Fazza

When I worked for a College and we just started to get IWB and Data Projectors we were paying around £500 per half-day installation (including a lectern and PC as well) and when I took a look at the installs they were not exactly professional with trunking quite litterally, falling off the walls as they hadnt bothered to use any screws to secure it! I said to my boss at the time if he spent some money and purchased a decent set of tools then I could do a better job than that as long as I had someone else to work with who was good at DIY! £2,500 later and a load of DeWalt cordless tools etc. we installed every IWB and DP that the college wanted from then on. All we did was speak to the Estates team for advice on the Aspesos register etc. and the H&S manager watched us climb up and down a ladder and showed us how to check for any damage etc. and then off we went!

I've changed the controller board on a HDD before and it worked a treat and I was able to get all the data off of it. Like others have said, it needs to be a like-for-like hard disk drive which is an advantage of being in a school as we dont tend to buy one computer at a time but a whole computer suite etc. so it's more likely than not that you'll have access to another HDD that is exactly the same. If not then eBay might be worth a try.

Step 1: Be prepared for all the Mac Haters to reply on this thread with no helpful information whatsoever causing the thread to become very large with no actual answer for you. Step 2: Swap them for PCs... Step 3: Ignore step 2 I was trying to be funny! On a serious note... Like Micro$oft, Apple do some Technician Training called OS X Support Essentials and you can get the books on Amazon for around £30 a go which will help. Before you know what to do technically, you need to decide what you want to use them for! If it's just for any old user to connect to the internet on and do some Wordprocessing then just create a local user account for the students/pupils and do it that way! You can integrate the in to Active Directory if you want them to log on themselves. Remember, if you have an ESS agreement you can get Office for Mac and install that on them! Do they want to print - then Google that and you'll see how to connect to a Windows UNC path (I think they're called SMB connections). Want a Mac Server? Well, there's an App for that for around £20! Take a look in the Apple App Store and see what it can do! If you've got some pupils who are struggling to engage with computers then let them have a go on a shiny Mac - they look cool(ish) and are a trendy brand and look nice in a classroom - a lot of the time iPads are used simply because they look shiny and the students are willing to engage with it because of that. Here are a couple of links you might find useful: http://training.apple.com/pdf/mac_integration_basics_1010.pdf http://training.apple.com/pdf/mac_management_basics_10.10.pdf If you're keeping one for yourself you can even install Windows on it using a program called Parallels or VMWareFusion (around £45 each).

Network Share: Software and Documents such as POs and Asset Registers etc. IT Services Intranet: Useful things like buttons that link to all our systems from our Helpdesk to our Wireless Bridge along with contact details of suppliers and support contracts Microsoft OneNote: Procedures and Notes on everything we do - full of screenshots, error messages and what we did to fix them etc. With OneNote we set up an 'IT Services' account and then shared the different notebooks (we have one for each of the 7 or so sites we support) with all of our own accounts so when someone adds something to onenote it automatically synchrosnises on all our devices

If you're talking about users and groups in Active Directory Users and Computers then search EduGeek for Salamander

Just done it too!

I'm pushing out a Package using SCCM 2012 R2 and for the last few days in the Deployments window it says it has installed successfully on 50% of the computers in the collection I have deployed it to. However, if you go on to the 50% that SCCM says doesnt have the package, it's there! So it has deployed the Package and installed it OK but despite the computers being used most of the day, SCCM still thinks it's only 50% successful! What's going on?!

I'm not a supplier so I cant give you a quote. The reason I'm posting is because I've never heard of Nutanix Hyper-Converged before so thought I'd give it a quick 'Google': "Nutanix delivers invisible infrastructure for next-generation enterprise computing by natively converging compute, storage and virtualization into a turnkey hyperconverged solution." Statements like this always make me laugh as they're clearly aimed at Director/CEO level to try and bamboozle them with the current buzzwords - the only one missing is the word 'Cloud' and then I would have won Buzzword-Bingo!

We use Impero and it's great fun taking the automated screenshots it takes of any Violations made by the students to the computer suite that they are in and hand it to the teacher in the room for them to deal with!

Why dont you start a Poll on this thread then and then you'll find out!

That could be what I'm looking for! Thanks - I'll take a look and let you know how I get on. *EDIT* I've checked and that section is in the remote computers registry so I've added the keys to a Group Policy so we'll see what happens!

I've just noticed in a couple of our computer suites that the NVIDIA driver software is announcing that a new Driver Is Available so I was wondering if there was a way or stopping this message from displaying? A registry key change or something maybe? Thanks.

Not really, just Next, Next, Next Finish - copy the settings from our main site and bobs your uncle! Once I've got an Image created it means one of our Technicians can go on site, boot via PXE and then leave and let it do it's stuff and as long as it doesnt fail it will be ready to log on by the user when it's done! We have a 100Mbps direct link to the site so it's easy to remote on to and no messing about with SCCM at our main site.

Hi! I've just finished installing and configuring SCCM 2012 R2 at one of our other schools and it's time to create our first image there. I've got all the software installed and working OK and have run the manual image capture CD on the machine but I get an 0x00004005 error which from what I can gather is a non-specific error saying something has gone wrong! I was trying to find any log files on the computer but couldnt find any in the normal places so I decided to launch a command prompt just to check it could contact the server and I was not able to ping it. On performing an ipconfig/all I could see no DNS servers were listed so I pinged the servers IP address and that came back OK so it can see the server but only via IP and not DNS. I quickly enabled the local admin account, rebooted Windows and when I then did and ipconfig/all the DNS settings were there! Any ideas why the DNS settings are disappearing during the manual image creation which I guess is running sysprep at the time?

I decided on the KISS method and just installed a fresh installation of SCCM at the other sites.

So did I as it clearly says Win 10 SSD and standard HDD - I assume simply replying to this thread counts as an entry to the prize draw?

That would do it! Good idea that, might use that myself when doing upgrades/updates of the backend and we want to make sure no one tries to access the database whilst we're doing it as it can screw it up sometimes if they do!

Then the settings will most likely be generic and work with all supported operating systems. The ones for Windows 8 don't specifically say Windows 8 setting on them. You need to build a test pc, bung it in a new OU in AD and create a test GPO and try the settings out.

You should be able to do all those things with a Group Policy, just download the arms files and take a look as I'm sure they'll be in the same place they were in 8 or at least somewhere similar.

Good luck with getting something that will do all of that for just £3,000! You might want to look at something from the likes of www.serversource.co.uk it's refurbished Dell servers and storage with a 3yr warranty on it. We've used them loads of times and it's nearly half the price of new and the kit we've had from them is in 'as new' condition with the odd scratch here and there (if you look close enough) and the warranty is good too. Give them a call and have a chat with Joe, tell me what you want to do and what your budget is and he'll tell you what they can supply you with.

We use the Sahara Wall Mounted Active Speakers as they come with a lead with the power switch and volume control on it. They're around the £40+vat mark. Sahara 1050001 30W Active Speaker System with Wired Volume Control and Speakers | Stuff-uk.net

Ask the Music teacher to suggest something, that way you can blame them if it's not right as they're supposed to be the experts on these things!

It's a permissions issue. Only the user on that particular Mac has permission to read the files. Same as NTFS permissions, just Mac ones! Right-Click on the folder and in the permissions section add the user you are currently logged on the MacMini as to it and then you'll be able to access the files once it has done it's magic.

We use Ricoh for our MFDs so can't really help you choose from personal experience. What I would say is that you will need engineers to come out and service/fix them at some point so where are they based? The closer they are, the quicker they will come out to you! We use Ricoh, partly because they happen to be based in the same town so response times are brilliant!

So what you're saying is that looking at the stats that I mention is an optional extra then? Cool, at least we now know, shame it's has literally taken years to be told this as we've always been fobbed off with random answers in the past. All you need to do now is write an SLA so all your customers know what kind of service to expect as unblocking a website seems to have a higher priority than wireless not working as when the wireless is playing up, teachers cannot teach with their laptops and as everything is electronic they need to access the network to open their resources so when the wireless stops working, it is a critical thing for a school and we shouldn't have to chase it up over several days and then end up fixing it ourselves!