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We find it's normally the PSU failing, discharging all power solves the issue sometimes for a little while before eventually dieing completely. Normally replacing the power supply works, but you seem to have already tested that :/

Got it sorted it in the end, just trying to get hold of the Discover Hosted Technical Guide now to view the details of the backup utility they now provide. Cheers Vikpaw

Thanks, will give it a shot tomorrow

I found that if you create your .rdp file using a Windows Thin PC (and presumably Windows 7 machine) there is an option on the device redirection under drives to redirect "devices which I plug in later" which does what your after.

Used SQL Backup and FTP from here: Free SQL backup software for MSSQL Server 2008 and MS SQL Server 2005 Express databases and did a Full backup using SQL Management Studio Edit: Just noticed our Discover database is in a similar position (Database 100MB ish, log file 400MB ish) so obviously I'm missing something here. Did notice our Solus3 database is set to the Full recovery mode if that makes a difference. Discover and the rest of SIMS is set to simple.

Just been looking at our Solus3 setup making sure everything is all sorted ready for the Summer Upgrade and noticed the database is 3MB but the Transaction Log size is 75MB. I ran full backups against it presuming that would trim the transaction log size down but it didn't. Have I understood correctly that a full backup should trim the transaction log or is there another step and is 75MB large/small/normal for the Solus3 database? Thanks

This doesn't happen though (or it didn't when I was playing with the timetable). When I locked a session from a block to a period on the timetable, that session would stay put. When I locked a subject within a block, if I unbuilt the block then it would remove every session from the block regardless. This caused great confusion when using the autoscheduling because it seemed to move subjects arround within the blocks at random too when trying to schedule. An example, T6 built a block with 2 art sessions on at the same time. We partially built the block, locking the Art sessions at different times, then built the rest of the block. We then unlocked the Art subjects, tried to autoschedule the blocks and T6 shuffled the block arround so that the 2 Art sessions were on at the same time again! It turned out that it seemed to be the only way to schedule that block, however there was no prompt, warning or mention anywhere that it would rebuild a built block when trying to schedule (that I've seen anyway)

You can't sign up for the High School one any more though can you (or am I missing the link somewhere)? If it's true you can't sign up for it anymore, which one are people signing up for on the MSDN AA? (I need to try and get it sorted for september)

It's the full .net4 release that get's installed with Solus 3 so would expect that one.

If you get the letter, any chance pm'ing me a copy please?

I've poked arround in the DMS folder on a test system, word documents and the like (which will include profiles, individual reports and the like) are all just within the DMS filesystem (not encrypted) and presumably called when required, the remained of the stuff is scattered arround. Obviously I haven't a clue on the structure and wouldn't recommend going poking arround and pulling stuff out of the DMS filestructure on a live system unless you know what your up to. Just to expand a little more on what I put, @vikpaw has the right area with the Xporter. The Groupcall Xporter is/was used by CLEO for MIDAS and is how they were extracting linked documents to put in place for the Parental Online Reporting (where ever CLEO decide they are now upto with this project), so we have the reports in SIMS which the Xporter runs and pulls out then uploads any new linked documents.

Groupcall have a way of extracting the SIMS linked documents, so it's possible somehow.

Went to London on Friday, cached the data for the wimbledon area to save on data costs before I left. Worked pretty well.

@TheScarfedOne Do you get prompted about the RDP file and the publisher and do your drives auto mount (or are you not automounting USB drives)? I had a quick play (admittedly not in a huge ammount of detail) at the end of the week but kept getting prompted about the publisher of the rDP file and memory pens wouldn't automount (but I do need to go back and play properly)

Thanks, will give it a go tomorrow (might be last chance saloon for it....)

It's worth bearing in mind also the IEP writer only writes certain fields back to the IEP, the rest of the data is pulled straight out of SIMS and even if you alter it in IEPWriter won't write back those pulled fields back from SIMS.

I'm ready to give up on Thinstation - 4 days later I'm not much further forward then I was. I've created my image which the client pulls down, it pulls down the config but when I choose to launch either rdesktop or freerdp neither launch, it goes to a black screen and then comes back again. If I switch it to use the vesa driver, rdesktop works but if you log out and then try to connect again the screen corrupts requiring a restart for it to work properly again. I suspect it's a graphics driver issue, but not certain. The batch of machines in question have a Radeon Xpress 200 integrated graphics card in them, but I have the Radeon driver package in my image. I'm stuck and don't know where to go with it, because the Vesa option is obviously no good either at the moment.

I'm thinking of trying it on an old pc which I can't for the life of me figure out how to get thinstation working on it, although suspect it might be to old to cope with it

Could try Pack and Go-ing the powerpoint so it updates all the links and stores the files in one folder and then upload the powerpoint and video to the same location on moodle and see if that does it? It might just try and reference the video from the temp file location when you open the video though... (unless I'm missing the way to properly embed it)

Fixed it - what a bloody numpty I am! Now to try and get the graphics driver to work....

Spent the afternoon looking at this since there was no one to interupt me which was quite nice. Thinstation boot's using PXE fine, but doesn't ever pull down the thinstation.conf.network from the server. I setup tftpd on my computer to test it to rule out WDS interfering with it at any point and it still does the same and can see it pulling down the boot files but it never seems to request the thinstation.conf.network file in the log. I created a debug image and can ping ip addresses without a problem so the NIC driver is there and working, but I'm stuck as to where to go from here to try and diagnose why it's not getting the conf file. Any hints?

I've spent the afternoon trying to setup Thinstation, I've been through the TS-O-Matic, created my Thinstation Image, put it on my WDS server, got a workstation to boot from it and then.... get the error No Valid Session Type and I'm now stumped. As far as I can tell, I've got everything right, I've re-editted the thinstation.conf.network several times and rebuilt the image with rdesktop instead of freerdp but don't know where to go now and can't find what the most common cause of the error is. I've attached the two latest thinstation.conf.network's if someone could take a look and see if I've made any glaring errors or give me another area to tackle to try and get this working? Cheers! thinstation.conf.network1.txt thinstation.conf.network2.txt

Yeah, we're not using a central store at the moment because there's no need but since we're pushing Windows 7 out I thought if it was going to be of use I might head down that route. Might give it a go just to experiment over the summer.

I'm looking at whether it's going to be of benefit having a central store for Group Policy or not and wondering what others do? The reason being I'm planning to move to Windows 7 over the summer for the IT rooms, but initially the admin side of things will remain on XP. So, would having a central store cause me problems anywhere along the line? I remember reading somewhere about a problem with 2008, 2008 R2 and the central store but can't remember what that was. As our SIMS server runs 2008 I don't want to bugger anything up by implementing one for no benefit. 1 Domain Controller currently runs 2008R2 and the 2nd runs 2003. Any guidance much appreciated as to whether I should head down this route or not. Thanks!

Assuming that the machine is set to auto-login, how about a shortcut to the powerpoint in the startup folder. Then once your done updating the powerpoint, you restart the machine through the remote desktop connection so that when it comes back up it launches the updated powerpoint? More of a faff then just using VNC, but is a way of achieving what you want to do without using it.