MrsGrinch

I think the time has come for me to do that. I honestly thought that finding stations on a network was easier than it is, and I just didn't know how. This isn't the first time a sub-sub contractor has bunged stuff in and then scarpered. I thought maybe I was being a bit namby-pamby by demanding a handover! Thanks everyone. (But I'd still love to know how to set my own subnet....) Michele

Hello Strawberry! That was exactly the sort of info I need. But one more thickie question - once I see what subnet I SHOULD be in, how do I set the laptop there? It's an ordinary RM school laptop on win 2000, and I have access to all the usual system management kit through the manager account. (A nice change - the network stuff is stripped off older systems.) The installation was abysmal, even by the standards of some of the goings-on I've seen in a small, broke primary school. Like splattering an access point with paint and putting built-in shelving in front of it, which was then filled with boxes of books. Having a sense of humour helps. Michele

They came in and put four stations somewhere in the school. (I still haven't physically found two, but I would guess they are also eight feet up the wall near the new classrooms.) My handover was four empty boxes and the old switch lying on the computer suite floor, and verbal message left with the school receptionist for me to finish it. And a copy of the invoice. This is where white wine is one of my most important tools. Can someone just do a couple lines of Idiots Guides to What a Subnet is and How I get there? Everything IS working (more or less) and I'm loathe to reset anything just because I want to change the SSID name. I'm only at that school part time and my week is pretty fully booked. Michele

I assume so - all the laptops have been using the new access points without any problem since they went in. How do I check, and how do I get myself there if I'm not? Up to this point, I've done a bit of troubleshooting on existing networks, or had backup that knew what to do. So it's time to learn wireless before the white wine gets to the rest of my brain cells! Michele

That's what I was afraid of . I've manually pinged all the places I thought they might be hiding, as there is an older wireless network in place and they've stuck to the adressing scheme. Nada. I'm not even sure I'm doing that correctly - how do you ping a subnet? I'm used to doing all the usual criminals like the laser printer, and I can ping the old access points. They haven't changed the password on admin - that much they told me. I did get a note saying "Tell your tech to finish configuring the network." Thanks. Michele

Hi all. I've just posted this over on the classrooms forum (I'm used to hanging out with the cc3 people) but realised this might be a better place to ask. I have a pretty basic question about a wireless system for laptops. One of my schools had a new set of wireless access points put in and I was left without a handover. It's a netgear smartswitch and four access points. Using netstumbler, I can see the access points. The display shows them as being at subnet 10.92.142.154.0/24 I'm not sure what that means, or how I get at them. The laptops see the network as NETGEAR and I'd like to change it to something else. I've logged on to wireless access points on other networks, but I can't figure out what IP address they're at. Many thanks. Michele

Hello, lovely geeks. I have a pretty basic question about a wireless system for laptops. One of my schools had a new set of wireless access points put in and I was left without even a scribbled note as a handover, and wireless isn't my strong suit. It's a netgear smartswitch and four access points. Using netstumbler, I can see the access points. The display shows them as being at subnet 10.92.142.154.0/24 That was from memory, so it may not be exactly right. I'm not sure what that means, or how I get at them. The laptops see the network as NETGEAR and I'd like to change it to something else. I've logged on to wireless access points on other networks, but I can't figure out what IP address they're at. Many thanks. Michele

Thanks, everyone, for the commiserations. I'm just going to have to harden my heart when someone (she knows who she is) shows up with a full quota, an overloaded laptop and two 2-gig sticks full of pictures. Or the guy who has the complete Bob Dylan works downloaded from iTunes...... (Is that really on the curriculum for KS2 or is he pulling my leg?) Michele

Hi. I wasn't sure where to put this question. Does anybody's school have an effective policy for managing the use of digital cameras and the storage of the pictures? I work at two schools and the pictures are driving me nuts. The teachers take pictures of everything, unload the cameras everywhere and then leave them. Then the kids use the photos in class work, which creates huge documents and then they get left, clogging up disks. I'm not sure how to prevent clangers like this, either: One teacher bought a brand new camera, and the default setting for the picture resolution was on High. She took a camera full of pictures, stuffed them all into a document on her wirelss laptop, and sent it off to print on the colour laser. Nothing seemed to happen and she left it. The pictures kept appearing in chunks, on and off for weeks, until almost a ream of paper had been printed. She only finally complained because her laptop was acting odd. There are no automatic archiving facilities at either school, but we can put it on if someone know of a good system. Back when I worked for The Big Corporation, all our junk vanished off to archive ever month. Cheers. Michele

Hi Michael. I can see the school's wireless network (and a few of the near neighbors). The adapter is enabled and I've also re-run the wireless setup a few times, but I must admit I haven't tried just plugging it into the wired network. Thanks - maybe at least I'll see a different error. Michele

Daft question: How do you start TCP/IP on an old edition of Xp Home? One of our school laptops is being wireless dead. (It can see the linkstation, though.) If I go into Admin and look under Services, it says that TCP is enable and started. If I try and PING from a Dos prompt, it says that TCP/IP isn't running. I'm not sure where else to look. Any other thoughts as to why this laptop might be refusing to see the other computers (particularly the on with the shared drives) in the workgroup would be appreciated. It might just be falling apart from old age. Thanks. Michele

Hi, all you wonderful and hugely helpful people. At one of my schools, the desktop PCs (old win 2000) on a wired-in network have unanimously decided to stop printing. The wireless laptops (slightler newer XPs) are all still printing fine. It's a vanilla school network - dsl router, BT broadband out the other end. The printer is a minolta colour laser 2300DL, on the terrestrial side. The only exception to this is the DNS server, which is on the terrestrial network but is an XP. He still prints. (Yes, we use it as a class PC but this isn't my decision. It's never used for web surfing and is virus-free.) I've done as much debugging, unplugging and pinging as I know how. The desktop guys THINK they are printing - the jobs whizz out and the queue is empty. I don't have another printer to try - the inkjet has kicked the bucket and is unplugged. Any suggestions? The last time we had a printing strike it turned out to be a wonky link station flooding the network, but then EVERYBODY was unwell. Thanks. I've been given an extra afternoon at that school tomorrow to try and re-assert my authority. Cheers. Michele

Many thanks to everyone for all your suggestions. I went in this afternoon and shifted some shortcuts, tweaked some targets, renamed a few things and now all those noddy little annoying packages are in their program sets, working nicely for garden-variety students. We may now go back to a CD-based program we had given up on and have another crack at it. The troubleshooting package pdf seems to have been taken off the RM site. If anyone has a copy banging around, I would love to have one. Michele

Thanks very much, everyone. Some of the things you've said have helped already. I feel incredibly thick for not knowing about the shortcut folder. I have been on the CC3 course, and we did a highly condensed session on package building, but the instructor didn't think he could really go into much detail. Fridays are "package build" days, and I would like to finish one with all the hair I started with. If I had my druthers, I would go on the course. We also have used the Blueprints for a couple packages. I come from a programming background and don't find the ideas about it difficult, but I always have the feeling that the RM stuff is doing things I don't know about. (Wearing a tin foil hat helps, I am told.) Cheers. An don't feel you need to quit talking.... Michele

Hi. We've been creating MSI packages on our CC3 network at a primary school with mixed success. Sometimes we can do it without a hitch and other times - often for very basic software - we get nowehere. We're using WINLE and the AppWiz. Neither of us has been on the package build course, and are not likely to get ever get funding for it. Our biggest problem is that the shortcuts don't show up in the program set. Or when they do, they seem to "displace" another shortcut. And once in a while, the shortcut shows up but doesn't work. We do know about copying and pasting into the shortcut bank, and we always start with a clean workstation. And we have declared surrender on DigiBlue. Can anyone give us any tips, or any recommendations for a package build sequence that helps? If the RM course really does help, we'll start a campaign to get one of us sent on it. It looks like RM used to have a troubleshooting guide on the Knowledge base, but it's vanished. Thanks. Michele

Wow! You guys are great. I've done defrags on them all, and knew about some of the swap file stuff but wasn't sure how to do it. When Win98 was out, I was still working on DEC equipment (anybody remember them? I'm a VAX system manager in disguise) so missed out on learning some of the old windows DIY. It was my chums at DEC used to call old equipment "boat anchors". I'll try all of the above, and I might take you up on the RAM. The head gets nervous when she sees me with a screwdriver or a ladder, though! Thanks lots. Michele

Hi. The Head the board and the coordinator have a pile of quotes, and the whole room (tables and all) will eventually be hauled away to the dump. (I'll be turning cartwheels in the playground as it goes.) Until then - a year at least - I have to keep the show on the road with what we have. We have a really good local tech firm who helps out with bits and pieces to keep us going. But I'm unlikely to get tuppence out of anybody. BUt I do have time to spend, if there are work arounds. So - PC gerontology, anyone? Michele

Hi. I'm having trouble with just one of our primary school ICT suite of PCs which are out of Jurassic Park. One troublemaker (Win 98, Classmate 5 and usual gumph) is suddenly crawling. It doesn't crash or stop, and eventually all the keystrokes and mouse clicks and print jobs catch up if you have enough patience. It's been virus-checked to within an inch of its life, the disk is less than half full and I've un-installed all the unused and seldom-used software. The windows task manager is an old (maybe RM) one which is just a list of running applications. Any ideas, or can someone suggest an old utility that I could use to see what processes are running? Thanks. Michele

Hi! Another TWO girlie techs here. I'm an engineer and a refugee from 20 years in industry and now having fun (but accumulating bald patches) as a tech in two North Essex primary schools. (IN Colchester - St Johns green and BWW in Great Horkesley.) I'm really enjoying it. One of the Year 1s asked why I knew so much about computers. I told them it was because I went to Hogwarts and they are still watching me carefully. My colleague in sanity management is Marion, who is out there reading this and will introduce herself. Sigh - yes, we really do sit and read the Misco catalogue together. Michele

That's an excellent idea - these are classroom tabletop computers, and must not be away from their tasks of accumulating dust, tupperware and cuddly toys. They're permanently on the network, too. That way we can add to the galleries and only do it once. Many thanks! My colleague in TA/IT is on here too and I'm sure she'll see this.

HI. I'm a tech/TA in a couple primary schools in North Essex. I've found edugeeks wildly useful over the last year and now I'm well and truly stuck. I know that Smartboard owners have found it tricky to get the gallery to install on 9.5 and up. We're getting a stranger than average error, though. On the newer whiteboard it goes in just fine. On the two-year-old boards, though (which have a brand new pc attached) we get "Failed to read the current state of the gallery" every time. We've stripped it all off and started again, run it without the network or board attached, and made sure we had windows installer 3.1 on. We've downloaded the gallery separately, emptied the cd onto the desktop and sacrificed a goat on the keyboard. We had a support call logged with RM (These are all on CC3 network) but there is nothing in the knowledgebase there or on Smarttech forums. Has anyone else even seen this? Michele