Zorba

Hello All. I have read here that some of you are already doing this, so what am I doing wrong? When I associate a SIMS user with their AD account all looks fine. But when I try and save the changes I get an error message unable to find user joe.bloggs (eg). Any help greatly appreciated.

Sorry guys, but can anyone help?

bump

Hi Guys, I am setting up my second school website using the old Edugeek Joomla 1.5 with Rokwebify template (Thankyou SYSMAN). Can anyone tell me how I change the bullet colour for the latest news module. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for all the replies. The more I read it seems that scaling 2010 to provide 1700 mailboxes is just not cost effective. Has anyone out there achieved what I want to do on a schools budget without breaking the bank?

Thanks Steve. Would you min sharing you server spec (complete) and number of mailboxes and cost. I am wondering if I am better of installing 2003/2007.

Thanks for the replies guys. If you have implemented Exchange 2010 I would be interested in your server specs and how you licensed. I would really like to host this ourselves as I think it is important to maintain our skillset and if we outsourced everything it really would be a dull job (see BSF)

Evening All, At my last school I implemented Exchange 2003 and it transformed the way we worked. I am now in a new post and am looking to deploy exchange there too. School is a large secondary and with students, staff and community will be looking at approx 1700 mailboxes. Sorry but I have several questions: 1. Licensing. How have you licensed. I was looking at schools agreement and have been told I need connector license for students to access mail from home. How have you done it? 2. I am considering virtualising. What route have you gone and how much has this cost? What sort of hardware spec have you deployed? 3. Live@edu. Would take all the fun out of it, but would I be doing the school a dis-service by not implemnting this free solution? Would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks Grumbledook for taking the time to write such a long post. You are absolutely right, however with BSF around the corner I do not expect SLT to do much to address the problem and much as it pains me I think I may start looking for work elsewhere.

We used Liberum also but moved to Spiceworks. It could definately be quicker but we no find it invaluable.

Thanks for taking the time to reply everyone. I guess I knew most of the answers already but nice to have a vent and get others views. Just need to bite the bullet and practice saying Nnnn Nnnnn Nnnn oh bu99er.

Hi somabc, PC's are locked down tighter than a gnats chuff. I think we are just too helpful and I should say no more often. We end up burning CD's downloading photos off staff cameras setting up projectors in rooms due to timetable c$%&ups at the last minute etc. We log eveyrthing no matter how trivial so we have a record on the help desk. We have one teacher who will raise 3 tickets minimum every day, title "PC not working". It will invaribly be switched off at the mains or some little darling will have unplugged the network cable, but no matter how many times we show her how to remedy these simple things she just refuses to do it herself. I am sure you have all got one of these. On of the issue we do have is staff laptops on which we were forced to give admin rights, the agreement being that we could bill staff £30.00 to put right any fault that had been caused by them downloading virus/trojan etc by using P2P software or questionable surfing habits. Yet to have a bill payed and they wont let us remove admin rights. Roll on BSF!

Hi TMCD35, We use Spiceworks for our helpdesk and works well. I have mentioned although not officially (CPD not good here) that we are stretched. A lot of issues we have are supporting staff both teachers and admin. Many staff are in need of training but we don't have the time and many just are not interested anyway as it is much easier to ask us to do it. Why do schools employ people in admin who do not have basic computer skills? Feeling a bit disaffected and un-appreciated. Not sure what to say to line manager as money is tight and last year there were redundancies. I do not want to sound like I am whining although when I read this post back I am whining!

Hi All, I am an NM in a smallish secondary school 750 students. I have been in post coming up to 3 years. When I arrived we were running one server. I have very quickly expanded on this and we now have two DC's, File Server, Exchange Server, Web Server (Centos 5 , Edugeek Joomla pack thankyou), Reporting Server (TeAM), ISA Server, VLE (Centos 5 & StudyWiz). We run PCE, WSUS and EPO and have now Virtualised SIMS. We have 75 student laptops approx 100 staff laptops and 360 curriculim desktops and 20 admin machines. Until last year I had 1 Tech (muppet) who we have now replaced with an excellent chap. I go to work each day and feel like I am drowning.When I think about all the things I should be doing regarding documentation etc I realise I am not cutting the mustard. There just never seems to be the time to sit down and plan and document. We need a server we install it, plan to document and it never happens. It now feels like I am more technician than NM and the two of us seem to be running round firefighting, assisting in classrooms, repairing vandalised kit etc. We constantly have approx 40 tickets on the helpdesk and just never reach the bottom of the pile before we get another 40. I end up doing things like the web site and server updates etc from home where I can concentrate and work without interruption. I am just not enjoying it like I used to and am feeling rather stressed which results in me being tetchy and sometimes abrupt with staff when they come to me with more trivia. I know I am not alone in having such a small team. So how do you cope? PS The reason I have the time to do this is I have the day off today as I have annual leave to use as I always seem to have projects on in the school holidays. First thing I did when I got up this morning was update the web site!

Hi, After successfully deploying the agent to workstations SIMS still does not install. When checking the log file on the client machine (see below) we get an error on the digital signature check. This is the third version of the SIMSInfrastructureSetup.EXE we have tried. Does anyone have any ideas? 2009-11-30 16:10:26.1805|Error|CheckSetupSignature(): Digital signature failure for SIMSInfrastructureSetup 2009-11-30 16:10:26.1805|Warn|runSetups(): Installer failed digital signature check: SIMSInfrastructureSetup.EXE 2009-11-30 16:10:26.1805|Info|Check(): Update check complete

Hi Geoff, Already checked this it says ACPI Multiprocessor PC.

Yep all drivers downloaded from Dell and installed. All working at the moment I am attempting to break it again as I type.

Hi, Thanks for your post however this is not the issue. The plot thickens. I have begun a rebuild from scratch and running processes are now using both cores. I started installing apps. Office, java, ie7 blah blah. I then came to Silverlight which then hung. I checked the processes running using Task Manager and low and behold if I look at CPU affinity there are two cores available and only one ticked. I am not saying it is Silverlight probably a coincidence but I used system restore to roll back to just after I installed Office and all is working as it should. I am currently rebuilding from scratch again and will check status after install of every app. I would like to emphasise that both cores are detected and can be seen in Task Manager. Before problem occurs if I check affinity on explorer.exe for example both cores are available and both ticked. When problem occurs and I check affinity both cores are present and clickable but only Core 0 is ticked. I am buggered if I know what is going on.

Hi Guys, Hope someone here can help. We have taken delivery of some Dell Optiplex 360 Core 2 Duo E7400's We have rebuilt machines using our XP VLK slipstreamed with SP3. Machines appear nice and nippy but we experienced issues whilst playing around with IE hanging. We did some nosing around and noticed in task manager that running processes were using only one core despite TM displaying graphs for two cores. Checked on untouched Dell install and processes using both cores. Installed CPUZ and this detects two cores. Have tried replacing HAL.dll but problem remains. Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks for the steer. Had Joom SEO installed, tweaked the settings and all working now.

Your right they are rare but what about when your school suffers a fire. Happened to a school just down the road. It ocurred during the school day and on the very day that the backup bag had been brought in to change the tapes (left in server room)!! Luckily Fire Brigade brought fire under control before it reached server room and the servers suffered only some water ingress. They were left for a week with the covers off to dry out. I try not to think about such a thing happening at our school but when I do I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

An idea I have been toying with but not tried yet was to run a DC in VM ware. Fire it up allow AD to replicate, shut it down and keep this on a usb hard drive off site, perhaps doing this once a week. Thoughts anyone? Would this work?

Hi Simon, I mean the Title Bar in Internet Explorer/Firefox. When navigating around the site the title of the page being viewed is not displayed in the browsers title bar, only the site name Barr's Hill School & Community College

Hi All, Using the previous Edugeek Joomla 1.5 package with egdefault template. No page titles are displayed in the bowser when navigating the site, only the site name appears. Anyone have any ideas why? Barr's Hill School and Community College

amychow, any news? Keep us informed it would be useful to know what the problem was.