Stuart_C

I've gone for using USB Drive LEtter Manager (DSBDLM) to restrict USB drives to certain drive letters. Then I use Group Policy Software Restriction policies to block all exe and exe type files from those drive letters.

OK update, a little bit of messing around and what we have come up with: Scanning in as PDF through the MFD photocopiers for speed. Then using Acrobat Pro to OCR the PDF. We then use a third party software to read the text. Adobe Read Aloud doesn't do a good job of wokting out where all the text is (things like the "(25 marks)" confise it, and has some words missing from it's database. The voice is also a bit naff. But is does do a good job of converting it to text. Our exams officer has also just found out that she should be able to get PDF's from some of the exam boards on exam day. AQA said no but the rest of the boards seemed positive. This seems to be an odd requirement for one pupil or is it a sign of the future?

Contempalted putting this in the Software section but it might not be software specific so... Child A is allowed to use a laptop in exams. Child A is allowed to have his exam paper read to Child A. Child A is also allowed to use a more advanced typing package such as Word with it's spell checking facilities. Exam Centre A doesn't receive any usefull electronic copy of the exam paper only the normal printed one. Now I think that our Learing support department are trying to get away from the need for human readers so have asked us to look at it. Reading software is not too tricky, Windows iteslf will do that. However exam paper only arrives a short time before the exam and whilst we can scan it into PDF fairly quickly the resulting file cannot be read by Adobe/Windows. I would guess because the photocopier has scanned it as a JPG then converted to PDF. Adobe also can't save the PDF as text. So.. any suggestions? Anyone else come accross this issue?

I've got UAC turned off. It's a pain in the backside.

Just been playing with the Capita desktop software to get it to work smoothly on my normal workstations when staff are using it. But I've hit a snag. When I run it I get an error saying that the file RCClient.inf cannot be coppied to the directory. Works fine for me so assuming I'm on a straight permissions issue I do some hunting and find that for some reason it's copying the file into C:\Windows\Downloaded Program Files, don't know why but you seem to need to be an admin to put stuf in here, (or the trusted instller). However the permissions on the folder, by default, prevent me from chaning them so that "users" can create files. Before I brute forceably override all this can I ask if and how people have over come this? I'm hoping GP will allow me to add to the security so that our staff can access the folder and run it but it seems a massive pain in the back side. Win 7 machines by the way.

Not sure this is the right forum but I'll give it a go. What it the legistlation on converting old videos to digital copies? I.e. we have the video and before it fails (or the video player's fail) we want to convert them to digital format. The question is can we do that it or will digitising it violate the copyright on the original video. I had a feeling I'd read a discussion that converting the media would in fact violate the copyright, the ERA agreement only covering the school for recording live footage, but wasn't sure.

Todays windows based challange see's me playing with folder re-direction. I've already got it working for documents and my pictures but I'm currently trying to get it to work with Favourites (on Win7 machines). So I set it up in a test GPO and it seems to redirect, brilliant. Except that I don't seem to have the favourites and links that I populate with Group Policy from a different GPO. Whilst looking round the test GPO I right clicked on the "URL's" link to see what options I had and acidentally hit "reset browser settings" and then thought I'd see what happens as there was nothing else in that GPO apart from my folder re-direction. When I looged in as my test user i noticed that the favourites suddenly appeared, I was nearly happy until I realised that it had only put in the favourites in the "root" and the folders. So any URL's stored in the Maths folder didn't appear. The only thing I could find was to do with the security on the folder and share but both the user and SYSTEM have full control to where they need to and it's still odd!

@Steve21 because I know not of these things you speak so would have to look into it. Additionally this seemed the quickest and easiest way. @User3204 yes but could I send Document A to 500 people and get 500 responses then send documentB to 500 people and get 500 responses. and so on.

Having a conversation this afternoon about what we could do better. I pointed out that you could re-do some of our PDF forms to allow them I be filled in on screen, which is easy enough using form fields when creating the PDF in Accrobat. I then had a feeling I'd seen PDF's that could be saved and a quick bit I googling found this. So easy enough and would allow us to send electronic application forms to overseas applicant, have them fill it in and send it back. Except I don't understand the restrictions!! Does it mean I can only have 500 responses of each document? 500 responses to EACH document, I don't quite get it.

I was going to say somethig similar, doesn't it actually say something like "total activation requests"? As each pc re-activates (or makes sure it can activate) every 30 says or so it should be high!

There's some good tutorial videos on ms's site. Let me know if you need them and I'll post a link tomorrow. Actually, having just done it, I've found it far easier than most of the documentation makes you think.

Seems to be disontinued so it would have to be second hand, interestingly I have seen one second hand for that price, are you selling it Just trying to work out what Fluke's replacemnt is, CableIQ qualification tester look OK but I suspect may be out of my price bracket, there is a Microscanner2 but I'm not sure how much information it gives about the quality... Looked at the Validator, but alas it might be a bit out of my price range again unless I can sweet talk the bursar into not looking too clolsely at what I am spending..

Cheers, Interestingly I was looking at the Pro version of that NT750

They can add up to 10. Bit of an issue when I need an account for deploying PC's with and have to include the username and a password in an ini file...

I'm looking for a cable tester. I've seen a few but I'm wonding what people would recomend. A cheep one would be a good start something to make sure all the ends are punched it and there are no basic wiring faults. However if anyone has any suggestions as to devices that can measure the quality/loss of the connections/cabling that doens't cost thousands of pounds that would be helpfull. Whilst I need something anyway, I've recently inherrited another network and it really needs some testing to see how much work it needs doing to it.

That would be great if you can.

How do I give a user (or group) permissions to add PC's to my domain? I don't want to make the account a domain admin but it needs the ability to add more than the default 10 accounts to the domain. My guess is that I define it in the Group Policy under Computer Config=>Policies==>WinSetting==>Security Setting==>Local Policis==>User Rights Assignemnt==> Add workstations to the domain. If that's the case I'm not sure whether it should be applied to the Domain (Default Domain Policy) the DC's (Default DC Policy) or whether i can just add it to the OU where I am creating the computer accounts. And I don't want to muck anything up.

Oooo... I like that. I'll have a look on Monday, cheers.

So @PiqueABoo 's suggestion works fine sometimes.... If the machine joins the domain as part of the initial build then it picks up the group policy fine. If it fails to join the domain it continues into windows and I'm left with the same security isses. It doens't seem happy if I have too many machines running at once. So any further suggestons or way to make the domain join more reliable?

Finally bounced enough Win7 machines off my KMS server for them to start activating and.... It all worked fine Yep you need a KMS host key for the server. Just put it in and away you go. There are some good videos on MS's site about volume liceneing and activation, using slmgr.vbs and so on...

I'll give the gpp stuff a go and see how I get on when I'm back in the office tomorrow.

On the whole I've got MDT and WDS working together fine, I'm sure it could be better but so far it works to get win7 and my apps out there. My problem is that when the drivers are installed I get a number of program's added to HMLM\software\microsoft\windows\run. These are the intel graphics driver application (igfxtray.exe etc) when windows runs during the process these run, windows brings up a security warning asking if I'm sure I want to run these applications and the waits. The deployment only resumes after I unticked "do not prompt me for this file again" and press run. The deployment then resumes. Any suggestions on the best way to stop this? When I imported the drivers I just looked at the folders containing the drivers in but it seems to have brought the program's as well. I don't want them as it gives kids the opportunity to "humorously" invert the display.

Is there an offical proceedure for teaching staff who have left, retuning at a later date? I would assume I can just remove their leaving date however I was wondering if this would cause problems or not. I will also need to re-add them to "manage classroom staff"

They are at work and your responsible for what goes on managing the network. I second the AUP suggestion then just do it. Emphasises the positives, faster remote support, rather than anything else. Given you have access to all their files, Emails and I presume you log all the internet traffic, what does it matter? Also who on earth has time to sit there watching people randomly? Do then genuinley believe they would? Leave the Head, HR and Bursar off if it makes them tetchy, but to be honest here I just did it and made it part of the general ICT support package. It's actually more frustrating for the few machines that I forgot to install it on!

I know this crops up now and again but what sort of disk space limits are you allowing your end users? I've allowed everyone a personal allowance of 2GB (Staff and students) but there is a load of shared storage for staff to save lots of things for pupils to use. My issue is actuallly with our Art department who have a seperate area for the art pupils to save art work. Every time I increase the space for them it fills up and then they get moany. Now disk space is not a bottomless pit so my issues is at what point to I cut them off? So far I've got about 177GB for 47 Y12/13's and 150GB for 130 Y9/10/11's (The Y9 don't do that much). All full. So is that plenty compared to you lot or am I massively restrictive?