smarties11

We use LimeSurvey for this and for all of our school surveys / application forms. It's open-source. You could also use Microsoft Forms if you are an O365 school

If the drive is ticking then it's likely a read head fault, and software will not help. It needs sending away for a physical recovery. The more you fiddle with it and keep it running, the less your chances of recovery. I've used a company called R3 Data Recovery for a family member with great success (http://www.r3datarecovery.com). It cost £300 IIRC on their lowest priority service - and they recovered the drive within 5 days. HTH

Hi, Is there any particular supplier you'd recommend for this type of setup?

Surely if Cortana can access these programs then they are available through other routes too? I.e. student uploading a shortcut to cmd into their user area etc. Therefore it's not a cortana issue but a lockdown issue?

Excellent! Also....roaming profiles are a bit of a no-no with Windows 10. It doesn't support them correctly. There is a reg hack you can do to get them working 99% but they still won't work with Start Menu XML layouts if you want to use those. I think they work OK with the LTSB 1607 build but you'll only have the same issue when LTSB moves to the latest build in 2019. Best to plan ahead now. You'll need to move to local or mandatory profiles and then use U-EV to roam the user settings.

Sorry to be like a dog with a bone on this, but you are missing my point. I could see you have done it under 'user configuration' on your original screenshot. That is not what I am questioning. I am questioning whether you have this group policy linked to an OU that actually contains users. Your previous comment about the "computer being in the correct OU" might imply that you have actually linked the policy to an OU containing computers.....which won't work. So, your OU 'bgfa.internal/Testing OU' - what is in this OU when you look at it in AD? Your test computer, or your test user? I'll bow out at this point as I don't want to seem like I am hassling you, but I suspect that is why your policy isn't applying or showing in GPRESULT.....

I wouldn't be so sure. Image shows the policy settings are in User Configuration, but it doesn't confirm that the policy is linked to an OU containing a user. Given that GPResult shows nothing and he's mentioned that the computer is in the right OU, my money is on this policy being linked to an OU containing the test computer, rather than an OU containing a test user?

Folder redirection policies are user policies, not computer policies. Your GPO needs to be linked to a user OU, and your test user needs to be located in the same OU. From your quote above it sounds like you've linked the GPO to a computer OU.

THINK I've sorted it. Noticed in the MS article it says there should be ,0x1 after each DNS peer address. So I started again - unregistered w32tm, re-registered - rebooted the DC and then ran net stop w32time w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"0.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1 1.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1 2.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1 3.uk.pool.ntp.org,0x1" w32tm /config /reliable:yes net start w32time w32tm /query /peers And I have time sync back. Will monitor and see if it keeps it this time, as this is the same position I got to yesterday.....

Nope, DNS is working fine and the DC can resolve the NTP servers I am using

Thanks - I've checked and the registry settings are already correct as per that post.

Our connection is via KCOM. I have logged a case to check that NTP is open for us on their firewalls, but as I can access port 123 on portquiz.net and also query various NTP servers successfully using NtpQuery from the same DC, that tells me it shouldn't be a firewall or blocking issue. I just don't get it?!

Hi All, I'm battling to try and get our first DC that holds the PDC Emulator role to sync time with an external time server. It has worked for several years and then stopped working a few months back. As an interim measure, I installed NetTime on the DC and let that control the clock instead. However, what I didn't realise was that although the DC was keeping correct time, because it wasn't being set by the w32time service, other servers and clients in our domain have stopped trusting it as a source so have reverted to using the local CMOS clock. This became apparent yesterday when our users were being asked for credentials to access the Internet, which turned out to be because the time on our SmoothWall was more than 5 mins out from the DC, breaking Kerberos. I solved that quickly by manually setting the time on our SmoothWall and then I reset the w32time service on the first DC and set it to get external time from the pool servers at ntp.org. This worked, and our clients and servers started following the domain hierarchy for time and began trusting the main DC again. Yay. However, I have done a check this morning and the DC with PDC Emulator role is no longer syncing with the external source again. I am getting event ID 47 in the event log, stating that no valid response has been received from the manually configured peer and that it will be discarded as a time source. I have followed various articles online covering unregistering and re-registering the service, and setting the service type to own. I've tried lots of different time services including time.windows.com, ntp.org and most recently ntp0.ja.net (and ntp1, ntp2 etc) and none of them work. Our firewall is allowing port 123 as I can access port 123 on portquiz.net from the DC, and if I use NtpQuery from the same machine I also get a valid response. I'm at a loss! I thought about moving the PDC Emulator role to another DC, but before doing this I attempted to set the second DC up so that it gets time externally first. It fails also! So not a problem limited to our first DC... The commands I have been running to configure the w32tm service are net stop w32time w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"ntp0.ja.net ntp1.ja.net ntp2.ja.net ntp3.ja.net ntp4.ja.net" /reliable:yes net start w32time Here is a screenshot showing the event viewer error, the result from w32tm /query /peers and the success result for NtpQuery for the same peer... The server is running Server 2008R2 and fully up to date with windows updates, up to and including the April 2018 CU. Any help appreciated!

+1 for ColorVeil, we use it here too.

You can use a User GPP to set registry keys in HKLM, you just need to have a reverse GPP applied too, using item targeting. e.g. one user GPP that sets an HKLM registry value, with item targeting set to target a group that the users you want to apply the key to are members of and a second user GPP that unsets the HKLM registry value, with item targeting set to target the same group but with the condition 'not a member of' set. Hope this helps!

Hi, I just wondered if there was a changelog anywhere? We are running version 2.0.8.9 and I just wanted to see what changes the latest version brings. Thanks so much for all your valuable time on this project. We've been using this for a couple of years now and it's amazing!

Crikey, you must have healthy budgets! I've been buying i3/4gb/120gb SSD AIO 23" over the last few years for around 420 ex VAT. This year I only have around 300 ex VAT to play with so will be looking at Pentium G NUCs hung off the back of 23" ish monitors! To be fair though I find an i3 with 4GB of RAM and an SSD to be more than adequate for an IT suite, and the newer gen Pentium Gs are very close to i3 performance with the added bonus of qualifying for Microsoft TAP OS licence.

May I ask what tasks you are using machines of this spec and budget for?

That's great to hear! I've had no issues either yet....fingers crossed. Of course this will all change in the coming days when 1803 is released!

Very odd. I've only got one demo machine set up at the moment, so will be interesting to see what happens when we roll out to further machines, to see if the setting "sticks". Yeah, I also ran intro trouble exporting the layout for a user. Think it might be a bug in 1709. I found a patch for it but it made no difference for me. In the end I just exported the default administrator layout (which worked) and edited manually. It's fairly easy once you understand how the positioning and size parameters work. Little tip - if you create pinned tiles to websites (like we have with parentmail for example), you don't point the tile to the .url file - that doesn't work. You make the .url file in the redirected start menu, choosing the icon you want etc. And then in the layout file, use the DesktopApplicationID parameter instead of DesktopApplicationLinkPath, specifying the URL exactly as you typed it in the .url shortcut. As long as the URL is the same in the layout file as it is in the .url shortcut, the pinned tile then uses the description and the icon from the .url file.

Hi, That's odd. Enabling the remove common program groups works for us. Are you on 1709? Can you verify the setting on the client with gpresult? The UWP apps need uninstalling, as they don't have shortcuts in the traditional sense. The start menu xml layouts won't affect the redirected start menu itself. They are for controlling the pinned icons that show on the right hand side of the start menu. The shortcuts already have to reside in your redirected start menu, and you reference the shortcut that is in that redirected menu. Here's my example (not finished yet as still in our testing phase but you get the idea)

Yeah, I'm installing CS4 on a test machine as we speak so we shall see. Yeah, I can't believe how expensive the creative cloud is for schools. We only paid £5k for a 500 user perpetual site licence for CS4 many years ago. We were quoted something crazy like £10kpa for creative cloud! Which way did you go with student profiles in the end since you ditched the guest route? Are you just using local profiles and then clearing them down regularly? Thanks

This is really useful, thank you. We do use CS but an older version (4) - which isn't actually officially Windows 10 compatible but it does apparently work. Will be interesting to see if it has the same guest issue. Unfortunately the cost of annual licensing for Adobe precludes us from upgrading to a newer version. Out of interest - what were the other issues you saw that you were able to overcome? Thanks :-)

Hi Katy, There is an Outlook GPO setting to auto configure the e-mail profile based on the primary SMTP address held in AD. As long as you have autodiscover setup correctly (which you must have if users can just click next through the outlook startup wizard) then this will automatically create the email profile if it doesn't exist, without any user interaction. Hope this helps

Thanks to all for replying! I'll be checking these out tomorrow......ran out of time today