secman

Chaps, I have only found a quick mention of the Leaking Capacitors problem in a flakey server. We have just had a motherboard replaced on a Dell SX270 small form factor PC. It was just under 3 years old and we noticed when speaking to the engineer that a number of the larger capcitors were leaking. We have since then checked at least 30 PCs from the same batch (purchased for summer 2003 installation) and all have either obviously leaking capacitors or "doming" on those with an "X" engraved on the top. We are just about to approach Dell on this issue because we are concerned that we may see successive failures on this batch of PCs. HAs anyone else had a similar experience either with leaky caps or getting the supplier to replace the motherboards? Thanks Alan

We used to have Jeffrey, George, Freddy, Rod & Jane and still have Bungle % Zippy (both going this summer) We have changed to CURRIC01, ADMIN01, PRINT01 etc. A bit boring but it gives us an idea of function. Cheers Alan

Well, if Geoff is right, then we are all in for a fun summer! lol!

More Information on the Flash Problem.... I have been looking at this further and found that there is a permissions issue with Flash Player 8. I cannot get a standard user or a power user working with flash, I get the red "x". Even a simple thing like running a flash movie from a website is a no no. Anyone got links with Macromedia??? This is going to cause problems for many of us as the only solution seems to give users local admin rights! We have also started to noticed some similar issues with Windows Media Player 10. My collegue has found that the latest Media Player also seems to work only if you have loac admin rights. We have installed under local admin as usual but the media player will not run under user or power user rights. Does anyone have any thoughts on this or how we can get things sorted?

How can anyone compare STONE and DELL? Dell are probably the largest PC manufacturer on the planet with millions of units installed in all sorts or businesses. Have you noticed how many Dells appear on TV??? I have been working with Dell PCs since they fist started up in the UK in 1987 (Yes I am that old!!) I have rarely had any real problems with the kit, found it reliable and long lived. Some of our Dell GX110 PCs are 5 years old and although a bit slow these days and being phased out, still boot every time. We have bought over 300 Dells in the past 3 or 4 years, have had no DOAs and any problems have been sorted quickly and efficiently. I would recommend them to anyone. We also have Dell Servers which have also proved reliable and stable. We do have some minor concerns over Dell's business practices of late but they seem to be pushing to take the education market by storm. But the kit has always been excellent. We also have some experience of dealing with those who seem to think it better to build your own PCs. Our Junior school has 22 PCs build by a freelance technician that have had problems with PSUs blowing up (literally!). We just cannot get anyone to take responsibility for the failures and have a number of unusable machines. The case manufacturer wants us to disassemble all the PCs and send back the cases for checking. You wouldn't have this problem with a branded PC. There is also the problem of compatibility. Although much better than it was, there is still the chance that the motherboard won't like the sound card for instance. Who then sorts the problem. Branded PCs go through many hours of testing that we simply do not have the time to do.

This is what makes this site so useful. We are just starting to look at putting in Wireless networking across our site and are intending to look at DLink as it is a recommended LEA Supplier. As so many have suggested that the kit is kess than stable, what other equipment are people using? Might be a good idea to start an Edu-Geek approved list of hardware just like the essential software list. Thanks

Chaps, I don't know if anyone else has seen this. It might be a "feature" of the latest Flash Player. We are using local profiles at the moment (OK I Know!) and have to clear them off from time to time to clear local disk space. We are now having problems clearing the local profiles. There is a folder called "flashplayer" that the PC says it's not empty. Well of course we have looked, taken ownership change ids permissions etc etc but cannot remove this folder. Hence we cannot remove the remaining tree. Even tried DOS!! The room we are seeing this in is used by students at lunchtimes for general internet access (and to do work if required) and we think that it is as a result of a mini craze thats going round called "The Penguin Club" Any suggestions would be greatfully received. I don't want to have to re-build 32 PCs to sort this out.

Chaps, I have been scanning the posts to see if anyone has come across the sort of issues we are having with the QCA Testing software. My collegue has got the thing running on a "virgin" PC. Now we have run it under WINSUITE (on an XP Pro SP2 PC) we have come across some problems. When you run the software from a PC we get a message saying that the system needs read write access to a number of Folders (e.g. BACKUPS, DATA, SAVED etc.) We have checked the permissions on the folders and users have modify permissions as instructed in the manual. Anyone any ideas????? Thanks

Thanks for the tips so far. I am only on site at this school one day a week so have just been able to test things. The problem still exists. At first logon of a new user, the folder containing their old files is there on the Home/My Documents but disappears at the next logon. If it is put back then it stays through subsequent logons. I have also noted that new accounts are not getting full control of their home drive. The permissions in the "advanced" tab inherited from the Home share only give the user full control of the folder and not the sub-folders. In this state, users have problems reading and writing profile files. If I add full control manually to the users share all works OK. I think I need some more testing to establish exactly what's happening. I have to be a bit careful at the moment because I'm testing on a live environment!!!! Any further ideas or tips would be appreciated.

Folders are re-directed and seem to be working OK. Switched off Synch of Offline files on the PCs in an attempt to resolve the issue. But it's still there. What I did find late this evening was as follows:- Created a new User ID. Pasted a folder of files into the home folder before the user logged on for the first time. When the user logged on the files were still in the home drive /My Documents. When the user logged off, the folder disappeared to be replaced by what is normally in My Docs. If I then copy the folder back in, the user can log on and off without the folder disappearing. We can deal with this for the moment as we have a backup of the files but it would be nice to understand whats going on. This is my first experience of GPO etc, so I will need clear instructions for any suggestions. Thanks

@Geoff No I forgot to mention that this is a W2K server with XP Pro SP1/2 and W2K Workstations, and some W98 but they don;t do roaming profiles etc so I am discounting them.

Chaps, I have a strange problem... I have set up a number of users on a curriculum network with new IDs. They have home drives on the server with "My Documents" directed to the home drive. That all works. They have roaming profiles which also seem to work OK. The problem is that we copied folders containing teacher's files into the new home folders and now we are finding that a user logs on, the folders are there, they work on files etc and log off. When they go back on on either the same or another PC, the folder we copied on originally has lost all except the files the teacher worked on. We have also had cases where the whole folder has disappeared. We have backups and can restore the folders easily. But why is this happening? Any ideas. Many thanks

We look after two schools. The Primary Scholl has two separate IP Address Ranges as supplied when they attached to the London Grid for Learning via the LEA. This is known as "Option 1" and seems to be being used by a fair number of schools in our area. At the Senior School we are on "Option 2" mainly because we have our own firewall and this gives us 16 "public" addresses to use for things like a web server or VPN (if we ever get the time to look at something like that!) Internally we use one IP Subnet and separate the users currently by Domains. This may all change though as we intend to move to one Domain soon and lock down everything via security and permissions.

@Geoff - Thanks the GPMC pointed me to the problem - access denied to the home folder @Overworked - Thanks the Technet article sorted the permissions. All seems to work now. Many thanks to all

Many thanks for the info

What else should I be doing. This is the first time we've done this. Thanks

While looking through the most excellent info supplied on the subject of roaming profiles, a question has come to mind..... Where does a new user in a roaming profile environment pick up their first and default profile? In non-roaming enviroments, it goes in the netlogon share under "Default User" but where does a roamer look for the first copy of the profile? Thanks

I expect this has arisen before but I can't find anything that will resolve the problem. I am setting up a new set of usernames etc for staff in a Primary School. We are not using Roaming profiles but want to re-direct the "My Documents" folder to the users home drive. I have followed the instructions from MS, the Edugeek Wiki, and checked any other web sources I could find but to no avail. There is a default profile in the netlogon folder that the id's are picking up. The server is W2K, clients XP Pro, staff will be in an OU called TEACHINGSTAFF with a GPO called Staff Settings. The only thing set in the GPO at present is to redirect the My Documents folder to \\server\home\%USERNAME%\. The permissions to the home share are fairly wide open, short of giving them full access I can't see what else I can do. It just won't apply the policy! Need to sort this today as I'm off the rest of the week (hols to take!) Thanks

Not sure if this is the same problem and you may have tried what I am about to suggest. Had a similar problems with a printer change over. I had to delete all the profiles on the PC (use a default profile on the server which is copied to the local PC when the user first logs on.) I'm not sure how this would work with a Mandatory Profile setup but I suspect that the mandatory profile is remembering the printer settings. I also vaguely remember some problems setting up a netgrear print server, but as you can print from the admin account I would look at the profile. Hope this helps!

OK then.... Seems as if there is a consensus that we need to start a dialogue with the developers of Educational Software. The question is how to go about it. One way might be to get together our requirements, don't forget we don't all use MSI to install software (yet!) and there must be a fair range of environments out there, then put together an agreed document that can either be sent individually from all participating schools to the say Head of Development or from EDUGEEK as a forum (or both). Perhaps the Edugeek staff can advise if we should post to this or another thread or to another place on the site. After a few weeks we can then put a document together an post it for comment/amendment. Then light the blue touch paper and stand well back......... 8)

@CyberNerd Not all the Web based packages are that wonderful. We have Heinemann's Language packages that run under the "Harcourt Management Platform" They are a pig to administer, you need to upload a new list of users each year as they can't roll on!!! and kids can't study more than one language at a time!!! Not bad as we are a Language College!!!. They all need to get their act together and we just might be the catalyst.

As we, the members of this esteemed forum, have to install and support this "Educational Software" what say you to setting up a dialogue between ourselves Edugeek) and the developers at Nelson Thornes, Granada, Birchfield et al to get this stuff written properly so it works on our heavily managed environments. Some can do it (e.g. "Focus on" range) so why can't they all. Perhaps a "corporate" approach from some 500+ forum members might get something sorted.

Congratulations to you and the good lady! As an older chap with a 23 year old and an 18 year old, I can say from (considerable) experience that you have both started one of the best periods of your life together. Enjoy! Alan

Hmmmm.. We struggled with similar problems on packages like Multimedia Science School. We found that making all users "Power Users" (Put the Domain Users Group in the local Power Users Group). It was a permissions problem in the end but was difficult to identify exactly what was wrong. This may of course be a problem for some but as we have a desktop lockdown system in place it doesn't cause us a prob.

We found IDN (Bolton) on 01204 363530 were about the cheapest around. Alan