Fazza

If that's the only solution then I'll have to remove the Group Policy or at least the the %TEMP% location from it I'll add it to that page in a moment. In the meantime we've just tried to install the NET2 security door software on a laptop for a member of staff and that also doesnt work! Not a good start for us!

We've just implemented Software Restriction Policy GPO and configured the following: Set to Disallowed: %appdata%*.exe %appdata%*.bat %appdata%*.ps1 %Application Data%*.exe %Application Data%*.bat %Application Data%*.ps1 %temp%*.exe %temp%*.bat %temp%*.ps1 %temp%*.zip*.exe %temp%\7z\*.exe %temp%\rar\*.exe %temp%\wz\*.exe %userprofile%*.bat %userprofile%*.exe %userprofile%*.ps1 We've just had out first issue come to light and we cant install FireFox on any of the computers as it uses the %TEMP% folder to install from!

We use an Acer Iconia Windows tablet as a Surface Pro is way out of our price range! Great for watching training videos and grabbing as you leave the office to go around the schools we support. Full blown Office 2013 on them so can pretty much do anything we need to do and it's great for accessing the front end of our helpdesk system online so can close jobs on the fly

We had a Netgear switch that was doing something similar and after reading the manual it turned out the switch (although it had been in for ages) had decided to become overloaded so we had to by a proper HP PoE switch instead and no more problems

We went from Imaging with Ghost to using SCCM purely for imaging via PXE and now use it for some much more! Cheap as chips on a school licence agreement.

I'm guessing that you'll need to make the Inventory look for the file on a computer first and store that information within SCCM before any query will work.

I agree but sadly without SLT support it just goes on and on and on. We bulk buy laptop keyboards for one department and get them for £5 each instead of £25 for the generic ones as a bulk discount! The department claimed they just fell off due to wear and tear until one day they caught a student pulling of and breaking the keys - they then came with 'egg on face' to apologise and tell us we were right all along!

lol - we get a couple of those each year and have to try and keep a straight face whilst putting the keys back in the right place! Had to get rid of a few once as they had been even more creative than usual and used keys from multiple keyboards to write/type the word they wanted! Vandalism falls on deaf ears at most places I'm afraid and the only practical answer is to have CCTV and a security guard to monitor it constantly!! #nevergonnahappen

We have a Vandalism Toolkit containing all sorts of glues and plastic fronts that we had the DT department make to glue on to the front of some of our older PCs that the students enjoy breaking the grills on! Not forgetting the graffiti remover for getting rid of phallic symbols that have been drawn/etched on to the odd case!

That might be where WinPE puts it's own files, but the files that SCCM uses are in a place of SCCMs choosing. In the SCCM admin console right-click on the boot files, get the properties of them which will tell you the location of the files you need to use.

So it's just the schools with 'oiks' that have vandalism then?!

I had the exact same error and the KB3143760 is what fixes it. Make sure you follow the instructions to the letter or it wont work. If you follow the instructions correctly, the first things it does is copy you boot image to your c: driver. The it mounts it . It then talks you through updating a file within the boot image and then finally it un-mounts the boot image. After un-mounting the boot image you must then copy the boot image file from the c: drive to where it is stored within your sccm installation (mine is in the SMS_XXX\osd\boot\x64\ folder) and then within the SCCM console you need to right-click the boot image and update the distribution point.

We did this a long while ago using a spare server we had lying around and two old PCs. Our Administrator became the invigilator (an online course/certification at the time if I remember correctly) and that was that. When one of us wanted to sit an exam we would schedule it for half-term and put a 'bugger off exam in progress' sign on the door.

20 - is that all?! We've also given up on checking the computer suites each half term as we used to change 100+ each half-term break which means for some time the students had been using them without any problems and very few had been reported to us! Now we only change them when they are reported to us. How on earth they can use them beyond me as for us it's normally the space bar that is broken and pretty much unusable. Vandalism is pretty much accepted by people outside of the IT Services department which is why we've given up on it. I wonder what taxpayers would think if they knew hundreds of pounds of their money was being used each year to replace/fix vandalised computer parts? Multiply that by all the schools in the UK and that's a lot of money!

There is an Open Source alternative: Open Sankoré | The Free Interactive Whiteboard Software An Epson rep showed us it when they originally demonstrated one of their interactive projectors.

That's exactly what wold happen - LOL!

Forgot about that! We use SCCM for pushing out our builds for Windows 8.1u1 and have that as part of the task sequence

The best diagnostic tools I have ever used were when I worked in a College and we had Ultra-X stuff! We had a PCI card that had it's own RAM and Graphics Card so you only needed a working CPU for it to work and power on so you could let it run its onboard testing software to diagnose a faulty PC. As we had around 2,000 Desktop PCs these cards were a great time saver - at £900 each they are expensive in a small environment like a School with a couple of hundred PCs but at the College they saved us so much time and money messing about testing different components. Ultra-X also did some StressTest software which was a couple of hundred quid at the time and was great for stressing out a computer to see if it was crashing or not when the RAM got full or the CPU ran high for a while. Not sure if they're still going, but if they are then from my experience of using them a few years ago they're worth a look. At the moment the only thing we use is our experience of being in IT Services/Support for a fair few years now! Any PITA faults I just pass down to one of our Technicians - that way I dont get a headache, they do!!!

Thankfully they have a lifetime warranty so give HP Support a ring and see what they say

We've been using the software for years and until the last few months there have very rarely been any issues with the software - currently Impero is working for us so we are implementing our 'if it aint broke dont fix it' policy and not upgrading (like we would normally do) during the next half-term break.

ECDL is probably the best way forward. Assuming you're confident with your Office skills then go to the ECDL website (ECDL / ICDL Syllabus - ECDL Foundation) and download their Syllabus. You can then use that as a framework on what you are going to teach them. We've used that in the past too as it was basically cheap and all online self-paced learning. Sadly the uptake was quite low so we scrapped it.

When was the last time you needed support from Microsoft for Movie Maker? If like us the answer is 'never' then dont worry about support and install it anyway!

I think I'd rather have a 1970's simple system that have a handful of bugs (if any) that they know about and have a fix/workaround for than a modern CPU with Windows 10 OS controlling a nucleus missile!!!

Yes! The Teachers are (supposed to be) trained professionals - something some seem to have forgotten and think it's the job of the IT Services department to safeguard the children they have been trained to teach, look after and safeguard! That doesnt mean an IT Services department doesnt have it's part to play, but the only part they should be playing is implementing technology solutions (such as web filtering and monitoring) that the safeguarding person (or persons) have requested.

The best safeguarding method is classroom management by the teachers.