Harlquinth

The wiki isn't loading for me either - is it offline or something? Thanks, Peter.

It's the built into the server, comes up as a HP Smart Array P410i on the bios screens. We do have an additonal HP SAS expander card as well for connecting an additional 8-bay drive cage to - would connecting both drive cages to that and ignoring the onboard RAID be an option do you think? Thanks, Peter.

Yes, that's what I ment - there doesn't seem to be a virtual disk option that I could see when I had a look at the settings on our server (in the raid bios).

So was that having all of the drives in one single raid array and then having the virtual disks on top of that? That sounds something similar to what I saw suggested on another website, however there doesn't seem to be a virtual disk option that I could see when I had a look at the settings on our server. Thanks, Peter.

Hi, Just wondering where/if you managed to get anywhere with this? We have recently brought a new server, a HP Proliant DL380 G7, with 8 x 600Gb drives in, which I initially setup as with raid 5 using all 8 drives. It wasn't until I finished installing Windows Server 2008 and started configuring it that I realised that MBR partitions/disk have a maximum size limit of 2Tb, so I couldn't use the remaining space on the array, so I've ended up deleting it ready to start again. After reading up about it I found out about GPT, and that Server 2008 should be able to boot off a GPT drive if the server is EFI-based. Two questions that I haven't been able to find answers to though are i) if the Proliant DL380 G7 is EFI-based (I'm hoping so since EFI seems to have been around a few years), and ii) how do you go about creating/converting a drive to GPT ready to install Server 2008 on? (I've tried using the 2008 setup tool, but that just seems to create normal partitions.) Does anyone have any ideas about answers to the questions, or if not any other suggestions? I'd rather keep all the drives in the same array if we can as splitting it into more than one array would give us less space, but if all else fails then guess I'll have to look at two arrays. Thanks, Peter.

reported!

The kitchens are quite nearby actually as well, just along the corridor. Don't know what sort of microwaves they use though. Is there any software that can do some sort of RF survey, or would it have to be some sort of specialised hardware? Thanks, Peter.

That could explain some weird things we've been noticing today. Quick update: We found that the wireless cards on the laptops had a couple of power saving settings, so we set those settings to high power, which increased the logon time by about 50%. We then swapped the Ruckus point (which was an older model that didn't have 5Ghz) with a newer one from another part of the school that did have 5Ghz - that seemed to increase the logon speed by about 50% again when we tested it. This is where it gets interesting - on one of our tests the laptops refused to login at all, then we noticed on inssider that the 5Ghz ssid's had dropped and vanished completely (which was causing the laptops to not connect). When checking the logs on the Ruckus controller we noticed that at exactly the same time the 5Ghz cut-out the was a strange log entry saying "AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [128] goes into non-occupancy period". If it is from the mobile mast is that normal, or could it mean that the mast is faulty? Date/Time Severity User Activities 2011/01/19 13:47:04 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [128] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:47:04 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [124] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:45:53 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [120] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:45:53 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [116] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:44:19 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [104] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:44:19 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [100] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:43:10 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [112] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:43:10 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [108] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:39:50 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [136] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:39:50 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [132] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:31:54 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [136] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:31:54 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [132] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:30:21 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [120] goes into non-occupancy period. 2011/01/19 13:30:21 Low AP[68:92:34:1e:97:c0] detects radar burst on radio [11a/n] and channel [116] goes into non-occupancy period.

I think the BThomehub was hovering around -80 to -90. If the Ruckus ap was using a different channel would it be better? I thought it was meant to automatically switch to the best channel, but it seems to have stuck itself on channel 1 (and there doesn't seem to be a way of forcing it to use another channel). We did originally have the laptops set to use a wireless-G network on the Ruckus point, but we changed it to use N last time we were trying to solve it. Could mobile phone transmitters interfere with wireless-G/N? I just remembered that we have one of those located in the school, fairly close (about 20 meters and 30 meters up) to the room with the laptops in. Is there any software that we could use to see what interference it's causing (and anything else that may be around)? Maybe we need to invest in some lead shielding for the classroom! Would having a second Ruckus point in the room make any difference? May try borrowing one from another part of the school and see if it does. Thanks, Peter.

Did some more testing today (best part of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to figure out what's going on!). Disabled/turned off any non-ruckus AP's in the area that inSSIDer could detect except for a BTHomehub one that appears to be coming from the housing estate next door, but that still didn't seem to make much difference. Takes about 15 minutes to log on 16 laptops (we have 32 normally, but just got out 16 to test with) as a test student and run a program from the start menu, so something is obviously wrong somewhere, just not sure where/what. We did notice that the channel of the BTHomehub seems to be channel 1 as detected by inSSIDer, however the ruckus AP has also set itself to channel 1 - could this affect things (I thought that the Ruckus points were supposed to auto-detect/set the channels?). Any other ideas? At the moment it isn't really doing what we brought it for... seriously considering seeing if we can either find someone to come in and spend some time with us working out what's wrong with it and/or getting something else instead! Thanks, Peter.

Hi Stuart, Thanks for your reply - I did wonder if it was normal for inssider to behave like that. We use mandatory profiles on our network, which are around 3mb in size. The laptops use wireless-N, though they only seem to connect at about 60mbps, so I'm not 100% sure if it's setup properly as I understood N was ment to be upto 300mbps (the AP is in the same room as the laptops). We tried turning off some of the non-Ruckus AP's earlier, and we thought it may have made a difference, but we thought it might just be our imagination! Will have to try some more testing on Monday. We only have 6 Ruckus AP's here at the moment, so are still having to use our previous AP's in places. Thanks, Peter.

Hi, Just wondering if you managed to solve your problems as we're having similar issues with our Ruckus wireless/student laptops setup. We've been trying to test it a bit this morning with inSSIDer, and we've noticed the Ruckus AP spiking downwards a few times when logging on with a dozen laptops at once to test it (normally we have 32 logging on at once when they're being used with a class). We also noticed that the signal dropped right down when we did Sophos updates on the laptops. After reading this thread I'm thinking about turning off as many of the non-Ruckus AP's as we can that we have nearby and see if that makes a difference with our testing - does anyone have any other suggestions that we could try? I found out that net-ctrl do Ruckus wireless when I visited the Bett show on Wednesday and met them at the Edugeek stand - should have seen if they had any ideas whilst I was there! Thanks, Peter.

I was speaking to someone on the Microsoft stand, and it sounds like pricing will be released to resellers on the 1st of February, and it will be available from the 1st of March.

I once had a bit of a mishap when planning a timed reboot of one of our servers... I have a batch file that uses the sleep utility and net send to send warning messages around the network before using the shutdown command to reboot. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that the sleep utility wasn't installed on the server I wanted to reboot, so it rebooted a bit quicker than expected!

Can't remember if it was actual stripes or not, but the colours on the projector in our hall went strange a few months ago and we had to have it replaced (it was time-expired anyway). The company that replaced it said that it had probably overheated due to the amount of dust filling it and that would have caused the prisms to warp which distorted the colours.

Deepfreeze might be useful here - that way any changes that they do make to the c-drive would be reset everytime the machine is rebooted. Hq.

I had similar issues with email not getting through with 123-reg, and after several one-sided arguments with them using their email support site (couldn't find a proper email address or phone number for them anywhere) I decided to move all my domain names. Whilst reading about 123-reg on the internet I found out that their support has been going downhill (and their website not being updated) ever since they were taken over by another company a few years ago and the company that took over got rid of the existing staff/management. Some of the existing staff then formed 'daily.co.uk', which is where I transferred my domain names to after several helpful phonecalls with them to check that they didn't have the same email problems. The web interface for managing domains with daily.co.uk is much more modern than 123-reg, and their support is much more helpful, so I can certainly recommend it.

Hi, One thing that I've noticed since the new version of the site was launched (the old version didn't have this problem) is that long threads that have more than one page no longer have the page number on the end of the title (e.g. 'Multiple page threads - Page 2' for example), which is a bit annoying when saving different pages in a thread that you want to look at later as if they have the same title then you risk overwriting other pages if using the title as the filename. Thanks, Harlquinth.

I've had this same problem with it coming up with a search delay message when opening the homepage and then using the search button - does the homepage do a search in the background or something? Thanks, Harlquinth.

I quite like the new version, but also find this a bit confusing - forum title above the post would make more sense to me. Would also prefer the latest posts section to be more prominent as well like it used to be. A couple of other bugs/annoyances that I've come across are: 1) When searching it sometimes comes up with a message "This forum requires that you wait 8 seconds between searches. Please try again in [x] seconds.", despite being several minutes (or hours) since my last search (a lot longer than 8 seconds in any case). 2) Also, with the previous version of the forums, the webpage titles used to vary depending on what page of a thread you were on (so '[thread title] - Page 2', etc), whereas the new version just uses the same title for all pages in a thread, which is one of my pet hates as I then have to remember to change the filename if saving a page so it doesn't overwrite any others, so hope this can be changed. Thanks, Harlquinth.

Thanks for the help - this solved our problem with our geography software (Horizons 1,2, and 3) after we had problems after moving the software to a different server and upgrading to IE 8 over Easter (still not 100% sure which change caused the problem!). Did have an additional problem when configuring the flash settings - for some reason the software still didn't work after putting 'P:\' and '\\servername\apps' in the allowed list, but then we found putting just '\apps' in the list instead worked for some reason, not sure why, but happy now it's working again. Thanks, Harlquinth.

I've successfully managed to get Chromium (open source version of Google Chrome) running on our network by putting it on our shared apps drive and using a shortcut to it. Not put it into general use yet though as I haven't found a way of configuring it using group policy or the registry to restrict changing of settings. Peter.

We have approx 150 pupils per year here - we have four computer rooms with x32 computers in each, and one computer room with x24, so assuming that the rooms could be freed up and enough invigilators found then there might just be enough computers, however I'm sure I remember seeing some guidelines somewhere saying that only every-other computer should be used to prevent the students seeing each others screens, so that would cut down the number of usable computers a lot. Peter.

CKEditor might be worth a look as well. Peter.