FishCustard

If they're just a bunch of PPT and PDF files, couldn't you just dump them on a network share and let users find the ones they want? Even creating a folder structure for them would be less work than fighting idiotic installers.

Can someone recommend me some USB wired mice with a strong USB cable? One of our little angels has taken to pulling the mouse cable clean off the mouse(!), and as we're a special school we can't really just ban said cherub from using the computers. I know some have the cable guard on the end, so something like this but beefier might do. I've asked the folks at Haptic Networks to have a look for me, but thought someone here might be able to point me in the right direction.

Far easier to search for whatever it is in the Start Menu than hunt around on the desktop. EDIT: Also, we redirect the desktop to the user's home folder to prevent people bloating their profiles when they save stuff there. I could disable saving to desktop, but it's better user experience to just redirect it and let them do what they want.

ClassicShell is great, and what I use for W10, but that theme? As for the desktop, I have nothing on it other than shell icons (Computer, Recycle Bin, etc.), and put all the shortcuts in the Start Menu.

I tend to put them in the self-service checkouts, and then pay whatever the remaining balance is by card, thus getting no change back. As for the prices, they'll just push them up to round-pounds. People will moan and scream for a while, then just get on with it. Discounts will probably become £X.95 or £X.90. I think it's a good idea - the Mint wastes money minting the things, and they don't really serve much purpose these days.

Is that actually the XP Luna Start button...?

Electroboom - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0-OtVpF0wOKEqT2Z1HEtA A good mix of genuine science and entertaining idiocy. Ooh, also - Cody's Lab: https://www.youtube.com/user/theCodyReeder

I completely agree with the idea, although I also fear that if it were implemented the DfE would just nick the money from elsewhere, leading to something of a zero-sum game. Many 'educational specialist' recruiters are expensively useless - they'll just stick their brand on the pack the school provide, send it off to the TES and charge a commission. I'm sure some are great, but many are pointless.

We're looking for a visitor management system for our new site, but most of the ones we've looked at don't allow you to change the categories displayed on the 'home' screen. For example, they'll just show "students", "staff", "visitors", "authorised visitors". The issue is, we're a (large) special school and therefore have lots of visiting professionals (e.g. speech therapists, OT, nurses, minibus drivers, etc.) and would quite like to have more granular categories to prevent people scrolling through loads of irrelevant names, or at least be able to customise the category titles. Does anyone know of such a system or should I get coding?

Check Event Viewer, do a boot trace with ProcessMonitor.

I wouldn't trust a device on battery during a public exam. I'd much rather figure out some way to have them mains powered. Sure, there could be a power cut, but then you've got at least some redundancy with the battery. We used old Dell D630s and a locked-down 'examuser' account. Worked brilliantly.

Nice indeed! I'm apparently just next to an area where they're trialling it (Hammersmith)... very envious!

I'll have to do about 150 at our new site. Yaaaaay.

When I get my hands on the thing I'll see if I can come up with a PowerShell script that handles all of the oddities, so you can just set the relevant variables (install source path, etc.) and apply the script at boot... obviously will share here.

You'd think that an educational software developer would package said software in a way that's easy to deploy on school networks (you know, the setup that 90% of your customers will have). But noooo... have to spend money on marketing mailshots rather than installer engineering and QA!

What did you have to edit in the MSI? Glad you got it working!

Try adding the /passive switch and see what you get. And yeah, ProcMon does generate a lot, you can trim it down and just keep the events you need though once you're done.

For 'removing RM CC3/4' I would like to recommend 'tactical nuclear weapons', but I doubt your budget would stretch to that. In all seriousness, create a new domain alongside and migrate. It's not worth trying to do it any other way - RM puts tentacles too deep into various things for the migration to go cleanly.

Uuuugh 1603 is the very helpful 'fatal error during installation' which could mean anything from 'already installed' to 'the Grand Space Lemur doesn't like your MSI'. Can you try running msiexec /i .msi /qf which runs in quiet/unattended mode but with full UI so you can see what's going on? Alternatively, try Process Monitor (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon) and see what is actually failing during install (probably need to enable boot logging - https://www.msigeek.com/6231/how-to-enable-system-boot-time-logging-using-process-monitor-tool)

Cool, let me know what happens.

Try plugging it in to the computer, opening a terminal and running cfgutil restore, which will reinstall iOS (without the faff that Configurator can make you jump through). Then once done try cfgutil activate, or try preparing again.

Error 1612 is something to the effect of 'installation source unavailable' - stupid question but the permissions on the share/MSI are correct, right? Authenticated Users or Domain Computers has read access? EDIT: And no, you can just call msiexec​ on each file one after the other.

Make sure you're launching pulsar.exe and not SIMSLoad.exe​

I think I can beat that - I was once asked to look at a laptop that had been fished out of the Thames. It was in a leather bag, but had spent one full tide on the riverbed... unsurprisingly it didn't work, nor could I recover any data from the HDD.

Haha, unfortunately not. I was tidying up the IT suite after the little angels had left, and noticed that, well, something smelled a bit fishy. I opened the printer tray and there was a mackerel staring back at me.