indie

You might want to have a look at the stuff Argon offers, I got the Remote Boot Floppy Generator from them for our old Netgear FA311's. They also do PXE on Disk for the SIS900's

Just stumbled upon this on slashdot, looks like a fairly interesting read for those of you that are into open source. O3 Magazine The FTP server's busy, but you can try and download the first issue here.

Well I can't get UPHClean to work with XP x64, it installs but the toolkit installer keeps repeating "User Profile Hive Cleanup Service Required", nice one M$ The service won't start even if i try and force it to. Might have another look at this tomorrow.

And you say the Slashdot RSS feed takes up to much space with images?

Priorities, priorities!

Tried resetting the JetDirect to its defaults? Or upgrading to the newest firmware? Do the printers work when connected locally to a machine?

I started working in IT in 98, the school I was at had 2 rooms full of Acorns, no network and all we had to look out for was broken monitors and dodgy viruses on the machines. We made the big jump to Windows 2000 and I was looking after 30 PC's, 1 Win 2k Server and 3 Networked printers. We also had 128k 24/7 ISDN internet, for 2000 we we're the dogs bollocks in the area for computing The network slowly grew, we added 3 new rooms and networked the library. Now the school is just like any other, every department has PC's, IWB's, Projectors etc. The place i'm at now has around 150 PC's, mostly XP x64, 20 Wireless tablet PC's, 12 roaming iBook's, a Mac suite, language lab and auditorium, we're open 8-9 and guess who provides support out of hours I look after 5 Servers for the LAN (W2k3, OS X and Linux) that support over 1800 users, Blackboard which is going to be rolled out across the LEA soon (and I'll get to admin that) and W2k3, Linux and OS X servers for Web/Media hosting that we do. I designed and implemented the Network, have recently overhauled it and upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet. I'm MS certified, just about to sit my CCNA and struggled for 9 months to get a payrise, yet if i'm not in one day and something breaks, the place grinds to a halt. I'm the only tech on site. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, i just wish people were a little bit more appreciative for what we actually do!

Does it have to be to the tune of a Queen song?

I've never had the fortune to admin anything RM, but from what I've seen and heard I don't want it anywhere near me!

To set the Default Gateway via DHCP do the following (assuming you're using a Win2k3 DHCP server): Start > Programs > Administrator Tools > DHCP Click the + on your scope to expand the tree, right click on Scope Options then hit Configure Options Place a tick in the "003 Router" section and enter your gateway's IP address into the field and hit add. To set a proxy server in your GPO do the following: Open the Group Policy Object Editor (Probably best to edit your Default Domain Policy) Navigate to the following: User Configuration > Windows Settings > Internet Explorer Maintenance > Connection > Proxy Settings Add your proxy info there and all should be good!

Right, I've only been on EduGeek for a few weeks but we've got an Auditorium which will hold about 70, WiFi, 100Mbit stable internet, Video Recording/Streaming Facilities, Catering can be arranged and we also have rooms with Computers. I'll check with the Director to see if we could have it all for free, are there any specific dates in mind? If it's all planned well enough ahead i'm sure he'd be happy for it to happen here. We're based in Middlesbrough, for those of you who have no idea where it is, click here. We're about 40 miles south of Newcastle and 60 miles north of Leeds. PS Theres two good pubs within walking distance too

I think you're getting mixed up between "Windows Messenger" and "MSN Messenger". Windows Messenger is used to send net send and Alerter service messages to machines, think winpop back in the NT days. Like Geoff said, SP2 turns off the "Messenger" service by default, so go into services and turn it back on to automatic startup. Make sure it's running on both the Server and Clients, HTH!

Kinky, shouldn't you be concentrating on driving though? It was snowing in Middlesbrough yesterday morning at about 5:30 and my car was iced up this morning. Loving the Mondeo's Quick Clear button, de-iced everything in under a minute

You filthy, filthy people!

I'm the Network Manager for a large ICT centre, I look after a couple of hundred machines (XP, XP x64, OS X, Linux) and a few racks of servers (2003, 2003 x64, Linux). Been working in education for 7 years, MCP in Windows 2000, sitting my CCNA in January. Got a fairly broad knowledge base of all things geeky, internet technologies, LAN/WAN design, security, coffee drinking etc.

Sorry, 2 Yagi's, 3 AP's. 2 for the bridge, 1 to relay the signal around the flat!

I'm moving into a place which is only about 300 meters from where I work, I work 8 - 4:30 but our centre is open till 9 so most nights I get a call from someone saying something's broken, how can it be fixed. Most of the time it's an AP that needs rebooting and I can VPN in and reboot it, which I dont mind doing. I talked to our director and proposed that if I can set up a wireless link I would be prepared to provide out of hours support as much as I can (and get uncontended 100Mbit intenet access ). I have near line of sight, with the very tops of a few houses in the way, has anyone here ever done anything like this? I know for something like this we should really call someone external in to do a site survey but we'd prefer to keep costs down, if we spend £200 and it doesn't work, it's better than spending thousands to get it working. I've been talking to a friend of mine who's recommended the kit i'd need, just wanted some input before I tried it! 20dB Yagi Antenna Linksys WRT54GS (UK Version) Talisman Firmware (Power output can be turned up well over the legal limit :twisted:)

Oh my god, the ultimate webpage episode is on channel 4 now!

I'm sure we all have our favourite distro that we use and recommend to people, but just what is it about that distro that you like? I've been using Debian for years. It's moved on from what it was in the late 90s and has excellent package management! Need to install apache? apt-get install apache Need to install mySQL? apt-get install mysql It installs the other components that the package needs and sets up a default configuration. Want to update all your packages to the latest version? apt-get dist-upgrade What other features do you like that your distro has?

Knoppix is an excellent start to getting into Linux. Don't be afraid to download an ISO of one of the popular Linux distros and get it installed on a spare machine. I know it looks daunting but we all started somewhere! My distro of choice is Debian, be prepared to answer some questions about your hardware during install, it's not as "plug and play" as Windows.

Staff have unlimited printing and it all gets charged to the department they're in. Little Billy on the other hand has x credits, if he prints x copies of crap and uses all his credits, the next time he's in x lesson he can't print. The teacher would come to me and say Little Billy can't print, i'd check his account and see that he printed x copies of crap. At this point we make the Little Billy pay for the extra curricular printer use and reinstate his credit's making him aware they are for school use. Once his credit has run out, and he's say in an English lesson we can add credits to his account and charge them to English. There is a certain amount of administrative effort involved though! No system is perfect and some prints do slip though the net, but up to now we've been able to account for thousands of pounds of printing costs.

2.0 Litre Mondeo Zetec, nice Dark blue with Zetec-S bumpers Used to have a 1.2 Clio, never buy a Renault. Got it from new, the Airbag system broke, it had to have the engine wiring loom replaced twice and the throttle motor went (within the first year). Also, and I know this isn't Renault's fault but after a service once the garage forgot to put the fuel pipe back onto the injector rail properly and I had petrol pissing about my hot engine bay for a while, nice.

We use Print Manager Plus to audit printing and charge each depeartment for what they've used. It's amazing how much they cut down on printing rubbish once they're made to pay for each and every copy. It can be configured to deduct a different cost based on Colour/B&W, paper used, printer used and also works with plotters. Invaluable!

We get rid of stuff on them with DBAN, then ship them out to various places within the council (Secondary Schools, Primary Schools, Youth Clubs etc). We just upgraded all of our machines to x64 P4s, networked game of Brothers in Arms anyone?

Looks interesting, seems like a lot of config to get it running though and there's still alot of machines that dont support USB boot. Been playing with live CD's for a while now, Auditor is nice, contains a lot of apps for Digi Forensics etc