hallb15

We're using Sophos Enterprise Console 5.2.2 and endpoint 10.3.15. I've still only had the one PC affected though, which is odd as we have about 100 desktops and 75 laptops around school.

We use ABTutor and it covers all of those features apart from 'batch login on selected clients' I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean by this so maybe if you could explain a bit more I can tell you if ABTutor will cover it. The keyword monitoring is very good as it allows you to take a screen shot, or record a video for a pre-determined length of time to see what the user does afterwards.

I'm not convinced its a windows update - there'd be more PCs affected across school if it was. The same issue occurred in all versions of Safe mode (low res, command prompt, etc...) I had to nuke it so I could get the teacher back up and running before Ofsted inspector came in - actually I was still doing it when she came in but it didn't seem to matter. I had to bite my tongue though when the teacher was sticking flip chart pages to the smartboard with blu tak!

I've had one PC do the same here this morning. Its a @VeryPC AIO Panel and was running Win 7 Pro, 64-bit. PC boots up as normal but as soon as you CTRL-ALT-DEL to log in it goes to a black screen with just the mouse pointer. You can still move the mouse and the keyboard is responding as you can press SHIFT 5 times to get the sticky keys prompt. We use ABTutor and that was working so I could see the blank screen with just the mouse cursor from my remote PC. With Ofsted in I didn't have time to do much with it other than to quickly re-image it. I've not seen any others PCs in school do it as yet though...

I agree - now that you are on one site and you are managing the network, you should start again. Office365 is great for email, but I wouldn't attempt to use Onedrive for storing users documents. Do you have the budget for a new server? If so you can set that up on a new domain to host hyper-v and virtualise everything. Once you've got it all ticking over nicely, then you can create new accounts for all your users on the new domain and copy their home areas over. Its daunting at first, but when everything is working how you want it, and you have a better understanding of your network, it makes supporting it so much easier!

I'd put money on it being something physical e.g. CAT5 not CAT5e, or older cable suffering from crosstalk/interference due to poor routing etc...

We are predominantly using Netgear in school and we have several of the GS724Tv3 switches. I've got a few devices that are showing 100Mb on the switch but these are not computers; things like photocopiers, a barcode scanner etc. You need CAT5e for true Gb so it may be that you have some older CAT5 cabling somewhere. Firstly I'd check your patch cables at the cabinet end and the PC end as these are the easiest to replace.

Welcome @Zipsterr

I use Altaro for backing up VMs and this appears to work well. For me, the problem was that our old server was being backed up with Windows Server Backup as a temporary measure until all roles were transfered to the new virtual environment. It was reporting the backups as running successfully, however it was only when I tried to recover a file that it decided not to play and that it has been telling lies all this time!

And neither is Windows Server Backup to NAS it would seem...

There's a cure for that: Badger Badger Badger.com! The Original Dancing Badgers!

So when do the new socks start shipping? I'm wearing my Edugeek/VeryPC/BETT socks today but my VeryPC Rulers of IT socks are completely worn out now and I can't keep going on one pair of socks!

Thanks for the replies - we're going down the data recovery route as it turns out there was more on the array than originally first thought...

I was in the process of moving everything off this server anyway as we have pretty much completed our virtualisation process. Just hadn't found a suitable time to finish the job. You know how it is when everything is working OK and you don't want to rock the boat, especially with Ofsted imminent. I can find most things I need of the backups, just some aren't as up to date as they could be. Just wondering how long I let it rebuild itself before I accept its not going to work...

Well its still attempting recovery of the array - 15 hours later! How long should I leave it? I'm beginning to panic a bit as I've realised there is some data on there that wasn't backed up - I know, I know, lesson learnt! Anyone tried a SAS to SATA cable with any positive results?

Having done some more testing it turns out that the drive in bay 2 hasn't failed completely, but has been flagged as due to fail imminently. I've replaced drives 1 and 3 and these are being recognised as new and working so I'm holding out hope that the RAID controller is OK. So I now have to decide whether to press F2 to attempt to rebuild from the existing working drives onto the 2 failed ones, or just cut my losses and replace the imminently failing drive 2 and build a new array from scratch.

To cut a long story short, ML350 G5 server was working fine before the half term break. Powered down properly last Saturday due to electrical work taking place in school. When powered back on, failed to boot as 3 out of 5 drives in the RAID are showing RED LEDs. Seems too much of a coincidence that drives 1, 2 and 3 could fail at the same time. In the RAID option ROM Configuration utility, only 2 drives are showing as failed (1 and 3). I've got replacement drives (thanks to super efficient delivery via @VeryPC) but my concern is that it may be the RAID controller that's dodgy. Any thoughts?

Oh the suspense - or should that be suspenders? [emoji33] Edit: doh!

The only reason I've not won anything so far this year is because the NUC is mine! [emoji3]

Its quiet on here today - half term for everyone? Just the die hard SocktoberHeads checking in...

I will be at home next week (half term break for us) where I can watch each video without worrying about youtube's random restricted mode generator problem... Yay! Great challenge BTW - looking forward to next Friday's...

Ha ha, Gonklet - that's a great word! What did happen to @Gonk's theme tune though? @VeryPC Al any news?

Confusing isn't it and yes, RIP Raul.

Why do I have a Wham song in my head after watching that video? "you put the boom boom into my heart..."

Ryu and Ken of course. Great game on the SNES - terrible film though...