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We get about 158 calls a month! Half of them are things like "won't turn on" or "when i switched the projector off yesterday the power light was flashing" Oh well, we have about 3 genuine problems a month - and they are all todo with SIMS!!

what make is the laptop?? If you want to use windows to configure the wireless network i would just uninstall all the other software that manages the wireless card. We have had a similar problem with Dell's running XP, they won't start a wireless connection until the computer has logged on. We found that if you waited 1 minute after the log on screen has appeared the computer will find the network and work ok!

Been asked by the reception staff to find an all-in-one (or 3 in one) laser printer. The only thing is it needs to be rather small (width and height) Needs to be colour, but apart from that nothing special! Any ideas? (can be a very good inkjet with large cartridges!

what ISP do you have? Some ISP's block FTP access. I know that one of BT's lower business packages doesn't allow you to access ftp.

possibly an old tape. Just got told roughly how much budget going to get, so gonna chuck it and get a new set. :-)

I have an old travan tape drive, which I recently installed in a fairly old server. I have a problem with one of the tapes which was working previously. It is exactly the same, but a different brand of tape. Any idea's what could be causing the problem?

They cannot unblock it for specific schools as it will affect all the users. Could speak to LEA - they should be able to get something done about it! ;-)

Get yourself an Iomega REV drive. You can plug it in via USB and it treat's it like a memory stick which makes the backups faster than normal tape drives. Also, if using SIMS make sure that you extract the SQL data (there should be a shortcut on the desktop!). We found out that our office manager (they were doing the backups (don't know why!)) wasn't extracting the data and they weren't really doing much of a backup because of it!

If he hasn't had any RM training then he will absolutely hate the RM network as he won't know how to find any of it's great features. The RM network is supposed help you. If the techie is trying to use normal windows tools such as Active Directory then the RM network will be seen as annoying because the RM network does all of the Active Directory tools for you! Make sure that the techie is using the RM stuff and he will soon realise that they aren't an annoyance!

I want to be able to access our network (mainly the servers) from home on a vanilla windows network. We have 3 servers all running server 2k3. any ideas? ideally i would like something free!! Also, we use E2bn for our broadband at school. Can I do this through them?

2 x 500 GB Hard drives about 75-80% full take 15 mins here!!

If the teachers here come whining to me about small pay and sh** hours, i merely point out that i am on less than 9k a year, and have never gone home at the end of my hours! Funny how quickly they shut up! Personally i don't see why they are demanding more money, we have 6 pieces of software here that does all of the planning and paperwork for them. Reports are automatically written by the computers so they aren't spending hours on them. There are sooooo many lesson's online for teachers to use. They only need to sit in front of the class now instead of teaching them! (this is not teacher bashing it is merely an observation!)

hmm... I think it is a media over reaction, but i must say the tying up of teachers is very tempting when teachers want CD's copying and i am trying to recover somebodies work!!

i defrag the servers once a week because staff are always moving there files around and at the minute we are loading lots of software to the network. Defragmentation is important if you regularly access lots of files on your computers hard drive. it does physically move files on your hard drive as it will attempt to place them as close together as possible so that it hasn't got to go to the end of your disc to find one file. It doesn't affect files as you see them - this is what scares most people they think that there files are going to go missing because it is going to cut and paste them somewhere else.

I can't believe that price! There support service isn't even that good! We had a problem that SIMS had changed all the passwords and no one had any idea what they were. Capita left us waiting for almost a week! That meant that our admin and finance department couldn't do anything!

So, new financial year coming up, finally get to spend some money. The question is: When do you get your budget given to you? We have just been told that we can spend as of the end of May!!

We have one too! erm... wouldn't say exactly the same comments as you - our one jams, leaks, now won't duplex, and won't do A3. The paper tray is tiny and needs filling up all the time. The ink cartridges are too small for this printer!

this is bad for us as our LEA have said that we can only back up the SIMS data to a tape drive, we are not allowed to use a CD, or portable hard drive. anyone know if there is any freebie software that allows you to backup to to tape??

We have just been given the Luton Learning Platform (as we are a school in luton ;-) ). Our platform comprises of 4 areas, MyDesktop, MyClasses, MyPortfolio and MyMail. All the features in MyDesktop: Calendar, shared file areas, personal file areas, and a diary are already available on our school system, so are not needed or used. MyClasses just makes a class dependant MyDesktop - so that is the pupil profile equivalent of our system. MyPortfolio makes a form of PowerPoint Presentations - Microsoft PowerPoint. MyMail - the only part of the system that might be used. We have an internal email system but it isn't used. So this one probably won't be. Staff have had access to this learning platform for over 4 months, yet only 6 have logged on, and this is only because our office manager is forwarding emails to it. Just really want to know if anyone else has a learning platform that is used and what features it has on it. We are in a poor area of Luton so most pupils don't have internet at home. I really can't see it's use!

Ok need 2 new switches, can anyone recommend any good ones? Not really fussed about prices, need 1 to be 24-port and 1 16-port. Ideally a gigabyte speed and 1 should ideally be managed. Thank you!

do we need a managed switch for wireless networks?? also need some help with wireless access points - what would people recommend as some heavy duty access points.

I have absolutely no problem with Vista. No going to put it on the network at school yet because our staff hate change! Don't mind user account control, just proves that computers haven't taken over yet if people are still making them ask for your permission to do something. Not sure why Microsoft programmed it to ask when you started something. It should prompt when the computer does something itself, i.e: auto updates, backups, scheduled tasks, etc... Like i said, no problems!

I wonder if anyone can guess what this post is about?? Right, currently here is the layout of our network: 1 core switch - Dlink Gigabit unmanaged switch (about 3-4 years old), this connects the servers, our "office" and wireless access points for 1 building (6). This also connects the fibre link to our other building. 1 dlink 10/100 unmanaged switch in the other building. This also connects the fibre at the other end. It has no access points and has only 6 people connected to it. It also links to the ICT Suite Switch (by CAT 5). (about 3-4 years old) 1 unbranded 10/100 unmanaged switch for 15 computers, 4 WAPS. (about 5-7 years old). What would you recommend? We don't have a large budget but the above switches could all do with a replacement.

we don't have problems with staff moving actual computers. I mean they slide the monitors back and forth to suit them but that is it. mind you we don't use the attendance part of our SIMS. Actually i am having difficulty deciding what we do use SIMS for....

Fixed it - switched automatic updates off. Now i have to do it manually from Microsoft update. Very strange though. It is only my computer that has done it. We have about 6 of the same computers with same software around the school and they are not affected.