tobyhacker

Hmm... a SIMS.net update a few days before exams results come through and the version number of Examinations Organiser becomes 6.66 - someone is having a laugh surely?!

We use our RM Ones on a CC3 network however, I know a couple of schools who are using them on non RM networks and they have no problems at all. If we ever decide to move from a CC3 network we would still keep buying the RM Ones. As K.C.Leblanc mentioned - being able to have smaller desks is spot on, we have a mixture in our rooms where we have some with deeper desks which allow students to work infront of the PCs with plenty of room if the teacher doesn't require the use of the network.

We purchased 180 (ish) RM One PCs about 3 years ago and we have found them to be brilliant. I know a lot of people don't like buying RM products however the RM One has saved us loads of time and money as they are very child proof (a must in my school!) and they rarely go wrong (in my experience). Plus, when out of warranty we've had no problems in getting parts to fix them ourselves. They are slightly more costly than other all-in-one products but after looking at others I have always gone back to RM. Also, I've seen the concept pictures for the next generation and I must say they've improved on an already excellent product.

We had on a couple of occasions when running SIMS.net the following error message: Catastrophic Error That was it apart from an OK button which when clicked allowed you to carry on working as normal... if someone would like to explain that to me I would be grateful!

I know in my LEA that if you have no qualifications in IT then you can't progress past a certain salary, even if you can do the job better than someone who has. However, I would list your current job specification and all the different areas of work that you deal in and compare it to any benchmark job descriptions for your LEA. Make sure you have a good breakdown of what is required for each position written down and then request to see your line manager or head and ask for your position and salary to be reviewed because of the jobs you are now required to do compared to your LEAs recognised job descriptions. If you can prove why, and use examples of similar positions and pay in your area, then you should stand a good chance of getting some recognition

Hello all, Has anyone had any problems with the RM AL51 laptop shutting itself off at random intervals? RM diagnose the fault as being a motherboard issue - "loose mountings for CPU" We have 16 of these laptops in our school and 8 of these have developed the same fault. I would like to know if anyone has had similar experiences as I am still waiting on RM to say whether or not this is a large scale fault or whether we were just REALLY unlucky (yes I know they were RM laptops and that we should expect this sort of thing...) Thanks! Toby

We used to have terrible problems with machines not updating SIMS.net, but by making sure we run simsperm.bat before giving the laptop or PC to the member of staff who will use it has fixed all our problems. Hmm... sounds a bit dodgy really... well maybe Capita can come up with a solution!

If you run simsperm.bat on each laptop it will set the required permissions for the user to be able to upgrade SIMS.net themselves. I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head but I believe in run type something like... s:\setups\simsperm.bat domain\username For example for me I would put: s:\setups\simsperm.bat khs-admin\toby Hope that helps! btw... who comes up with these names? simsperm and the other one is assman?! At least someone at Capita has a sense of humour... well they must have to provide software like SIMS.net (this is my own personal view and not that of my schools)

We have had similar problems here... we just changed the proper teachers staff code in Personnel and also in Nova-T6 to something not used before and all seems ok now.

No... they are replacing sensors and the main control box... but it just beeps continually now... not sure what would be worse, burning or the beeping - even when I'm off site I'm sure I still hear that stupid beep.

We have music on in the office during term time... it helps to keep the mind creative! During the holiday though something will always be on loud as it is so quiet in the school... got Bowie going at the moment to cover up the beeping fire alarm control box outside my office...

I would like to be part of a SWAT or special response unit type thing.

ok then... it's just that for us sometimes workstation upgrades will work and sometimes not depending on the update. But since doing what I suggested before we have had no issues at all. It has made mine and my technicians lives a lot easier when we have over 100 laptops connecting to SIMS.net each day and people start moaning when the updaes don't work!

Hi, You will probably find running SIMSPERM.bat useful as this will set all the right permissions needed on the PC for Sims.net usage and installation of upgrades. We had similar problems to you when installing upgrades on workstations and laptops especially. It is in the setups folder, I think you need to run it like the following if I remember correctly: S:\SIMS\SETUPS\SIMSPERM DOMAIN\USERNAME or GROUP

This actually happened to one of our PE staff in Easter, the first thing he grabbed was his school laptop and phone (he thought the car might catch on fire). He placed the laptop next to a friends car who had stopped to help and walked away to talk to the police (in fairness to him he was in shock). When another policeman turned up he asked the friend to move his car which he did without question... can you see where this is going?! The family saloon car then reversed over the laptop... well, the front wheel did anyway! All in all if you are grabbing stuff don't place it NEXT to another car after an accident! But, one new screen later and the laptop is working fine... good old Dell Latitudes! Toby

Nope not on our machines! Installed on one played around with it and uninstalled all in one day. Microsoft are almost as bad as Sims... or should that be the other way round?!

When trying to log onto SIMS on the server itself when others are having issues can also take up to 5 mins or so. So I don't believe it to be a network issue. Our SIMS helpdesk has informed me that Capita say it is an SQL issue and that it maybe resolved when we move to SQL 2005 in August. Up till then we've got to manage, they gave a few suggestions which I've got to try. Server Spec is Xeon's with 4GB RAM lots of HDD etc etc. So in theory should be more than a match for SIMS! Things seem to have settled down today with no reports of problems with SIMS hanging or being slow to log on, so we shall continue to monitor it and see what happens! Many thanks for all your ideas! Toby

Hmm... thanks for the info Pete. When I spoke to our SIMS support team about this they did seem surprised about the size. Maybe something else is causing everything to slow up then? The hunt continues!

I do regular backups to shrink the DB so I can't see it being this (I clean up old backups regularly) After rebooting the SQL service the mem usage has been continually climbing upwards and is now up to 439MB at present. DB is just under 1GB with the log nothing to write home about. Still waiting to hear back from our LEA...

Hello all, We've been having a few issues here with our SQL Server which our SIMS sits on. Sims has recently been slowing right down so to log on can take up to 10 - 15 mins and in some instances time out. It seems that the sqlservr.exe process on the server is being hit pretty hard with the CPU usage at around 25% and the Mem Usage being over 1.13GB. The times when this is happening seems random it's not only when 60 odd teachers are logging on to do their lesson registers, it can be when only a handful of people are using SIMS. This only seems to have been happening since we did our March update via SOLUS. Has anyone else been experiencing these or similar problems? Also, does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this? I'm still waiting to hear back from our LEA support team... Many thanks! Toby