smurfomatic

Thanks synaesthesia, we're planning to move everything over to Google Docs in the summer (hence the impending retirement of the server) so this sort of problem will be a thing of the past, hopefully. Still can't understand how it had never synced these particular files to the server, when the laptop is always "online", and the rest are OK...

One of our staff members has lost a load of Word documents from their account, which is synced using Offline files to the server. This is not the entire contents of "My Docs" missing, just around 20 or so files. Laptop is running Win 7 Pro, server is running 2003 (I know, but it's being "retired" soon, I hope...) Files should definitely be in My Docs as the Word recent file list shows where they were saved. Simple enough to solve I think, go through the backups from before Christmas and recover them. No such luck! We do daily backups to external hard drives using Backup Exec, and they wouldn't catalog properly for some reason so I used Systools BKF Recovery to search the .bkf files and recover the entire "My Documents" folder. I did this for all six backup tapes (Monday to Friday and "spare") which had various backups dated in December and January, with the "spare" having been used over November half term. The files didn't appear in any of these backups, which is crazy as they were edited in mid-December by the person concerned. How they can exist in December, yet not appear on the backup taken in the first week of November, confuses me considerably... I have also tried the following to no avail: Search the entire server for documents with the correct name, and also all word docs. Check through the Offline files cache on the laptop, as well as booting into MiniXP and searching the CSC folder directly. (Offline files does not report any errors, and only shows those files currently in My Docs) Banging head on wall, swearing (when no children present) and apologising to the person who has lost their work. Anyone have a brainwave as to what can be done? There are hard copies of some of these files, but others have lesson observations and planning which goes back several months.

Is there any way to force users to sign in on Chrome? At the moment we're looking at Go Guardian for tracking & filtering web use but it won't work if the users can simply bypass it by not signing in... No issue with Chromebooks as we've disabled guest browsing, it's just a matter of finding a way to control it on the PCs & laptops. I've found that Chrome has a --bwsi flag, which does the exact opposite - forcing the browser to run without logging in. Hoping someone out there can help!

Having issues getting our Chromebooks to print to our Ricoh network printer. Desktops will print fine through Chrome, it's just an issue with Google Cloud Print saying the printer is offline. I'm guessing this must be a network/internet issue, we have a Smoothwall web filter which acts as the proxy server. What I have done: Updated Chrome on the print server Installed the Cloud Print service Updated printer drivers Restarted server and then tried all of the above again...

Looking for similar things here, we're refitting the junior end of the school (Nursery - Year 2) that currently has RM Mobile One laptops. They were great having colour coded keyboards, but it seems no-one produces anything similar in a laptop any more - unless someone out there knows otherwise? We would be ordering a set of 16.

SkreeM - it all seems to be working now...having reset the wireless link by unplugging it, I logged in to each unit and restarted them from there. Suddenly it connects properly!

We have an issue with one room which is at the extreme end of our network. To give you an idea of the topology: Computer in office, with wireless point. WAP is connected to wireless link across car park. Other end of wireless link into switch. Switch connected to main site via laser link. Laser link into main network. Told you it was complicated... "Server2" is closer, and "Server1" (the mail server) is a few more hops away, at the other end of the school. The system will browse the internet fine - there is a Smoothwall proxy in the same room as Server2. This traffic then travels down the same cables to where Server1 is, to get to the router. Can't ping either server, but can ping the Smoothwall and other equipment in the same room as Server1. However, this laptop won't connect to either Server2 or Server1 for shared drives, email access etc. Same problem occurs when I use my laptop in the room, the other laptop works fine in other areas so it must be server or network related. If I plug straight in to the cable that runs into the WAP, I can access Server2 but not Server1. All this seems to point to there being some setting about the number of network "hops" from one end of the school to the other. Any ideas what setting this might be? Tried running "pathping" from the servers to this computer. From both Server1 and Server2, I can get to the "near" end of the wireless link but not the far end. This would seem to indicate a fault with the wireless link, but if so then how can I be getting internet traffic? Confused...

It's not just the database that has failed, the entire contents of the hard drive were corrupted. The "original" database was lost when the drives failed, so all I have to work from is the backup. There won't be too many emails that came in during August, I was just hoping those that are currently there would sync back to the server. After a week of sorting everything out, the prospect of exporting all the staff's PST files then re-importing them to keep a handful of important emails doesn't enthral me! I'll ask the staff to save any critical messages by exporting them to their laptops.

Thanks Nick, I expected that's what would happen. I take it that they can't be saved by moving them into a new folder?

We're currently recovering data from a backup (two out of three HDs in the RAID failed...) which will be restored at some point over the weekend. We've had to use a backup from a few weeks ago due to other problems. We use Outlook in cached mode, so users currently have access to emails that will "disappear" when the recovery is complete. What will happen to these emails? Will the client computers sync them back to the server, or will they get deleted when the server is back online?

We're running Server 2003 and need to allow external connections to our new digital signage system. Here's the setup - we have a no-ip.org domain which currently has two sub-folders - /exchange which links to OWA and /portal to Engage portal. I want to set up a third sub-folder to allow external access to an internal IP address. I've tried setting up port forwarding in the router, to send all port 90 traffic to the internal IP. IIS is then set up with a web site to direct the traffic, but when I try this off-site I get an error saying (external IP):90 is unavailable. Is this possible in IIS, or am I banging my head against a wall for no reason?

GTX - thanks, I'll get in touch if/when we know what we're doing. Geekypete - we already use kidblog for the pupils, so it may be a good extension...

We've only just begun to discuss the implications of setting this up, the issue of losing control was one point that had been raised! The other option was to go really basic, and use something like mural.ly to make a "virtual noticeboard", without the risk of spamming going on. Still issues with control though...

We have a parent's group that wants to have a "noticeboard" for buying and selling stuff, organising meetings etc. and I was thinking the best way forward is a messageboard. Different forums could then be set up for different situations. This would have to be: Hosted somewhere other than our own webspace - while the school will link to it, we don't want any responsibility of running the thing. Disclaimers will be posted telling users who to moan at... Child friendly - no unsuitable adverts, and decent spam controls to stop users being bombarded with messages Free - or at least, very low cost Easy to use - the parents will be running it, and I have no plans to help them! Does anyone have any experience of similar setups? A version was attempted previously - not sure what they use, but everyone signing up got spammed. Simple admin controls, so they have to explicitly approve members rather than block them, would be good.

Thanks for the donation. He has two sisters and one brother - one of his sister and his brother were both suffering around the age of 70, and Dad's came on a year or so earlier. The other sister has been checked and is fine, we've been told that it should be put on our notes to have a scan around the age of 50, which is a little way off for me...

As someone working in a private school, I certainly agree with the comments that we don't necessarily have better equipment than the state sector! However, smaller class sizes certainly help (average here would be about 15, hardly anything bigger than 20) but the children are here from 8.30 to nearly 7pm five days a week, plus Saturdays - and that's for kids 8 years old and upwards. They do compensate by having longer holidays - just had 3 and a half weeks for Easter, and 8 weeks over the summer...

I'm hoping that posting this here doesn't break any rules, please move it if needed... My brother. Despite the fact he's not done any serious running for some time, he decided to take on a challenge. Beginning in May last year, he took up running some events. To be precise, 6 half marathons and 8 marathons. In less than a year. The runs are all in aid of the British Heart Foundation, who do fantastic work in researching cardiac issues, as well as care and treatment for the victims and their families. Why that number of events? Our Dad, a great and hard working man passed away suddenly in January last year at the age of 68. (Can you see where the numbers come from now? Well done!) His death was caused by an aortic aneursym, something that two of his siblings also suffered from (fortunately their condition was diagnosed in time to save their lives). Just to make things even more difficult for himself (as if running all those events with minimal training due to workload wasn't bad enough) the last half-marathon and marathon are being done as "Bernie", the Northampton Saints rugby mascot. For those who don't know what the costume looks like, here's a photo of Gareth running in his final half-marathon: As you can imagine, this is a fairly cmbersone outfit to run in. However, he'll be tackling the London Marathon on Sunday, to complete the challenge. If, after reading all this waffle, you're still interested, you can give your hard earned cash by going here: Gareth Robinson is fundraising for British Heart Foundation or by texting BARY68 £1 to 70070 (any amount can be used up to £10, depending on how generous you are feeling. Thanks.

Peculiar problem with one of our new laptops. Set up with Windows 7 and Office 2010, if you go to a website with IE9 and click on a link to an Office doucment, nothign happens. Right click and Save Target, still nothing. Doesn't load an error page or anything, just sits there as if you've done nothing (but the hyperlink changes colour so I know it's been clicked on!) Tried disabling all add ons, enabling all add ons, checked security settings as far as I can (we've got inspectors in from tomorrow so I'm rather busy...) Links to PDF files, and html work fine. On ly happens in IE as Chrome loads the same links, just wondered if anyone else had this problem and found a solution?

Bit the bullet, installed the XP media content CD. Worked fine - it must be Friday!

We've finally started replacing our XP Pro machines with Win 7 ones (avoiding Windows 8 as it's too different and no time to train staff). Previously, all staff machines had Office XP which was then upgraded to 2010. On these new machines, however, they've just had 2010 installed. We need the staff to be able to access the XP clipart though. The folder with the XP media content has been copied onto the machines, and I've tried to use Clip Organiser to import them but it doesn't import all the file tags - meaning you can't search the clipart! Does the XP media CD have to be installed (rather than copying & pasting) to enable 2010 to "see" the files properly? I can't seemt o find any method to import the catalog files.

Thanks Patrick. Forgot to post the solution on here - it was a reverse DNS lookup problem, solved by the IT technician at "the other end".

I've been asked to look into an issue receiving emails from a certain domain (another school). We can send to them fine, but any messages sent to us get bounced back with: Firstly - is this a problem at the sender's end, or ours? We are receiving external emails from other domains, and they can send fine to other domains except ours. A quick search seems to say it's a reverse DNS problem, though I can't see why this would be affecting only one sending domain. We have recently installed a second broadband line in parallel to the existing one (which still handles email traffic) - could this be causing the issue?

Rob - how easy is it to configure a server for direct delivery? Never having done it before, it sounds like an ideal solution but don't want to risk losing our connection to the outside world!

DT2 - frankly, I can't be bothered. We're reviewing all our IT infrastructure and (if I get my way!) we won't be using their services for much longer.

Rob - Timico are the company in question. Currently they provide internet, SMTP relay and other bits for the website. The internet connection part is being transferred. However, having finally got through to someone on their support desk who seems to know what they're talking about, they're going to authenticate our new IP address to connect to their system. Still refused to give me the username and password for our account though...