Oaktech

I've done that and improved things, but you underestimate exactly *how* old some of them are!

I've got a windows 7 laptop which is turned off in a cupboard 99% of the time. I still need it for certain switches which are manged by Java in the Browser, others that require a discovery app that crashes on windows 8 or above and to configure a NAS that requires an ActiveX plugin. We have plans to replace all of the affected hardware but some of it won't be until next summer due to budgets.

We do exactly this for historic data pre-bromcom.

I've got a smoothie at the same patch level on one of my sites - I'll try this tomorrow. PS, Nice to see another South Coast tech!

They don't move nearly enough for it be a futile excercise, and having been in an organisation that did use asset tags for machine names, it's a lot easier to ask a teacher 'are you in your room, in PPA - which machine, or on your laptop' and type a machine name in a known format into the remote viewer, than to try and talk them through finding and reading the asset tag, or even going to the desktop and extracting the right bit of information from the BGInfo display.

I've not had Toshiba for a while (last used them in 2017) but they were solid machines but let down by awful spares and engineering backup. I wouldn't touch an HP device in a managed contract if my life depended on it. Not robust enough, my wife has them at her work and they never have all 6 devices working at the same time. Canon devices are amazing, been incredibly reliable, spares and toner backup has generally been excellent, engineer onsite same day in the rare times we've needed to get someone out. Their admin and accounts dept however are a joke. It's taken 4 months to get a contract extension processed and I'm still awaiting delivery of 4 device pedestals that were ordered last September. We also have issues with them assigning the wrong invoices to schools within our MAT, so they've stopped the wrong schools toner supply over a payment issue that wasn't us!

All of my sites begin WS for a wired workstation, LAP for a laptop and TAB for a tablet PC. Then usually a shortform description of the model number for example 5060 for an optiplex 5060, 100E for a Lenovo 100E, etc. If the device is assigned in asset management to an individual, it's given their initials - usually a laptop or tablet. For example we end up with LAP-X360-JS for a laptop HP Spectre X360 belonging to John Smith If the device is in a classroom, one site uses the 'base number' off the site plan, leaving us with WS-5060-B03 for a wired workstation optiplex 5060 in Base3. The other site uses the class code to form WS-5060-1JS. Shared devices are named for the year group they serve or the cabinet they belong in: LAP-100E-6-30 for a Lenovo 100E, in the year 6 cabinet number 30, or LAP-100E-R1-30 for the 30th laptop in the Red 1 cabinet. ICT suite devices are named for the room name on the site plan, or the name of the suite. WS-BASE03-01 or WS-SUITE1-01 - we don't bother with the device type for suites because they're all the same devices.

It's weird how some places are fine about and some places get confused! I don't think it's possible to extend it, I've asked Google and come up with nothing. Two of my sites it's never an issue, the third, it caused confusion weekly! I set a sky blue background colour at that site which is a main colour in the logon screen image and that seems to resolve people being confused about pri/sec monitors, or even if the monitor is on!

One of my sites, we hadn't bought a PC for about 4 years until they announced windows 11. I've been working the local businesses hard for donated systems, we're mainly 4th and 5th gen i series processors with SSDs. I'm now starting on a rolling replacement program

Rolling it out to staff as we buy hardware compatible with it. No real issues, no grumbling from staff*. *Other than one person whose label printer isn't fully compatible and requires to be power cycled before each use. The printer is supplied as part of a software contract so it's not an us problem, it's a them problem

And the 'prevent changing lock screen and logon image' setting isn't working for you? It's preventing me from changing it even as an admin!

Certainly did. It was worse for wireless devices - they took best part of 12 hours to get a lease until I restarted the service - wired devices took about 20 minutes. A release and renew didn't work, however a release and reboot did.

Humour me and restart the DHCP service - I've had a similar issue recently.

So, it's an updated Blair Witch Project?

How are they taking the domain machines home? Local user? VPN? Can you train one of them to try a DNS flush on their home network? Is there any authentication policies on the gateway that might preclude a connection?

I just do them myself - spares off ebay or Amazon.

Can you dispense with the gateway for internal machines? We had a similar issue when we went from using RDP on a non standard port directly to using RDP gateway. That turned out to be incorrectly configured DNS.

Why have a blank password, if they can type a username they can type a short password like 'red' or an easy sequence? One of my sites we enforce a 3 character, unchangeable, non complex, password for years R-4. For years 5 & 6 we enforce 8 characters minimum, non complex, changeable. The other sites we enforce 8 characters non complex, changeable for all years.

We've got a teacher with elbow and wrist issues following a cycling accident and we bought her an Anker vertical mouse under occy health advice and she loves it; which is good because they're only £20! This bad boy... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-Wireless-Vertical-Ergonomic-Optical/dp/B00BIFNTMC

I'm telling finance to treat it as a 'grace period' to spread the full cost out another 2 years.

We have serious allergy details up in various pertinent places but they are all difficult for students to access and they are covered over. Anything more than that remains available in the MIS. First Aiders get a circular email from School Admin to check the MIS if anything is new/updated. We might be lucky in that in all 3 of my schools we don't have anyone with an illness that could make them critical in seconds other than those with allergies.

Bear in mind formatted/usable capacity will always be less than quoted because of partition tables and offsets.

I've just tried this and It's working fine for the 3 applications I've tried it for, which are IrFanView, Lego WeDo and Google FileStream. We're deploying them like this... net use b: \\SOMESERVER\SOMESHARE\applications\GoogleDriveStream if NOT exist "C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\launch.bat" b:\GoogleDriveSetup.exe --silent --desktop_shortcut net use B: /delete If I delete the if NOT exist condition, the installer runs again and overwrites, the file timestamps change. I suspect, the MSI behaves differently and I would be managing MSIs through GPO or via Application Package.

Geometry

Security through obscurity?