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We've started to be a little more careful berating students with wrong passwords due to a spate of subtle keyboard rearrangements which look okay at first glance.

Psshutdown from SysInternals suite will take a text file and shut machines down. It won't ignore machines where a user is logged on. You could just use a long timeout and give users the ability to cancel the shutdown. This is what I do at the end of the day, this also performs a shutdown if the user left without logging off. You could also use FOG, it has a log off if idle and a shutdown after a predetermined time after logoff. Not scripted but configurable. Needs some configuring and requires a Linux server running FOG. FOG is normally used as an imaging system.

I am afraid I don't have a quick solution to the problem, but I do have a technician who is a little happier because of your problem. The technician was convinced that he had not set the proofing tools to not installed, yet that is what happened. He was doubting his sanity a little until today. As to our fix we did not spend a lot of time on this, our solution was to fix it in the image and then re-imaged the classroom. For the odd not quite standard machine we uninstalled office and then let the fixed GPO reinstall it. The technician tells me that a repair fix the problem despite putting the msp file right. All I really need to do now is investigate a method of scripting the uninstall of Office 2010 so that I can make the process a little less technician intensive.

I have a problem with Word 2010, when I create a new blank document and attempt to save it as a .docx file I receive the error: "Cannot save the files. 'test.docx' is not a valid short file name (maximum eight characters, plus a three-character file extension). Type a valid file name, and then save the file again." We do have Office configured to use .doc files as the default format, which does seem to be part of the key. If I convert it first and then save it I have no problems. It also seems to be a problem with particular image builds as some other builds don't suffer. Does anyone have any ideas as to what we do to fix this?

The reply from one of our Physics teachers was "If this text looks red you're travelling in the wrong direction!" Took me a few seconds to realise what he meant.

I have a ActiveBoard 378 where if I want to route the USB cable safely I need a cable longer than that supplied. I know I need to use an active USB extension extend beyond USB 5 meters. The question is, will something like CablesToGo 5m USB A Male to A Female Active Extension Cable (81655) - dabs.com work with a Promethean board?

We have Frog. The teachers generally like it and it does seem reasonably easy to do most of the things we want. Advantages: Hosted on a Frog server in your own building, so no reliance on broadband to access it, great if you have a slow or dodgy connection. Flexible, can do lots of things. Allows access to existing network drives. Tech support via phones for simple issues is excellent. MIS integration. User accounts are created automatically overnight. Disadvantages: Very expensive. Seems to suffer from a number of bugs (then I guess all the rest do to). Tech support via email very slow. Has been known to take 2-3 weeks, I usually email and then phone them. Tech support for complex issues is very slow. We have a problem with the MIS importer not pulling parents email addresses across and it has been with the developers since January with no sign of a fix yet. Despite at least 2 new versions of the importer since I reported it.

Version 2.6.0 is now available on the Frog Community site, follow the Tech Support links. I did have issues getting to it yesterday with 404 errors when I attempted to download it at work so I called them and they emailed it to me instead. To save that phone call PM me your email address and I will sent it to you.

It certainly sounds like it. I had the same problem with a number of elderly Phillips projectors, it was cheaper to replace the projector than repair. With ours it started as a small patch in the centre of the screen and gradually got larger, until the image became just about useless.

I have a similar problem on an Intel board, when I set the WOL in the OS it works fine. However if I sysprep it for imaging then the settings are lost. I now need to work out how to make the setting sticky or to reapply automatically it after imaging.

I've just had the same thing happen here, so all the advice given was much appreciated.

I have worked in two schools in Cheshire (and still do), both host their own email servers, one based on Linux and one Exchange. County will happily forward emails to you and act as smarthost or allow you to deliver direct to the recipients.

I frequently see our SQL at close to 100% CPU. I have managed to find that it was how our database was initially installed. We have the OS, SIMS DB, temp DB and master DB all on the same drive spindles. Using perfmon it is possible to see massive IO loads on the drive. I plan to replace the server this summer budget permitting! Then I will install it in a more performance minded way. There is a reindex patch which helps a little.

Take a look at bginfo (BgInfo) & OCS Inventory NG (OCS Inventory NG | Main) as these log this information and more to a database.

Removing Table of Content Entries Unpack the SCORM zip file. Right click on the file SCORM_File.zip > 7-Zip > Extract Files to "SCORM_File". Open the folder "SCORM_File" Right click and edit imsmanifest.xml. You may need to use WordPad as some of these files will be generated using a Unix text file format, CR as apposed to CR+LF. Locate the title of the contents section you want to remove. Make a note of the identifierref value as you will be looking for this later. Delete the section … inclusive. Locate the value from identifierref in 4. Note the value in href=”…“, this is the path a file. We will be deleting this file next as it will make the SCORM package smaller. Delete the section … . Where the identifier value matches the identifierref you noted earlier. Locate the file from 5 and delete it. Repeat from 4 if there are more entries to delete. Repackage the files into a .zip file. In the folder SCORM_File. Select all files. Right click. 7-Zip > Add to “SCORM_File.zip” Upload the file SCORM_File.zip to the VLE & test. Important things to note. imsmanifest.xml must be in the root of the .zip file. If it is in a sub-folder then the SCORM file is not valid and the upload will fail. As of 05/04/11 there seems to be a bug in Frog. Updating a SCORM package does not seem to work. The upload occurs but the update does not. The work around is to delete the SCORM file and upload again. This is likely to cause problems if the SCORM is published in any form as the URL will change. After a brief test earlier today this bug seems to have been resolved in the latest version / patch. Example imsmanifest.xml Conventions used here: Bold – Items to note / search for. Italics – Items to delete. … – Snipped out text to shorten the example. Here I want to remove one of the two “1.1 Lesson plan” entries. … … Book 1 - Year 7 (1.1 Using a microscope-Oxford) Unit 1 - Cells 1.1 Using a microscope 1.1 Textbook spread 1.1 Lesson plan 1.1 Lesson plan … … … … 1.1 Lesson plan (Science Works Y7-Oxford) PDF version of the main lesson plan for this lesson. microscopes magnification LOMv1.0 yes LOMv1.0 yes Copyright Oxford University Press 2008. … …

As has been said before, contact OUP for split packs. I will do my best to remember to upload a copy of my document on hand editing SCORM files on Monday. It is the document I wrote for the Science secretary, comments on it would be useful.

School 1. Director of ICT Services (Assistant Head & Head of ICT / Business) Network Manager Deputy Network Manager (Me) 3x Technicians - full time 1x Website manager / Technician - 50% on each School 2 Director of ICT Services (Deputy Head & Head of ICT / Business) Network Manager (Me) 1x Technician full time term time only. 1x Technician part time term time only. Lets just say it's quiet during the holidays!

As mentioned by others synctoy is a good solution to the backup of a flash drive as is xcopy. Triggering it could be a problem, especially if like me you turn off autorun. Instead you could use USBDLM (USB Drive Letter Manager - USBDLM) on the machine. I see two problems with this: 1. Every flash drive inserted would backed up, to prevent this I would write a script to check for a file called, say backup, the file could contain the path to the backup destination if it was not the backup command itself. 2. Only the computer with the appropriately configured USBDLM install will cause the drive to be backed up. A problem with using the standard autorun would be the drive attempting to back itself up which ever computer you plug it into.

I would agree with you here, but I don't understand why they don't put a bit more effort in to making the SCORM packages so that they are actually usable. I guess it is because it costs money and because they already supply them they can make the a legitimate marketing statement. Only when you have bought it and tried to use it do you find it is not quite what you expected. This is my experience, I have contacted OUP on a number of occasions asking for split packs and never had any problems getting them, no asking for invoice numbers or proof of purchase, just here's the FTP password go ahead and download it. Once I got the split packs I discovered that they were not perfect as they contained lessons plans and other stuff that we did not want to put on the VLE. This meant that I had to work out how to remove them, which as it turns out it's not to difficult, but given the number of files involved neither I nor my team have time to do all the files the department wanted to upload. I then had to give the science departments admin support (secretary) a crash course on editing SCORM packages. She still talks to me so I must have done a reasonable job of not scaring her. In the end the head of science it very pleased with the result and will be using SCORM packages where appropriate but will also upload individual files if that makes more sense.

Have you tried the advice in http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/6015-wsus-not-picking-up-pcs.html? I had a similar problem which was caused by machines having duplicate SusClientId's as these don't seem to be deleted by sysprep. Try deleting the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\SusClientId then run wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization /detectnow

I am sorry to say I get the same as john316, that is everything works as expected. If I create a page with a text and pictures brick in it and then add links, the links are correct if I put BBC - Homepage. If I remove the BBC - Homepage I get http://vle.server-fqdn/www.bbc.co.uk. Does it make any difference if you use the toolkit or from inside the VLE?

I have just had a look at the IdeaPad on the Frog support site and found these existing requests, so no real need for developing more. Please consider voting for them and adding your thoughts if needed. Keyword Filtering for status updates Keyword filtering for status updates for the students would be great. Having the ability to add words to a list that are not allowed to be used on status updates. 'Report This' button This is an idea coming from our students - they would like a 'Report This' button that could be added onto any page we chose, so if it requires attention (for example a users' status update) it will automatically email an admin highlighting the issue, with a message if required. Status updates database I would like to be able to see ALL status updates sorted by date and time. On this list I would like to see what the status says, who it was from and when it was posted. I know this is doable by using admin tools ? user logs, but you have to select users on an individual basis. We would like to see a complete list to make the job of monitoring less tedious.

I have the same problem and have just taken the decision to remove the wall posts / status updates from students for similar reasons to those you are anticipating. I would suggest going to the Frog IdeaPad and checking for and if needed putting in feature requests for a couple of different things: To allow admins to have a report of all wall posts / status updates so that we can see who wrote what to who. A profanity / bad words filter to built in to the forums, status / wall posts, if not any form. If do put these onto the IdeaPad then let me know and I will put my vote to your ideas (if I have any left). We have also seen them changing their profile pictures to something inappropriate also. For this we have given them a warning that their pictures will be reset to those in SIMS if the dodgy ones don't vanish. I have a feature request for a report to show all profile pictures which someone has managed to produce some code to something, though I have not tried it yet. I would still prefer that to be built into the system. Frog is good but from a reporting and monitoring position is it severely lacking and needs a significant amount of work. If I had realised just how poor it was I would have strongly advised against purchasing it. I would have been overridden but as least I would have had the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" to the boss.

A further update. Now that I have sorted out the HTTP/HTTPS problem SCORM works from home also. All I needed to do was to allow HTTP through the firewall, Frog handles the HTTPS/HTTP switching.

An update, when used via HTTP the 2 parts of Science Works Yr 7 work fine. The duplicate entries in the contents page are for PDF & DOC versions of the same file. Unfortunately there is no identification of which is which until you click. Now on to Frog to find out how to secure logins.