SteveM555

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely pick up some manual lenses if they'll work ok. I have a Canon 1200D and I do have a small collection now, I got my new 22mm lens today for macro and hopefully some photos of the sky/stars at night. 55-250mm f4.5-5.6 USM IS (I would really like to either sell/part ex it and get something upto a 300mm or 400mm though as I enjoy wildlife photography) - Most used. 50mm f1.8 (I got this second hand around £55 off eBay) 24mm f/2.8 STM Lens (Got this today!!) 18-55mm (not sure on specs, I got this as a kit with the camera) - It's hardly ever used though, I think i've taken one photo with it. I think the only thing I would like is a better zoom lens, however the original Canon lenses go anywhere from £800 - £1k+!! I've seen the fixed zoom ones a lot cheaper but I would prefer autofocus I think and would also prefer a lens that isn't worth more than my car...

18C in the server room for us here too.

We have been using Office 365 Email for a couple of years... Recently teachers have found out that they can share documents, files etc. with each other using OneDrive online. MS have made some good improvements lately. We don't use Sharepoint online but may look at it if people are interested.

Thought I would chip in... with my Flickr page. Starting to get into Photography, although still need some decent equipment! Id love a better lens but for anything around 300mm with IS it's getting expensive. Quite happy with some of the photos though and I am just starting out.

Another +1 for Impero. We also use Smoothwall for internet filtering/monitoring too.

Been using Sophos for 3 years. Seems good so far, detected lots and had no outbreaks. Also handy with Application Control policies too so we can block certain software if needed.

Here is what we use for creating home directories and Importing users from CSV all in one.. CSV File Structure: Forename,Surname,Username,Password,EmailAddress,Description,UPN,OU,City,Department,Script,HomeDir,Telephone,Web,Country,State,Post Test,User,Test User,s0sqv5,[email protected],Pupil,12345678,"OU=2015,OU=Current Years,OU=Users - Pupils,DC=SCH,DC=local",Sheffield,Pupil TG,pupils.bat,\\someserver\pupils\2015\,1111 111111,www.school.com,England,Somewhere,555 555 And the Powershell... It defaults to users.csv in the same directory. It may need some modifying for your setup though, it also writes to duplicates.txt if it can't import. By default the home directories are stored as firstname surname in the folder specified in the CSV. It also adds Read, Write and Modify permissions to the home folder. I can't take credit for it as it's one I found a while ago online and modified it to suit. Import-Module ActiveDirectory $Users = Import-Csv -Delimiter "," -Path "./users.csv" foreach ($User in $Users) { $OU = $User.OU $Password = $User.password $description = $User.description $Detailedname = $User.forename + " " + $User.surname $EmployeeID = $User.upn $UserFirstname = $User.forename $emailAddress = $User.EmailAddress $SAM = $Detailedname $homedir = $User.homedir $homedirAD = $homedir + $Detailedname New-ADUser -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Name $Detailedname -SamAccountName $SAM -City $User.city -telephoneNumber $User.telephone -wWWHomePage $User.web -department $User.department -postOfficeBox = $User.country -state = $User.state -postalCode = $User.post -EmailAddress $emailAddress -EmployeeID $EmployeeID -UserPrincipalName $SAM -DisplayName $Detailedname -GivenName $user.forename -Surname $user.surname -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString $Password -AsPlainText -Force) -Enabled $true -Description $description -HomeDrive "H:" -HomeDirectory $homedirAD -ScriptPath $User.script -Path $OU if(!$?) { if($error[0] = "The specified account already exists") { $errorStr = $error[0] + ": " + $SAM Write-Warning $errorStr $tentry = "`n" + $Detailedname Add-Content ./duplicates.txt $tentry } } else { New-Item -path $homedir -Name $Detailedname -ItemType Directory $userDir = "$homedir\$Detailedname" $Rights= [system.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemRights]::Read -bor [system.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemRights]::Write -bor [system.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemRights]::Modify $Inherit=[system.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]::ContainerInherit -bor [system.Security.AccessControl.InheritanceFlags]::ObjectInherit $Propogation=[system.Security.AccessControl.PropagationFlags]::None $Access=[system.Security.AccessControl.AccessControlType]::Allow $AccessRule = new-object System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule("$Detailedname",$Rights,$Inherit,$Propogation,$Access) $ACL = Get-Acl $userDir $ACL.AddAccessRule($AccessRule) $Account = new-object system.security.principal.ntaccount($Detailedname) $ACL.setowner($Account) $ACL.SetAccessRule($AccessRule) Set-Acl $userDir $ACL $out = "The AD Account: " + $Detailedname + " and Home Directory: " + $homedirAD + " have been created." Write-Host $out } }

Not sure what your DCs/Clients are running, but there is a patch from Microsoft regarding the issue here which may be of help? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2866345

Does the report tell you more information? gpresult /H GPReport.html in command. Is it just the drive mapping that's not working? If so, check that nothing already has a drive letter mapped (e.g. card reader in pc/laptop) by checking disk management. Failing that check that the GPO is correct with the share name, there should be no backslash after the path.

I also can't see mine... but in our house someone is always streaming Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer.. Added to that Steam game updates and downloading new games at 25GB a time seems to be the norm!

Once you're connected I use the following.... Import-Csv H:\email.csv | foreach {Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity $_.group -Member $_.member} With the CSV containing one column of... member,group Joe Bloggs,All Staff Some User,All Staff John Smith,All Support Darth Vader,All Support It'll throw an error if the member is already in the group, but it will just carry on processing them anyway. That's the simplest method I've found of doing it... I agree the admin UI should have better group management.

Are you familiar with Powershell and O365? If so I can send you some scripts to import accounts into groups from a CSV file.

We have a Smoothwall UTM but also have a pfSense firewall with squid setup in case of emergency (and for us testing in the office) pfSense seems to be a very good free alternative, it required some extensive setting up for us though.

I think that's what I'll have to do for now. There are still plenty of switches without any fibre, luckily I can remedy most of those in the server room myself.

Thanks, that makes sense! With regards to the cable run, there is no fibre to these switches.. It's CAT5 straight from the cabinet in the server room. The cabling has been around here for at least 6 years or so, it looks like the only thing they've done is replace the switches on the cheap. I was hoping to have more than 1 cable run, no idea what they expect is going to happen if that ever broke/cut etc. as it feeds a good few rooms. I am pushing for fibre runs to all switch cabinets but it's way to late (apparently) to be planning it for this summer. I was hoping I could do something in the meantime to improve things until next summer. There are even some switches around the server room that are not fibre, which I am hoping to sort out ASAP. Thanks for the help!

We have been looking at our switches we have scattered around our site and noticed that nearly all of them are D-LINK DGS-1210's (DGS-1210-08P, DGS-1210-16, DGS-1210-24, DGS-1210-24P DGS-1210-48 Gigabit Smart Switches with Fibre Uplinks | D-Link UK) They come with 4x SFP Fiber connections, but having hardly ever dealt with using Fiber I have a few questions if anyone can help... 1) We have a cabinet mounted on the wall of a store cupboard with 3x switches in. They are connected together using a single CAT5 to each switch (these were set up well before we started). There is only one uplink to one of these switches. Would they benefit from being connected together via Fiber? since the uplink is only 1Gbps anyway? - Id much prefer to get another couple of cable runs back to the main comms cabinet but it doesn't look like it's going to happen until at least next year. 2) If I do end up buying Fiber cables for these switches, does brand matter? I've seen plenty of [insert company] compatible SFP mini-GBIC connectors. Will any work as long as it's the correct type? e.g. I've been looking at these for example: Trendnet TEG-MGBS10 - SFP (mini-GBIC) Transceiver Module - Ebuyer Thanks

We're also looking for a good lockable draw solution. Haven't found anything suitable for removable hard drives yet. We laser cut our own branded blanking plates though!

We use Remote Desktop Web Access. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc731923.aspx It isn't a full-blown desktop, we select the applications staff can access. Works great here.

We also team them here.. We also have more VMs than the number of network ports on each server. We do reserve one for management though.

We have dealt with Ergo and have around 75-100 desktops (i3, 4GB ram, 120GB SSDs). Not had any issues with any of them since they were installed nearly a year ago - So I can't comment on the support. The ones we have are Ergo branded and come with a plate to screw on the back to fix the cables in place. We have Lenovo laptops but no desktops (these also seem fine up to now)

I have also built our sign-in system - This is what we use for all staff (we have RFID cards). It has a PHP/MySQL backend and a .NET application for the sign-in frontend. It handles all staff/visitor sign-ins. Working patterns, reporting, email reminders, fire register (hooked into NET2 Access Control) so it automatically prints the fire register once the fire alarm goes off. We couldn't find anything on the market at the time that did everything that we wanted. It is still very much in development, but currently live with all staff/visitors.

Only some basic ones here.. I have a script that reads new AD users from a CSV and creates home folders and sorts out permissions. If anyone wants it I'll dig it out.

Some things I can think of.. spread over the last few years: PC in every classroom hooked up to Interactive Board/Projector. Impero VLE Site-Wide WiFi iPads (only two classroom sets at the minute, but they get booked up very quickly)

Using 3.2.7 here with Guest mode and vouchers - With HTTPS the page just times out (doesn't get through) any other page re-directs to the voucher page.

Hopefully someone can help.... We have around 10 old HP 2055 Printers still in use and have been working fine for years and years. Recently, 3 of the 10 have started crashing and freezing, the panel on the printer will become unresponsive and it'll need a restart to start working again. We also have a problem where 2 printers will NOT start back up (stops on the error orange LED) when the network cable is still plugged in?? It is extremely confusing as we have the other printers working fine with the same setup/drivers etc. Tried the following: - Factory Resets - Removed from DHCP and changed IPs - Tried a different driver on the print server - They all print perfect over USB - But not networked. - Plugged into a different Network Switch No way can all of the printers suddenly go faulty at the exact same time, print server shows nothing and also nothing in the event logs either. Has anyone has this before? The one where it won't start up unless the network cable is unplugged is ridiculous! If we plug it in after it's restarted it's fine for a while until it crashes. I was thinking this has to be a network issue; but we've changed nothing and most of the HP printers are working fine (on the same switches, same print server etc.) Any advice would be great. Thanks,