cheredenine

Thats.... rather handy! Thanks for that; i'll give it a go!

Cheers for the replies - i'm giving legacy mode a go at the moment, see if i can get it to behave with creating/deploying RIS images. I can't help thinking the insistance on .wim files is a bit cynical - shouldn't need to spend £45 in order to use a tool that was once free and has been upgraded/crippled in favour of the newest OS version. Maybe i'm being unfair, but after spending most of today trying to get things running, i'm feeling less than charitable!

I boot into the deployment image i created, pick the image i want (I've only uploaded one so far) and then i get a message saying: "could not display the images available for installation" All the searching i've done so far this morning suggests mounting the boot.wim file with imagex and deleting the pid.txt file. Only the boot.wim file i have doesn't have this file... It came from a Dell restore disk originally; i've tried getting rid of the dell specific folder, but to no avail... Please - any ideas? I don't want to be defeated by this over-complicated pile of nonsense!

We're moving on to launch Serco Facility (got our data back today!) and ePortal to our staff from september. With ePortal specifically we're rolling it out to a pilot group first and are looking to make it as friendly as possible. We plan to 'disappear' some bitlets through editting the XML config files, at least until staff get used to things. Is there, however, a way of preventing users from altering the initial default layout of bitlets? I want to minimise the possibility of teachers getting disheartened with ePortal when they accidentally move bitlets and can't find them again..

Cheers for that, very helpful!

We're probably going to be repurposing a classroom to act as another ICT suite in the near future; as I'm new to the area I wonder if anyone can suggest some decent companies that I could approach in the Norfolk area? We'll be looking to get desking installed, as well as mains and data cabling. Maybe a Smartboard as well. Cheers!

I did login with local admin rights, as my user account is a domain admin account; and i certainly opened and closed the applications. This didn't stop the issue returning for the user affected, though, It was only changing the permissions on the folders that solved it, i'm afraid.

Aha... Not my choice. I've recently joined the school and have inherited a network previously supported by ICT Solutions, Norfolk CC's IT support arm. They have particular... ways... of doing things. The reason I was given was that some school, somewhere in Norfolk, had had trouble between a peice of educational software and NTFS, so the standard practice now is to use FAT32. Of course this means no file and folder level permissions on local machines, so Winsuite (another great legacy) has to be set to hide all files on the C drive..

My account is, of course... Would explain why the other classroom PCs don't exhibit the problem, too - they all appear to be Fat32 rather than NTFS, thanks to ICT Solutions...

We have a winner! This user, when made an admin, didn't have the problem, as you said.. With the permissions set on the local machine as you suggested and admin status removed, the problem is still gone. Thanks for your help! How odd, though - i can't see how this works, both as a problem and as a solution. The machine in question has been reinstalled, and both the user account and the profile have been recreated; no common element left. More to the point, my laptop is on NTFS, has Office 2003 installed, doesn't have the domain user permissions set and works fine. Odd...

Nothing suspicious that I can see in group policy for that user/computer - a couple of scripts copy shortcuts to the desktop, but thats it. Already done one virus check on the relevant folders on the server; the PC had a fresh install yesterday...

Gave this a try, just to see - don't think it could be related to default profile in this case as just done a clean install of windows, though. Tried launching from the actuall exe file, too, but no different.

Well... I did mention it was from the programs menu, but to be absolutely clear, I was using the shortcuts from Start->All Programs->MS Office. This was on Office as was originally installed, after being reinstalled on the offending PC, and after the whole PC had Windows reinstalled...

Time to resurrect this little gem. I took the advice offered and decided to have a fiddle with the profile. This didn't work, so I've since recreated the user account and reinstalled windows on the offending PC. Still get the issue; the only common element is the user's home directory. As soon as this is connected and available everything goes to pot, but i can't see anything suspicious in there. The problem manifests itself thus. Word or Excel, when started from the program menu, will attempt to open everything in the H: drive (home directory), whether its the appropriate file format or not. I haven't quite tested it as far as i'd like as the user needs access, still - i can't tell if its reacting funny to any H: drive setting (ie blank, newly connected folders), or just the existing one. I have the feeling it'll work fine until you connect to that existing folder and then it'll mess up whatever you do until the profile is recreated. Once it does manifest itself (i've tested this bit with an empty folder for the H: drive) and you start Word, killing the Word process obviously gets rid of Word, but some shortcuts have somehow been created in the H: drive folder - i seem to remember auto-correct lists and drive shortcuts created. Any ideas? Its getting annoying now - i've enough to do without bizarre random occurances!

Haven't had chance to shuffle the user on to another PC - she is an assistant head, so isn't in one place long... I suspect it is profile related as I can log on to the offending PC and use Excel without too much trouble...

Oh, no, not just spreadsheets - everything! The drive in question is, for reasons known only to the owner, full of shortcuts to other files - some internet pages, some documents, nothing that looks unusual. There are some sub-folders to, but Excel seems to leave those alone.

Right, hold on to your hats, this is a strange one... I have a user on who's computer Excel and Word are playing up. Excel will, when started, attempt to load whatever is in their H:/ drive (their home directory and where My Documents is redirected too). Nothing I've done can fix this behaviour! Starting Excel with the /safe or /automation switches gets round it, but I've tried detect & repair, uninstalling, reinstalling, registry edits, clearing out the user's profile, etc. All the help on line suggests a small number of possibilities; testing add-ins and Com add-ins (no use, no add-ins active), clearing XLSTART folders (nothing in them anyway), altering the 'At startup, open all files in' setting in Tools, Options (nothing set in there either) altering the default file location (only work properly once, but just displayed the same issue with a different set of files) Now i notice the same thing is happening with Word, too... Anyone got any bright ideas?

I wonder if anyone can point me to a document or web page that states specifically what a school's respoinsibilities are for storing data? Theres plenty about keeping stored data safe, but I need whatever guidance or requirements is available about what should be stored and for how long, etc. Basically I'm writing a development plan and need something to back me up about instituting new backup proceedures that may involve a cost... Cheers!

Reading further into the documentation there is a suggestion, as you say, that this is optional. The deal looks, superficially, quite good - three years of costs will be funded by the LA and they'll sort out implementation and MIS integration. Trouble is, i've never seen it in use, and need some guidance from those that use it! I also wonder how much the LA's implementation will differ from the standard fit offering...

Just getting to grips with the set up in a Local Authority thats new to me, and wonder if anyones got any views: The school i've recently joined has a small Moodle install hosted off-site. Obviously we need to be looking at promoting VLE use and looking at ultimately integrating it with our MIS. The LA seem to be pushing Fronter as their LA-wide solution; not sure i've seen all the details at all, but there doesn't seem to be any mention of whether this is optional or not. Can anyone share their experiences or what they plan to do? Still early days for me in decision-making, but i had planned to investigate bringing Moodle on site and integrating with Facility (our new MIS in the pipeline), and maybe rolling out Exchange for email instead of the Easymail service currently used. Having never seen Fronter in use, not sure i want to take the school down the route of blindly saying if there are alternatives...

Thanks for your reply. I think we'll go down the 'Standard edition' route as you suggest - i was hoping i could save a few quid with the free version, but it seems its not to be! Given the spec of the new server we have coming, it'd be a shame to have Facility limited because our database software can only address 1gb of memory...

Hmmm... Not sure i'm feeling brave enough to risk it, so I think i'll play it safe! As i'm new to the school I'm not sure how staff will react and don't want to be stuck with poor performance if they all jump on board straight away. Plus, the new server we've got coming to run it on is fairly decent spec; shame not to use all the cores... Thanks guys.

I've just started at a school as Network Manager and one of the many projects to get stuck into is an already-in-progress move from Phoenix Gold to Serco's Facility MIS. Serco recommend the standard edition of MS' SQL Server 2005, but i wondered if it would run on the free Express edition as SIMS (the MIS from my previous school) does quite happily. The response I got on asking the rep this question was a no and a link to a features comparison page- their technical people apparently reckon the Express editon is 'too limited for Facility when used in a secondary school'. Has anyone out there tried it? Call me cynical, but i'm wondering if i've got the easy answer, rather than the correct one! Cheers...

I've just recently started a job at a school that uses Winsuite, also in Norfolk, and have been told of this issue. Apparently no-one, including the software publisher, quite knows why it happens, and so deleting the affected user account and recreating is the only sure-fire fix... Good luck!

Oldish thread i know, but this tickled my fancy. I wondered if you could do a wildcard type thing with this to test against multiple computers without having to list each one in the script - so the script runs a command for all ICT1-xx computers, but not ICT2-xx computers, for example. Turns out wildcards aren't supported, but a work around is possible as long as you have a specific and regular naming system for your suites: set part_name_ict1=%computername:~0,3%1%computername:~4,3% set part_name_ict2=%computername:~0,3%2%computername:~4,3% if %part_name_ict1%==%computername% goto test1 if %part_name_ict2%==%computername% goto test2 goto broke :test1 echo It works! ICT1 set goto end :test2 echo It works! ICT set! goto end :broke echo broke! goto end :end exit For example computer name ICT1-01, the set commands pick out the first three characters (ICT) and the last three characters (-01), and fasten them together with a digit specified in the code specific to that variable. So, part_name_ict1 would generate ICT1-01, but part_name_ict2 would generate ICT2-01. The script goes on to compare the constructed part_name variables against the actual computer name, redirecting accordingly. This can then be used to run specific commands for individual rooms, without having to have multiple different scripts. You could do all this through setting logon scripts in group policy, i realise, or using Kixtart, but maybe someone can find a use for this!