MunkySpanner

We were recently asked to put music in the reception area. Repurposed an old active speaker on the wall with an old Samsung Galaxy phone in the roof (an original i9000 still in the box that has been sat in the safe as an emergency phone for the last decade!) Found a load of royalty free music online. Just generic classical/jazz type stuff. Been sat there playing away on a loop 24/7 without a stutter for the last 6 months. We definitely need it. When the reception area was refurbed, they built a couple of meeting rooms off the foyer for meetings with parents etc. Quickly found out anyone in waiting in reception could hear what was happening in the meeting rooms. The music isn't loud but it helps to mask it a bit. Trunking for cables is a definite. We get notified on health and safety inspections if there is an even an end cap or corner joint cover missing on ours. As for the rest, if you've got the cash to spare, sure, make it look nice. If not, then teaching and learning should be the priority.

We've just started moving to HDMI only laptops and using HDMI-VGA convertors. The image continually appears and disappears on some but not all. I think we've tracked the issue down to old 14 pin VGA cables connecting the faceplate on the wall to projectors. I believe the missing pin 9 is a signal cable used for communication between pc and projector to communicate info such as max resolution etc. (Think I saw it in a post on the Startech website) All the ones that work have all 15 pins.

Had endless fun with getting this working. Have a mix of devices and so far found the following: StarTech USB31000S Ethernet Adapter - Works with GEOBook 109 so just booted using WDS and deployed. Didn't work with Lenovo 100e or Dell 3190. Also have some HP 250s out but haven't had any back for re-imaging yet. For the Dell and Lenovo, we created an offline media task sequence in MDT .Then created bootable disks from the ISO using some old 30GB 2.5" SSDs with a SATA to USB Adapter. Booting from USB works fine on both Dell and Lenovo. Added the appropriate drivers in the task sequence as well as the drivers for the StarTech adapter so that once imaged they automatically join the domain. For some reason the Partitioning part of the task sequence had to point to Disk 1 on the Dell and Disk 0 on the Lenovo. Easily changed by editing the ts.xml as required.

The 'tree' does get the same comments from people here too. Our standard response is 'No, it's just a tree, until it's christmas. Then it's a christmas tree'. We won't be decorating or switching the lights on until at least the start of December.

So, today the power supply failed on the NAS that is the destination for our backups (it's mirrored to another NAS so all backups were safe). It had a standard 24 pin motherboard connector and 2 proprietary connectors on the backplane for the drives. Only had a mix of 5V, 12V and Ground in these connectors, so chopped all the molex, sata and other aux power connectors off a spare ATX power supply and joined them to the connectors chopped from the dead PSU. I was astounded when it actually booted. Barring a parity check on the disks, it all seems ok. Got a replacement on order but glad to have it back up and running until the new one arrives. These days there's not much to be cheerful about, but i'm pleased with this days work.

+1 for Netsupport Been deployed for 6 months now after moving from Impero. It's like night and day performance wise and so far has been pretty much fit and forget. Basically, it just works, which gets my thumbs up every time.

We've used Impero in the past and have recently moved to Netsupport. From a safeguarding point of view the phrase cloud in Netsupport is brilliant for seeing at a glance what keywords are being picked up. The safeguarding team have access to just the areas of the software they need so don't get overloaded. Policies and keyword lists are easy to set up and edit. The client is minimal and even runs on some really old Intel Atom machines we have that used to be crippled running Impero. So far we've had no issues at all.

I should be in this week as I don't have any annual leave left (used up on wedding, honeymoon etc.), however, managed to get approval to work from home. Currently sat at the wife's place of work as she has to be in today and she's the only one in the office. Thought i'd give her some company. Hoping to build up a load of good karma for next year as it's the only thing keeping our aging network running!

Yep, any event, any user. So far Advanced have done nothing but the CPU affinity suggestion. They offered to remote in during half term but never called, even though I gave a direct dial and times of availability. I had to get a bit shirty just to get the reply i've had. Seems to me they don't want to deal with anything that isn't Progresso.

We're getting the following error when attempting to input positive or negative events in Behaviour management in ePortal. "Results String from dataserver is empty" Anyone else seen this? It's been about 3 weeks now and all Advanced have come up with is change the CPU affinity for Facility.exe and SQL so that they are using different cores. Facility is on a virtual server and SQL is on a completely separate physical server so that's a no go. Anyone seen this before? It's only started happening about a week after the last update.

Looks fine to me. The /boot partition is like the hidden partition that Windows creates. Here's what ours looks like

We have a few students who take home laptops provided by the school. I've been asked by the safeguarding team if there is any software available that will monitor or block dodgy stuff while they are connected to their home connection. Whilst in school they are protected by our in house and ISP systems (Impero, Watchguard Firewall, Netsweeper) plus some IP and DNS redirects for Facebook, Twitter etc (a bit belt and braces but i like it that way) I think the safeguarding team are thinking of something like NetNanny. I can't see if it would work with a domain setup or different users logging on as it seems geared towards home/specific user setups. Remote filtering systems like Smoothwall would be great but i can't justify it for half a dozen kids. Any suggestions gratefully received.

broc - had thought about it but might get into a spot of bother if something critical gets closed without saving. I know it'd serve them right but i'd rather they saw the funny side and we can all have a good laugh about it rad - another good option for the future. No optical drives installed at present though

For thos who wish to have a bit of fun. The pdf explains how to close the program if you can't do so via task manager. Alternative Calc

Every now and again we get asked to help out with what i would call "the fun little jobs that make everything worthwhile" One of the admin staff (here-on known as S) asked if we could help her get her own back on a couple of the other admin staff (here-on known as E & A). Whenever S leaves her desk, E & A have been pressing the Calculator shortcut key on S's keyboard many times opening multiple instances of Calculator. Since S likes her shiny new multimedia keyboard, swapping isn't an option and besides, us techies can be far more inventive than that. This also gives us the opportunity to flex our coding skills. The final solution has been to replace the original calc.exe with a new calc.exe of our own devising (the original has been renamed to calculator.exe just in case S actually needs it in future) Now when the Calculator key is pressed it opens a message box stating "Format C: Drive. All data will be deleted! Are you sure you wish to Format the C: Drive?", with Yes and No buttons. Whichever button is pressed a new message box opens and displays a green progress bar that looks like it’s deleting the files. They can’t close or stop this and it takes about a minute to fill the bar giving them plenty of time to panic. And for the piece de resistance, when the progress gets to 100%, a scary picture pops up and plays a scary laugh, which just comes back on if they close it. I don't think i've ever been so excited for the new term to start!

3.2 for me Processor - 4.6 Memory - 4.6 Graphics - 3.3 Gaming Graphics - 3.2 Hard Disk - 4.9 HP nx7300 Laptop - T5500/4GB DDR2/Intel 945GM/80GB Fujitsu Sata HDD Upgraded from 1GB ram to 4GB to give the overheads for running Virtual XP and the memory score went up from 4.5 to 4.6! Seems ok so far. Even got SIMS running under virtualization and looking like a native app (Apart from the "Initializing Virtual Environment" window which pops up first.)

My XBOX live gamertag Was listening to Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench when i had to think of one but Monkey Wrench was already taken so i went for the english alternative, Spanner.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. Looks like this is the way forward as I suspected.

Looking at a solution for the P.E. department to take registers via Lesson Monitor. Thought about SIMS own Lesson Monitor Mobile add in and PDA's but seems costly for something that has little practical use other than taking registers. Considering netbooks because of portability, solid state drives as they're bound to get a bit of hammer and can be used for usual web/office based tasks which is all P.E. are going to need them for. So, has anyone tried running SIMS on a netbook over wireless?

Got about 26 promethean boards ranging from about 4 years old to some of the newer style all in one units that can be raised/lowered on the wall. Some USB, most connect via serial which is far more reliable. Used to have no end of connection issues but seems to have died down with the new v4 drivers Had about 4 PSU failures. Older installs were an easy swap out with the psu plugging into the serial connector on the back of the pc. Newer install had all the cables going into a box on the wall with the psu inside it, all fastened up with the star bolts that have a little sticky up bit in the middle. Right pain to get undone without the proper tool! Also had a couple of the serial cables fail, but all in all no real complaints.

A heartwarming tale for you all. Recently been coming in early to set up laptop/projector and speakers for some Year 11 kids to do a presentation in assemblies. Original plan was 4 assemblies in one week, one for each house. Due to teachers rearranging things and Ofsted visits leading to assemblies being cancelled at the last minute, finally did the last one this morning at the 7th attempt. Of course this makes me not a happy bunny for all the early, unpaid starts that have been a waste of my time, and that of the Year 11s. However, whilst sat in the office waiting for the kids to go to lesson's so i can go and pack up the kit, one of the Year 11s comes in and says a big thank you and hands over an easter egg! Sat there speechless for a sec before mumbling a stunned thank you. Looks like someone does appreciate all the effort after all, and i now have a nice fuzzy feeling inside