Halfmad

Vista business is the one I decided on after testing a few of the versions, there's not a lot in it though. I still feel that vista is bloated beyond belief though, I'm avoiding it in the school for as long as possible, hopefully until vista SP2 is out lol!

Hi all, Just curious if there's a way of tracking who deletes files and when on 2003 server, I'm not wanting to do it with pupil data purely with staff data. I seem to have spent a good few hours recently restoring files that have magically vanished and as usualy nobody is admiting fault. I have a feeling it's the same 3 or 4 people who are at fault. Would auditing be able to do this?

to the OP - She's the Network Manager, it's her fault if it all goes wrong. Put it in writing, email your concerns to her and her boss, then do as your told I'm with you though, I don't allow staff here to have it at home and in school, one or the other.

I have to agree with your richard, I am feeling very very much like that, my family have said I should go see the doctor but I know he will either give me happy pills or sign me off and that wouldn't look good when applying for jobs elsewhere stating that i've been signed off work due to stress so would rather avoid that. So my method is to sit down and cry in a corner at home and try and sleep, sleep is a strange thing I get only a few hours a night as I have so much going on in my head I can't sleep, banging my head against a brick wall is more fun at times than trying to sleep! All this mess is my thinking behind jacking it all in and leaving the job and giving up and rethinking my life, not that I could do anything else really as IT has been my life for years. I could almost have written the exact same thing, more or less sums up how I feel. I don't want to be signed off but things aren't going to change at work - I've more or less been told this by the SMT. No money for a technician etc and won't be for at least two years.

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=11750&highlight=what ^^ might be a starting point although as a network manager I have budgetary responsibilities and essentially deputise for my business manager (bursar) when he's out of school/holidays.

I'm looking for a new job nearer home, I'd love not to have to drive every day! I've asked for a technician and our Bursar is furious that it's been turned down without any consultation. Even a part time tech would help a huge amount and most importantly actually improve the quality of work - not just the quantity. Sadly Mattx it's all about money, they don't want to spend it on IT people when they can get in another person to scribe for dyslexic kids or another teaching assistant. They really need to get priorities straight.

In all honesty I'm struggling at the moment, doctor is trying to persuade me that taking some time off would be a good idea but I'm against going off on stress related grounds. He can of course force me if he wants to but as yet has resisted doing so. I'd be bored at home if I'm honest, first week would be fine but 4-6 weeks? I'd be crawling up the walls. I'm on my own, 400 clients, 5 servers, 35-40 projectors and a heap of other responsibilities that range from creating/managing the websites to setting up projectors for assemblies and even making up word templates for staff to use.. I also manage our budgets and have running arguments with SMT about what we should be buying. Some days I love the job, but at the moment and for the past couple of months it's just been hellish. Staff have unrealistic expectations and although I'm managing them as best I can at the moment I've actually started not caring - which is a really bad sign as I take a great deal of pride in my work. My daily commute is now anything up to 3 hours, generally around 2 though thanks to motorway roadworks etc. I personally don't think that's helping much at all as I have to start work at 7:30 on days that we have assemblies which means being out of bed before 6am.

I use 9 point calibration and never had a problem - never noticed any improvement with the higher level calibration even for handwriting. Looking that the OPs picture I'd say it was a faulty smartboard, but you could replace the USB cable to see if that helps - hell you never know!

Admin server but only one LAN/Domain which everyone logs in, admin staff simply have membership of the admin group to control access to the admin office server shares.

Yup was just about to post about SP2, had a few of the newer Dell laptops and desktops needing it too.

Have to tried the 1200n driver that's built into XP/vista/2003 server? I very rarely have to use driver disks unless it's a new model. I've found too many problems with the newer drivers from HP - apart from the fact that they're usually bloated.

I don't have a degree - I haven't missed out on any jobs I've applied for, I'd really like one though as everyone else seems to have one! HND is fine and frankly experience seems to count more these days than a degree once you've got 2/3 years under your belt. Professional qualifications such as CCNA/MCSA etc all mean more to most employers than any degree, partly because there's so many degrees and just about anyone can pass at some level these days.

you're LEA should have a recommended replacement cycle. Ours is every 4 years although typically this is broken due to senior management spending the money on smartboards instead of client computers (which is it's whole purpose). We have computers that are 9 years old here, running windows 95.. I think that's says it all. Although thankfully we do have a lot of 3/4 year old ones, but the situation is getting worse year on year. I've warned then in writing, I suggest you do the same. Hardware cannot be repaired forever, especially Apple Macs where the cost seems to rocket for parts each year. CDROM drives now cost me £85 a shot, logic boards are up to £300 - it's cost less than £500 to replace it with a brand new Dell.

Agree with contink, it's reasonable well organised at the moment - although I still think the main forum listing needs to be sorted out - gives me eye strain everytime I use it

Yes but I'm willing to be they'd never be able to find it I'll have a look into it anyway, see if I can make one monster button with "click me" written on it for them

I was surprised that this wasn't the case, but apparently they only have to go through the department heads then office staff will send anything. Problem is that each department has it's own letters, most of which are absolutely awful. I've even spotted a few glaring gramatical errors in the standard letter our English department were using.

Sadly (or not) we don't use SIMS! Geoff - that'll do nicely, cheers! Nick - that's too complicated, trust me. We're trying to keep it at simply as possible. I'd considered mail merge but my boss just laughed and pointed out that most staff can barely select a printer..

I've just had my business manager ask me this, essentially we have standard documents they staff use to send to parents. Problem is that staff are messing up the formatting and essentially sending out garbage to parents. What he's wanting is some way of having a box in the documents which teacher fill in with the details. At the moment we have: As you know PUPIL NAME has been studying SUBJECT at LEVEL. His/her performance has been at a level that would suggest PUPIL NAME is unlikely to achieve a pass at level. It looks awful as staff leave all the text underlined - the person who made the letters only did that so it was easy to spot what you had to edit out. Any suggestions? essentially we need the pupil name etc to be highlighted in some way, but when printed etc it looks the same as the rest. My initial thought was to do them in red, as most of us use mono printers but I'm sure I've seen it down using grey boxed areas before. I rarely get a chance to use word - hence me asking for help

I completely agree with unixman and plexer, that's an awful installation and equipment spec. My initial thought was "lol" sorry but it's almost comical.

Have you tried generating new SIDs for the computers concerned? Just a thought, I've heard of all sorts happening in a local high school (not mine) where the tech was imaging but not using sysprep to regen the SID. Worth a try, other than that I'd go with Jake's idea!

You shouldn't be relying on your mate to fix that PC, fix it yourself as that's the quickest way to learn. Struggling? have one PC next to you on the net and play with the broken one, I'm Google qualified..

My orange broadband has been ace, never had more than a few hours of downtime and that only happened once in the past 14 months. Personally I wouldn't touch SKY, just don't like the company.

TTIUWP (this thread is useless without pictures)

GrumbleDook what size of establishment do you work in? 6 people? sounds huge!

I generally have to take leave during holidays even though we have an entire central IT department that the school can call on if I'm not here - granted the service we get varies and since they haven't been in to deal with desktop issues in almost 2 years it's not surprising that staff avoid them at all costs. We really should have myself and a tech though, 640 pupils, 80 staff and just over 400 computers (mix of PC and mac), it's asking a lot of one person and frankly means I never get a chance to develop anything as I'm constantly running about plugging stuff back in (because it's magically stopped powering on) and frankly wiping teachers bottoms.