TheCrust

From memory I think it came out of the Beta version and originally had a fighting fish on it, but I could be remembering another one I experimented with previously. I think I have a version after I removed the fish but before I did anything else to it floating around somewhere. If you want a copy to use as a base for your own backgrounds, PM me an email address and I'll bounce it your way.

We were an all-Vista school before and at the moment, we're a mix of 7 and Vista - but only because our rollout is still in progress. By the time the start of term comes around, we aim to be all 7. At least, that is the plan but it's been severely scuppered by HP delivering 300 desktops late....

Thanks. No, that's the live thing deployed across the entire network now - unless I have a change of heart (or come up with something better!) between now and the start of september. Changing it wouldn't be a problem - we use SCCM so could deploy out new background images fairly routinely: for instance to promote an event within school, or get a message across.

Now there's a thought...... Here's a pic of our initial login screen now I've been playing. http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a69/thecrust/private/140809-02.jpg

We've used exactly the same procedures to create our Windows 7 images as we did for our Vista ones with no problems. Except (and there's always a "but"!) We wanted to use our SCCM 2007 R2 infrastructure to deploy the images in a single hit - create the task sequence, advertise it to a collection (or collections!) and then watch the machines deploy 7 without having to visit them. I've found that although my WDS image works fine for WDS, joins the domain happily etc.. it won't play properly via SCCM. It's not a compatibility / Windows 7 support thing as SCCM will deploy a plain vanilla Windows 7 RTM image fine (as I discovered when I accidentally put it down to the entire network earlier this week...!) so it must be something I'm cocking up in the image creation process without realising it.... We've nearly done the whole school via WDS now - so SCCM can wait for the moment, but if anyone has any thoughts on that it would be appreciated!

We're based in S.E. Derbyshire and we've just used IT Collections Ltd - A computer recycling company and IT disposal centre to dispose of a lot of our old kit. There were circa 130 desktop units, around 20 or 30 TFT panels, some CRTs, a couple of old poweredge servers and a good 40 or 50 broken laptops (that had been cannibalised for spares over the years) and they happily took the lot. Cost us nothing. They provided a certificate of collection when they picked it up on Friday, and assured me we will get a certificate of secure data disposal in a couple of weeks along with a complete breakdown of kit in terms of serial numbers (I already have that anyway but it will be interesting to see if any of it "disappears" along the way). In terms of the servers, we removed the drives and wiped them ourselves - with the oxy-acetylene gear in the technology prep room. That was fun.

Have just finished configuring Win 7 Pro on my laptop, and have the Enterprise / Pro images all ready installed on my WDS box ready for Monday morning. I see that MS decided to keep the bird / leaf theme on the login screen that was introduced in the RC. Does anyone else think the dove / olivebranch visual is a bit..... um..... gay? I know we can change this (and I already have on the laptop, and plan a suitably "corporate" branding of the schools rollout) but out of interest I'm wondering what everyone else thinks. When we rolled the RC out to the IT department earlier this year, the general concensus of the login screen was it looked "very hippy" and not all that corporate!

I'm more interested in those that are getting better - but no word on them so far (presumably because hyping the infection is more news-worthy than re-assuring folks who worry that people are getting better!) Anyone read Stephen King's "The Stand" or seen the film of it?

It's been nearly two years since I had the misfortune of having to deal with a digiblue camera so I could be misremembering but I have a recollection of having to "admin-ize" a generic user account with a mandatory profile for students in a primary I supported for the first run of the software before I could remove the admin rights and it would run as a regular user.

Ashok, you star. We removed the quantum media changer driver - leaving it as "unknown media changer" - and tried another test backup. Reported transfer rates were up in the gigabytes-per-minute this time, and the backup of the 800Mb program files directory on the machine took less than a few seconds. In fact it was so fast we thought it had failed and quit on us! We're now running some test backups from network servers using the agents but it seems this has sorted it - one fix that definately WASN'T documented on either the Quantum or the Symantec websites! Many thanks again!

Thanks guys - we've already tried both of those. Upgraded the firmware on the drive, and ensured we are using the Symantec drivers for the drive itself (did I not say this in my first post....? Apologies if I didn't!)

We've just replaced our aging Quantum LTO1 Valueloader with a bit more capacious Quantum LTO3 Superloader 3 - but performance under Backup Exec 12 on a Windows 2008 server seems, well, pants- to put not too fine a point on it! With the old valueloader on the same server, we were seeing data transfer rates over 500Mb/min - but with the new Superloader 3, we're getting only 5Mb/min! It starts off around the 600Mb/min mark, then plummets steadily and quickly in the first few minutes of the job until it bottoms out around 5Mb/min. A recent 800Mb test job (backing up the program files folder from the media server itself, to rule out any agent issues) took nearly 3 hours to complete! Obviously this isn't great when trying to back up nearly a terabyte of data overnight - it just isn't going to happen. I've checked and confirmed SCSI connections - it's on an Adaptec 29160LP adaptor: not the newest HBA, but it worked fine with the other one. Changed cables, changed terminators. Still the same. We've even gone to the extremes of completely reinstalling the server to ensure any old drivers from the original Valueloader have been well and truly removed from the environment. No change. We're using the Quantum driver for the autoloader mechanism, and the Symantec driver for the tape drive. Autoloader operations complete fine and in a timely manner suggesting the quantum driver is OK. We've updated the Symantec drivers using a hotfix from their website, and applied SP3 for Backup Exec 12, still no change. We're using brand new Sony LTO3 media throughout. Given Backup Exec will use a network folder as a target for backup, and record throuput in the region of 300Mb / min when it does so, we're comfortable that it's not an agent issue pulling files from machines, or that the software itself is rubbish. It seems confined to this autoloader - which suggests SCSI, driver, or physical device issue. However we've been on to Quantum, who have inspected the device logs and had us run some test software against the device only to find no fault. Under the test software, it is returning the expected data transfer rates and they're insisting the device is working fine - it must be something else. Any suggestions? I think there can only be a config problem left - but I'm beating my head against a brick wall over what it could be as I've spent so long staring at it without success! Seeing woods for trees, and all that. I can see that I'm going to have to buy in another SCSI HBA just so I can do some swap-out testing, or even upgrade to Backup Exec 12.5 to rule out 12, but I'd rather not spend precious wodges of my budgets if I can avoid it! Thanks in advance! Jim

Race ya!

Yeah, well sortof. The yeah is because I did in the end, but the sort of is because it involved a complete reinstall rather than anything clever. I wasn't aware of anyone else having issues - a spot of intensive googling hadn't picked up those posts you linked to (thanks for that by the way!) - so as there had been no feedback here up until when I last checked and yesterday was an INSET for us, I figured I might as well get on with the inevitable rebuild rather than risk wasting a day on a repair and then only have to rebuild it later anyway. I started by moving the FSMO roles away from the box. That done, the plan called for a quick dcpromo to drop it down to member server status..... Only for that to fail immediately. Something about a signature not being present on the binaries (the exact error is written in my notebook on the desk in my office). I couldn't even remove roles such as DNS - it just refused, even after a reboot and some harsh language. So in the end I moved as much as I could off the box, putting another DNS server in to at least preserve the zone, and then downed it - removing it from AD manually via ADU&C. It was then reinstalled from scratch using Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition media with SP2 ready integrated in that I downloaded from the Microsoft MVLS website - seems happy as larry after that.

This is in response to a thread I posted up some weeks ago now: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-server-2008/35820-service-pack-2-a.html We've been applying SP2 successfully to a number of our Windows 2008 servers - up until now. One of our DC's fell over in the middle of applying the software. I'm not sure how it happened because I was distracted reading Angry Tech's blog, had my back to the console and didn't see exactly what the server did - but the bottom line is that the service pack install did not appear to progress past the pre-install phase before it terminated. I have tried to re-run the install from scratch, but all I get is a message stating I "need to install Windows Server® Service pack 1 before continuing" Checking the basic system properties, the system still thinks it has Service pack 1 applied, so I can only conclude that the service pack setup fell over while removing or modifying a file it subsequently uses to check minimum service pack level. Does anyone know of a way to force service pack 2 installation to proceed? Try as I might, I can't find any service pack 1 specifically for Server 2008 and although SP2 is common between Vista and Server, I am not going to try force-feeding SP1 for vista onto a DC "just for giggles". Anyone got any suggestions or thoughts? At the moment the server in question seems relatively unaffected by it's failed brush with SP2 but I am not optimistic it will stay that way and although I know a rebuild would cure it, it does seem drastic! Ta in advance. Jim

As an update to this issue, I have now resolved it. A bit more careful examination of the application event log showed it wasn't the GPO responsible for the folder redirection erroring - it was another GPO that locked down the student desktop and that had previously had folder redirection settings applied in it that was causing the problem. Temporarily removing the "lock down" GPO and leaving the redirection GPO in place confirmed this - students could log on and get their redirected settings fine without needing to be members of the administrators group. After poking around in SYSVOL, it seems the permissions on Policies\{Student lockdown GPO GUID}\User\Documents & Settings\fdeploy.ini had become corrupt to the point that only the administrator could read them. Even though this file was not responsible for the desired redirection settings, it caused the whole thing to go bandy. If the user had admin rights, they could read and process the file - and got redirection from the other GPO fine. If they didn't, because they couldn't read this file it caused the whole redirection process to stop with an "access denied" message. Simply resetting the permissions on the fdeploy.ini file to inherit from parent again resolved the issue. Live and learn on that one I guess. Thanks for the suggestions anyway - much appreciated.

Permissions check out - I can log on as a user and *not* get the redirected desktop or start menu, but then navigate to the redirection target fine. When we came to it, yes, it was a folder stored within NETLOGON and with it's own share. I removed the share, moved the folder, and re-shared it with the same name. We chose to leave it as \\DUMBLEDORE\profiles rather than anything else because as well as playing host to the redirected folders, it will also host a few mandatory and non-mandatory roaming profiles when we eventually set them up. Because it's all (loosely) related to profiles, I lumped all the various folders into one share. I hear what you're saying though and when I get this FR problem sorted, I plan on hiding the share anyway.

I know a lot has been written about this (emotive!) subject, and XP SP3 made it all the more fun to deal with, but I'm wondering if anybody can give some advice here, or pointers to where the problem might lie. I'll try to give as much info as possible having read some of the other folder redirection threads, so this will be quite long. Bear with me! One of our feeder schools has a Windows XP network - mainly SP2 machines - controlled by a pair of Server 2003 boxes. Folder redirection is used for staff and students to give a consistent set of desktop and start menu icons. This is achieved through a single GPO that uses the "advanced" redirection settings to shift the start menu and desktop folders based on group membership: Pupils desktop redirects to \\DUMBLEDORE\profiles\redirection\pupil\desktop Pupils start menu redirects to \\DUMBLEDORE\profiles\redirection\pupil\startmenu Staff desktop redirects to \\DUMBLEDORE\profiles\redirection\staff\desktop and their start menu goes to \\DUMBLEDORE\profiles\redirection\staff\startmenu The GPO is configured so that the computer configuration side is disabled, and all other settings apart from the folder redirection are left as "not configured" so interference with other GPOs should be minimal. Recently, it came to our attention that "on occasion" it wasn't working. According to the school staff anyway - when I looked at it today, it seemed to me like it wasn't working at all! Further investigation showed that the pupils can log in fine but they receive a blank desktop and start menu. There are two application event log errors generated: one for Folder redirection ("Access denied") and the other for Userenv stating that the folder redirection policy was unable to be applied. Staff using the same GPO linked against their OU can log in fine, and get their redirected desktop and start menu - albeit very sluggishly but I think this is more to do with Symantec carrying out a boot-time scan and me not being patient enough with the workstations than with the network. The access denied message initially suggested a permissions issue on the source directory the redirected folders are stored in - but when checked, they are identical for pupils and staff: Domain Admin and SYSTEM user contexts have full control, pupils and staff groups have "read only" - both at file and share level. Users are correctly assigned to either group and to rule out a local permissions issue on the workstation, I added my test pupil user to the local administrators group to see what it did. There was no change - folder redirection did not work. I discovered while I was experimenting with permissions that adding the pupil users group to the BUILTIN\Administrators group then allowed the folders to be redirected correctly. I know this is "a touch insecure" so it's not been left like that but it does suggest a permissions issue - however I can't for the life of me find where the trouble may be. I've checked the permissions on the GPO itself to confirm the user groups can read and apply it, the share and file permissions on the directories where I want the redirections to go. I've even checked the ownership of the bloody folders in case that had some bearing on it! But no luck so far. I even went as far as applying SP3 to a workstation and then re-imaging it completely using a fresh WDS image with SP3 slipstreamed in to avoid any SP2->3 upgrade issues - but this did not cure the problem. It seems the only way I can possibly make it work is to leave the pupils user group a member of Administrators.... Noooooooooo! Now this network has been inherited so I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to have missed something blatently obvious but I've spent all afternoon staring at the problem and can now no longer see the wood for the trees so a fresh perspective is required. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance! Jim

I've just got hold of a copy of Service Pack 2 for Vista and Server 2008. Having applied it to one or two of our Vista installations around school, it seems to be stable and works well enough. In fact my perception is that the machines sped up slightly but I've got no way of confirming that. The next stage is to plan applying it to our Server 2008 boxes. Although I can build a test box for this, I'm wondering if anyone here has got the RTM version of the service pack onto a Server 2008 rig yet and can share their experiences and feedback on it? Thanks in advance

One of our users came to me complaining that occasionally when she saved attachments from email in Outlook 2007, when she went back to access the saved files later they would appear as "blank" icons and wouldn't open. This has only ever been intermittant so tracking it down has been a right pain as the PC usually behaves itself when I look at it, but yesterday I happened to be in her office when it decided to rear it's head again so I got to see it first-hand. The attachments display correctly in Outlook, and open directly from the email when double-clicked as you'd expect - but I noticed that when they are saved it seems Outlook is stripping the file extension from the name. This leads to the usual "Windows cannot detect the file type, do you want to use the web service or specify an application" type message when the user tries to open an unrecognised file type or a file with no extension. Rename the file to add the extension back in and all is peachy again. It works as you'd expect. Comparing her workstation with mine, I noticed that in the "save as" dialogue, Outlook on my workstation correctly reflects the file type when saving, so automatically appends the extension to the name I choose to give the file. On her workstation, Outlook just says save as type "all files" - although the drop-down is there, there are no other entries in the list so you cannot manually select the file type. So when you click save, the file is bunged out to disc with the given name but no file extension - which creates the problems when the user attempts to open it later. Add the file extension in with the name when saving and there is no problem - file is written to disc correctly and it works. This appears to be intermittant behaviour - restart the machine and log the user back on and Outlook will correctly save the file, automatically adding the file extension with no further intervention - but I'd rather not just give her the old IT chestnut: Turn it off and back on again, every time it happens. So, apologies for the long-winded post, but anyone got any ideas? Thanks in advance! Jim

Yep - read all that yesterday. When I looked into it a bit further overnight, I noticed that while Add/remove programs reports SP1 installed and the rollup 6 pack, the version numbers reported in the registry don't reflect this.... I suspect I have some easter-break work coming up - like the replacement of the exchange box. It's a critical system for us (as it is for many!) and not having it protected or filtered is one thing but having it mis-reporting the software it has on it is someting else..... Thanks anyway!

Our exchange 2007 box was running Sophos puremessage v3.0.0 and had been perfectly happily for over a year up until lunchtime today when it progressively stopped processing mail. Mail was building up in the submission queue, but going nowhere, and the application log was recording lots of MSExchange Extensibility ID:1050 errors quoting: "The execution time of agent 'PmE12Transport' exceeded 300000 (milliseconds) while handling event 'OnRoutedMessage'." In the end, the only way we could see to get mail flowing again was to remove puremessage completely. We tried disabling it seperately but it didn't work - yet once the uninstall routine was kicked off mail started to flow again. I left it a while, downloaded the latest version of puremessage I could find on Sophos' website (v3.0.2 IIRC) and tried a re-install only to be told by the installer that "it did not support the version of exchange I was using" I'm using Exchange 2007 SP1 on a Windows 2003 R2 server. In what way isn't this supported? Anyone got any suggestions or had similar experiences? Thanks in advance Jim

Thanks everyone - some useful feedback there for me to chew my way through when I get a moment. Cheers John - though having experienced Bromcom at my last school, I won't be in a hurry to go down that particular route again.

Morning! After the recent bad weather forced sudden closure onto us, our head has asked us to evaluate systems for improving and speeding parental communication – seeing as the radio stations were so busy announcing school closures, nobody could get through to notify them of any more.... Does anyone already use any system for automating parental contact via SMS or email? If so, what do you use and what are your impressions of it in terms of cost to run, reliability, management features, how it ties in to your MIS etc.. etc.. Thoughts and comments appreciated. Thanks in advance! Jim

Just as an update, that seemed to do the job nicely. All I need now is something to inspect incoming HTML and deny access if the page contains a couple of key terms: such as unblock, proxy and bebo. My students hate me - can't think why....