Satvir

Hi, I am trying to set up AirServer at our school. iPad and PC is on the same wifi and the iPad can see the PC. However, when it attempts to connect, it drops after about 10 seconds. Any ideas?

We have fixedthis by running a batch script, every 15 minutes, for both staff and studentshome drives (a separate script for staff and students). This desktopinifile is created every time the user logs onto the network and so it needs to bere-ran every 10 minutes. It takes less than a minute and is not CPU hungry atall. Our batch file is: REM ***********remove student troublesome desktop.ini files*************** REM this mustbe placed in C:\support\scripts run as system user every 1 day @00:15 REM and repeated every 15 mins for 23 hours mdD:\deletearea_Students RoboCopy D:\users\pupils D:\deletearea_Students desktop.ini /MOV /E /LEV:3 /Z/R:1 /W:1 /TS /FP rmdir D:\deletearea_Students /S /Q exit Basically, the script makes a temporary folder on our D:drive on the server. scans each of the user areas searching for the desktop.inifile. If it finds it. it then moves that file into the temporary folder. Onceall the user areas have been scanned, it then deletes the temporary folder whichcontains all of the desktopini files. Works very well and does not cause us any issue. We havebeen using this for over 12 months now.

Hi, We are an independent school looking at Office 365 or Google Docs. My preference would be Office365, since staff and students use Office 2013 anyway. I am ideally looking at a prospective from a private school, but open to ideas from other large schools or Academies who have carried out a full roll out. Each user has an email account that they access via OWA. We have 5 iPad trollies and a laptop trolley as well. Users save to their home drives. How does your school manage Office 365 and staff/students saving to the cloud? Do you sync your home drives to the OneDrive cloud? Does it affect bandwidth with lots of users attempting to save at the same time? Do you give them freedom to save their files to their home drives and their OneDrive area and it is up to them how they manage their areas? What do you do if your Internet goes down - are you pretty much stuffed? It would be good if there was a chance that I could visit a site close to Leicester to see it in action and how you manage it. Thanks in advance for your help.

Thanks. We have an onsite firewall through a company called PANDA (the system is called GateDefender). Our Meru/Panda system is using transparent proxy and so we don't need to put in the proxy settings Capita ran some tests yesterday and we tried to enable advanced SSL but that made no difference either after we had installed their certificate onto some ofour devices. They have now asked us to speak to KCOM as they think thatsomething, somewhere is not right

Hi, We have a Capita broadband link via empsn and a Meru wireless network. Now, iPads and iPhones won't connect to the App store, apps that connect to their own servers don't work and any staff member who has connected their devices built-in mail system to yahoo, Hotmail etc, won't download to the devices. Meru are pretty confident that it is not their setup that is causing the problem but as usual Capita are taking an age getting back to us. Does anyone else using Capita have a similar issue? Have Capita reported or mentioned what they think the problem could be?

Thanks, but unfortunately we don't have SCCM. What about GPO and deploying MSI packages this way? What experiences have you had with that?

Hi, What is the best way that the rest of you install/auto-update the latest Flash and Java onto client PCs? just checked and our image on our newest PCs were created in June and since then there have already been 4 Flash updates. A real pain when Flash needs updating and staff are saying that websites don't work and once Flash has been installed it works fine.

Thanks. But I don't think you can open them before hand and so converting to mp3 won't be an option

That's what I said, but the head of MFL said that students were unfamiliar with portable CD players. What the !! There is a play, stop, pause, forward and rewind. How much more difficult can you get. Cheap £20 each players from Argos is not really rocket science

Now that the exams are over, just interested to know how other schools dealt with exams where CDs needed to be used, such as language listening exams and Music listening exams We used our laptop trolley and they listened using Windows Media Player. Just had an email from the Deputy Head who is now dealing with a couple of parents who said that their children suffered as the laptops stopped working. He wants me to look at suitable alternatives or ways to move forward. The only real issue was that Windows Media player crashed on a student and we were called down to sort it out. We always set up 2 or 3 additional spare laptops in case of such issue but the invigilator and student decided to stay on the same laptop. VLC media player is an alternative program to use as that is more reliable than Windows Media Player. The other alternative solutions that I have provided is 1. Go to portable CD players (no IT issue or system crash can be at fault then). 2. Re-image the laptop trolley laptops ready for the exams and only allow it to be used for the exams and therefore not allowing the trolley to be used as a resource elsewhere in school. 3. Move all the exams into the Music Technology ICT Suite, which have CD drives. However, there is no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, with software crashing. However, The Music Department will then also suffer will reduced timetables. 4. Buy laptops specifically for exam use and not allow them to be used for anything else throughout the year. However, this is an expensive option and a waste of decent laptops. My preference would be the portable CD players but the Deputy Head is saying that the Head of MFL moved away from this a couple of years ago as that too was unreliable and the students did not know how to use the CD players as they were more used to laptops and the media players on those!!! Any suggestions, ideas or improvements would be a great hel;p.

Just give Microsoft a call on 0800 917 9016. Tell them you need more licenses adding as you have more computers than the full time staff you registered for. You can add 200 or 300 extra and they won't question it Every time you enter your win7 or office activation code this number will go down and so it is always best to have more than you need

Hi, I have just purchased EMCO shutdown software. Unfortunately not free but very cheap, in terms of the return you will get from electricity saving, It is a one off cost with unlimited support and maintenance and so no annual cost. We paid around £212 inc VAT Remote Shutdown - Automatic Shutdown and WOL Software

Or purchase an adapter which fits into the bottom of your iPad and then a VGA cable can go into the adapter, which is connected to the projector

Hi, We are already thinking about summer project work and we are considering Viglen as a brand/supplier. They are not Dell or HP, but do offer very good pricing and a 5yr NBD onsite warranty. Has anyone had any dealings with the company and their equipment? We are looking at either the small form factor or ultra small factor PCs.

Who cares.

In my previous school, I added titles of the teachers in their display names and so Mr, Mrs, Miss etc, were all together in the address book and so easy to differentiate between staff and students. In my current school, the previous IT Manager had set it up with the person's surname and then their first name. This was for both staff and students and so you couldn't tell the difference. I added a (Mr), (Mrs), (Miss) etc. to the end of the display name. Student accounts have also been changed to year of entry, surname and first initial, but this doesn't show up in the address book under display name, unless you scroll across and go to the email address.

At my old school we used Selectamark. You stick the stencil on your item, use a coloured compound to paint over the holes and then remove the stencil. We had our's with the school name, the post code and a sequential number. This number then refers back to a spreadsheet where you can have whatever information you want e.g. model number, serial number, room, floor, teacher, purchased from, price paid, warranty information etc. Quick and easy way to see the item number and refer back to the spreadsheet when moving equipment around school. With the compound, you can permanently security mark light plastics, dark plastics, aluminium (iPads, iMacs), glass etc. Great product at a great price and also has the added benefit of a visible deterrent from thieves as everything is security marked. I have tried using sharp implements to try and scratch off the stuff and it is very difficult and leaves a huge mess where you have tried to scrape it away. I have now purchased it at my new school and will be doing the same thing again.

Yes I found the following link and I did ask CAPITA to unblock the following URLs. However, they said that these don't go anywhere and so they have ruled this out as being the cause. This link says the list of URLs needed to be unauthorised for bypass through the schools proxy server Office 2013 can't access internet through my firewall's web proxy; proxy settings for office 2013?: Office 2013; proxy settings To do this, configure the following list of URLs to be unauthenticated on the proxy server: Search Microsoft.com https://sls.microsoft.com/ https://sls.microsoft.com:443 http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftRootAuthority.crl http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureCommunications.crl http://www.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureCommunications.crl http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureServer.crl http://www.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureServer.crl https://activation.sls.microsoft.com

Hi, We have a very annoying issue with Office 2013 and inserting online pictures. We migrating all of our PCs to Windows 7 and Office 2013 over the summer, but due to the way that Microsoft have developed Office 2013 and not thinking about how it would actually work in education and businesses, every time anyone in school attempts to insert an online picture (clipart) from within Word, PowerPoint, Publisher etc., it keeps returning the following error message: You need an internet connection to insert online pictures. While you are offline, you can insert pictures from your computer. The computers are all on the network and have internet access. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated?

We have been having the same issue for a couple of weeks now. It was first of all limited to just some teaching staff, but it has now spread to the majority of the school. I have contacted CAPITA and they have said that they are aware of this issue as other schools are having it as well.

I was the IT Network Manager at this school for almost 8 years, until I moved on in March 2013. The post has now been split into 2 posts (another one which has already been advertised) and this post. Actual salary £16,111 to £18,210 p.a. The school wishes to appoint a suitably qualified, enthusiastic, positive, self-motivated and resilient person with capacity for hard work to be part of our I.T. team. The successful candidate will be involved in all aspects of I.T. around the school and will have responsibility for specific software, e.g. the management and maintenance of SIMS, PARS, INSIGHT, SECURUS etc. There may be an opportunity for additional paid hours as and when required. Closing date : 9am Monday 15th April 2013 Application form, job description and person specification can be found on the school’s web site www.netherstowe.com. (current vacancies list on the left menu). Good luck and PM me if you wish to know anything specific about the network or the setup. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything more about the role other than what is advertised, you would have to contact the school for that.