markwilliamson2001

We have had a strange issue over the last couple of weeks, which has only reared its head the Friday just gone, and the previous Thursday and Friday. The network would slow to a crawl, then suddenly speed up again, then again to run slowly repeatedly. This caused strangle logons, machines to fail at running startup scripts, and mapped drives to fail...I think these problems were caused by broadcast storms which were flooding the network. I eventually traced (what we think of the source of the problem) to what we think was a dodgy nic in a HP colour printer/copier. Once the printer was removed, the problem then seemed to disappear. I managed to find the problem by tracing the issue through the various managed switches we have. The nearest switch to the dodgy printer was showing up repeated CRC/Alignment errors on the port which corresponded to the printer. All errors were from the date of which was since I had installed the printer. According to the logs, CRC errors were mainly caused by loopbacks, mixmatch of link speed types. I then (once disconnected the printer from the network) checked the config on the NIC on the printer. It was defaulted to 10T Half (AHA I thought!). So set it to be 100TX Full, and then reconnected the printer. The problem then seemed to re-appear, so I just disconnected the printer and left it be until now. Has anyone had a similiar problem like this? We have had these problems before (very rare) due to kids looping cables in sockets. I also thought it maybe something to do with duplicate IP's (since we set all network printers to be manual IP's). While we are on the subject of broadcast storms, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss VLANS, since it would have prevented the 'entire' network going down. The switches also support STP/RSTP, but I have very little knowledge of this as well. We have around 50 switches in school (with 700 odd machines), so I think VLANS are the way to go. Can anyone help out on setting up VLANS from scratch? Thanks Mark

I didn't deploy the MSI file, I just use our modlogin.scr logon script with the following line: run "\\printserver\PCclient\pcclient.exe" (or something similiar) that is in the instructions. I would make sure Domain Computers have read access on the PCClient share on your printserver, as I think ours didnt run at first. HTH Mark

I can pretty much guarantee that most issues are with Print Manager Plus!! Try removing it, and seeing if the problems disappear!! We found that ours did! If you need any advice for paper cut, let me know! M.

Hi We have a very large number of HP printers, and use to run Print Manager Plus, until upto a year ago. We again had issues with printers not printing properly, and random issues, until we eventually got rid of Print Manager Plus. We are now using Papercut NG (Software for print quota and print control management. Your print accounting and monitoring solution - PaperCut) after it being recommended on here, and have experienced no issues at all since changing over to it. Even our ICT teachers are doing there own print quotas for students and they love it too! It also makes troubleshooting "I CANT PRINT" scenario's since most of the time its down to kids not having enough quota! Give Papercut a try, its dead easy to setup, and we run the client program as an exe at logon. The install instructions are really easy to follow as well. HTH Mark

We had trialed this as well. When Demo'd it was good, but then when we trialled it, it was C**P!! We had another system running alongside, which an ICT Teacher had written to monitor web-usage (which works perfectly). We had problems installing the client with the provided MSI, (which were eventually resolved, after 3 weeks of trying). PCE did not write data back to the server properly, but did it in 15 minute sessions (wtf, so if a student uses a computer for less than this time, nothing got recorded). It also seemed to miss large chunks of data recording for no apparent reason either! In the end, it just died a death, and we stuck with our own Chasemon system! Regards Mark

USBDLM on the TS? Not sure how else you could do it. M.

Yeah do as mentioned above. I had to do this for Vis Studio 2005. I also found a neat little tool to assign packages in a set order in one policy (which is handy for something like VS 2005 where there are lots of pre-req's which need installing prior to the app itself.) It is called Assigned Software sequence manager from Sywan. Google it up, I use it frequently! M.

I know exactly where ur coming from... We have 2 techies, and one of us has to 'manage' most of the assessment data organisation and systems relating to it inc registration. Why we actually dont buy decent software that could allow teachers/admin staff to do these sort of admin/printing jobs I don't know? and let us get on with doing proper techie stuff like managing WSUS, updates, installs and student internet logs (i.e. maintaining and improving the system we already have!) I have spoken regarding issues like this to a long time to my boss, but we always get *non technical* jobs that anyone who is midly IT literate and can use a mouse can do! I feel a sense of achievement today, since I finally got Coreldraw 12 running without crashing, freezing, and giving piles of errors :D so after 2 years, it finally works! M.

Hi Clark, Don't get me wrong, I am not against Bromcom! It seems good to me! At the moment, we are stuck between a rock and hard place with SIMS.net and the TEAM bolt on. I have never really been a fan of SIMS/SIMS.net, although it has improved of late. Saying that the August upgrade seems to have slowed down .net startup considerably! I like lightweight easy to deploy/maintain apps, quite often centrally controlled (web based apps are great if programmed well..although can be clunky at times, esp when working with forms). Major problems at the moment seem to be sync between SIMS and Team, espicially the graphical timetable...which is resolved using the FROM SIMS module. This is specced to run at night, through a vbs script, and sometimes it works, but quite often it cocks up. When run manually it is fine

I would go with Serif Movie Plus as well, very easy to deploy, (in version 5 I think we have), and easy to import and use video. The only issue I had with it was the audio codecs which our Sony camcorder used, but I managed to find K-Lite codec pack, which I deployed using a startup script. This was free, and was very easy to do. If anyone wants anymore help, please ask. Thanks Mark

What MIS system are you now using Kiran? SIMS, CMIS or your own system? Thanks Mark

I managed to stop this by preventing hkmd.exe being run by students as part of a software restriction policy. This also stopped any other random hot key apps running as well!

Hi Clark, I am working with Neil Cheshire (ex bromcom) who has started at my school. We have already discussed the Bromcom solution with our line manager (but he wasn't too keen on the idea). Thanks for your help anyway. Mark

Kiran, I am aware of the improvements to lesson monitor and its integration into SIMS.net, but since we have 700 machines around school, deploying it via Group policy/AD was in my mind, since we do that with nearly all software now, but there doesnt seem to be any solid and reliable way of doing this at present. Hence the idea of using it over TS, thus making installation, and upgrade using SOLUS easy. Also if we used TS on vmware, we could rollback to the previous working version of SIMS/lesson monitor easily (since SIMS has a terrible reputation of breaking a working and stable product at an upgrade....). M.

Much appreciated. I have no experience of TS at all, so am unsure of any pitfalls we could fall into, especially concerning printing and profiles etc etc. But at least it is a step in the right direction! Thanks Mark

We currently run SIMS.net on our admin network, (which consists of 35-40 clients, and two servers (one for SIMS share) and the other running SQL 2005. On the curriculum network, we have restricted access to both staff and students. This works okay, and actually gives us very little trouble. However, we ran Lesson monitor around 2003, and it was rubbish. Updating of client machines was a pain, and it was always a problem setting up permissions using scripts etc. We then went to a SIMS bolt on called TEAM from education software ltd. This solved our problems in terms of deploying to clients, but now a colleague who basically 'micro managed' the system has left, we are now finding more and more issues with the syncing (sp?) of data between the two databases (SIMS and TEAM) concerning classes in timetables, and registration data not copying back properly to SIMS. There are also other issues regarding TEAM (which I am personally not happy with) but that is another story. We are then thinking of going back to SIMS, to solve our syncing issues and make the whole system simpler, but don't really want to spend ages looking at deploying SIMS (since I believe that it is currently not feasible). We currently only have Fat clients around school for registration. However, we have some ageing machines which are a ball ache when it comes to logging on, so I had considered converting them to fatish thin clients using thinstation or a possible alternative. With this in mind, I had also considered possibly running SIMS.net and more importantly lesson monitor over TS. I have thought this might cause havoc with our network (in terms of speed) since the TS would have around 120 teacher workstations all trying to access it at the same time (logging on at the start of each lesson), but I believe this could be solved using managed/team'ed NICs on the servers, and further improvements. I am also not sure how we could use RDP using our fat clients, except providing a mstsc client shortcut on teachers desktop which automatically logs the user on with a standard user logon to the TS, and runs SIMS.net immediately at user logon to the TS. I think this might only be short term until SIMS web-parts come out (please please please!). Thanks Mark If anyone has any experience in doing this with SIMS, I would love to hear from you, and any problems that you had.

I don't have daily updates of machines on my network, plus I do the install of all new machines, so is easy to add/remove machines from the list. I had a script somewhere which used to query AD for computer objects, and pipe the results to a text file. I then used to paste this into excel, and add the shutdown part of the script to the computer name, then just dumped the completed results back into a text file saved as a batch file. I nearly got round to totally automating the whole process...

You guys never heard of shutdown.exe?? I use this integrated into a batch script, which runs as a scheduled task on our servers. It runs at 10pm, (when school closes) so no-one should be here then, and if they are: TOUGH!

A suggestion to try and speed things up would be to take a look at wake on LAN. You can enable this in the Bios (if the machines are fairly recent, or wake them automatically in the BIOS), then using a small piece of software (we use LanHelper) add them to a Wake on LAN service on one of the servers, setting all client machines to come on at 6.45am. We did this and nearly all complaints stopped. All they have to do now is logon, and take the reg. We can also schedule WSUS to download and install updates at 7AM, and also any software deployment via MSI can take place before anyone arrives in school! It takes time to start with, but soon you will notice the improvements. HTH Mark

Have they enabled spanning tree protocol on the switches, because we had a similiar problem with an older 4000 series Procurve switch? Once disabled, it worked fine for RIS'ing. We then re-enabled it once we had finished. Hope this might help? Mark

Well, that is a beta, so I never expect much from them! BUT - why don't microsoft just leave the browser choice open (i.e. not include any web browser on home versions of the OS? You don't get DVD writing capability in XP, so have to install Nero or something else, so why not do the same with a web-browser? I never use IE7 at home, I just download Firefox or an alternative straight away and use that. I can see how IE7 is good for enterprise level LANS since it can be controlled and locked down using GPO, which is ideal, but for security and ease of use, Firefox rocks hands down.

Mine would have to be the inclusion of a decent web-browser that was actually standards compliant LOL...:p (how about packing in FireExplorer8? lol...) Oh, and some decent whole machine backup like time machine in Mac OS Leopard! NTbackup is just too complicated for teachers on home laptops etc... M.

Well it does a lot of the hard work for you when setting up a website for a Primary school, such as basic layout, school logo, term dates, news, easy to upload pics etc etc, setup file directories, site maps etc etc. You can also include a google maps link, therefore providing maps which can be printed off, and also provide an excellent calendar system (google calendar) while also allowing the school to keep the site upto date without having to learn HTML, FTP etc etc. I have looked at Moodle, Joomla etc in the past, but this is very easy, quick and a synch to setup. There is also an excellent "search site" function built in. It just covers a lot of bases that Primary schools could need for their own website without having to go really in-depth with designing a website from scratch (as I have done in the past). You also don't have to worry about backup and hosting issues etc etc!

Well I spent about 1.5 hours on it last night fiddling and came up with this tester page: Home (Malvern Hills Primary School) I apologise for the beer pic, but I was just messing. The only issue I have so far is that the table rendering in IE7 is terrible! Cell alignment and the such like just didnt work at all, no matter what I tried.. :-( I know this is new (v1) but on the wishlist would be more flexibility for layout and better rendering in IE7 please google!

I am still playing at the moment, but it appears you can edit the templates (albeit it is slightly limited, but you can edit almost all the site, as well as including your own logo). You can edit the site's colour scheme, and the layout, including width, navigation bars, etc etc. I am not sure about Google Adwords, but you might be able to turn this off somewhere. Mark