AlexM

Hi, I'm trying to deploy the relatively large DYMO connect software which comes in the for of a .exe. I've managed to package it fine but it fails. To install, I've created a .cmd file (which gets packages in the .intunewinapp) that uses the /S /v /qn switches as per the .exe's help file for a completely silent install but although it installs the web connect fine it then prompts for user input anyway for the rest of the software. I've played around with various methods and tried Master Packager too but it either won't install at all, just installs the one component and nothing else or installs the one component silently and then prompts for user input everything else. Has anyone else managed to deploy this? I have a relative large and spread Windows machine base to roll this out to and installing on half a dozen in one school is fine but the thought of a few hundred across a relatively huge county makes my eye twitch! Any help very gratefully received.

Hi all, just wondering if anyone has experience of decent laptop trollies that are cheap and cheerful? Another thing that would be useful is a trolley that doesn't make it too difficult to remove the chargers from - so many make them a little too permenantly installed which can be a pain when you want to guarantee a laptop session (for example when taking part in the national tests). Any advice on suppliers would be very gratefully received.

How about IDNS? Not been terribly impressed so far... Anyone had experience?

That's a top tip - thank you very much; I'll take a look...

I've had a few schools buying various refurbished equipment from numerous companies and in setting these things up I've found some are good and some are not so good but consistantly I have found at leat one or two 'items' have needed to go back due to faults. I do want to give schools good advice and have a fighting chance that if they have to buy refurbished that they get half decent kit so I'm after recommendations :-) Refurbished laptops are especially a big concern as batteries are either going to be original and potentially near end of life or aftermartket rip-offs that won't last long at all. Really would love to hear your thoughts, experiences and a few names of good and bad refurb resellers; I'll no doubt share some of my own experiences too.

Turns out it was a legacy Group Policy which forced IE11 to be used to open web documents in Internet Options. Changing this resolved the issue.

Hi all, Have an issue on several machines where the log-in pop-up window is blank. This is running on a school network and it does work fine on the Macs and one PC. I have tried all ways to get around this but still no luck - it's almost like the window just hangs. System details of an affected / test machine are: Host Name: LGR-OFFICE OS Name: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OS Version: 10.0.16299 N/A Build 16299 OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation OS Configuration: Member Workstation OS Build Type: Multiprocessor Free Original Install Date: 13/03/2018, 09:38:22 System Boot Time: 05/06/2019, 17:06:37 System Manufacturer: LENOVO System Model: 10DU000SUK System Type: x64-based PC Processor(s): 1 Processor(s) Installed. [01]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 60 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~2901 Mhz BIOS Version: LENOVO FCKT72AUS, 04/08/2015 Windows Directory: C:\WINDOWS System Directory: C:\WINDOWS\system32 Boot Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1 System Locale: en-gb;English (United Kingdom) Input Locale: en-gb;English (United Kingdom) Time Zone: (UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London Total Physical Memory: 4,009 MB Available Physical Memory: 1,351 MB Virtual Memory: Max Size: 4,713 MB Virtual Memory: Available: 1,522 MB Virtual Memory: In Use: 3,191 MB Any ideas?

Hi Phil, Apologies for the delay in reply - not been able to get to a free machine on my visits to run some more checks but have done so now. I'm installing/ running the latest versions of all the software. Unfortunately, I made a mistake and it isn't Lynx it's DisplayNote that's causing the issue! Here's a screenshot of the issue: I'm now not here until mid-way through the summer holidays where I'm carrying out extensive network and machine updates but can address any potential solutions then.

Hi All, Having issues adding a Konica Minolta C368 to Google Cloud Print services. Managed to add it to the G-Suite administrators account but when I then go to share it with all accounts, it's just not there. I had to add it using the 'classic printer' method. On looking on the internet, I've found mention of an App that can be used as the link between the copier and Cloud Print - IWS App. Have tried to download it but I think as a result of it not being available in all regions it's not available. I have asked the school to ask the copier provider but this appears to have ended up fizzling out!] What I was wondering - does anyone have the IWS App setup and documentation they could let me have?

Great - thanks Rob.

Not too sure but the machines have .net installed...

Bit of an odd one this but have just installed the Lynx software provided with CleverTouch boards and I'm getting the following error when I try and run it: Could not load module sandman2@sandman2_check_no_update__0 Have tried running with full admin rights, repairing and reinstalling but still no go. Any ideas?

I did think of this method - line-of-sight connections maybe in each school-cluster but the big problem is geography - both with the terrain and the distances involved. ALso, connectivity to many schools is limited speed-wise - more by the costs involved than the technology! On the use of Meraki - definately something I've been thinking about as far as WiFi and device management go and we already have an exisiting Meraki tenancy and were hoping to move forward to the full Meraki system (we are using the once-free Meraki at the moment which has limitations). Completely agree with the network versus local machine filtering - have used machine-based filtering solutions and have not been overly impressed by them plus I need to know that if the local client crashes or fails for some reason, the user will still be guaranteed filtered browsing. (I think someone may well state something about what I've just typed but I'll answer that as and when!). Really like the idea of hosting the filtering on a Datacentre - VPN to there, filter and manage and then out into the big wide world... (Probably being a tad simplistic there but!) Thank you for all the comments - very interesting what's been said and the thought porcesses this has provoked. As data bandwidth continues to be more heavlily utilised and swallowed up by the ever expanding amounts of online apps, resources, streaming and CMS, I do feel that using cloud-based management systems has to be the way forward...

This is straight off the top of my head so sorry if it's a complete pie-in-the-sky but... At the moment we have around 70 primary schools who currently have fast SDSL links that connect back to our main Council network, go through a Smoothwall appliance and then the traffic goes out to the internet on a 1Gbps link which is shared with Council corporate and NHS traffic. It works quite well but the bandwidth constraints from all the devices plus updates plus cloud-based access and cloud drives means the link can really struggle. We also have centrally managed Cisco WiFi in the schools and this can drop as a result of bandwidth saturation from the school to the Council. My idea is to route all traffic direct to the internet via the service provider rather than via the Council but this would mean Cloud managing the WiFi and filtering and my question is how can this be done effectively, securely and with the ability to centrally manage both the filtering and the WiFi. It also has to be cheap! Any ideas or real-life experiences gratefully received. Many thanks as always.

We recently had a new school comissioned and built and the team that ran the project didn't ask IT to spec the kit. As a result unfortunately they have ended up with Promethean touch screens which the staff are not happy with especially as they've now seen the CleverTouch screens. What hasn't helped is that in the few months the school has been open two of the boards have already suffered a broken touch input USB connection - they've complete fallen apart and the quality is so cheap. I setup an account with Promethean but have never heard back so I'm hoping posting on here might get some sort of result - we get support from CleverTouch / Sahara within hours (although I do wonder how long that will last!) but if no one from Promethean can help, I'll strip the back down and replace the USB socket myself.

Now all sold...

Hi, I have 40 Sunray 3 ultra thin clients (part number 380-1642-01) that are new open box and come complete with everything - UK keyboard, stand, UK power supply but no mouse. Asking £55 each including delivery to UK mainland addresses. Delivery to other countries can be quoted for. Can give a discount for multiple items. PM me for details.

Hi All, We have a poor school (financially!) who are looking for a bargain TS solution and wondered which ThinClients are both cheap and reliable. Have used the Axel units previously and have found them very good but it's been a while since I've done any installs. Anyway, sorry it's a little generic but really looking for a decent client.

Thanks for the replies - have to say I have been using the email support option via the Office 365 portal and never answer the calls and as snagrat says, they soon sort the issue out anyway. Main issue I'm having now though is the latest batch of schools I'm setting up don't have the email option anymore - only phone - and this is on both the new and old style admin consoles. Any ideas or routes to raise the call via email still?

Hi All, Having real problems with signing up schools to Office 365. I'm currently working with around 30 schools to migrate their aging SquirrelMail P4 email servers to Office 365 but almost every school I sign-up and validate the .sck.uk domain name subsequent have no access to the free Office 365 licenses - only the trial E5 licenses. The only way previously has been to contact Microsoft each time and then jump through all the hoops which takes a very long time both in hours spent on the phone and waiting for resolution. Previous MS have said that all subdomain schools will automatically be granted the licenses but this still is not happening. Anyway, my question is - is there a way to email someone at Microsoft direct to get all of the schools properly licensed in one go? It would be so much easier and they should have on file that the TLD name is for educational use only. Any help would be gratefully received. Many thanks

Hi, I've been tasked with setting up iPad management including apps for iPads across 80 primary schools. We already have a basic Meraki management solution in place which basically just deploys the Meraki agent plus certificates to allow connection to our WiFi across the schools. What I want to achieve is to have each school's iPads moved into their own container and then they have there own VPP log-in so they can buy and deploy apps themselves. I do also need them to have some sort of centralised storage for photos, videos etc. Previously some schools have done this and used a Mini Mac onsite for the storage side but is there an easier neater way to do this centrally for all schools without the risk of one school accessing another school's files? The network/ Wifi connection across all our sites is very good and each school sits on our network with traffic to the outside world all converging at a central point before being proxied out - so no school is directly connected to the internet using a router on-site. Everything is Cisco managed. Any help or advice gratefully received.

Getting some issues while updating and installing apps on iPads using configurator 2. Our internet connection for all the schools in the county route through on external IP address. When enrolling iPads and updating them, at first the downloading is fast but very quickly the download speed drops and will remain slow for the rest of the day. If we transfer the Mac to another network (which is using a different external IP address but again for all the schools) the speed will pick up again. My thought is that with all of the iOS devices that all the schools have - and there are probably a couple of thousand now in all that would use this external IP - Apple are throttling the available bandwidth as more requests for apps and updates are received within a certain time period. The speed was so slow that I ended up taking home 60 iPads to setup on my home network but the same thing happened about half way through the process - speeds started to significantly drop. Turning on caching on the Mac doesn't seem to help much either. Any thoughts?

Some of you might have realised (probably the hard way!) that Microsoft has deprecated Windows Easy Transfer in favour of the far more superior Laplink PCMover Express which is free for home use/ not on a domain but near useless otherwise. Anyway, fear not, you CAN run Windows Easy Transfer (WET) on Windows 10. Using WINRAR, extract the contents of the .exe to a folder on your Windows 10 machine and then from within the folder run migwiz.exe and you'll be able to open and migrate your Windows XP or newer data. Note - this only works for the older version of WET (pre-vista style) number 6.3.15.0 it would seem and this version is also x32 and x64 compatible although I've not tested in 10 yet.

Those were my thoughts to be honest. I can see that they would need a lot of supporting as time goes on and having found them relatively easy to corrupt the OS on let alone all the other issues I'm at a loss as to why this is even being thought about seriously. We've just got rid of the beige boxes out of schools and then we're going to replace relatively decent machines with units that just don't hit the grade at all...

Am looking for thoughts, experiences and comments on a proposal from our Schools Service to push Raspberry Pi's as a replacement for desktop PCs. They'll be running an office suite, be used for surfing the internet and accessing Office 365 on a daily basis in primary schools. I do have my views on this which I will share but wanted to see if my views were in-tune with other IT professionals working in schools? Look forward to hearing your thoughts.