jmak

I'd heard of mobile phones and seen them on TV when I was a teenager...

Simple (An entry especially to wind up fellow pedants!)

Parrot

Just gone to update my system through Dell Command Update and it now had the following warning at the top:

£25 is ridiculous. It's so high that there'll be a black market of fakes.

If the servers are provided by the LA then presumably if you stop buying support from them they'll come and collect the servers? In which case the new supplier would have to start from scratch. Given the regulations around Schools Financial Standard and Assurance Statement I'm surprised no one has picked up that you're paying for something with no service specification. But in your position I probably wouldn't press that button. There's conceivably a time you could ask an innocent sounding question about the LA's service spec. It's about the right time of year for the contract to come through. You could just say that you're doing some due diligence on the IT side to make sure that you have everything covered and you want to check what's included in case you need to buy anything extra...

Have you asked the business manager/bursar for details. We bought a package from our LA and every year the BM went through it with a fine toothed comb. They should at least send you a contract specifying what they'll provide, even if no one checks it. Who provides the hardware currently? That's a *very* old server.

As it's spreading (more cases since first post), I think it's new firmware, not old firmware. I did have one user report that it had magically started working again yesterday afternoon (no reboot of computer, monitor just jumped into life), so maybe they're rolling out a fix... Rolling back firmware on peripherals is more annoying than clients (no restore points or easy "uninstall this update" options). Oh well....

Could you do a bullet point summary for the collective please? An anonymised version of the script would be ideal [emoji120] And what the process is, i.e. what's copied to where and what triggers the events and anything pre-work that needs doing. Very gratefully received - I'm having very similar issues.

We're having issues with Dell docking stations with Dell latitude laptops and Dell monitors. They were working last week and now seem to be gradually failing to display. Mostly they detect the displays, but nothing appears on the screens. I've updated BIOS and drivers, tried Dell display manager and Dell optimizer software, swapped cables. Mostly Dell 5430s with i5 and WD19 USB C docks, but some with docks built in to monitors. The HDMI output works. The dock still provides power and network and connects to mouse and keyboard. Anytime seeing anything similar?

I found that non-M$ USB Ethernet adaptors mostly didn't work so I create a boot disk by copying the boot.wim that's produced by MDT and then boot from USB. The combined USB to USB hub plus Ethernet are ideal for this, but you can swap the boot USB for the Ethernet adaptors with no ill effects. Once connected to the Ethernet it just deploys as normal.

Why not buy the cheap phone? You could then set it up on the school WiFi and set it to automatically save the photos to your network/OneDrive/SharePoint.

I haven't really had any issues with Windows 11. I moved as I found quite a few of my customers had done the upgrade by accident and wanted to have some idea of what problems they might encounter. So the same as Mike really! In terms of the home edition: if you're upgrading it might not be an issue, but on a clean install you have to try *really* hard to avoid signing in with a Microsoft account.

If you carefully modify the socket with a scalpel (ok then, attack it with a Stanley knife, 'cos surely it should fit, it's just badly made) and take the sides off the slot.... It still won't work! Don't ask me how I came to know this valuable nugget [emoji848]

The first couple of machines I checked were set to RAID so I got quite optimistic, but I changed to AHCI and got the same result. UEFI is deselected, secure boot is set to off Almost our whole estate is Dell. I've had success with older machines which needed legacy boot options turning on and brand new machines with PXE boot built into the UEFI stack. I've also managed Surface Pros and some HP devices which needed a particular driver injecting. I'm fairly concerning it's something to do with these machines or the way their BIOS is configured.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm away from that system today - I'll test tomorrow

My deployment server has been working well, but I've recently had issues with m2 drives. The task sequence runs and the image deploys, but it can't find the bootable device afterwards. One was a custom PC, but I'm having the same issue with Dell Optiplex 7060 and I installed the driver pack in MDT and updated the boot files in WDS. I did have to turn on legacy boot to get it to PXE boot, but I've done that on other models without issue. WDS version 10.0.20348.1 MDT version 6.3.8456.1000 Both patched Any suggestions please?

Dance .

You've worked out hovering? If you can do that I'm surprised you can't afford a butler [emoji16]

As a workaround you can create a USB WinPE boot disk (which you create in your imaging system) and usually includes the necessary network drivers. You then stick the USB ethernet adaptor in and deploy the image as normal. I used that method for Microsoft Surface Pros as they will only PXE boot from Microsoft adaptors which I definitely couldn't afford!

I think your approach is sound - I've always thought it seemed like a good option compared to only being able to teach from the front of the class. What's the reason for the teacher laptops being on the guest network? It would be more straightforward to implement and give you more options if the teacher laptops were on the main WiFi network.

Depending on the spec of the Chromebook I've run Audacity successfully in Linux "mode". It appears as an app once installed.

There's an "inactive mailbox" function built in to cater for this requirement: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/create-and-manage-inactive-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide

As long as they don't have a sneaky plastic liner bonded to the cardboard...

I'd start with the school development plan - assuming there is a current one of those [emoji849] That should have a strategy for what the school will be doing to improve teaching and learning and that should be the key driver for change in the IT provision. Teaching should know what they want to achieve; you should be able to advise on and deliver ICT changes to aid the success of the teaching and learning goals. If they don't have a strategy, you can just put "develop IT provision to support teaching and learning goals". And ask the question as to why it's missing.... From what you've said you've already done, I wouldn't expect there to be anything very specific on infrastructure changes, but it might look very different in 10 years, so a holding "ensure the infrastructure is updated to industry contemporary best practice" statement would cover most things. You may have already done more than your list in this thread, but I'd look at Cyber Security accreditation. I probably wouldn't commit to achieving it as there are too many dependencies in a school beyond your control, but it's what I'd be aiming for.