Osprey

Unauthorised Advertising Removed - Please use the Contact Us for details on how to advertise - John

I don't know what your requirement is but laptop cabinets rather than trolleys means that you can put a small group of laptops in each room. If your teachers don't move around then they can be responsible for making sure that the laptops are looked after and recharged (they are accountable for them!)

I use Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) which is a free download from Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE) It's quick and does an excellent job. It won't do RAW files but if you use TIFFs you can load it into Photoshop to enhance the picture later. I have got much better results with ICE. The best one I took was of a rescue helicoptor, it appeared in several photos as it flew across the view so when I stitched them together I ended up with several helicoptors!

Since Skype, Messenger and a number of other chat type programs no longer work through our "educational" ISP I am seeking a suitable free chat program that we can use in school. This will be mostly for staff to use to communicate with each other from the classroom or for the head to tell everyone that he has called an emergency staff meeting at lunch time! Any recommendations?

Spiceworks gets my vote. I use it for inventory purposes, as a help desk, as a central database for all equipment. It is excellent for generating reports of what is installed or what is not installed on workstations. My only gripe is that there seems to be an update every five minutes! Mind you, there is nearly always a nice new feature or an increase in speed.

Senteo - don't know price. Try speaking to Richard at Datacable 01535690075

Any system that takes an hour to prepare five minutes of questions and costs a fortune isn't worth using! We have Senteo and once you get the initial setup done it is easy to use. It integrates with the SMARTBoard software and can be used with prepared questions or you can make the questions up as you go along in class. Of course you need to get decent training first!

Yeah, stop mootilating the English language!

I have tried this out and it works. I forget where I got it from so apologies and acknowledgements to whoever wrote it. It does have the disadvantage of being a scripted install so if you want to uninstall you will need to use a scripted uninstall, it doesn't uninstall if you remove the machine from the influence of the group policy that you use to install it. - Create a folder on the server called Office2007 and share as office2007$ with autheticated users having read access, Domain Admins and Admins have full control. (or use Office12$ or other suitable share) - Inside this folder create a folder called logs and set it so that authenticated users have write access - Copy the contents of the Office 2007 disc into the folder - Go to the \\gateway\office2007$\ProPlus.WW folder (gateway is the name of the server in this case), rename the config.xml file and replace it with the following: - Edit as appropriate ie add pid key and school name, alter location if necessary - Use the following script as a startup script (edit the locations) in the top half. This script will work for W2k, XP and Vista, both 32 and 64-bit. It checks to see if Office 2007 is installed by doing a registry query, something you might want to use in scripts in future instead of checking/copying a text file. setlocal REM ********************************************************************* REM Environment customization begins here. Modify variables below. REM ********************************************************************* REM Get ProductName from the Office product's core Setup.xml file. set ProductName=ProPlus REM Set DeployServer to a network-accessible location containing the Office source files. set DeployServer=\\gateway\Office2007$ REM Set ConfigFile to the configuration file to be used for deployment REM (required) set ConfigFile=\\gateway\Office2007$\ProPlus.WW\config.xml REM Set LogLocation to a central directory to collect log files. set LogLocation=\\gateway\Office2007$\Logs echo %date% %time% Setup started with error code %errorlevel%. >> %LogLocation%\%computername%.txt REM ********************************************************************* REM Deployment code begins here. Do not modify anything below this line. REM ********************************************************************* IF NOT "%ProgramFiles(x86)%"=="" SET WOW6432NODE=WOW6432NODE\ reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\%WOW6432NODE%Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\%ProductName% if %errorlevel%==1 (goto DeployOffice) else (goto End) REM If 1 returned, the product was not found. Run setup here. :DeployOffice start /wait %DeployServer%\setup.exe /config %ConfigFile% echo %date% %time% Setup ended with error code %errorlevel%. >> %LogLocation%\%computername%.txt REM If 0 or other was returned, the product was found or another error occurred. Do nothing. :End Endlocal - if there are problems with the install then check the logs folder and the %temp% folder on the workstation. To restrict which machines Office is installed onto use an AD group and GPO filtering I hope this is helpful to someone out there!

Datacable do something like this. 01535 690075 and ask for Martin. I think they can customise them as well. No idea about price though

The article says "This symptom only occurs if the image was not created by Sysprep or other unique SID-generating technology" We have regularly made images which we have used to re-image workstations using either sysprep or Ghostwalker and the machines appear in WSUS without problem. We did once, accidentally not do this and at that point only one workstation appeared in the WSUS console. We used newsid on them and they started to appear in the console.

I edit the user hive in the mandatory profile so that "HKey_users\nameofuserhive\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Favorites" is set to u:\favourites where u: is the home directory. Note that I even use the English spelling!

Some WAPs, those designed for home use, log events and then reboot when the log file fills up. If you have more than about two laptops attached the log file fills too quickly and the WAP keeps rebooting. "Industry standard" WAPs handle the log files better. My preference is for a managed wireless solution and we have had good success with both the Netgear and the HP solutions on different sites. Of course you still need decent cards in the laptops!

We use the following vbs script 'defrag.vbs 'Defrags all hard disks - Can be run as a Scheduled Task 'Modified to create an error log and display it '© Doug Knox - 4/13/2002 Option Explicit Dim WshShell, fso, d, dc, ErrStr(), Return, X, A(), MyFile, I, MyBox, Drive Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") X = 0 Set dc = fso.Drives For Each d in DC If d.DriveType = 2 Then X = X + 1 'Determine drive letter of first fixed disk 'This is the drive that the error report will be placed on If X = 1 Then Drive = d End If End If Next ReDim A(X) ReDim ErrStr(X) X = 0 For Each d in dc If d.DriveType = 2 Then X = X + 1 Return = WshShell.Run("defrag " & d & " -f", 1, TRUE) 'Determine the Error code returned by Defrag for the current drive and save it If return = 0 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag completed successfully" & vbCRLF elseif return = 1 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & " (defrag was cancelled manually) " & vbCRLF elseif return = 2 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & " (there was a command line error. Check your command line for valid switches and drives)" & vbCRLF elseif return = 3 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & " (there was an unknown error)" & vbCRLF elseif return = 4 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & " (defrag could not run due to insufficient memory resources)" & vbCRLF 'errorlevel 5 is not currently used elseif return = 5 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & " (general error)" & vbCRLF elseif return = 6 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & "(System error: either the account used to run defrag is not an administrator, there is a problem loading the resource DLL, or a defrag engine could not be accessed. Check for proper user permissions and run Sfc.exe to validate system files)" & vbCRLF elseif return = 7 then ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with error level " & return & " (There is not enough free space on the drive. Defrag needs 15% free space to run on a volume)" & vbCRLF else ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) & "Drive " & d & " Defrag aborted with an unknown error level: " & return & vbCRLF end if End If Next 'Create the Error Report in the root of the first fixed disk. Set MyFile = fso.OpenTextFile(Drive & "\defragreport.txt", 2, True) MyFile.WriteLine(Date) & vbCRLF MyFile.WriteLine(Time) & vbCRLF For I = 1 to X MyFile.WriteLine(ErrStr(I)) Next MyFile.Close Return = WshShell.Run(Drive & "\defragreport.txt",3,True) Set WshShell = Nothing Set fso = Nothing We schedule it on the servers to run at weekends when quiet, on the workstations we schedule it to run on Wednesday lunchtimes when the machines are likely to be on but not used much. To roll it out we use the following script to set up the task: The following script is used to install the defrag.vbs script on the workstations and to run the task.vbs. It checks to see if it is already installed, if it isn't it makes the folder, copies the files and runs task.vbs to set up the scheduled task. We run it as a startup script via a group policy. Hope this is of some use to someone!

If you are using brand new machines from Dell which are preactivated, why use sysprep when you can use the built in Ghostwalker in Ghost. It changes the SID, keeps the licence key that the workstation came with (they are the same on each one!) and leaves the activation as was.

We copy the following vbs to c:\defrag and run task.vbs For domain workstations we use a startup script to see if it is there and if it isn't we copy it onto the workstations and run task.vbs defrag.vbs is scheduled to run on Wed at 12:30

The new bit on the forum which shows similar threads is very useful. I had tried searching and not found much but the similar threads produced some interesting links. The most promising is has a script called printers_195.vbs on page http://edugeek.net/forums/showthread.php?t=394 but unfortunately there are no page breaks in the script and it is difficult to read. Anyone have a copy of that thread with appropriate page breaks? Like some other users, I can't use the computer name as this is a unique name that can't be changed and computers are moved from one room to another.

Currently we use a vbscript to set the printers on a workstations when the user logs in. This may be run either from All users\startup or from a loginscript in a GPO. What I would really like to have is one script that runs on all computers at startup or login which looks at the attribute of the computer class in Active Directory to see what it's location is, look up the correct printers for that location in a text file, and then install them. I have a script that will return the location from AD for a particular PC but I can't find out how to look up the printers from a text file. Has anyone else tried this sort of script? I have come across some software that does this. It is part of the Jigsaw suite that Akhtar install, it is based on Con2prt but it is copyrighted!

Hyper-V = Hyper Ventilation ?

Set up the website templates with Dreamweaver, buy a few copies of Contribute and get everybody else doing the work of populating the website with you authorising final copy. Alternatively, have you got a learning platform / portal yet? Use that if you have. You say "update it now and then" but really these days the site needs to come alive if it is going to be looked at. People need to be drawn back to it regularly for news, jokes, games, info, etc. I think the first thing to do is sit down and work out who your audience is, what it is you want to communicate to them, etc. then think about the means, and also whether you are the person to do it! There are lots of companies out there who will design a website for you and provide you with something like Contribute and training so that you (and your team) can update it regularly. Some of the primary schools I visit have the children gathering the news, jokes and other information and putting the web pages together for the teacher to publish when their happy with it. It's a lot of work, but there is no point in setting up a web site if no one wants to look at it!

We create a new shortcut such as:- explorer /n,/root/,u:\ so that uses have access directly to the location we want them to but can't go browsing all over the place - well not unless they are very clever!

Don't bother backing up the WSUS content files, these can easily be replaced - not exactly essential and irreplaceable data!

Are there any msi packages of any of these? One of the problems of Real Alternative, as I understand it, is that it won't handle streaming radio. Many of our teachers have to have a dose of Terry Wogan before they can teach their children!

In some cases it is worth considering adding additional discs, move some of the data across and use dfs to make it appear if it is still one share. Of course, if the system drive is full then...... !

You could switch auditing on for the folder and files in question and see what comes up in the event log. That might tell you who is responsible.