sloughman

Hello I wonder if folk can help. I work in a small special school, we have a managed wireless network, but no seperate BYOD network. I have suggested to the powers that be we have a transparent proxy set up so we could do summer lettings etc and for staff phones, guests etc , this would mean getting an extra router from our county provider, I would then set up a Ubuntu DHCP server all would be fine, minimal cost approx £450 for router to be installed. However this was turned down, then within a week I am asked "how much of the school is wireless", "why's that ?" I ask, ... "because we are having a summer school and they will need the wireless " "but we have no BYOD" set up. "Can't we give out the wireless key " "Not really...no!" It was an embarrasing moment as the potential client was present. In order I can stress to the powers that be, without wanting to appear stupid what are the risks exactly of giving out the wireless key? Just so I can be quite clear, explicit and specific. Any advice and help will be gratefully received.

Ok, thanks to all. Basically SLT want a few small/light and of course cheap laptops that a few students need. Any ideas/experience of particular models anyone ? Thanks

That's great thanks, I'll investigate further.

Hello I wonder if anyone can advise. We have a teacher that regularly takes students out on day field trips (at least weekly). He has asked if he would be able to access the internet on these trips on his PC. 3G dongles spring to mind. Although a 3G enabled tablet is also a possibility, but more expensive. Has anyone got any thoughts on this as to what may be the best approach ? Thanks in advance

Hello I have been asked by SLT to look into getting a few (2 or 3) Netbooks for student use. I have no experience of Netbooks in a Network environment (Windows 7 Server 2008R2). I understand there are potential issues with KMS licensing, is this correct? Do other folk use them without problems ? Which model do you use if so ? Will they load image from WDS sever via PXE boot ok ? Any other potential pitfalls ? Thanks in advance.

Hello I have a meeting tomorrow with the various department heads etc, about disaster recovery. This is the second school I have worked in and I have never had an official disaster recovery type meeting before. This will cover all aspects concerning the school. From my point of view what sort of things should I /we think about (IT wise). Other than the daily back ups of all servers , which is done what else do I need to do/think about /be concerned with ? Has anyone actually had a disaster that they can give useful tips from ? Any info gratefully received.

Blimey, stirred up quite a response, slightly deviated from my original thread but interesting nonetheless,.....but ironically nobody answered my original question as to how many policies they have on their website.

Hello folks, I keep getting requests to put more and more policies on the school website, currently divided into two areas, one page with all the main policies (about 50 of them) and one more for internal type issues eg staff discipline etc (some 30 odd policies) under the Governors page, at present this page is tucked away but not password protected/sign on. The governors are planning on putting more docs in this area. I was wondering firstly do other schools have this many policies on their website ie 80+ and do you have a special password protected / sign on page for governors policies/documentation ? Any info gratefully received

Has anybody used Tosiba Satellite Pros, with the above BIOS ? It seems the oddest BIOS to lock down. If I set a Supervisor password it locks down all parts of the BIOS except if a student tries to get into the BIOS it says "Enter Supervisor Password or hit F11 key to proceed. F11 key limits functions" However the one and only funtion that F11 allows is a HDD/SSD drive password set. If I also set this (HDD)it means that every time anyone logs on they have to enter this password before Windows boots, if I don't set this password, a student can go in and set a password via F11 for the HDD (as has now happened, although it has taken 16 months for a student to spot this) I am now locked out. So I enter BIOS Supervisor password, fine, but then it asks me for HDD drive password, (the one which a student has changed) I am locked out entirely even though all I want to do is enter BIOS ( which I know the password for) . Any help gratefully received.

Hello, I have been tasked with finding a supplier of a School Wireless clock and bell system. I have googled and found a couple but if anybody has got any good recommendations I'd be grateful. Thanks

This is a teachers external hard drive, so can't run as admin. Does anybody else have teachers that use protected usb drive, how do you get round the unlock.exe's ? Thanks

A teacher has bought an external USB hard Drive with WD Drive Unlock security on it. As exe's are blocked for teachers by default the "blocked by group policy....." message came up. This is where I came in, I added F:\WD Drive Unlock.exe to additional path rules, unrestricted, in Group Policy, I now get the error message "Administrator log in required" when I click on the WD Drive unlock icon. Has anyone else had experience of these drives, how do I resolve this issue ? Many thanks

Yes I think it is a permissions issue......thanks.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. All the user files create fine and append fine. The Computer files also create fine but will only APPEND fine if restarted inbetween logins. ie at the end of the day if a PC has not been restarted it will only show one user for the whole day (ie the first user), even though I can see through the various user files it has been logged onto many times yet if userA logs on twenty times EVEN to the SAME computer without restarts it will append all 20 in the user file but the computer file will only show 1 entry.

No. This is what happens. User A logs on to Computer A script creates text files called userA and Computer A with the date /time /name entries. When User A logs on elsewhere it appends to the already created User A text file. User B comes along logs onto Computer A that has NOT been restarted, User B file is created but no entry added to Computer A file UNLESS it has been restarted, I can't see why.

I wonder if anyone can help. I have created the following log on script, that creates two text files in separate folders for each and every each time a student logs on. One text file named with the computer name, one with the user name. The details within text files are the same . The reason for two files is so I can search by user or computer. My one issue with the script is that with the Compute named text files do not append a new entry if the computer is logged onto a second time, unless the PC is restarted in between, although the user text file appends perfectly for each and every user even if they log off , back on the same PC WITHOUT restarting, ie two entries in User A text file but only one in computer A text file. Does anybody know why this would be as it's the same info just being sent to different locations. echo Log In %Date% %TIME% %USERNAME% >> \\servername\Computerlogon\%COMPUTERNAME%.log echo Log In %Date% %TIME% %COMPUTERNAME% >> \\servername\Studentlogon\%USERNAME%.log

Hello, I would like to be able to see details of which user has logged on/off where, and at what time, on my Server 2008R2 Windows 7 domain. What is the best way of doing this. Any free software recommendations that does this ? Many thanks

On a regular check up of all server drives I noticed the C drive on one of my servers had decreased in size by 10GB in the space of a month. After a little research I found it was masses of usage files in the above file path. These had suddenly started appearing after I had attempted to set the server up as a WSUS server, which had failed to install. So my question is how do I stop these files appearing every 5 minutes, each file is 1.5MB. What is the route cause of this, I'm guessing it is to do with Something to do with sharepoint central administration ? and IIS ? Thanks

Forgive my lack of knowledge , how would I know the bandwith amounts ?

So the basic upshot is as long as cable is shortish run, significantly less than 50m, number of nodes makes no difference ?

Hello, i wonder if anyone can help. What is the optimum, ie max, recomended amount of PCs sharing a cat5 cable. At my school there is a classroom with 16 PCs that connect to a switch that feeds back to the server room cab via a single cat5 cable. Would switching to fibre for the switch to server cab run increase performance noticeably ? Thanks in advance.

OK, thanks, I thought it'd be something along those lines......

Does anybody use the Free Autodesk 123D Design / Make in school. I have installed on PC in school. Initially all looks fine , but when it comes to the "sign-in " top right, a blank white screen comes up, with no error message. I have looked on the support side, many other people seem to have same issue but no resolution. Does anyone have any answers ?

This topic is drifting off what loop back processing is for , isn't it ?

What do you mean by the 'Apply group policy' tick, where is that ?