Obee1

Hi all We have a pretty poor finance system inplace, provided by the local authority. It's clunky for them, and departments don't have access to the system, so department leaders just get budget reports periodically. We can't change the system out as its the local authority system. However does anyone know of any small system that could be used internally for ordering (and tracking orders), which then feeds into an order tracker and budget? I'm thinking of trying to put something together, but if there's something that anyone already knows of that works for them I'd be interested to here. The workflow would ideally be something like: people enter order details into a form, click submit, which sends the order off to finance team. Submitting the order then posts onto a spreadsheet all of the items on the order, supplier details etc It then also tallies up all of the costs attached to the order and subtracts them from the overall budget. Be useful if anyone has any pointers, if not then I'll create something.

Hi all I have a client who has recently updated from Office 2007 to Office 2016. One user raised a question which I haven't had before: they used to use the strikethrough deleted items in Outlook to manage their workflow. Personally I always hated that featured and much preferred deleted items to be purged to the deleted items/trash. This particular user however liked it. I can't see any way to re-enable it. Can anyone confirm whether it has now been depricated or if not where this can be re-enabled? Can't see any mention of it online when searching....  

Hi all We have an issue whereby we have created a start layout in Windows 10 1803. We have exported the layout via Powershell and set the users to use this layout. USER CONFIGURATION>POLICIES>ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES>START MENU AND TASKBAR>START LAYOUT This works fine. However another issue that we have is that Windows 10 likes to use Edge as the default PDF viewer. Additionally if this default app is changed it likes to give users the opportunity to select which app to use. We need to use Adobe Reader for this rather than Microsoft Edge due to some of the functionality. I have managed to fix this issue by creating a further xml to set the default app to Adobe Reader. COMPUTER CONFIGURATION>POLICIES>ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES>WINDOWS COMPONENTS>FILE EXPLORER>SET THE DEFAULT ASSOCIATIONS CONFIGURATION FILE This also works fine. The problem arises that by using the Default Associations File, it stops the start menu layout file from working. I have tried merging all into one file, but that doesn't seem logical and doesn't work. Does anyone know if there is a limitation to how many xml files you can apply via GPO. If so is it one, and the reason this isn't working? Anyone had the same issue and know any way around it?

They’ve been helpful overall and it was me who suggested the moving to virtual but there guy agreed that it was a perfect solution when perhaps it’s seemingly not. Are you saying that each DNS server is a user? Yes we have 2 dns servers set up as forwarders so if the 50 user limit does exist then we should be fine. I was thinking this is applied to client users in which case we have 600 ish.

Thanks I am just going to have a look at this one, as a backup in the event that OpenDNS is not going to continue filtering beyond 50 users.

Thanks @mrwoberts I had configured the OpenDNS signup free service with DNS servers 208.67.222.222, and 208.67.220.220. That is working, but I am unsure whether they will run into any issues tomorrow when there are several hundred people using the network. I read on another Edugeek post that OpenDNS free is limited to 50 users. Does this mean that when we have lots of activity tomorrow that it would be stop filtering?? If so does the Family Shield have a similar limitation? I think I prefer the one I have already setup as it sounds like it's more geared towards enterprise than "family". Just where I am not actually in the next couple of days I want to be fairly confident that they're not going to run into all sorts of issues with me not there...

Hi guys I have been having a bit of a nightmare... We've had internet speed and connectivity drops for some time. My initial thought was an issue with the web filter (Lightspeed), as since we upgraded to 3.0 in about September 17 we had difficulties sometimes logging in etc. Anyway several updates later etc, I was assured that it wasn't an issue with our rocket. We then started looking at all kinds of other things. Our DNS servers (which were only virtualised last summer) I thought could have been an issue, then we were looking at our ISP as our bandwidth was maxxing out sometimes, then back to the filter as they'd released a new user agent (the LMA) which I wasn't aware of, a dodgy internal server was also looked at. So at 3:30 Friday afternoon, which was an INSET Day so most staff left by that point, our internet fully goes down. Up until that it'd only been drops. We unplug the entire network and patch things back in looking for a loop or something. Turns out that when we remove the web filter all is absolutely perfect, speeds faster than ages, non drops or anything. By this point I'd accepted that our out of warranty six year old filter had had it. I speak to their support guys in America, and run a workaround plan by them. Workaround is to create a Virtual Rocket, backup the database and config from the physical and restore that to the virtual and then change the IP of the virtual to that of the physical, unplug the physical and hope that the clients user agent talks to the virtual as if it were physical. Their support guys said that's a great idea and I should go for it. So I have spent the weekend creating a virtual rocket, and doing all that (given that the physical was faulting that took longer than I'd hoped). But it seems that using a virtual as a filter on its own without a physical does not work. Their support guy who's oncall today on his own isn't sure why. My staff and students return on Tuesday, with tomorrow being bank holiday and me actually being off until Thursday. My workaround this evening is remove our current DNS forwarders and use OpenDNS. This seems to be working fine, but I just read on another post that the free version is limited to 50 users. Without really having the opportunity to test 50 users prior to Tuesday morning I wondered if anyone has any info on this limitation? Can't see anything about it on their website. Any suggestions would be welcome at this time. No V-Lans here and staff IPs are mixed in with students.... Cheers for any suggestions in advance...

Hi guys Very strange issue that is occurring. I believe this issue has been occurring for a while as I had one printer which would repeatedly map to areas, outside of the scope of the GPO, but I am now experiencing a far more extreme version of this. I have a new Windows 10 client machine, which will be used by one member of staff. The client user should have four centralised virtual queues mapped via User GPO using Printer Deployment from the Print Management facility on the print server. Additionally he has a printer in his office, which should be mapped and another printer in a meeting room. However, when running a group policy update the user receives all six of these printers, plus some additional ones for which the machine should not be a target. Further to this there are also two printers which are not included in any GPO anymore which are also being mapped to it. One of those two doesn't even exist on the print server anymore. I have created a new user account for the user, removed his previous account from the PC and registry, none of which have helped. I have also run the RSOP tool, but that doesn't really tell me much about where these printers are coming from. Group Policy modelling strangely also wont help me - when I run this I get the following error message: "An error occurred while generating report: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" When searching online for what this error means, people seem very unclear and are just trying things. Also someone suggested that in Windows 10 the default is set to connect network printers, and that the way to disable this is to go into advanced network settings and remove this from the Private Profile. This is on a domain profile, so shouldn't matter, but I have disabled the feature incase. Also two of the printers are no longer even attached to the network so this shouldn't be the affecting factor. Any advice appreciated as I am brain fried as to where these are coming from...

Hey everyone. Can see lots of people having multiple issues with Eclipse and MLS Support. We have always had a bit of a rocky road with performance and support. Since moving to HTML5 the performance has got worse, and particularly since the summer this has got progressively worse to the point now where it's virtually unusable in the Management module. I realise that they're moving to a new platform and that this is supposed to be counteracting the performances issues, however it seems that this has got worse before its getting any better. I am going t catch up with them at the BETT show this week to discuss further, but id be interested to know how many other schools are being affected by this issue?

Oh my!! There'd be uproar here if we asked pupils to logon to staff machines to print or for staff to print students jobs for them. We don't have too much wastage issues now as we have applied soft credit limits to students. We use Papercut to ensure that jobs are only released at the device by students or via the web interface by staff. So wastage is fairly minimal now. I'd recommend you look at Papercut MF - would make your life a darn sight easier.

Already done this too. They're not navigating and finding it I don't think. generally it is linked to the other problem that I have about it mapping in places that it shouldn't. For an added complication, It does also have airprint as it requires printing from iPads. I realise that we can't restrict printing from mobile BYODs.

Thanks for response. Yeah that's a kind of second string to the issue actually. We have printers mapped upon location, so that printer should only be mapping for the nine machines that we have in that room. Interestingly however that is not the case. It appears to be mapped in other random locations, but without any logic. So for each location there is generally 3 printers mapped, which are the nearest printers. We also use virtual queuing so that the print jobs can be ejected on multiple devices (follow me print). So essentially I have kind of done half of what you've said, but we don't ban from installing additional printers to allow for fault tolerance (either printers not correctly mapping or printer breakdowns, requiring a new printer to be added).

Hi guys Got a bit of an issue with a printer that we have shared from our print server being printed to by machines outside of it's location. It's based in the library, but students in classrooms appear to be able to print to it. I have changed the share and NTFS permissions to only allow the computers in the Library to print to it, but that doesn't appear to work. I have then looked at the effective permissions for a user and see that they don't have access, but they are still able to print...? We do have Papercut, but as far as I can see Papercut only allows restriction by user? Any thoughts or ideas on ways to enforce a restriction? I have read various posts from people stating that you should be able to restrict via permissions for computers or security group containing the computers, but doesn't seem to work...? Thanks in advance for any thoughts/ideas??

Thanks to all for contributions. On further investigation I became a little more keen on the department accounts for Twitter and not listing these as searchable and then just retweeting stuff out. Have just been to a meeting however and the initial stage of this is going to be emailed to us and we tweet it out. I'm a bit worried that this will still involve lots more work going backwards and forwards before the tweet is "ready" but will see. Thanks guys and girls.

Thanks. We were thinking of doing this, as department head's were quite keen - well some of them. The problem of moderation then reared it's head and there is also a feeling that it's difficult enough to get our students and parents to follow one account, let alone all of these other ones. We kind of envisage parents then saying that they haven't heard about something and are following on twitter only for it to transpire that they're not following the correct account. Have you or do you have any issues like this?

Hi all We have been on Twitter and Facebook for about 5 years now. Our success is very limited - we have just a few hundred subscribers and our content is not eye-catching/regular enough to really engage people. Our Head wants us to start using social media more, but as I have explained to her, one of the challenges that we face is getting good quality regular content. We are now down to just 2 IT technical staff - me and one other guy and we are run off of our feet, particularly as I also line manage the business support and facilities management too. Everyone here is very busy, so I don't see this shift being easy. Last week we staged a marketing meeting and got quite a bit of staff interest in involvement, however I think our Head doesn't want to load any more of this work onto teachers. I have said that I am happy to post things up, but that I need the content delivered to me rather than me walking around trying to find an interesting lesson to tweet about. I have setup a shared folder on the network and some staff have also begun emailing me content, not yet realising that captions (and 140 character restricted captions) are required. So how does everyone do it? Do you allow certain "champions" to have access to the Twitter and Facebook accounts and tweet live from departments? We are a little concerned for moderation and security of the account details on this, but are open that it could be an option... Do you have a shared folder? Perhaps with dates on it or something? Do they email it to you? Do you outsource your marketing? How does it work in your school? Any advice appreciated.

@dapaulio, do your Vostro 3568's boot to an external monitor ok? We recently bought lots of these and have just found that none of them boot to external monitor. The graphics driver (Intel-HD-Graphics-Driver_PDTP9_WIN_21.20.16.4574_A04.EXE) just says ""this computer does not meet the minimum requirements for installing the software". I am on Dell Support Chat now. I have done this from a fresh W7 install. No doubt Dell will want me to do everything I have already done. Do you know of any other working drivers for W7 Pro x64?

Well thanks @DMcCoy. Been in the business about 12 years and never come across this. Weird that it's happened twice in a fortnight though. Worried that its something server end as fairly recently changed to Server 2012.

Thank you all for your replies. Everything looked as it should, however I was intrigued by DMcCoy's answer. We use and always have used Offline files. This has always been without problem, but disabling them resolved the issue in this case. We have had multiple users share laptops with offline files enabled in the past without issue, but seemed to be the issue this time around. I came across a similar issue today whereby a user with offline files enabled needed access to another user's area. I couldn't map the other users file area unless disabling offline files. DMcCoy, have you come across this issue before? Anyone else?? Thanks again

Hi guys & gals Come across a bit of a weird issue today whereby I have one device that will not connect into the users home drive. These are mapped by GPO, never had any issues; now we just get the old “M:\ refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location.”. I have seen this before but it is usually that I have missed a character in the UNC path. On further inspection it will let me map directories above the one for which I get that message. I have tried different users and the problem persists on that device for each user. I have reapplied (forced) the GPOs and even tried removing it from the network and adding it back on fresh. I have a workaround in that if I use the IP address of the server rather than the Server name it works fine. This would therefore point to a DNS issue. I have checked IP and DNS settings all look fine. I have changed them and then reverted the change just for good measure. I have flushed the DNS and checked the DNS on the server, which seems fine. This issue isn't replicated to other devices, so clearly seems to be some kind of issue with DNS on that device I would think. Also disabled firewall on both device and server to test whether either was blocking. As I say I have a workaround, but I don't like workarounds I like working. My coffee-starved, post Christmas Do little brain can't think of much else to try. Anyone experienced this weird behavior before?

Hi guys Came across this thread about Accelerated Reader not working properly. Has anyone started having issues again with this software? We had issues around about the same time as that thread, and despite trying everything nothing seemed to work then the issues just went away after about ten days. As I say our issues (very inconsistent) have returned. Anyone else??

Hi guys, We were experiencing this issue at almost the same time as you guys. We have a proxy server and initially thought that it was something to do with that as there seemed to be some performance issues with the site, so added it to the exclusion list. Checked the web filter wasn't blocking traffic. Spoke to Renaissance and got their documentation of sub domains etc which needed to also be unfiltered. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Issues were very inconsistent ie different users, different machines, different times of the day etc etc. Eventually the issues just resolved themselves. We did lots with profiles, clearing internet history, clearing cache on the DNS and web filter, as Renaissance claimed everything was hunky doory their end. As I say eventually after a week or so the issues just disappeared. It would seem that I was not the only one having these issues and it coincides with your timing. This thread seemed to go very quiet with no real answer. Did your issues also resolve themselves? Today I have had a report of similar issues. Anyone else having issues??

Hi guys Wondering if anyone can help me. I am running a new Hyper-V Server (2012 R2) and have created a reference image which I want to sysprep and capture. I have sysprep'd the machine and set it for OOBE. I have therefore disabled the sysprep steps in Task sequence. When I boot into the deployment share and select the task sequence it runs through very quickly and says it completed with no errors but does nothing. Then reboots and the machine is as brand new without the capture phase. Can anyone see anything wrong with my Bootstrap or CustomSettings.ini: Bootstrap looks like this: [settings] Priority=Default [Default] DeployRoot=\\USERS-DEPLOY-VM\DeploymentShare$ UserID=it UserDomain=woodlands.lan UserPassword=************* KeyboardLocalePE=0809:00000809 keyboardLocale=0809:00000809 skipbddwelcome=yes Custom Settings Looks like this: [settings] Priority=Default Properties=MyCustomProperty [Default] OSInstall=Y SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES SkipCapture=NO SkipAdminPassword=YES SkipProductKey=YES SkipDomainMembership=YES JoinDomain=woodlands.lan DomainAdmin=it DomainAdminDomain=woodlands.lan DomainAdminPassword=*********** UserDataLocation=NONE SkipUserData=YES TimeZone=085 TimeZoneName=GMT Standard Time SkipTimeZone=YES SkipBitLocker=YES DoCapture=YES ComputerBackupLocation=NETWORK BackupShare=\\Users-deploy-vm\reminst\ImageCaptures BackupDir=%OSDComputerName% SkipBitLockerDetails=YES UserLocale=EN-GB UILanguage=EN-GB SkipLocaleSelection=YES SkipApplications=YES SkipComputerName=NO SkipSummary=NO SkipFinalSummary=NO Any advice on what I might be doing wrong appreciated.

Hi guys We currently have a flat network. No VLANs, no VMs and all centralised storage is on servers and RAIDs. I am considering the move to using VMs on Hyper-V and a SAN. As it stands right now I have created fairly small C partitions on the servers, so as to maximise the resource available to end users. All of this works fairly reliably. We have however had a couple of issues throughout the year: * Shared storage server went down - 2/3 days to resolve as two disks failed. * Ran out of space when trying to regenerate boot images on our deployment server. * 1 DC completely failed at one point and took a couple of days to rebuild. I've always kind of thought that VMs are a bit of a fad if I'm honest. I don't really believe that running something virtually will provide you with the same resource as a physical device, even if your server is upscaled to cope with the extra load, that said the ability to regenerate a server in a matter of minutes definitely appeals. As does the ability to add extra storage very easily. For this reason I'm considering the implementation of the above. Hyper-V as I understand it is fairly straight forward although it does restrict you to just two servers per physical right? With regards to SAN. I don't really know how to setup at the moment or exactly what is required. I have found a few useful resources, but not many recommendations. Does anyone have any recommendations, or a specification of what they've had? Anyone got a quote that they're happy to share? Our budget is extremely limited so I might not even be able to afford to implement this. Any advice much appreciated.

Hi all I have a server that is failing, resulting in one hard drive being replaced last week. It then BSOD three times at the end of last week. Subsequently I need to rebuild Windows and would like to move everything to four brand new disks. I am having loads of trouble backing up due to the size - approx 1TB. My cloud backup seems to be faltering/taking forever, so I have tried manual backups etc, which are working somewhat but fail with long filepaths etc on some files. So two questions: 1)does anyone have any advice on being able to load the four hard drives into something and be able to copy the data across onto new Windows install? 2)Additionally does anyone know if I replace all four hard drives and build a new RAID whether I can reinsert the original four hard drives to perform manual backups at a later date if required? ie if something is not backed up somewhere and I build a new Windows system and someone reports that something is missing if I can then power down, reinsert the old hard drives and manually copy the data onto a portable drive then switch back to new, power up and copy the data onto new hard drives?? Any help with this headache greatly appreciated. Happy half-term!