. She wasn't getting a wireless access point in the room - as that would require a point to be installed, which we're trying to avoid because of costs. If we did put a point in, there really wouldn't be any point in wireless - would there! Oddly enough now I've had a little chat with her she's perfectly happy as the access point isn't in the tiny room with her. She's now admitted that perhaps she should have spoken to me first. I couldn't believe that someone would OK a random person from outside installing cabling!!! He's an electrician but I couldn't care less! It ain't happening!

I usually have a NASA picture on my desktop, change it every now and then when I find a nice one ftp://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/

http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/ Nice collection of silent installers and a decent forum with more info on making your own etc.

Same, I almost fainted when I was allowed to spend £3500 on it. We didn't buy maintenance though, they wouldn't stretch the extra £500 for it

Well neither of you is getting the job since you've both failed on initiative! The poster leaves an e-mail address - I suggest you use it Harris Federation does sound like something out of start trek, pretty cool! *Captain, we're nearing the border of the Harris Federation."

Ranger remote - isn't that essentially the same as net support school? I thought NSS was more or less just ranger remote rebranded.

Ghost mulitcast is fantastic, used it a few times although I do have 10 disk DVD duplicator so sometimes I just roll images out via that during term time (when I can't afford the network to be slow.)

how about opening lots of local files until it's removed from the list? Run CCcleaner? see if it can clear it out?

if you want to have it repaired I suggest giving these chaps a call, have done a lot of work for me in the past with printers that I simply couldn't fix: http://www.laser-printer-services.co.uk/

Sidewinder - I don't think you're in any position to refuse to support the hardware, if it's got windows XP then it's not *that* old. You should however push for them to get a RAM upgrade. about 30% of the computers in my school are under 256mb RAM thanks to poor specs by the last network manager, they're 4 years old but I'll have to support them for up to 4 more years thanks to poor budgeting by . We can't refuse to support equipment because it's a bit slow, if it's old, causing problems to fix or simply near impossible to update (95/98) then yes you'd be able to but as it stands you'd be refusing to support valuable hardware because it was an inconvenience to yourself. Sadly it's your job, I know how annoying it can be to work on computers that are loaded with software, with next to no RAM and being asked to install even more stuff that it'll run at a snails pace! I suggest you look at making a very clean and minimal image for them ASAP. I've done this for our 95 PCs in the library which oddly enough I haven't been near in 8 months.

We get a hardware replacement budget each year from our LEA, sadly I don't have the final say in what it's spent on and it's increasingly used to buy IWBs instead of replacing aging client PCs, some of which are still running Windows 95.

Cheers Apeo, looks much more tidy. I've edited it and added in all of our printers. works like a dream :prayer: Apeo

Hi all, I've changed the script quite a bit this morning as it wasn't quite doing what I wanted it to. No doubt this can be done in a neater way as I'm very much a VB script newbie! Essentially the script checked the UO the workstation is in, if it matches one of the list then it deletes all network printers and adds in specified printers and makes one default. I wanted it to delete all printers as I have a few laptops that are on loan between departments and I can simply drag them into the different UO as the departments use them, the staff get very annoyed if their print outs appear in the other departments printers so I simply stop this happening by removing the bloomin printers! It works for me so far, still have to test it a little with students more restrictive accounts though. ================== on error resume next 'Set variables. Set shell= WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set WshNetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network") dim Counter, PrinterPath Set objWshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") Set objAdsSystemInfo = CreateObject("adsysteminfo") Set objComputerName = GetObject("LDAP://" & objAdsSystemInfo.ComputerName) Set objOU = GetObject(objComputerName.Parent) strOU = replace(objOU.Name,"OU=","") Dim computerName computerName = LCase(WshNetwork.ComputerName) 'Add printers depending on AD OU containing computer. if strOU="IT1" then Set oPrinters = WshNetwork.EnumPrinterConnections FOR Counter = 0 to oPrinters.Count - 1 IF mid(oPrinters.Item(Counter), 1, 2) = "\\" THEN PrinterPath = oPrinters.Item(Counter) WshNetwork.RemovePrinterConnection PrinterPath, True, True End If objWshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\print\Dell1700 IT1" objWshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\PRINT\Dell1700 IT1" objWshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\print\HP2500C IT1" Next elseif strOU="IT2" then Set oPrinters = WshNetwork.EnumPrinterConnections FOR Counter = 0 to oPrinters.Count - 1 IF mid(oPrinters.Item(Counter), 1, 2) = "\\" THEN PrinterPath = oPrinters.Item(Counter) WshNetwork.RemovePrinterConnection PrinterPath, True, True End If objWshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\print\Dell 1700n IT2" objWshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\PRINT\Dell 1700n IT2" Next elseif strOU="Mathematics" then Set oPrinters = WshNetwork.EnumPrinterConnections FOR Counter = 0 to oPrinters.Count - 1 IF mid(oPrinters.Item(Counter), 1, 2) = "\\" THEN PrinterPath = oPrinters.Item(Counter) WshNetwork.RemovePrinterConnection PrinterPath, True, True End If objWshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\print\HP LJ2100 Maths" objWshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\PRINT\HP LJ2100 Maths" Next else 'No printers added or deleted End if ==============