Gongalong

Ah, I should have clarified I'm looking for a pair of speakers, like the X-140's. It's a pain to site the subwoofer on a desk.

Thanks all. It's definitely confusing. It seems every time that the teacher logs out and back in that the SmartInk add-in for PowerPoint disables itself. I have no idea why. You can re-enable it for that session, but after logging off you're back to square one. Even then with the add-in enabled it seems to have lost the ability to detect which pen is picked up, unless that's a "feature". I note the small floating toolbar that appears during PowerPoint presentations allows you to select the ink colour, but why do that when you've got 4 different pens? I'm guessing the problem with Word is the gesture control issue.

Hi folks, To-date we've always used Logitech X-140 speakers, but eBuyer aren't stocking them any more, and I can't find them at a sensible price (£20) from any decent suppliers. Can anyone recommend some decent (good range) PC speakers, in the £20-40 bracket? TIA

Hi folks, For anyone who's very familiar with the Smarttech Smartboard software... (running with a SB680 board) 1. PowerPoint doesn't seem to be "pen aware". That is when you write with different colour pens they just get treated as the pen selected in the PowerPoint floating toolbar. Anyone know if this has been caused by an update, or there's a way to enable this? 2. I'm told by the teacher that she was able to scroll through a Word document by just swiping up and down. Now it just selects text, much like a mouse. Is/was this possible? TIA

All I could do was identify the affected machines and manually un/install. A mess.

FishCustard: I've just remembered that someone senior in support gave me his contact details to cover any situation. I emailed him, but he's on leave until next week. I emailed the person referred to in his Out of Office, but he's on leave until Thursday. In his Out of Office there's a group address, so I've emailed that...

The problem is what can I do if an Account Manager doesn't respond? Is there an alternative route in to RM to escalate a question? (The difficult with large faceless organisations... or at least when the only face you know doesn't respond)

They certainly don't do themselves any favours...

We've not had responses from two different RM Account Managers, despite repeated chases over the last 2+ weeks. Not good! Anyone else having problems getting replies?

Just in case anyone picks this up via Google, the PC has an MSI H61M-P31/W8 motherboard. It has no "Intel XHCI mode" option, or anything that seems related. Edit: I got a PS2 keyboard and mouse to work. This was after disabling USB in BIOS (which then disabled PS2 devices as well! Cue one BIOS reset). The problem now is that in Device Manager there are two devices with the following error: "Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers required for this device. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source. (Code 52)" These devices are: Intel® 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enchanced Host Controller - 1C26 Intel® 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enchanced Host Controller - 1C2D I have also tried updating the BIOS (this was on v3.0). It's now on v3.6, but no new options that I can spot. Basically all USB functionality is dead, following this windows update. I'm going to try Intel drivers to see if I can revive the USB controllers.

Hi folks, I seem to have been hit by the (bloody awful) Win 8.1 update bug that takes out the mouse and keyboard. The only problem is that I don't have a UEFI settings page that all the fixes seem to be referring to. I have a fairly basic MSI board, although I'm struggling to figure out what atm as it doesn't show in the BIOS setup page at least (short of opening the machine up). I have tried settings related to USB, but there's pretty much just the ability to turn it off, along with USB legacy support. Turning the latter off hasn't helped. Any ideas? TIA

Hi folks, We're looking at getting one of the CCTV bird boxes from the Morrisons points scheme: http://www.morrisons.co.uk/More-for-you/LetsGrow/Catalogue-2013/Wildlife/CCTV-Bird-Box-Kit/ The Science teacher who wants to get it want to be able to capture video/stills from the device, which seems to output with composite video and mono audio. Any recommendations for a Win 7 compatible cable/box? TIA

Hi folks, Anyone got one of these, and if so any good? IPEVO IS-01 Interactive Whiteboard System | IPEVO Online Store | www.ipevo.com We've had something similar (a "Mimio" IIRC) that was awful, but it was much much older. TIA

Hi folks, I posted some months ago, and someone recommended a good no nonsense wireless USB adapter. Annoyingly I can't find the post. I've got several laptops with faulty wireless, and also no end of problems with our current wireless setup, so am looking for something simple I can plug into a laptop just to give me an alternative. Any recommendations? TIA

We certainly couldn't make them administrators. We have around 100 installs of it, so it can be a real pain at upgrade time.

Ah yes, I should have mentioned we get support from the LA, not direct from Capita. So it's the (old?) system of deploying the patch to the local SIMS server, then the clients pull it from there when they're next run.

Hi All, We've just applied the Summer 2 patch, and had the familiar issue of the client failing to upgrade on a large number of machines. Staff were told to start it from the original icon (in the SIMS group) yet still. Aside from an administrator doing it are there any other approaches that reduce the likelihood of the upgrade working? (Obviously it's a huge job having to manually upgrade 50+ staff PCs, and unless I'm missing some basic step or fundamental understanding I'm surprised-ish Capita haven't resolved this by now) TIA

Thanks all. It was a profile issue, which I should have twigged but I've never had that exact behaviour before - corrupt profiles I've had aplenty.

Hi folks, The account for one of our Y11 students has an odd issue, when he logs on it immediately logs him off again with no error. I've removed Ranger from a test machine, and it still does the same thing. I'm having a look through events on the DC, but can't spot much other than the logging on and off events. For the moment I've created the student a copied account so they can get on and work, but I'd like to figure out why this is happening. Anyone come across this before and/or can suggest somewhere to look/troubleshoot? (We have a 2012 DC, with Win 7 clients. I've rebooted the DC, just in case) TIA

The scripts are GPO dependent i.e. it depends who you are as to what you get. Script as follows. I've taken out the share paths and names (not that I'm paranoid...): Option Explicit Dim objNetwork, strDrive, objShell, objUNC Dim strRemotePath1, strRemotePath2, strRemotePath3, strRemotePath4, strRemotePath5 Dim strDriveLetter1, strDriveLetter2, strDriveLetter3, strDriveLetter4, strDriveLetter5 Dim strNewName1, strNewName2, strNewName3, strNewName4, strNewName5 ' strDriveLetter1 = "T:" strDriveLetter2 = "V:" strDriveLetter3 = "W:" strDriveLetter4 = "Y:" strDriveLetter5 = "Z:" strRemotePath1 = "UNC Share Path" strRemotePath2 = "UNC Share Path" strRemotePath3 = "UNC Share Path" strRemotePath4 = "UNC Share Path" strRemotePath5 = "UNC Share Path" strNewName1 = "Share Name" strNewName2 = "Share Name" strNewName3 = "Share Name" strNewName4 = "Share Name" strNewName5 = "Share Name" ' Section to map the network drives Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive strDriveLetter1, strRemotePath1 objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive strDriveLetter2, strRemotePath2 objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive strDriveLetter3, strRemotePath3 objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive strDriveLetter4, strRemotePath4 objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive strDriveLetter5, strRemotePath5 ' Section which actually (re)names the Mapped Drive Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") objShell.NameSpace(strDriveLetter1).Self.Name = strNewName1 objShell.NameSpace(strDriveLetter2).Self.Name = strNewName2 objShell.NameSpace(strDriveLetter3).Self.Name = strNewName3 objShell.NameSpace(strDriveLetter4).Self.Name = strNewName4 objShell.NameSpace(strDriveLetter5).Self.Name = strNewName5 ' End of script.

Kudos to Xsensior / Openxtra because they added the function to alert for a disconnect to their software, after I logged it as a wishlist!

AButters: yep, I'd like to. There's just not been a convenient time to trial it. Duke5A: yes, they're in VB. The script sets a bunch of values i.e. the drive letter, the path, and the assigned name. It then uses a CreateObject("WScript.Network") with a CreateObject("Shell.Application") to map and name the drives. I found after all that for one of the scripts the drive *had* been mapped, hence the conflict. But not for the second script, which maps T, V, W, Y, and Z, and fails at T. Oddly the scripts take 5 or so minutes before they actually execute, so I sat watching Windows Explorer this morning to see if it gave any clues as to what was going on, but bizarrely T mapped without error. If it comes back I'll revist.

Hi folks, I've got a drive mapping via script issue... On my PC there are 4 scripts that run to map drives. These are legacy scripts from when I started working here, and are linked with GPOs. One is specific to IT support, and the others are standards scripts that are running on other staff PCs without issue. I don't think this happened immediately when I switched to Windows 8, so perhaps it was when upgrading to 8.1, but now two of the scripts fail with a "The local device name is already in use" error. I've done the usual, and checked the drives aren't already mapped, and that they aren't assigned to other devices. Neither seem to be the case. When I check the drive listings, disconnect the problem drive letters, and run the scripts again, they run without issue (!). For reference purposes the first script maps F, G, H, I, L, M, P, and R. It fails at P. The second script maps T, V, W, Y, and Z. It fails at T. Any ideas on what might be causing this? TIA

Well all students have full control of their own folders - as mentioned above I don't know whether Windows did this when building their home folder, or whether it's something our user import tool does (Ranger Account Manager). Either way it's what we have now. For the students that have done it I've removed full control, on the assumption that's what they've used (versus Modify) to make this change. I'll have a look at AccessChk. Another mechanism I might be able to use is TreeSize, which presumably won't be able to scan folders with only the user's permissions. I can at least then quickly look through a list of folders to see what is zero bytes or can't be checked.

Hi folks, This is technically on a 2008 R2 server, but is more of a general Windows question. I've got some students that are changing the permissions on their folders (taking ownership, and removing the administrator and all other accounts bar theirs). I don't know why they are getting full control on their folders, unless this is just standard Windows behaviour when creating a home folder. The problem is that I only discover this when I click on the particular home folder, and with some students it's a subfolder within. Is there a way to check/scan/whatever a number of folders to see if the administrator has been locked out? TIA