Hecate

Following a rebuild of the OS drive on our SQL server SQL is refusing to start. The data is held on another drive and is undamaged (in fact we have restored it to a temp server to keep things running) Can anyone advise me of the best way to rebuild SQL. Should I try running the repair options from the command line or should I just reinstall SQL and recreate the instance. Although not a complete novice I've never had to do much with the SQL apart from install it so any help would be welcome

recent experience recommends mirroring the OS drive as well as a separate RAID for the data. You should also have a separate drive for the transaction logs as this will improve performance. Just for comparison; we are currently running SIMS on a temporary server with a 2.5 dual core cpu and 2Gb RAM without any undue stress on the server and none of the users has noticed much loss of performance. This is in a school of 1300 pupils. We hope we don't have to stick with this for more than a few days but it is an interesting observation.

Thanks for your suggestions. It turned out to be a fairly complex configuration problem which Capita eventually sorted for me

patch 1273 is the one I've run and I can't find anything else relevant on supportnet - but I'll try looking at the staff hours

This is a long shot but someone may know the amswer. We have just had our main SIMS server fall over and are restoring the backup onto a temporary alternative. SIMS is fine but when we try to log in to FMS i get Application Error --------------------------- Exception EDBEngineError in module Finance.exe at 0007A2DE. General SQL error.[Microsoft] [sql Server]Cannot roll back atomic. No transaction or savepoint of that name was found. --------------------------- OK I've run the patch suggested by Capita without success, have reported this back to the support desk and am now waiting for them to get back to me .....and waiting........and waiting

I agree with maniac. We rarely have trouble with the actual update process. Occasionally the update refuses to run at all usually because someone somewhere is still logged in but once the server has updated the update process on the workstations runs smoothly. btw I have scripted the workstation update so it runs at computer startup which prevents impatient users messing it up.

Having disposed of the relevant printers I have the following that we no longer need Full boxed set of cartridges for magicolour 3100 sealed boxed cyan original for above transfer unit for above 2 remanufactured kyocera TK50H (for FS1900 printer) original boxed Toshiba T1200E Any offers considered - I'd rather not just dump them

We use Forensic and are reasonably happy with it

Are you sure you're using Personnel 7. Pre personnel 7 new staff have to be added in the personnel 5 and then get copied across into SIMS.net. Staff can be viewed in .net but not edited

We're using SIMS and FMS on the same SQL 2005 instance without any problems

1. yes 2. immediate classroom problems, SMT, urgent admin, order they come in. No corridor requests, paper only if left in official pigeon hole 3. depends on the problem - aim is to have a fix or work round in place within 1/2 day 4 help desk manager then IT director 5 yes whenever we can but only if we are sure user understands it 6 turn up or email 7 we are free to ignore requests that aren't logged properly

We trialled one of these but like BIZZEL found it fell between the two stools of laptop and PDA and we couldn't justify the price. We are however looking seriously at the Asus EeePC for those areas where a laptop takes up too much room (labs and workshops)

Remember SQL server is licensed on a per processor basis so if you up the number of processors you may have licensing issues

Have you checked the share permissions - we had this and tracked it down to 'everyone' only having read access to the share on the server where the home folders are stored - OK for existing users but new users weren't allowed to create a home folder.

Thanks everyone - I brought this up with our leadership team because I am doing more and more SIMS stuff linked to admin rather than just the network nuts and bolts. It seems I am not alone

We are going through a restructuring exercise and there has been a suggestion ithat we need a data manager/SIMS manager/senior management general dogsbody who would sit somewhere between leadership team and admin staff and oversee SIMS operations, workflow in the admin team and other issues to do with how data flows round the school, linked agencies and parents. There is however a huge variation in what various members of the team think a data manager should do and I wondered what happens in other schools

We use PARS because when we introduced electronic registration it was better than SIMS Lesson Monitor but we are finding issues with having some pupil data in SIMS and some in PARS and if we were doing it now would probably go for lesson monitor

We use MDS (mdsbattery.co.uk) they're usually pretty competitive and quick

I hit a similar problem where a machine had crashed while running SIMS - I tracked it down through the activity monitor in SQL server management studio which showed a stalled process

How about setting up a logon script that alerts you when he logs on then using a remote viewer to see what he's doing?

I am past the August release but I don't want to go down the windows authentication route because we have SIMS on teacher's PCs in classrooms and I can't rely on teachers to log off or lock the computer when they leave the room. I just want the junior support staff to be able to reset passwords without having to hunt me down every time.

I am trying to set up permissions for support users to reset SIMS passwords without giving them full system manager rights. I have created a user group with what look like the right permissions but the users can't see the user set up page. I had expected them to get a stripped down system manager group but they don't see any extra areas. Can anyone suggest what I am missing

I think you are confusing instances and databases. Each instance can contain more than one database so you can add the SIMS database to an existing instance or create a new one depending on your set up. On ours which is full SQLServer 2005 we have the library database and SIMS on the same instance.

We are using 2 as back up storage and are more than satisfied but we aren't trying to integrate them with AD

It's exam time and we have kids using laptops for wordprocessing. Does anyone know of an easy way of disabling the word spellchecker just for one user group. We have a way which involves putting a deny permission on the dictionary files but it seems rather clunky