smarties11

Sorry, I misunderstood your question! I thought your were asking whether we use a different DNS domain internally to the external one. We do use split DNS. Our internal DNS is set up so that all our web-accessible services are resolved locally on the internal IP. Yes, the MS connectivity tester passes with no errors.

Nope, we use the same DNS domain internal and external.

Hi All, I'm having difficulty getting Outlook 2016 to connect to an on-prem Exchange 2010 mailbox with Windows 10. We're looking to deploy Windows 10 soon - I had the same issue months ago on our two IT admin desktops (which are already on Windows 10) and managed to get past it but for some reason this time I can't suss it out! Any ideas? When attempting to connect to a mailbox I'm getting 'Log onto Exchange ActiveSync mail server (EAS): The server cannot be found.' Now I know that Outlook 2016 no longer supports MAPI and EAS is the only option. This should work absolutely fine as we've run EAS for years for mobile devices etc and it still works fine on those. Emails also still work fine on the two IT admin workstations, it's just the initial creation of the e-mail account profile that seems to fail! Things I've done/checked so far.... RPC over HTTP installed on Exchange server (it was) Autodiscover set up correctly in DNS (it was) Disabled and re-enabled Outlook Anywhere in Exchange admin I've tried disabling proxy in IE incase it was attempting to go through the proxy rather than locally. Doing this makes the error appear immediately (before it would take 20 seconds or so of trying) so I wonder if proxy is some of the issue. It shouldn't be, local exceptions are set for our whole domain and I can access OWA no problem with the proxy not set. Any help gratefully received! Thanks.

Thanks! Just to report back that now the image is fully up to date with Windows Updates, it activates successfully via KMS. One of the updates must make Windows 7 aware of the Windows 10 licence stored in the BIOS licence table.

@3s-gtech - Thanks. I've not used MAK codes since XP :-/ When you've used them with Windows 7, do they remain in place after a sysprep? So if I activate our image for these machines with a MAK code, then sysprep it and deploy to all 57 laptops - will these machines stay activated or will I need to reinput the key and activate each one individually? Thanks!

@e4e - Did you have any trouble getting Windows 7 activated on these laptops through your KMS server? We've also bought some of these, and the first one I've opened won't activate. Comes back saying the installed code is invalid, and if you run slmgr.vbs -ato you get an error which basically says that the education licence we use is an upgrade and the supplied OS doesn't qualify. Done some research online which suggests that the windows license installed in the BIOS licensing table is not correct. Now I know I could use a MAK code for these instead but I'd prefer for KMS to work and just wondered if you had the same issues. I will open another in a minute and see if it does this same....

Hmmm, interesting. I like that idea. Create a responsive HTML page that looks good at any resolution and then screenshot it at full screen, save as JPEG and then apply. Good idea. I'll do some investigating!

Do you mean use powershell to actually create the JPEG using the elements I require? i.e. "top right of JPEG add this text string in size 20" etc? Any ideas how I would do that? Ideally I don't want to use a centralised background image as I want to use the full width and height of the screen. I'd rather be able to get the client to dynamically create the JPEG based on the set centralised parameters. I appreciate I might be asking for the impossible! Thanks.

Hi All, We'll be starting our Windows 10 rollout in September, and I'm wondering if anyone here knows of any software that can be used to dynamically create a desktop background based on a set of user defined parameters? A bit of context - here we use the desktop background for various things. It displays current house points, how many pages we've printed this academic year and how many trees that has used, word of the week with translations into FR, SP and DE, book of the month and a weekly maths puzzle. Presently, each Friday evening I update the background ready for the following week. This is saved in NETLOGON, I have a GPP file policy created to copy this to the local machine and then use a GPO to set the desktop background to the local file. This works well and it is fully embedded in our school. There are of course some problems, and one of the main things I hate about this method is that we have a variety of different display resolutions. There's nothing more annoying that a stretched desktop background (having said this, no one has complained!) I did once look into creating a separate file each resolution, have all of these copied by GPP and then use a script on the machine to determine the current resolution and then apply the file for that resolution. But that came with issues, namely identifying all the resolutions in use (I came up with a list of about 10) and then also not being able to account for resolutions set by user - so this was abandoned. Also, it's a pain having to create the backgrounds. It would be great if these could be largely automated, with me just needing to change a central config file. So, does anyone know of anything that can do this? What I'm looking for is something that can run on the client, that pulls a config file from the network with our current background config in, and then generates a JPEG and saves it to the local machine. I guess I'd expect to be able to set positions and font sizes relative to the resolution (e.g. use 20% width, 10% height, top right of screen, for house points etc). A bit like BGINFO does but obviously that's limited to system info only. Another option I guess would be to have an active desktop HTML background a la Windows XP - but can't seem to find any third party software that does this? Would appreciate any input :-) Thanks.

Hi, Just wanted to check something with regard to the Windows 7 rollup approach. When building a fresh image, in order to bring it right up to date, we would normally apply KB3020369 (servicing stack update) and then KB3125574 (May 2016 convenience rollup). From there, we'd use windows update to get all the latest updates from KB3125574 to present. Then once one the domain, network management of updates would take over. Now Microsoft have moved to the cumulative rollup approach they have published a list here (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4009438) of all updates available for Windows 7 SP1. It doesn't include the KB3125574 convenience rollup, but starts at KB3172605 (July 2016 Update). Following the logic on this page, and assuming you use the 'monthly quality rollups' (which include previous monthly quality rollups), rather than the 'security only' updates, and also ignoring the preview updates, it would suggest you need... KB3172605 - July 2016 Update KB3179573 - August 2016 Update KB4019264 - May 2017 Security Monthly Quality Update (which includes all updates from September 2016 - May 2017) So my question is, do you still need KB3125574 (May 2016 convenience rollup) if you install the three above? Logic tells me yes, because the May 2016 convenience rollup is 500mb and the combined total of the three above is only 194mb, however there is no reference to this update on the page I linked above (which is titled "Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 update historyWindows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 update history"!) Thanks!

No problem, pleased it worked for you. Not quite sure why Microsoft have got it wrong in their article but still.....

I've not disabled SMB 1 on our site but the way I read the command you have used to enable SMB 2 (BTW SMB 3 doesn't exist in 7) is that you are setting the lanmanworkstation service to depend on SMB 1 and SMB 2 however you've previously disabled the SMB 1 service and hence that will prevent lanmanworkstation from starting. However, I see that the command you have used is as per the MS article. I personally would suggest trying for your enabling of smb2 sc.exe config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb20/nsi sc.exe config mrxsmb20 start= auto

Could always set the domain as a local exception in IE then create the domain as zone in your local DNS and point the www A record to a locally hosted IIS/Apache instance....

No problem, pleased it worked for you!

Your reverse DNS is correct, i.e. 217.33.213.214 has a reverse DNS of mail.thehazeleyacademy.com - however, when connecting to your SMTP server it is reporting smoothwall.HazeleyAcademy.internal. You need to change the setting on your SmoothWall box so that it reports mail.thehazeleyacademy.com. You can do this on the Email tab, under SMTP relay. Click advanced, and click the option 'user defined hostname' instead of 'use system hostname'. Then type mail.thehazeleyacademy.com in the field presented and save. *edit* Sorry, I forgot to add - some SMTP servers check to ensure that the reverse DNS matches what is being reported by your SMTP server in the banner header, and reject if they don't. Making the above change will ensure they match. Hope this helps!

Awesome, that's great service - thanks @ass17! Will look out for the next version.

Thanks for the new version @ass17! I've installed here today. Much better now with the page width option, especially on laptops with their widescreen displays. A small request if possible - is it possible to get the exam board field to preserve case when auto-matching? e.g., if you type 'a' (lower case) in the exam board field and then press tab to select 'AQA', what is left in the box is 'aQA'. Could it also be changed to a combo box with the exam boards in the drop down? As always, thanks for your work on this. It worked exceptionally well during our mocks without any problems or crashes whatsoever!

You raise a good point! If this was me considering this (and I am now and will amend things here - thanks) I think the way to tackle it is to identify the data required and have that exported to an (encrypted!) excel file stored offsite. So, for your example above, you could run a SIMS report at the end of every week / month - drop it into Excel - and then save elsewhere. This is always going to be much faster than firing up a SIMS box, and would deal with the immediate need whilst you are busy with everything else.

Hi, We've just noticed that when printing more than once, the page numbers in the footer are incorrect. Student printed their 4 page document and got pages 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. They then printed again (by accident, apparently) and got pages 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 and 7/4. I've just tested on my machine and have been able to replicate the same error. Thanks for all your hard work - we are using it for our current mock exam series and so far it seems to be working really well :-D

Hi, I can try - it just happened randomly (I think, when autosaving). There wasn't a particular pattern of events. I'll see what I can do!

Hi, I have given some 'training' this morning to our exams staff. They really like it, however when I was demonstrating it to them, it crashed and generated an unhandled exception! I have pasted the detail below. It allowed me to click continue and then worked as normal, but obviously the error is likely to panic students. Any ideas why this happened? We are using 2.0.4.1. Are there updates in 2.0.6.0 to fix this? Thanks ************** Loaded Assemblies ************** mscorlib Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.296 (RTMGDR.030319-2900) CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework64/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll ---------------------------------------- ExamWritePad Assembly Version: 2.0.4.1 Win32 Version: 2.0.4.1 CodeBase: file://domainremoved.co.uk/examswritepad$/ExamWritePad.exe ---------------------------------------- Microsoft.VisualBasic Assembly Version: 10.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 10.0.30319.1 built by: RTMRel CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/v4.0_10.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll ---------------------------------------- System Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.296 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Core Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.233 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Core/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Core.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Windows.Forms Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.278 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Drawing Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.282 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Runtime.Remoting Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100) CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Configuration Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100) CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Xml Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.233 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll ---------------------------------------- WindowsBase Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.298 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/WindowsBase/v4.0_4.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35/WindowsBase.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Deployment Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100) CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Deployment/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Deployment.dll ---------------------------------------- ExtendedRichTextBox Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0 CodeBase: file://domainremoved.co.uk/examswritepad$/ExtendedRichTextBox.DLL ---------------------------------------- ************** JIT Debugging ************** To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this application or computer (machine.config) must have the jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section. The application must also be compiled with debugging enabled. For example: When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer rather than be handled by this dialog box.

I would imagine it is because SmoothWall is inspecting the HTTPS content of these pages, using it's man-in-the-middle certificate. This breaks some webpages. You can stop this by adding the O365 URLs to a category/category group that has it's HTTPS inspection policy set to 'do not inspect'.

Thanks for getting back to me anyway. I've set it up on a network share now, with all the settings as per our requirements. Works fine on the test user I tried - hopefully it will work well for us in November, when our mocks start! Thanks for all the work you have put into this for people like us - it's most appreciated!

Great. Cheers Rob! I shall give it a try!

@ass17 - quick question for you. In our environment, we have 20 or so accounts in AD for public exams. They are only enabled when required and passwords kept with the exams staff. We do it this way so that during exams season, students can use any laptop or desktop in school for their exam, depending on where the exam is located etc. So my question is what is your recommendation in terms of running this over a network. Is it OK to have this stored in a share on the server, that up to 20 or so students may access at the same time? The config file I will set to save and autosave in their exam account user drive. Or would you recommend having 20 separate copies of it in each of the exams user areas? Thanks :-)