indiegirl

Have you tried uninstalling all the mouse software? The fact that the mouse freezes suggests to me that it's software, not hardware. I've seen this before on Dells - on an Inspiron 1200 (no nipple) and on an older Cseries with nipple pointer. I remember that the Cseries was resolved by cleaning the nipple as Ric_ suggested (even though the user didn't use the nipple, it was still affecting the mouse), but for the Inspiron, I can't for the life of me remember how I stopped it... I vaguely remember at one point uninstalling all of the extra drivers and 'pointer software' that Dell bundle with it. ETA: cross-posted with Paul!

I think that's the question that half the staff here are also asking!

Also completed. Passed to NM, but he won't bother (story of his life)

Anyone seen these? They look fantastic (from the salesman spiel)... we are getting one to trial, just wondered if anyone else had seen them or had experience of them. Samsung's website doesn't list them, but this site gives scant info on them: http://www.rgbcomms.co.uk/products/franchises/samsung.htm We're looking at the UF-80. It seems to work well as an OHP, a digital imaging machine, scanner, projector... is it too good to be true, though? (it doesn't do sound, that's the only thing).

...probably because it costs £s! (unless............)

Pandora's box indeed! I forgot to say that I am competent at HTML - I just have no knowledge of these Apache, PHP and other things you speak of... I was just looking at Joomla, but have no knowledge of the other bits and bobs. I'm Unix trained (M$ came second in my book) so I think the Linux route is most likely... plus it gives me plenty to get my teeth into...

... and I know nothing about web development. By that, I mean that what I do know just about fits on a postage stamp, and no more. Now, I wanna get one over my NM (discussed in other articles!), and I want to start the foundations for a school website (as it's something that he has 'been getting around to doing' for 18months now). This is where I run dry. Where the bloody hell do I start? Has anyone got any 'how-to' docs they'd be willing to share? I take it that I need a webserver, if I get a 1ghz box with plenty of mem, would it be enough? Should I go down the *nix or Windows route? What's easiest? TIA, and be gentle.... :oops:

I think there's possibly two (maybe one if the sixthformer who's been helping us has taken one)... I think it's one of these Mac Plus machines Hmmmmmmm.... although I think ours is missing a mouse... will have to go and hunt it down.

Yep, we had one too. No power supply nor instructions, it went on eBay... made £30 8O We cleared out a couple of cupboards over the summer, and in between finding work and exam papers from the 1970s, I also unearthed: 1 PA system, boxed 2 electronic typewriters (remember them?! No, nor me either, I'm too young) 2 SIMS scanner things (still sat in my cupboard, I even doubt that they'd eBay well) a couple of really old Apple Macs with what look like 10" screens boxes of headphones, still in packaging Hundreds of ribbon cartridges for old dot matrix printers. A Wacom tablet - minus pen (surprise!) Oh, and the "Texas Instruments" (remember them?!) Windows 95 laptop that's still sat under the desk next to me... (it even has it's original Win95 sticker on) ... the list went on and on Far too much money wasted...

@Ric_ I wish!!!! You mean for me to buy one? Like I have that kind of money...!! These have already been paid for from our budget, and that's the reason why they couldn't stretch to another £200 for one for me I'm just a bit... y'know, hacked off with it really!

Oh, I'm a professional (I've played the game before in big corporate organisations), so I wouldn't inflame anything, just quietly continue about my business until something happens and I'm unable to help them out. If I do get involved, I will certainly use the knowledge as a payrise-bargaining tool... as politely as possible, of course. My personal mobile is no longer in use for school.. that I do know :-D Our school's just been removed from Special Measures, so yes, we do have money to burn apparently... My NM is atrocious - I'd need a whole forum section to him, to give you guys an idea of what he's like. As a starter: He changed the administrator password on the system when I was out for a funeral one day, didn't tell me, didn't change it on the backups, AV, nowhere else... then left me to tidy it all up He often starts things and never finishes them - like an amendment to a staff's login - changed the email address and not the login, then this morning moaned at me for it not working! He is on my side wrt these phones - he's said himself that I "should have one"... but hasn't really fought for me. As I type he's busy trying to set the damn things up to sync with our Exchange Server. Is he writing anything down that he's doing? Nope...

Not the last time I looked... no... I know what'll happen though, something will go wrong whilst the NM's in India, and I'll be expected to drop everything and sort it. I wouldn't mind, but I know that one of the SLT is planning on giving the phone to his wife!

Am I right to stamp my feet here, or am I cutting my nose off to spite my face? Our school has just taken delivery of 10 i-mate KJAM phones for some of the senior staff members. My boss, the NM, has one, and is busy attempting (and failing) to set it up. Now, when it was originally discussed about implementing these things, it was said that we should both have one, because we're often not in the office, and amongst other things they'll be a mobile phone to get in touch with people. I'm currently using my own mobile to call people (at my own expense!) during the day. Surprise surprise, I've not been given one, but my NM has, as has the Head's PA (who sits in her office ALL day), and the personnel officer (who is also in her office all day). I still have no mobile provided by the school...... So far, I have refused to get involved with the setup of these phones. I'm also considering refusing to support them. This will be most apparent when the NM's on his month-long holiday to India (yet I get baulked at for booking a week off in term time). Should I get involved with the setup? Would you, or would you stick to your guns?

I *think* (and I'm happy to be corrected) that I'm the only female member here (that's genetically female, anyway!). Anyway, I'm Zoe, I'm no relation to Indie (above), I'm from Milton Keynes like SYSMAN and actually work at his old school, but I've never met him (nor am related!). My job title is officially IT Administrator (I have a Network Manager above me in the pecking order), however I often find that the scope of my work stretches into Network Management (ie,yes, I do his job) and beyond. I have an awful lot to learn still, despite being 5 years into my IT 'career' (ho ho). I started at one of the large UK banks in their Tech Support, working with *nix, then moved to a solicitors (never again), before moving into a school environment last year.. However, I still feel like a complete novice compared to some. Time to start considering my MCSE, methinks...

I used to live in the West Country before moving up (not too far from you, incidently), and we used to take regular trips to Cheddar Gorge to stock up.. Now that was the sort of stuff that sticks to the roof of your mouth, and combine it with Marmite... it was just about heaven....

Thanks all. Half day for the kids here Monday, think I might have a play and give them a nasty shock Tuesday morning :-D

OK.. I've had a look: Geoff: I can't actually see the IE wallpaper Bitmap you mention (we've XP desktops). We don't have a wallpaper specified by default, could this be why? Can I get around it by creating a blank bmp and setting permissions? Mark: The students do have access to it, yes...

The students don't have access to the C:\ drive as a whole, and permissions are so that they can't write to it even if they find it... I'll double check those permissions, tho....

Is it possible, without enabling Active Desktop? I'm trying to explore various ways around this without much luck.. I've managed to stop students from setting backgrounds everywhere but through the right-click menu in IE. I'd like to disable the right-click, but that's a tad extreme. Has anyone successfully done it?

We've used Schools Connect before... over the summer they took our 15" CRTs for free... we threw a few useless older machines on the van and they neglected to charge us for them Other than that, if the machines aren't Selectamark'd, then they go via Freecycle to anyone who wants to collect them. Certainly, any odd bits of hardware that's useless goes that way as well...

.... nope... still "stuck". Cue lots and lots of swearwords....

Interestingly, we have both... thanks for that, I'm off to play (whilst it's Lunchtime, and fairly quiet).. ;-)

I forgot to mention that.. we're completely Win 2k3 here with XP workstations... We also have errors with tcpsvcs.exe which generates memory errors on startup (the instruction at reference 0x7c8396d0 referenced memory at...- the memory could not be read). Now, I know that the RIS service relies on tcpip, but is the above error likely to be linked? We know that our memory errors are caused by a 'fix' (ho ho) that we put on our servers for faster bootup and memory handling (an addition to the boot.ini was made), which we've now removed. I think I'm tying myself up in knots here looking at all the different problems. Event Viewer also reports that the RIS service hung on startup, and then a few mins later reports that it's terminated, even though it's still showing as 'starting' in the services list. V confusing...

I'm definitely first in the queue to smack the NM. He caused untold problems because he didn't think his admin pwd change over at all (I've spent hours correcting the fallout!). Anyone would think that he's the lowly techie, and I'm the NM! (I wish). Anyway, reinstalled... and it said it was initialised and ready, but the service still says "starting". How long does it take on average to refresh? Should I have rebooted after uninstalling?

Ever since my esteemed leader, the school's Network Manager, changed the administrator password whilst I was away the other week, I've done nothing but tidy up after him (grumble over). I'm having one problem with our RIS service (BINLSVC). It had stopped, and I'm assuming that's because the the administrator password had been changed and it couldn't connect. I changed the logon account in the service itself to reflect the new administrator password, but it is now stuck in 'starting'. I'm unable to stop/resume/start or do anything with it. All I can do is refresh. This has stayed the same after a reboot. Has anyone struggled with this before? Should the logon account be a local system one... or should it be a doman account? TIA