ataylor

Still a work in progress but the following VB script run alongside the vpn connection event seems to be working, just having a little trouble with gpupdate hanging when i launch it so quickly after logging in. On Error Resume Next Dim objSysInfo, objUser Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo") Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & objSysInfo.UserName) Set wshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set wshSystemEnv = wshShell.Environment("VOLATILE") wshSystemEnv("HOMESHARE") = objUser.homeDirectory 'Refresh the USER policies and also answer no to logoff if asked. Result = WshShell.Run("cmd /c echo n | gpupdate /target:user /force /wait:0",0,true)

Agreed, although changing the current VPN configuration isn't really an option for us.

All interconnected but I need to split the data out to their own separate servers, which means different share paths.

We have multiple organizations that we need to split out from existing file servers so unfortunately I can't do that.

I've currently looking at shifting our users from their existing file server to new ones. essentially the file servers look like this \\FileServer1\home\%USERNAME% \\FileServer2\home\%USERNAME% and we are looking at moving it to \\FileServerOrg1\home\%USERNAME% \\FileServerOrg2\home\%USERNAME% \\FileServerOrg3\home\%USERNAME% Most of our users are currently working remotely, this means the normal way of mapping the home drive fails as the VPN is not available before the user has logged in. I have been looking at making a GPO preferences drive map to %HOMESHARE%, my current predicament is that %HOMESHARE% gets updated at login and not when on a VPN connection, so If I update the value from \\FileServer1\home\%USERNAME% to \\FileServerOrg1\home\%USERNAME% the user will still map to their old drive. To resolve this I'm looking a running a scheduled task against the VPN connection event to pull the current value of the users home share from AD and update the cached copy on the local machine, then run a gpupdate /force to connect drive mappings. The config for this is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment\HOMESHARE, now I can update this manually but it does not load into current configuration without logging the user out and back in again - Anyone have any idea how to update this live? --- Alternatively I can map the users directly with \\FileServerOrg1\home\%USERNAME% instead of %HOMESHARE% but it adds a lot of complication in terms of security group for each organization & only applying when migrated to the new server, plus training help desk users that make user accounts to add correct security groups, make sure samaccountname is same as folder name etc.

Are you using Smoothwall? Had an issue for a while where there was an old certificate deployed from Smoothwall that was causing conflicts with esafe as it didn't meet correct certificate standards.

We tend to go for 120GB drives, only machine that causes us issues is our isolation computer as so many different staff use it frequently and our staff Delprof policy is pretty relaxed (delete a profile after being inactive for two weeks) their OST files quickly fill up the drive. Aside from that - no problems. Most of our machines have Kingston, but we also have number of Sandisk & Patriot drives - I think I've had 1 Sandisk failure and 1 Patriot failure so far.

Got an email last month that there is going to be a 10% price increase on Adobe

We strip out all apps as our image is installed via SCCM, logins are all SSO with ADFS. Although we also strip out the Microsoft Store so i'm not sure about that one. Populate desktop shortcuts with GPO

Why not Raid 5 for an SSD?

I'm currently looking at upgrading our storage to SSDs, we store around 4TB of data which i'm sure I can reduce to around 3TB-3.5TB. Our two Hyper-V hosts are PowerEdge T620's with 2xE5-2650's, 64GB of RAM and PERC H710 Raid adapter. They hold 8 bays in total in capacity, the servers are currently running on 3x2TB Raid 5 & 3x4TB Raid 5 with two empty bays. I'm currently looking at dropping the 3x2TB drives, keeping the 3x4TB (for additional storage such as multimedia & for emergency storage in the event a host goes down) then install 4x1TB Enterprise SSD's in Raid10 - Doing this I can move the majority of our data and all of our services onto SSD storage. The only thing is that I'm not really sure what best practice is regarding SSD's and Raids - What have you guys have configured?

Wifi is all they needed here.

Got an email yesterday from our supplier about a 10% increase in their prices...

I use Eset, it tends to go down by like 50% on black Friday - I've just renewed and its much cheaper if you buy multiple seats so we just split it 4 ways between family members.

I don't mind taking a look at kit during my lunch (Which I tend to work through) most issues are solved relatively quickly, if anything like their OS is messed up, i'll wipe it if they provide installation media - i'll often point them in the direction of an SSD if doing this too. Our staff are very understanding and never approach us with the "its your job to fix this" attitude - We often get rewarded with beverages. It is always made clear that there is a risk to their kit and they are not covered if anything goes wrong.

My oldest Hitachi projector (ax2503) purchased in early 2015 has 3247 hours on the lamp and still looks great 4 years in.

We have hitachi ax2503, hitachi ax2504 and hitachi ax2505 - I've not had to replace a lamp yet though.

I'm currently working of an estimated replacement every 8 years which works out that I need to replace 4 solutions a year. The biggest cost saving exercise is dropping touch screen functionality in some classrooms.

I got a standard TV for our meeting room - I've considered it for classrooms but i'm worried about their longevity and durability. Additionally with the projectors we can potentially upgrade to touchscreen functionality if it becomes necessary in the future. I need to check our oldest Hitachi projector on its lamp life as i'm pretty sure its around 4 years old and still looks great, new lamps range from £70 to £100+ depending if I get an original. The Hitachi 2505 uses 310w and 0.35 when in standby and a 4065 interactive screen uses 175w but i need to calculate how much money that equates to over its life. If we say the projector costs £500 and the lamps are £100 each In a school year there are 190 days, 5 hours worth of lessons a day plus an hour for times that the board is left on in the day between lessons. That is around 1140 hours a year on the lamp. The lamp under normal usage should last 5000 hours so that is 4.39 years per lamp so I can probably get away with 1 lamp change in its life time. so that is £600 for the projector For the power, at a average of 6 hours a day for 190 days at 13 pence per Kwh, that is £46 per year, £460 for 10 years So total ownership is around £1060 for the projector (quick research tells me I can get a smart board for £850) so £1910 if I want to make it interactive. and for a £1700 interactive TV, £1959 with power. Obviously these are all rough figures that do not take everything into account. Additionally.... the electric bill does not come out of my budget

Hi, After budget discussions it was agreed that we can not afford to replace all interactive solutions with LCD touchscreens, in classrooms where the teacher does not require touchscreen functionality we are putting up ultra short throw projectors and in other classrooms where it is required we are installing LCD Touchscreen projectors. We currently buy Hitachi CP-AX2505 for around £500 each which replace our old Unifi 45 projectors. The old smart boards tend to get used to project on (the touchscreen functionality is unusable on a fair amount of our existing boards) but in some classrooms i'm thinking about replacing the older/smaller smart boards with a matt projection white board - do many people have experience with these and how do staff get on with them? Also, for circumstances where rooms require touchscreen functionality we do purchase LCD touchscreens - at the moment we have 1x Gene touch, 1x Vivid touch and 3x Smart 4065 smart boards that I managed to get for around £1745 each , I don't really rate the first two but the 4065 boards seem pretty good, our maths department are the only ones that really utilize smart notebook, what other solutions are highly recommended?

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We renewed 2 years ago(ish) with Konica Minolta after being with them 5 years previously. Out of all the companies we decided to renew with them again, very happy with the service - prompt with delivery and servicing. We are now on a 4 year contract as a few of our printers were requiring more visits than I would like in the last year. Edit: - Of the top of my head I think Ricoh was second on our list for winning the tender - print quality seemed a little better but they were more expensive.

We have 30 from VeryPC that are 3.5 years old and out of warranty most the hinges are starting to go (when they go, opening the screen puts stress on the motherboard) and we can't get replacement chassis! I've had to hold the chassis together with a proxy resin so I hope I don't have to get inside them again. i5, 4th gen with 4GB ram - Thinking i'm going to have to replace them.

My troubleshooting ability in wireshark is limited but this entry seems to stand out in comparison to a machine that connects successfully. Successful clients tend to connect outlook.office365.com first. Maybe its a DNS issue?

I'm experiencing a bizarre issue with one of our network switches that only seem to be affecting outlook connectivity for users that I have migrated to Office 365 - I have isolated the issue to a SGE2000 24 port switch, its currently there as a stop gap as it has replaced a switch that died a few months ago, I'm just waiting until I can purchase a Netgear switch to replace it. If I plug a client into the other switch in the same Cab, outlook starts working. I've updated firmware on the switch, reset it to factory default and even updated the nic drivers on the affected computers. Any ideas what might be causing this sort of behavior??