starscream

I love VLC, it's small and no nonesense, plays everything. You just have to tell people to open the disc rather than let it play auto. It doesn't install codecs either I think, self contained.

Ha, I have been setting up VMWare to do the opposite... Installing Ranger on a vanilla system! What didn't you like about ranger and we're buying into it this summer!

woah, it's printing like a goodun now. I totally recommend doing a cold reset for all 3500 users! It is printing much faster, and that isn't down to quality or paper settings either! Best thing about this is that you don't need to reconfigure the printer on the network as the jetdirect stores all that! ;-)

Tried that bud but no luck, I have everything set to collate that I can. I have fixed the colour issue by doing a cold restart! Just for reference a cold restart on an HP Laserjet 3500 is to turn the machine off for a few seconds, turn it back on holding the tick button and when it asks you to select language push up and press the tick on "cold reset". Fun times! Still annoyed about the collate problem though. I suppose the sensible thing for me to do would be to try and print it from another machine but I don't have time. I need these printing within the next hour and I don't have to bind them so.... mwahahaha Just wondered if anyone came across the same issue. I am dissappointed that this sort of thing can happen, even with collate set in several places.

So could this be used as a disk imaging solution?

Publisher 2003, but it does the same from Acrobat reader as I converted the document to acrobat to see if it was publisher's fault. I think it is windows that is causing the problem. Mysteriously now I have changed the cyan toner and all the blue is printing purple! Gonna reboot as I am not convinced it is the printer's fault. This colour issue is not related to collate though. ...I think.

This time of year, every year, I print out the school's prospectus on our HP Laserjet 3500n and Dell 3600 colour laser printers. Now I have managed to collate prints fine in the past and I have formated my laptop since. This year however neither printer will collate even when the collate option is selected in the print options. Every time it prints i get like 20 of page 1 and 20 of page 2 in that order and it takes forever to manually collate them! Anyone come across a problem like this before? It is strange how it's the same for both printers so it can't be printer drivers or the printer itself. I think it must be something in windows itself. Seems it does not send the collate command to the printer, unless windows handles collating itself in which case it could be something more sinister. Windows XP Pro.

cheers, I'll try this

so they VPN back into your school network and access the internet from there so it all goes through your filtering? I considered this but think it would be overkill for primary staff as they would not need to make use of network resources

I cant view the site, our cachepilot has blocked it. Whitelist won't allow it either grrr

oooo, I never considered the insurance thing. Will have to look into that! So how does packet fence work? Do you install it on your server, is it open source/free? I am in the process of allowing it on our cachepilot so sorry for the questions, can't view the site till I finish adding it.

Do you allow your staff to use their school laptop at home on the internet? If so what security do you have in place on the laptop? What software do you use in Windows XP to protect the laptop and user and of course the network when they reconnect? Do you use encryption on laptops that leave the school building?

Some great replies there every one and I totaly sympathise with all cases! Although I did read somewhere that computer keyboards harbour more germs than toilet seats! Because toilet seats are cleaned often!

I tried it a while back and I just got problems with it. So i used Access Manager instead. Can't remember what the problems were I faced so sorry not be of any more help.

Hi all, Anyone know what's up here... Ever since I enabled user only access to the internet via our Northerngrid Cachepilot by Equinet staff have been unable to use the full clipart library in Microsoft Office applications. For example it no longer searches the internet as well for clipart, it only searches what is on the hard drive (very little) it was fine till I make everyone have to long in when they need to use the internet. I have added the corporate whitelist to the staff group and have even added office.microsoft.com, microsoft.com, *.microsoft.com, office.microsoft.com/clipart etc etc and it still wont pick it up. The official MS clipart error page on the MS site says to simply allow office.microsoft.com/clipart in your firewall or URL filtering. Is there another location that MS office applications use when searching clip art? I have all the staff on my back but for e-safety I can't lift block lists, I can only edit them to allow access to sites they need such as this which should not be blocked anyway, just added it to allowed to check. When I use the TEST URL FILTERING option on the cachepilot it says ALLOW as the final answer for the clipart location. All I can think is that Office uses a different location when searching from within office apps. Cheers

Does anyone find that since working in schools as ICT Support that they have picked up lots of colds and what not? What with being in contact with so many keyboards? Technically a days work is like shaking hands with every single person in the school. On top of that you have people who don't wash their hands after the toilet and people who cough, sneeze and splutter all over keyboards and monitors. You get all the nasty bugs in the air sucked up into the projector filters so cleaning those should come with a health warning also. I certainly have noticed that in the past 4 years I have been ill a lot until this year, I think now I am immune to everything as I have not been ill all the school year! Touch wood! Do you clean computers often? Do your school cleaners do it? Is it in your e-safety policy as I heard it should be. I used to be to be honest I been too busy to order supplies to continue cleaning. Does anyone think that the occasional (termly??) wipe with antibacterial wipes on keyboard and mice would be sufficient? Let me know your views on being at greater risk to illnesses than other staff due to being in contact with more keyboard and mice. I remember that some companies have educated staff on personal hygiene as a lot of the workforce are off ill every year due to simple personal hygiene caused problems. Apparently hand driers are no where near as effective as paper towels when washing hands as the towel draws any remaining germs from your hands and is disposed of, driers simple dry it onto your hands. Drying is apparently a very important part of the washing process. ok i'm beginning to waffle, looking forward to your replies!

I don't think smaller companies test computers and just churn them out. I heard that the likes of Dell and HP do soak tests etc.

We got a batch of Optiplex machines 2 years ago and all the CMOS batteries have died! All credit to dell for getting replacement batteries out but it was a drawn out process and if we bought batteries ourselves it would void the warranty apparently. I like the dells but haven't got any other 2 so can't really commenton reliability other than they are working great at the moment!

Cool, I tried it but left the CD at home and it needs it to install so will try tonight

Could this sort of problem be a DNS related issue? I noiced the domain was not set the role of DNS server, does it need to be in a domain environment? I think it does and this could the problem. Should the DNS role be created while creating the domain controller role? The help says it should but for some reason the role of DNA server was not created

I have a test domain set up in vmware and added a machine to the domain, I have created an OU for staff and put a user in there. I have added a GPO in the properies of the OU, should the GPO now apply to the user in that OU when they log on? To test this I have enabled the remove run and help icons from start menu but they both still appear? Is there a reason for this? I am a noob at setting up a domain from scratch but have used AD for some time in existing networks. Can't figure out why this doesn't work. To test it further I have even deleted the domain default GPO incase it was overriding the OU users but that made no difference. Is there something dead simple I have missed that is causing the user to not be restricted? The user can log onto the domain usingt heir name and password fine. Server 2003 Standard XP Pro client.

thats for the heads up, I'll check it out!

Some good suggestions there fellas, I will look into them. Do any of them offer auditing of the emails and possible flag and inappropriate content? My main concern here is bullying via email.

What software does everyone use to audit their network? Is there any good opensource or free software out there to handle the task? Do microsoft offer anything for server 2003? I know Viglen Classlink comes with it built in, not so sure about our imminent new Ranger Primary system.

Good Morning All! Does anyone know of any inhouse email system that could be used for email lessons in a primary school that allows people to email each other but does not go out onto the internet. It would also be useful to be able to fully monitor emails sent and pick up on any inappropriate messages etc. I know it is asking a lot but I am sure I have seen something like this before. Ideally I would like something free or open source but understand if we need to pay. I feel a system like this is essential for teaching email in primary schools. The internet is just too nasty for real email. Teachers don't like software such as email detectives and would prefr the kids to be able to send real emails, to a certain extent. Thanks in advance!