spc-rocket

Looks good! Yes i agree IIS needed a bit of makeover! Ash.

Hi, Have you applied this fix? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831047/EN-US/ Fixes a lot of problems with owa password changes. Ash.

Hi, How about something like this: http://www.hmailserver.com/?page=frontpage It has AD support and above all its free with with all standard functions i.e. pop3, smtp etc. HTH, Ashok.

Hi, Uninstall the firewall client from the exchange server, it doesn't need to have and and its generall not good idea to have it on servers - they should be configured as Secure NAT clients. The internal and external IP ranges needs to be different, if your isa server has only one network card then you cannot use the server publishing rules. I agree with DMcCoy about telnet into from an external client to see if it can reach the exchange server via isa server. HTH, Ashok.

Hi, With this amount traffic would it be better to setup multicast on the switches to make it less bandwidth hungry and efficient traffic processing. Ash.

Ric, Is this exambase v5.0 by any chance? We had to do this last year for our MFL and the client didn't run correctly. By this i mean that it didn't work under normal users, however it will work under administrator. We spoke their tech support and they advised that this is known problem and that they are working on it. They couldn't sort this our in time and they sent the exams on CDs. I don't know if they have managed to fix this now but probably unlikely. HTH, Ashok.

Hi all, We're also looking to do a somekind of a video library of the vhs and dvds that we have purchased. Almost all teaching staff have a laptop so it would be great if we could do a one big massive library and digitise the videos with some kind of hierachy per department/subject. certainly some interesting comment on this topic and gives a good starting off point. I was wondering would something like real player server be good for this kind of thing? helix server?. This would be good for the bandwidth and also for the storage space as well? Just wondering if anyone has tried this. By the way we have the buffalo tera station pro and have download the AD intregration firmware but its a bit flakey at the moment as its beta so hoping they would fix this. Ashok.

I think the hotfix is now available and the info link (KB) is there but it still having issues actually downloading the fix - MS has messed up again.! As for SP2, I think it does offer improvements in caching and HTTP compression there is a SP2 whitepaper on MS ISA Server site which details the improvements. We are waiting for the download link to appear on the good old MS's KB link. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=915045 Ashok.

Hi, How about using the router to filter out the garbage traffic and allow only the traffic you are publishing with ISA server. So for example if you have a webserver and or email you would allow traffic like SMTP(25) HTTP (80) HTTPS (443) inbound on the router so this way you filter out all the other traffic and it had not even reached your isa server. For outbound traffic on the router - all all traffic since you will be controlling the outbound traffic using ISA Server. This can be achieved by using extended access control lists on the router. If you have a cisco router then these have good ACL support. We have isa server 2004 std SP1 and it seems fine with not problems. It is configured as an edge firewall and works well. HTH Ashok.

I think there is so much confusion surrounding the VLE thing that its sending out the wrong signals to people esp. schools. If there is a idea by Becta or DFES to make all school move to MLE (managed learning environments) then that needs to either happen fast or delay this, as schools have already started to utilise and successfully use their own custom made VLEs. I'm just worried about the idea of moving to a RBC's VLE or MLE for that matter, imagine the resources and retraining process that will be involved. My advice to all shcools who haven't got a VLE already is to hold back this idea and see what the LEA and Becta comes up with. Obviously to look good the RBC will go on what Becta and DFES will say. I agree with Tony's point that RBC and Becta should really listen to the people who will be using these services i.e. the school and what kinds of functionality they expect to see in a VLE. Up to now this has not be done and this is the reason schools haven't really adopted the idea of VLE - assimiate was a completely disaster and sadly is an example of this. The mira point gateway crashes often and is offline causing problems for users. Personally i think the idea of moving to MLE and VLEs is great and i'm up for this but i think Becta should really get the RBCs to deliver the core services i.e. connectivity which is good enough, decent firewall (flexibility - per school basis) and good web filtering with local control. The it can move on to other things that surrounds these core services. I don't know but somehow I get the feeling that too many things are happening too quickly and the real issues are not being addressed. Ashok.

hi indiegirl, This behaviour is linked to having sims and bromcom system. We get this as well and it only happens when you have bromcom and sims. Our LEA support has told us to take a backup and this will shrink it down again, which it does but at one stage (before we knew about this issue) the ldf file was 8Gb! when the DB was only 800Mb!. We haven't found a solution for this but our bursar takes a backup everyday using a tool developed by our LEA which uses the sims backup to kick in and therefore the ldf file gets shrunk again. You may find that when you do an upgrade that the file shinks as well, the reason for this is that just before the upgrade it does a backup of sims. Knowing capita and sims, i'm willing to blame blame and more blame capita for these kinds of cockups. Really feel like giving the capita developed a good punch in the faces as the software has so much upgrade and patches that its becomming a nightmare for us to get the upgrades done. HTH, Ashok.

Hi all, The ideason schools implementing some sort of VLE is a positive one but i see that DFES or becta will spoil the show because recently here have been quite a lot of development in terms of the RBCs offering these services and schools will have to use these. Having said this there is nothing wrong with implementing a VLE - at least this will get the staff and students using it and be familiar with the concept of a VLE. So when the RBCs offer these solutions its not too much hassle for the teachers and pupil to understand the concept of a VLE. We have a VLE but in the past have faced a problem with keeping it up to date with the latest info so this year (ine fact just last year) we have appointed someone to do exactly this - upload content, keep it up to date and manage it. I think just upload a lot of materials is not enought there should be some process to update it, modify it and even delete unwanted content. There is too many things going on at the moment to do with education that its not really helping schools. The e portfolios, personal web space and allow a pupil to have access to his/her work from anywhere will no doubt put up big challenges to the RBCs and also schools. Too many peope have too many ideas and everyone is trying to get their ideas or recommendations forward. Ash.

Hi eejit SurfControl do have a black list and it works on the categories so websites are categoriesed and everyday or every hour the list can be automatically be updated from the central servers. You have then in surfcontrol the option to allow certain categories to be allowed and others to be blocked. You can also create url lists, domain name lists, ip adress etc and then apply it to groups of users. If isa is joined to a domain then surf control can use the AD to read group and user information so its very flexible. The only thing is that its not cheap but its is a very good product. Ashok.

We've got 8Mb leased line for about £15000 so i don't understand ISPs who charge 15K for 2Mb!!, really don't. What i recommend is that you do the research and plan out what you going to use the bandwidth for and what kind of services that various ISPs offer i.e. firewall, filtering, caching etc. Ashok.

Yeah ISA 2006 beta out few weeks ago, have downloaded and installed it on a test machine. Doesn't seem to offer much apart from easier wixards to create the certificates and web/server publishing. I think ISA 2004 with SP2 looks very similar to ISA 2006. The only thing i've notced apart from the way to publish various things the support for LDAP on publishing web servers etc. Its handy if your isa server is not joined to a domain and you have another domain that is not trusted. Our isa 2004 sp1 seem to be working well and got it working the way the way we want it. Got surf control on it as well and it completements it very well. Ashok.

Norphy, Check out emailsystems, their products is very good and its cheaper we've been quoted around £1300 for 2000 user mailboxes. The price is an anual cost but i think they also do it cheaper if you take it out for 3 years or more. http://www.emailsystems.com - very easy to use as its a web interface. Also this offloads all the processing of spam to their servers so you don't actually run any software on your mail server. You get the mx record changed to their servers so mail is delievered to their email servers, scanned and the delivered to your email server. Of course you can make you email server recieve emails only from the emailsystems.com servers so its always filtered. Also you can use them as your smarthost. HTH, Ashok.

Hi Steve/others, I think this file will show you how to open the web folder files using the exploer kind of window. Ashok.

Hi Guys, I used the Decrypter that Russel found, it is copyrighted material so please use to find out how you can open it as a web folder and create your own .asp files. Should give you some idea. I can send other files but they are specific to the way rm easylink works so a lot of the code probably won't make sense. Let me know how you get on. Ashok.

Hi Steve, I've managed to decrypt the files from easylink so if you can make sense of it it may tell you how to open the window as a web folder. Ashok.

Norphy, I'll give the 256mb version a go and see what happens. The situation for us is that we need to copy the good old RM build disk data to the usb so we can re build stations. I used the HP utility to format the drive (Data traveller II) 512 mb and then i copied all the files from the floppy disk (RM build disk) to the driver but it didn't work. I tried the USB-FDD and also the USB-ZIP but no luck. I'll give the 256mb a try. Ashok.

Right guys, I have tried the HP utlity and this didn't work with the Kingston data traveller II 512mb flash drive. Any other methods or have i just been dumb and didn't try it correctly. If anyone's got an idots guide on this kind of thing then please forward the links or docs. We have the netac triple boot and they are working fine but don't want to spend £20 per drive. TIA, Ashok.

Ric, Can you provide some instruction on how to go about doing this. We got ISA Server 2004 and would like to enforce the safesearch but not completely ban google images. TIA, Ashok.

Good stuff guys! I'll check out the HP utility and see if that works. Luckly all the PCs we have do support the booting from USB as i've checked this already. Ash.

Hi Guys, Do you recommend any bootable USB flash drives, ideally should be able to do USB-FDD, USB-ZIP or any that can be made to be bootable. Looking for about 10-15 of these for building stations and would be like to pay no more than £12 if possible. Just sick and tired of using Floppy disks - toooo slooooooow!! TIA, Ashok.

Now availabe: Standard Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=88350ABA-D09E-44B5-8002-96590ABFA148&displaylang=en Enterprise Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3AD22B4A-28F2-44A3-8152-76E3DBAEFB08&displaylang=en