FishCustard

(@AngryTechnician - you're not alone) Today, while replacing an 'empty' toner cartridge in a Xerox Phaser 6125N, I noticed that it appeared to be far from empty. In a moment of madness I decided to open the thing up and pour out the contents. Easily a fifth of the volume of the cartridge was still full! Apologies for the rubbish photo quality - black dust isn't the easiest photographic subject, but have a look below. Would you say this came from an 'empty' cartridge? I think I should start testing other 'bottle' type cartridges and seeing if they've been lying to me too!

I hate to 'bump' threads, but I imagine this is the only place I'll get sensible answers to this - any ideas welcome!

What happens if you run it manually but silently, like this: msiexec /i \\server\path\whatever.msi /qn If it doesn't install, check the Event Log for errors, and then perhaps try running it in automatic full-UI mode so that you can see errors. msiexec /i \\server\path\whatever.msi /qf

^This^ Only the 4x50s can take high-capacity toner, so I'd go for one of those. The one in the staff IT room (a 4350) hasn't needed to have a toner change since about June, and that thing gets hammered.

We had exactly the same problem. Installing program data into the user's profile is complete bovine turd - why on earth would it need to go there?! To prevent other users from using it? But they say that it can be installed on an unlimited number of machines, so WTF is going on? Anyway, I solved it by shoving the 'RMS' folder onto a share, putting a batch script in the program folder that copies the data to the user's profile and then runs RehearScore. Create a shortcut to the batch file as opposed to the RehearScore exe and you're good to go. @echo off robocopy "\\SERVER\SHARE\RMS" %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\RMS /S /R:1 /W:1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\RehearScore 2.0\RehearScore.exe" You might want to block that folder from actually roaming so the files only end up on machines that the user needs to use RS on.

^What he said^

If they're old machines being kept limping along for as long as possible, I doubt SIMS would run well even on a full OS. Fair point about the SA though.

Wasn't thinking of using a TS, just shoving Thin PC on the thing and using it as an OS in its own right, should be fine for light-use PCs. .NET 4 will install (I tested it), didn't check <3.5 though...

Take a look at Windows Thin PC perhaps?

We use AppInventor as part of our KS4 IT curriculum (we run it on a VM on each client machine), and are experiencing a very odd issue with certain students' work disappearing. They create their blocks in the blocks editor, save it, and then at some later point they find that the blocks editor is empty or missing large sections. It's happened to about four students so far, and as everything is saved on Google's end there's nothing we can really do about it. Has anyone else experienced this/come up with any mitigation strategies? Could it be an issue with lots of access to the app from one or two public IPs on different accounts?

Our dinners are pretty poor - I don't eat the hot food except on INSET days when it's all they provide, but other staff attest to its crapness. On INSET days we get a very oily lasagne with some rather dry potatoes. Some cake and custard if we're lucky! Usually I have a wrap or baguette, the choices normally being (in order of increasing rarity): cheese, ham, cheese and ham, cheese salad, egg salad, BLT (seen once).

This. Although in the case of Capita, I think "This is why using a ... programming architecture is a good thing when making ... programs" would be a good start for their dev team!

Nope, AVCO AnyComms. But FMS has its own flavour of crapness.

Absolutely right, but rewriting the data access code may allow you to use better back-end methods for storing said data (normalized tables, etc), which is what I think @localzuk was getting at.

'Legacy programs' being the polite term for the Windows 9x-era excrement (Nova, Options, Exams, etc) that should have been either rewritten in .NET or (better) integrated into the core codebase. Yes, rewriting an app from scratch is often not the best way to go about things from a software development point of view, but sometimes you have little choice.

I realise that I'm preaching to the choir a bit here, but the amount of frankly rubbish software that I've seen recently has driven me to this. Why, oh why, dear local authority, does your file transfer software think itself too good to go in %ProgramFiles% and instead installs to C:\PROGRAMNAME by default? Yes, I can and do move it after installation, but still... Following on from that, why did you think it okay for said software to shove the files it downloads from the LA onto the root of the damned C:\ drive? Regardless of the fact that users on managed networks probably won't have access to C:\, it's just sloppy coding to shove user data anywhere else but the user data folders. It doesn't even tell you where it's shoving the files, so good luck finding them if you're using the software for the first time... *breathe* Secondly, installers. You're coding for Windows. There is an installer standard called Windows Installer (those MSI files we know and love). Why would you use a busted-ass proprietary EXE based monstrosity - particularly one that has no 'silent' flags, particularly if the software is designed for installation in institutions that will almost certainly use GPO/SCCM deployment! And there is absolutely no excuse for wrapping a perfectly good MSI in a busted-ass EXE. Don't even talk about doing it the other way around either: that's just heresy. I think if I ever switch tracks to software development I'd scare the crap out of the packaging & deployment team with my 'if you ever do any of these things....' rant! XD

Ah, right. I haven't had to think about RM in a couple of months, so I'm not well up on their shenanigans!

Curious as to why that might be...?

You'll need to unblock... youtube.com ytimg.com googlevideo.com ....I believe

All the IT folk have an HP 8900 (i5, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD) which is the same spec as in the IT suites. However, we shoved an NVidia NVS 285 in each of ours so we can get dual-screen (and I believe triple if desired) output, which does wonders for productivity! I may well upgrade the RAM in mine at some point (or perhaps I should just close some browser tabs....)

There's a joke in there somewhere about a Capita product being useful...

This. If you're going to use promotional feelies it's important to choose something that your 'targets' will keep around and use (thus keeping your company's details around too!). Anything that's quickly consumable isn't much good, but notepads, memory sticks, calendars, mugs, things like that are a good bet. (I used to run the technical side of a web dev company, we ended up advising people on all sorts of marketing things!)

Yay! ^__^

I'm glad you approve! I can't help but shamelessly point you toward the wiki and my own humble contribution to the multiverse. ^_^

Hah, true. Heard of the PPC? Too late... I already have! o_o