MouseAT

Don't do it this way if you're using MS Office (or at least if you're running Office 2008). We tried this, only to find our users couldn't work with DOC, XLS or PPT files from any source, local or network (although strangely the newer DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files were fine). In the end, I left the "Force local home directory on startup disk" enabled, then ran a login script to delete the documents, pictures, music, videos and downloads folders from the local user profile, replacing them with Symlinks to the mounted network volume. This essentially redirects these folders for the user, so that when they log in, all their applications default to saving in their network My Documents/My Music/My Pictures folders.

I'll have to test next time it happens - I've not got a problem file to hand to test with.

I've had this weird problem quite a lot recently - our staff and students keep finding that MS Publisher won't display embedded pictures in their documents any more. You cannot see the images in Publisher or in the print preview (although you can select them if you know where they are). If you print the document, all the images will print correctly. If I make a copy of the file, all the images in the copy seem to display correctly. Has anyone encountered this glitch before, and if so, is there a fix for it?

I'm just implementing this on our test system at the moment, and it's working brilliantly. Hopefully I'll be enabling this on the live system over the summer holiday.

I'm not impressed by Tiscali. They've recently been messing around with packet shaping, and have caused all sorts of problems. They also have a very restrictive fair usage policy - download too much between 6-11pm, and you'll find your connection becomes stupidly slow during those hours. Not impressed with the quality of service at all.

Our school domain uses Server1, Server2, Server3 etc. I've built networks for LAN parties over the years with various different naming conventions... Weebl and Bob, Shodan and Xerxes, or more recently, Daedalus, Icarus and Helios.

I don't think students need write access to the successmaker drive - I'm fairly sure all the data is stored in the database, rather than the file system. If you can let me know how you managed to build your MSI (or provide us with a copy of yours), it'd make my life a bit easier - I need to prepare an MSI package for deploying the client next academic year.

The Samsung is listed as having an Intel Pro/100 VE network card in device manager. The Dell machines also have Intel NICs IIRC, but I can't remember which model - I've not got one of those machines to hand. Windows firewall is enabled on all machines.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't very clear. The Samsung laptop developed the MRXSMB errors in the log and kept disconnecting from shares on one of our servers. Since patching, I've still got the disconnects, but the MRXSMB errors in the event log are gone. I originally assumed they were related, as the problem only relates to file sharing, but they now appear to be separate problems. In any case, I've now got two laptops (one Dell, one Samsung) giving me problems. They connect, synchronise, then disconnect again. If you attempt to reconect, they'll synchronise again, and disconnect immediately afterwards. It's causing no end of problems as these laptops cannot access our shared common drives. Forget the MRXSMB errors for now - it's the disconnection's I'm concerned about. Anyone seen this before?

OK, the problem is still there on that laptop (Samsung V-25), and one of the Dell Lattitude 110L machines has just started doing the same thing. No references to the MRXSMB errors this time. Erm... help?

I just grabbed the original driver CD and reinstalled the network card drivers using the installer, rather than just removing the driver from device manager and allowing Windows to reinstall it automatically. It seems to be working now (touch wood). Thanks to everyone for your help. I'll let you know if there are any more problems.

I've tried re-installing network drivers, and have just tried doing a full repair on Windows XP. I've got one last trick to try with the network card drivers before I give up and completely re-install Windows. If you've got any more ideas, I'm still listening.

It's a Samsung V25 laptop. I've not done anything to the NIC drivers yet - I might try that tomorrow. For the most part, networking seems to be OK - it'll ping the servers, authenticate and browse the web without problems. It's only file sharing over SMB that seems to be causing problems.

I already applied that fix. After doing so, the errors in the event log disappeared, but I still can't hold a connection open longer than around 10-20 seconds.

I've just had a problem with one of our laptops. I was asked to look at it yesturday as it kept losing its connection to network shares - it'd tell you it was working offline, and all the mapped drives would appear to be empty. If you try to reconnect, it'll connect, syncronize, and then immediately disconnect again. I was getting the following errors appearing in the security log: I found a reference to a windows update resolving this error, so I've applied the latest updates, and the message has now disappeared from the logs. The problem with the shares is still there, however. I can safely ping the server, and can browse the web fine, so TCP/IP is obviously working. Any ideas before I completely re-image the machine?

What happens if you create a local administrator account specifially for unlocking user accounts, and set it to deny logon locally? Would it still allow it to be used for unlocking the computer? Failing that, you need to be explaining to management that only administrators can unlock computers, and that if it's a problem, their complaints should be directed at Microsoft. Then ask for a decision - either you disipline students who abuse the 'lock computer' feature, and have admins unlock computers, or you disable the 'lock computer' altogether.

I personally use Cute PDF. It's another print driver job. I've not tried deploying it in a network wide environment - at the moment I've only got it installed on my machine. Students here don't need to create PDFs.