michaelf

Hey mate, my local post office has now shut so I'm afraid we're going to call this off. Sorry mate.

Which would you prefer mate? The next day is delivery before 1 and the pre 9 does what it says on the tin. I'd say £50 inc P&P for the first and £60 for the latter? Is PayPal acceptable for payment? If you'd be kind enough to send over your delivery address I should be able to get these in the post tonight for you. Also, a big thanks to everyone else helping out with delivery info here, its been a busy day and I wouldn't have got the time to sort this without you.

I should be able to get to the local Post Office before it closes tonight, could you PM me the delivery address please? As for payment PayPal would be great, although I can't see an exact price for that service so may have to be a PM once I've posted it?

Hi there, I'm pleased to say that they are still about, but I'm not entirely sure how I might be able to get them to you before the gig starts.

To cut a long story short, I ordered these as soon as they were released then forgot about doing so and made other plans on the same day. Imagine my surprise when they turned up in the post! Anyway, I'm happy to sell these at face value so £45 for the pair. They are both standing stalls, further details below. Tickets for Death Cab For Cutie - Seetickets.com

The most eco-friendly thing to do is to take the heat from the servers then use it to heat the building, an option that's quite well used at the moment. Without knowing the size of your server estate I can't comment further, but as we all know the health of that kit is paramount but often undervalued by managers who don't actually "see" the kit or it's value. I'd hope that your alternatives are well received, and that you're management team are reasonable enough that once reminded of the damage a failure could pose to the business you can find a mutually acceptable compromise!

Another +1 for experience over qualifications, I was lucky enough to be able to help out in my own school between lessons and during breaks before being offered a permanent position when I left Year 13. After a year there I secured my current job with only A-Level certifications. In your shoes, I'd certainly be looking at the apprentiship route over a degree to allow you gain that experience. Another thing to bear in mind is that in a course you'll more often than not be taught how things should work, rather than how they actually work. And in IT there's often something of a void between the two. It's one thing being able to install and troubleshoot in an isolated lab environment, but when doing so in the real world there's often additional factors in play. Another way to get a feel for things is to make use of Microsoft's virtual Labs here TechNet Virtual Labs These let you use a virtual machine running a Microsoft product for 90 minutes to get a feel things, and while they can't beat having a real server to play with, it's a good way to get a feel of things without the expense of doing so. One thing to bear in mind, although some of the labs may have quite imposing titles, you'll generally find that whichever you pick will present you with a full install of the product in question from where you can do whatever you like. Another advantage is that if you totally trash the machine you can just close the lab and start again.

The only experience I've had of the two vendors is with a Sonicwall VPN, however we have had some issues with their support when we've run up against issues. From what I've seen however the Smoothwall people always seem to have a strong presence on here for support.

I spent a couple of years working with CC3 then moved to a vanilla house so have some experience working with each and both have their good and bad points. However, the two biggest things I'd suggest you consider are: The above advice, while CC3/4 are based on windows they bring a LOT of extras to the table. That's not to say that any of these are unique to CC and can't be achieved without this setup, but expect to have a number of additional services to install beyond just Windows to get the same feature set you're used to. Your own skills and time constraints, not just to build things initially but to support them when things go wrong or requirements change in the future. At least with RM there's someone you can call and shout at on the end of a phone. Your suggestion of using an external party for assistance with a vanilla solution certainly seems a good half way house between the two, although when dealing with the parties make sure that you get costs not just for the initial installation work but also find out if there are additional costs for upgrades, support and system changes once things are in and sorted. Whichever option you choose it's always good to see people with open minds to the different options available to them and taking serious time to investigate those options.

As I understand it the local administrator account is disabled by default in Windows 7 installations unless there are no other administrator accounts, see here for more info: Enable and Disable the Built-in Administrator Account. As such, there's no one group policy you could change to stop it happening as the behavior is "by design". One way around this however to save you modifying each installation manually, would be to use Group Policy Preferences to either enable the account ( see How to enable a disabled Local Administrator account offline in Windows 7 (even when using BitLocker) or for slightly more security create a local account with a different name and add it to the local admins group. I've never had to use GPP myself as our Windows 7 estate is currently rather small, but the link above seems pretty thorough.

One of our campuses is moving this summer and we've taken the opportunity to upgrade the systems at the same time so very little if any IT will actually be moved. Even so, myself and a colleague have been involved since last summer and have had more that our fair share of challenges. From my experience with this and similar moves/extensions I'd suggest considering the following points: Will any new hardware be supplied as part of the build, e.g. switches, wireless, digital signage etc? If so, how will these integrate with your existing equipment? Is there spare IT budget available from the new build, and if so can this be used to fund new hardware in the building rather than moving old hardware over? Migrating phone lines, internet link, satellite TVs etc. Make sure there's sufficient M&E in IT areas, I've seen countless server rooms built with no air con and IT suites with only 4 13a sockets. Will the new build feature new CCTV, access control, BMS, digital signage or similar that you'll need to integrate into the network or offer support for? Will you require additional support, either in terms of bods on the ground or specialist knowledge to complete the work in the required timescales? Will new desks be provided as part of the build, and if so are they big enough, do they feature cable management etc? Do you have warranty support/spare hardware should anything fail during the move? For any fixed installations (smartboards, digital signage, etc.) can the required cables be run during the first fix? This is especially important if your staff are expecting teaching desks with PCs away from the wall. And one final word of advice, assume nothing. I've seen new builds planned with no server room and no network cabling because "there'd be wireless", or on the other side of the coin I've been handed an extension complete with wireless and a new switch installed, working and ready to go. In my experience those doing the building will stick to the specifications provided to them, so if you can get hold of these you'll know what to expect when you walk in there. I'd also advise trying to get a site walk or two to get a "feel" for the building before you start moving things in. I hope this gives you some pointers in the right direction but if you need any more advice, or me to expand on anything above then I'm of course happy to do so.

You could try removing the drive, plugging it into a working station and scanning from there? This way you're bypassing anything still running in the infected OS along with any problems with the Sophos installation. If you still have issues after this I'd also advise reinstalling Sophos.

I always tend to go with 48 port switches whenever I can get away with it for the reasons stated above and also second the recommendation for stacking, not only for the speed benefits but i also find it a little easier to manage. I also tend to make use of all available ports on a switch and then order more as required. All switches are under support so we can have a new box with us pretty quickly, and if that's not quick enough we also have uniform hardware throughout allowing us to move hardware should something business critical be affected. For our new build deployment I've taken the final point count for each hub room (this includes spare capacity) then rounded up to the nearest multiple of 192 (4*48) to give ample empty ports for future expansion.

Another recommendation for short patch leads and/or velcro depending on the lengths in question. If you MUST use cable ties then make sure to leave plenty of slack, there's nothing worse than trying to trace a cable only to find it tied in the middle of a bunch with no wriggle room.

IIRC the default is 60 days, although I'd guess that disabling netlogon wouldn't trigger this because the server is still online just not accepting logon requests. However, a broken SysVol might well cause similar issues although I've never encountered this before so could be totally wrong, might be worth asking LA support though?

PM Sent

Potentially interested as I'm considering a change away from my Nokia and could use the experience with Android but I'll have to see if I can muster the funds. I'm especially keen on this model due to the full keyboard. Couple of questions though to help me decide: Is the phone unlocked? How much thicker/heavier are the extended batteries over the standard ones?

In my experience it's pretty easy to pick up and in an ideal world it's something I'd want to start using gradually, migrate less critical systems first then others as your confidence grows. If that's not possible then as has already been mentioned a temporary consultant might be a good compromise, someone who's got the experience to get going with it straight away but you still feel is part of the team and who hopefully won't mind you peaking over their shoulder from time to time. As an aside, we went down the consultant route 18 months ago and for various reasons he's still with us now!

I'm not sure exactly how you'd deploy this out to clients (or even if you could ) but on my own workstation I have a toolbar that links to my home drive but shrunk up so all I Can see is the title as per the attached image. Might be another way to go about it while also providing additional functionality to the users.

If you already have a shared Outlook Calendar why not grant the staff permissions to view the calendar and to create/modify/delete their own items only? This way they can easily see when the resource is free and book it without several emails back and forth being needed but can't modify other people's bookings.

It's been a while since I've used AutoIt but what about this for a slightly different way of looking at the problem. Instead of using RunWait to launch an external command to map the drive, why not use AutoIt's DriveMapAdd command instead? The advantage here is that if it fails it will return an @error code showing the reason. You could then write an IF loop to try out the different places where the homedrive could be stored until it finds one that exists. Secondly I believe that one of the @error conditions also flags an incorrect password allowing you to provide a friendly prompt in the case of typos. Not the cleanest way I know but it might just work?

It's certainly worth firing up the HP array configuration tool and seeing what it reports. You should also find that when a volume or raid group is selected in the tool it will flash the error lights on all drives that form a part of it allowing you to see which drives are doing what (also handy for scaring nervous admins:P). I have a few older HP servers where either the light on the backplane or the light pipe on the drive caddy has failed for the green light. The drives work perfectly just don't have the green lights.

Well I've managed to get hold of a regular laptop box and some bubble wrap from a delivery we've just taken so will pack this in the next few days, just like Christmas again! I'm quite reassured that others have managed to do this before and it's survived. @mac_shinobi Thanks for the link, I've just whacked some rough details into it and it's giving a very reasonable £8ish. Having said that I do prefer the idea of dropping it off at the post office rather than waiting around for someone to collect. @Witch, if you don't mind my asking which service from Royal Mail did you use and how much did it cost?

I've just finished replacing the screen in a friend's laptop after it suffered an unfortunate accident, of the sort to be expected in student accommodation. The problem comes however that due to a delay in sourcing the part said friend is now back at university 150 miles away, and while I'd love a few days away I doubt that I'll be able to make the time to do so for a month or so. My question therefore is how best to get this laptop back to her safely without spending a fortune? How should I pack it to keep it safe without going over the top? And can anyone recommend a reasonable delivery service to use? Thank you all in advance!

A big thanks to everyone on the Edugeek stand. Very welcoming despite my tightening the knot in my lanyard rather than undoing it necessitating a mad scissor hunt! The best freebie award has to go to the free pizza, very sorely need after a couple of hours walking around! Second prize to A2Z with their great mugs and stress pig!