Sheridan

We've been asked to install pygame on a handful of PCs - which seems to worked ok - but the thing that fails is the 'import pygame' part Running as a local administrator (in cmd or IDE) we get this error: ImportError: DLL load failed while importing base: Access is denied. So it looks like a permission issue, even as an admin but I've got no clue as to what its trying to access - anyone know how this works?

Hmm I've tried with the continue on error and no joy - if I switch the OS to a clean copy of W11 - it completes the client install and then stops at that point, and no applications are installed So it seems like it probably isn't a driver issue, as it can pull down the wim file and apply it - but the post client installs just don't start

I've copied a task sequence in SCCM (just to deploy a 'thin' version of W11 instead of the fully loaded version, so the only difference is the image) however when I deploy it the client pulls down and applies the image, reboots and goes to the login page So it appears the client package isn't installed and any subsequent application installs are missed. I'm not seeing any errors though, so I'm a bit baffled as the 'full' version task works ok (albeit taking much longer, but that's expected due to the image size!) Anyone seen this before? it seems like the client package has been pulled down, just not installed as I can see the folder _SMSTaskSequence on the client but I can't seen an error in the smsts.log

Oh believe me I don't want to be clinging onto W10, but with this transfer period it might just be enough to piggyback us to the new build, rather than scrape about pulling in refurb kit to try and make do Ideally we'd have W11 everywhere but it seems I've landed into a place with very little investment historically

Unfortunately we're in a odd position - a new build due in early '26 - therefore we'll be getting mostly new kit as a lot of stuff here is old. So spending money on refurb kit might be a waste of time If we weren't moving, or had better kit then W11 would be rolling out - I'm reluctant to use extended support but in our scenario it might be the only option

I'm looking into this as I've just taken a new role which has 600 W10 machines - half are upgradeable, half are not. Budget is zero. So limping the 300 one for a year or so would help but this looks like its only for US customers, has anyone seen anything that would suggest it will be available to UK education customers?

Yep it’s working now, looks like it was at their end!

Anyone else here having issues with Solus 3 not downloading any updates? Just sticks at Downloading/Download queued When I try the update URL in a browser it times out, but also on a separate network/hotspotted laptop to mobile?

Interestingly (to me!) I had a look in the bios, and there was a battery option for maximising either 'duration' or 'health' - it was set to health Setting it to duration and the Charged capacity has now gone to 36mWh! - which manifests itself in Windows as about another 20% It's not a heavily used device, so I'll leave it with the duration set - that's more use to me and if it knackers the battery its a 3-4 year laptop anyway so its probably past its prime

Good point, I guess its possible its a 50mWh battery 'branded' as 41mWh for longevity or user expectations. Never seen it before but I'll be checking every battery now!

Not a big deal, but more of a curiosity - on an HP laptop I ran powercfg /battery report to check the battery state and health. It shows the design capacity of around 50mWh and Full Charged at around 30mWh - fair enough its about 3 years old However I opened the cover to add some ram, and the battery has 41mWh stamped on in several places, and its the original OEM (HP) battery so not a shonky copy Is this normal, I understand the Design/Fully Charged will always differ, but I thought the Design and actual battery should be close?

I've actually got a second 22" inch screen that is on an arm - because of limited space on my desk it swings behind the 34" monitor when not in use, and I can pivot it out when I want to have another screen (usually if I've got another laptop/pc I'm working on) The arm also lets me rotate the 22" into portrait, but I only used that for rare specific cases!

My pet peeve when I installed dual 24's around the offices is that 5 minutes later the two monitors were misaligned - no matter how neatly I installed them they would be fiddled around with and end up with gaps/height differences that did my head in!

I used to run 2*24" monitors in dual display when in the office, since WFH I bought myself a single 34" curved monitor and its way better in my opinion Obviously personal preference applies, but the windows management in Win11 is great so I find a single large monitor much easier to deal with Got it on Marketplace as well - so the cost wasn't too bad

1. Definitely keeping Netflix ID Mobile - only mobile company I've no bother with and no annual price increases Vodafone broadband, not because they're any good, just the best of a load of crap options in my area! Spotify - mainly for kids to use as I've use my Plex server 2. Possibly getting cancelled/occasional renewal Disney+ - hovering on this as I've become a Modern Family addict so might keep it for a few more months Amazon Prime, although I get the student rate the ads thing is a micky take and I don't find their pricing that competitive British Gas home cover - probably will cancel, engineers can be very hit and miss 3. Cancelled in 2023 Playstation plus - free games were rarely my thing and prefer campaign type of games anyway

I used fast.com for my speed tests - changing the wifi channel range was the solution but I never found out why For info, it was bang up to date in terms of OS/Apps. I've now got a mesh wifi setup but still have the same channels and speeds are similar across all devices (including Windows/M1 mac and a newer M2 mac now as well)

Only really knew him from B99 - but loved the character he played. Far too young

I didn’t want to have to use the sync method, I wanted a more manual (i.e like windows or android) way - I’ve got so much ripped music from cds over the decades I just want to mantain a copy ‘offline’ and copy on what I want to listen to on my phone Having faffed about with this for a while, I updated my external ssd (which was a Kingston in a good quality sata enclosure) with a Samsung t7 external ssd and wow, it’s night and day - the drag and drop copy is so much faster, with only a very occasional lag Oddly the old ssd drive enclosure copies to and from the Mac (and windows machine I also use) quickly, and disk speed tests show proper sata speeds of 300mbps so I don’t know why it’s so laggy when copying music, but with the t7 in a sale it was worth the gamble! So although I don’t get why its fixed I’m much happier with the copy speeds!

Airdrop doesn’t seem to work with music files. It asks where you want to store them and none of the options are where Music is, it’s quite a tied up system I’m realising!

Turns out this is an even bigger crock than I thought! If I drag and drop from storage to either the phone in Finder, or Apple Music - I can get delays of 20-50 seconds before it will let me 'drop'! So I ditched the Mac as being the source, connected the drive to my older Windows pc, ran iTunes and that won't let me manage the music manually because its already 'synched' to another device (i.e my Mac!) So that rubbish because a) I'm only ever manually managing my music so its not synching with a library and b) iPhone and MacOS are designed to only work with a Music subscription by the look of it So I'll have to wipe all music off my phone and start again, using the Windows PC. And buy android next time...

Apple Music replaced itunes on MacOS, so now you see the phone in Finder, and either sync with library, or drag and drop Itunes still works on Windows - ironically!

For the first time I've found myself with both an iphone and a Mac Mini (m1) for home use - usually I've an android phone/macbook or iphone/windows laptop so I've always copied music to my phone manually from my stored MP3 collection, ripped from CDs over many years So plugging my iphone into my mac and dragging the files across should be pretty straightforward? No - its almost unusable! If I select a handful of tracks and drag from the local storage on the mac to the iphone (connected via apple usb cable) it basically stutters, jerks about and freezes when dragged over to the phone in finder - sometimes taking 10-20 seconds for the green 'plus' copy icon to appear, its so frustrating! It can't be this bad surely? Its a modern mac and modern iphone 14 and its like using a 15 year old XP laptop! Short of buying a third party app is there anything I can do? otherwise I can see a Windows laptop being the next option

Public transport is always going to seem a little bit like a backward step compared to having your own personal transport (whatever it is) so its a hard sell Maybe the future should concentrate hard on: a) making cars greener by whatever methods (electric, hydrogen and synthetic fuels) b) making them smaller - SUVs etc are getting silly now and electric ones even more so c) actually designing road systems to promote flow Point c) is a big bugbear with me - in the last 15 years around here every single 'improvement' has immediately created a new bottleneck/traffic blackspot where previously it was maybe only busy at certain times. I'm sure a part of that is policy to create environment for city taxes etc but it doesn't help clear the traffic or air!

Personally I think smart motorways are the exact opposite, I understand the concept and it makes sense but in my experience all you end up with is a yo-yo of traffic, if it shows 40 everyone is stopped, if it shows 60 everyone is doing 30 because they've just come out of the 40... I was caught by the cameras a couple of years ago around Nottingham - and although I know its my fault the whole stretch flipped from 40-50-60 on an utterly random basis and I got caught doing 57 in the 50 bit (I was convinced I was still in the 60 zone and I was matching the traffic speed around me but hey, you can't argue with this lot) Ditch them and use the gantry signs for actual useable information. On a side note, I did the obligatory cash raiser/speed awareness course and the guy who ran it was such a smart motorway evangelist it was a little disturbing! It made it feel more like I was joining a cult.

Last time I saw an error like that it was because the app required a minimum level of iOS/ipadOS and some of the older ipads didn't go that high