Fazza

Do it yourself for free using this website: https://bios-pw.org/

I got one off of Amazon a few years back and has been very useful when we've put a padlock on something like a HP MicroServer and misslaid the key! Easier to do than you'd think and the Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube has lots of videos on how to do it...

If you have lots of them, try another key as we have a couple of hundred of them and sometimes if a key has been mislaid, another key with a different number can (more often than not) open the lock with a missing key.

I need to remove a faulty tape from DPM, what I used to do was run dpmbackup.exe -db to do a backup of the DPM database and then run a script from Microsoft that would delete a specified tape from the database. dpmbackup.exe -db doesn't work any more as the executable seems to have disappeared! It used to be in C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2022\DPM\DPM\bin> but it's no longer there. Have Microsoft removed it and replaced it with something else I'm not aware of or is there another way to remove a tape from the database?

AMC, Misco and Plan-IT all sell Dell hardware and you get an account manager you can speak to and if you're ordering a lot they can get access to 'special orders' to get you a discount from Dell etc.

It's a BETA program so no silent install. Only way to install it is to do it manually. Luckily we now have classroom management software (Impero) so use that to log on to all the computers in a room at once and then use Impero to run the install and have to them manually go around clicking on Next, Next, Next etc!

I suspect they don't know how to fix it as a lot of the original software engineers quit and set up their own classroom management software businesses instead.

If they are old speakers the powerline capacitors inside the speakers that normally get rid of any buzz may need replacing - if they're new speakers then the ground isolator may help.

Looks like TalkTalk have got until the end of the month to sort something out else 3.6m customers may not have any service! https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/talktalk-likely-to-default-on-its-debts-ratings-agency-warns/ar-BB1qY2gY?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=3a1c20d143814b8891f942fa73210352&ei=32

No money for moves this year so everyone is staying put - first time this has happened in the 12 years I've been here!

Go on - spill the beans?! $$$

We have quite a few pieces of software installed on our student computers, 2 of which are quite large (namely Visual Studio Community Edition and Adobe Creative Cloud). It's quicker to have them as part of a 'Golden Image' rather than part of a task sequence else computers have to download 60GB of files and when you've got 32 computers in a computer suites that adds an insurmountable amount of time to the imaging process. The problem I'm having is if I Install the Adoce CC software that we use and try to capture an image using the SCCM Capture Media it fails with a general error message. So, for the first time ever I've been using Audit Mode by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F3 during the OOBE of Windows 11 on my reference machine (Hyper-V VM) and when I was done I generalised the image using the sysprep tool I used a DISM command to create the .wim file which was successfully created! When I add the new .wim to my task seqence in Configuration Manager it applies the image OK and everything in the task sequence works except, it doesnt put it on the domain! If I change the .wim to a previous one then it does go on the domain OK proving it's something to do with the .wim I've created using Windows Audit Mode. Is there something I need to do in Windows Audit Mode to allow it to be connected to a domain during the task sequence?

Personally we dont tend to break up our PCs we just put them in out WEEE bin so this is great for the likes of EnviroElectronics who collect our WEEE but we much prefer the VeryPC Flex desktop computers as they have a lockable and/or screwable rear cable cover so the 'little rascals' can't unplug the keyboard, mouse, power cable or screen lead or anything else plugged in to the desckop!

Ask your account manager for clarification on why the room is too small and what their requirements are and also ask why they have provided you with 'really old' machines. Unless you already have this in writing, anything said verbally like this can be taken with a pinch of salt. Let us know what they say.

Weetabix make wheat biscuits for other people but it doesnt mean the cheap own brand wheat buscuits are the same as Weetabix as they use different/cheaper recipes. BMW make Minis but that doesnt mean if you buy a Mini you are a BMW owner/driver!

We've been using https://enviroelectronics.co.uk EnviroElectronics for years now and they provide you with a cage or large dumpster type bin (as many as you would regularly use) all for free and pick it up for free when they're full! Everything from toners, cables to Desktops, Laptops, Printers, IWA, monitors etc.

Testing of AUSST and RUM has gone well on my test PC so I'm moving on to creating a new install package that can be deployed whenever we re-image a machine so all the overrides settings are set automatically... The option to use AUSST is greyed out - what's going on?!

Not that I'm aware off but it was originally set up at least 2 years ago now! Does that handle both security updates and application upgrades do you know? It could be that it was turned off originally as we only have a 1Gbps internet connection and when we run the updates (manually) on 32 PCs in a computer suite it utilises all the bandwidth and out internet grinds to a halt on the other computers so if we have 500+ computers all randomly updating/upgrading Adobe all the time we could have internet bandwidth issues. Now we have a caching server (the Adobe AUSST) this is no longer an issue. Is there a way to turn the Auto Update on or is a re-install required with the settings changed that way?

I'm kinda thinking to have it run as a scheduled task - set to run every 2 weeks and to "run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed". Just got to figure out the easiest way to deploy the .overrides file to all the PCs and then we'll be good to go!

How odd! We had this exact same issue on a VeryPC desktop with an ASUS motherboard in it. We tried a different Ethernet cable, different Network Socket and even removed the PC and tried it in our workshop and it still crashed when you plugged in an Ethernet cable. We even swapped the motherboard out with another one and it still did it. It turned out to be the PSU - once we swapped the power supply with a new one, the problem went away!

We've got the Adobe Creative Cloud suite installed on most of our Student and Staff computers (several hundred) and at the moment we have to go around manually running the updates on the Student computers and if we update too many at once our Internet connection grinds to a halt! I've installed the Adobe Update Server Setup Tool on a Windows 2022 Server and copied the .overrides file to a test PC that has Adobe CC installed on it and now when I manually run the updates from the Creative Cloud Desktop app instead of using Adobes servers on the Internet it uses our local AUSST server so no more Internet grinding to a halt (we hope)! How can we automate the update process of Adobe CC? I've just been reading about RUM (Remote Update Manager) but that is implying that it needs to be installed (and run) on each machine we have Adobe CC installed on - can this be scheduled to run or run remotely from a server so that all PCs update at a scheduled time? How do you guys manage the updates of Adobe CC?

I'd get an electrician to check the grounding of it if that was happening here.

You may need to request KMS keys from Microsoft then, a quick phone call and can they can sort that out. When Windows 10 first came out we only had MAK keys so we had to request KMS and they did it live over the phone and on refreshing the web page the KMS key magically appeared

Licensing and Activation are two different things. Windows Activation will stay the same, either MAK, KMS or ADBA - whichever method you currently use. The OS will not know what type of license you have purchased, that's just a paperwork thing, there are many different (and correct) ways to license Windows etc. you simply buy the cheapest one which covers you for what you want. So what stops someone from buying 10 user licenses and installing Windows on 100+ computers that a lot more than 10 users will use I hear you say? Well in the terms and conditions you signed when buying your licenses you agreed to be audited by Microsoft at any point in time should they choose to do so and if they see you have 100+ users and only 10 User Licenses then in this example they will send you an invoice for the full recommended retail price of 90 licenses of the software you are using!! I've been working in IT for over 25 years and have only been audited by Microsoft once, they gave us a program to run on our DC which counted the users and computers in Active Directory Users and Computers and scanned the network for installed software on the computer accounts it had found. That got uploaded to Microsoft and we never heard from them again!

Looks as good/fun as the other films so can't wait for this to be released