cscc

Wishful thinking I know

Are there any technicians in schools that have transformed into an academy status school where their pay has been realigned with the private sector as opposed to the constraints of public section council control? If so did you see any financial benefits?

Basically, what we’re trying to do is publish OWA 2003 and Exchange Activesync through our ISA 2004 firewall. Currently, these two things are configured successfully on our front end exchange server. The problem lies in the fact that on ISA 2004 forms based authentication and other forms of authentication are mutually exclusive on the same listener. Basically, if forms based authentication is enabled on a web listener accepting incoming connections, then no other authentication method can be used at the same time on that IP address. Currently, we have a rule in the firewall for OWA as follows: OWA Firewall Rule Action = Allow From = Anywhere To = frontendexchange. Domain.sch.uk HTTP + HTTPS, tick notify users to use HTTPS instead. Listener = IntranetIP Public Name = intranet. Domain.sch.uk 217.xxx.xx.xx Users = All users Paths - /exchange/* /exchweb/* /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/* /Public/* Bridging = Web Server, Redirect requests to HTTP port 80 Web Listener (intranetip) Networks = External, Internal Port (HTTP) 80 Port (HTTPS) 443 Certificate = Same as above Authentication Methods= OWA FBA Always Authenticate? Yes Domain = Domain.Sch.Uk If I want to get Exchange Activesync working, I have to edit the firewall rule, remove the above web listener and replace it with one specifically tailored for Activesync. This then enables Activesync to work, but OWA to fail. The configuration for Activesync is as follows: Exchange ActiveSync Firewall Rule It is a Mail Server Publishing Rule (will appear as a web rule when completed) Action = Allow From = Anywhere To = frontendexchange.Domain.sch.uk HTTPS only Listener = Microsoft Activesync Listener Public Name = intranet. Domain.sch.uk 217.xxx.xx.xx Users = All users Paths - /exchange/* /exchweb/* /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/* /Public/* Bridging = Web Server, Redirect requests to HTTP port 80 Exchange Activesync Listener Rule Networks = External Port (HTTP) = Disabled Port (HTTPS) 443 Cerificate = Same as above Authentication Methods = Basic Always Authenticate? No Domain = Domain.Sch.Uk I’m aware that I can have the two firewall rules existing at the same time, but haven’t bothered because it isn’t fully functional at the moment anyway. I have already tried this: ISA Server 2004: Supporting Both Basic and Forms-based Authentication with a Single External IP Address and Web Listener (v1.1) It didn’t work as expected. I’m now going to try and do the it official “Microsoft” way, but I’m a bit stuck. As we’re a school, we operate through SWGfL, who control which servers have what published over the internet. We can get most ports/protocols allowed but it involves having to go through a change request process. The web address intranet.domain.sch.uk currently resolves to 10.x.x.x which has been assigned to us by SWGfL. Do I need to move the Exchange Activesync configuration onto a different server, obtain a different external IP address, and different web address (and certificate) for it, or is there another way I can do it by just using our front end exchange server, and it’s one IP address/web address? If it helps, I believe our front end exchange server has 2 network cards, one of which isn’t in use. Lots of people seem to think I need to bind another external IP address to our firewall, but isn’t it going to get a bit confused if I have 2 IP addresses pointing to the same web address? Any tips and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Is there a print credit system out there that allows credits to be placed on computers as opposed to users? If so one that isnt too expensive.

Just checked a few random machines in different rooms and within the profile directory My Documents is not there so the group policy is being applied correctly.

Yep the problem only seems to happen at the beginning of each lesson when all the students log in at the same time. We have 6 ICT suites with 30 PC’s in each. All these machines are pretty much in use every lesson, all day long. The user accounts have been split across 3 servers and the average profile size is about 12MB. We used to get this problem once every few weeks, but now it appears to be at the start of every period. The profiles of kids hasn’t grown enough to effect the network this much.

Yep, we use roaming profiles. We have folder redirection setup for My Documents and Desktop. So profiles are normally pretty slim. Have tried wireshark on a couple of machines and there is no unusual traffic, even during the massive slow down periods. The slow login for students isn’t really the issue, it’s fact that other machines already logged in experience huge lag for several minutes.

We seem to be having a bit of a strange issue with our network at the moment. It is something which has gradually built up and is now getting worse. In the mornings when the bulk amount of users log in, the whole network grinds to a halt. The odd thing is any machines on the network that have been logged in since the start of the day experience massive slow down, to the point where you cant do anything (the network switches seem to go nuts and pulse together simultaneously). The slow down can range from 3-5mins. The really frustrating thing is you cannot do anything locally as the machine just sits there with an egg timer until the network storm is over. We use roaming profiles for both staff and students. Since the problem has started to become more prominent we have checked our fileserver for profile issues and found out student profiles are no bigger than 30MB. Some staff profiles are 60MB max (staff normally login before the students though). Anyone have any ideas?

Hey, thanks for the reply. We currently have something similar set up for some users in order to prevent members of staff phoning every time a print job gets stuck. I have looked at many applications like PrintManagerPlus etc. but they are overcomplicated for what we need.

Does anyone know if there is a piece of software that will allow non-admin users (teaching staff) to manage network printer queues? We currently use an application called Command Workstation 4 for a couple of Xerox printers which collects any jobs sent to it and leaves them in a queue until they are authorized. Users can login to the application with their own credentials and manage the queues. The only problem is we cannot use this application for other printers because it only seems to pick up the Xerox printers.

Thank you very much, I shall give that a try.

I only have the home version at the moment for testing purposes. None of the computers are going to be connected up to a network. I basically want to mirror one machine and create a bootable disc that can be used to image the rest (they are identical builds).

Hi, I have a really stupid question with regards to Norton Ghost v14. I was under the impression that you could make a mirror image of the hard drive and then create a bootable CD/DVD from that which could then be used to automatically format the hard drive and image it. I am able to do backups on the drive etc. but I can’t see any option for creating a bootable disc. After reading around a bit it seems it was possible to do this with Ghost 2003. If anyone could shed any light on this that would be great.

Thanks for the reply. I tried again and waited for the AutoPrint script to finish and loaded Access but the report still produced the error message. I think I may have narrowed it down to be a driver issue. I set a different network printer to default and the report ran fine. The rooms that have the problems have the Konica Minolta Magicolor 5440 set as default. We are using the latest set of drivers.

We seem to be having a strange issue with MS Access. Every time a user tries to run a report using the wizard, Access throws up the following message: “The wizard is unable to create your report” I have searched the net and tried a few of the suggestions, the one which seems to work is changing the default printer to anything that isn’t a network printer and running the wizard again and it seems to work fine. The problem is that students do not have access to change default printers and I don’t feel the need to give them access just to work around this problem. Running the report wizard in our office seems to work fine and we only have network printers mapped. Anyone come across this before?

Thanks for the info. Hope this may be of some use, I managed to create a script that I added to a new group policy which runs upon login: Font.bat -------------- copy \\server\officefont$\*.* "%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates" /y -------------- I simply put the Normal.dot file in the shared folder on the server. The template file is applying to all users and seems to be working ok.

We currently have MS Office 2003 deployed on our network and wanted to set a default font for all office applications via group policy or similar. I have tried searching the forums but didn’t stumble across any related threads. Even changing the default font just in Word for all users would be a bonus.

Thanks, I’ll give the folder re-direct a try. If I apply this policy will the staff see a blank desktop the next time they login? E.g. not see the usual crap they have stored on there.

Ill have a look in to the disk quota option and possibly task scheduling a profile delete Thanks for the help guys.

Yep we use roaming profiles here. We are constantly finding ourselves deleting the desktop folders on the local machine and at the server end to resolve the issue but as soon as they log in to another machine it reappears on the server and then the problems starts all over again. We have sent out several emails and talked to staff numerous times about making sure their desktop only contains shortcuts to files and folders but it falls on deaf ears. This is why I wanted to either limit the size of the desktop or possibly restrict all files/folders except shortcuts. We did have a script via GP which removes all local profiles on start-up but this was slowing the network down majorly as staff profiles were being downloaded every day.

We are having a bit of trouble on our network regarding profile size which is normally relating to the amount of items stored on the desktop. A lot of our staff members have desktop folder sizes in excess of 500MB and log in to multiple machines which is causing major slow downs across the network. I was wondering whether it was possible to set a storage limit on the desktop folder which wouldn’t affect users who currently have a large amount of files present.