BBrian

We've recently bought some new laptops for the teachers to use with their whiteboards. These are touchscreen but the default action for touch in ActivInspire is to select what's on the page rather than use whichever tool has been selected. I've found where to change that under Edit/Profiles/Settings/Dual Mode ActivBoards but I'd like to know how I can push that change to every teacher in the school. Is there an ActivInspire ADMX available for me to use with Group Policy?

Hi, I've had some issues in a school where individual computers have crashed and flooded the networking, bringing it down on everyone. Symptoms would be webpages failing to load and no icons on their desktop (i.e. no connection to the file-server/redirected profile). Once the offending computer is disconnected from the network, everything returns to normal. This has happened with two computers in the past year, one having crashed leaving a black screen and one crash as Windows was booting (applying computer settings). I've updated their BIOS and re-installed Windows and everything has been working since. Unfortunately we have ~35 of these computers so I expect the problem will strike again. Our network is all unmanaged switches. One central one with our servers, broadband and other switches plugged into it. The other switches are 3 gigabit and 3 100 Mbit 24 port switches with a wireless AP plugged into each of the Gb switches. I need a solution that will handle the next time something like this happens without all student, teacher and admin computers going offline. I've never managed a managed switch before but at first glance, it seems Storm Control on each port another switch is connected to might handle it. It was also suggested to me to use v-lans (that I should already be using them!) but, again, it's a bit beyond my experience. I guess I'd give our (Windows) DHCP server as many IPs as there are v-lans but I'm not sure what we'd do with our gateway, which is controlled by the department of education (Ireland) though we can request setting be changed. Any tips would be appreciated, or any reading that sounds about my level!

I've had trouble installing, most recently, ActivDriver because the MSI doesn't store the files in a .CAB or inside the MSI itself. The MSI is in the \5.10\ folder and the rest of the path takes up 194 characters. The limit seems to be 255, there are 260 in the path above. I managed to work around it by renaming the Program Files 64 folder to PF64 and creating a transform for the MSI so it knew what directory to copy files from. I made the following edit in the Directory table using InstEd (Orca should do too): I've attached the transform for anyone to download: PF64.mst Ideally, your developers will package the files inside a .CAB file or inside the MSI and it should work without incident.

What command line switches are available for Inspire.exe? I'd like to be able to script importing Smart .notebook files and then create a file association for them. Thanks.

Weird one here... In one school in which I work once/week, I've just come in to find my software deployment folder "software" has disappeared from one of our servers. Judging from backups, it seems to have happened last Wednesday (I work Tuesdays) and I can't think of why. When I try to restore from Windows Server Backup to the original location, selecting Overwrite the existing versions..., I get the error "The alternative location specified for restore is invalid". When I make a new folder and try to rename it in Windows Explorer or with the command prompt, the name quickly reverts to New Folder, rather than asking me to merge with the existing folder. When I try to go to the full folder path (d:\pcadmin\software) the system/Windows can't find it. I can't scan the drive for errors right now because Windows wants to dismount it and the redirected folders are also on it. I scanned and nothing changed. For now, I've disabled the DFS folder target that points to the now missing folder. I haven't lost any data, but I'm also not able to recreate the folder. I wouldn't be surprised to find the space is lost (for now). Does anyone have any idea what happened or how to recreate a folder called software in the same spot?

When users try to visit a site, http://www.esinet.ie, they're getting an error: There is a problem with this website's security certificate. It's the same in IE, Firefox and Chrome. Firefox tells me the certificate expired in September. I was testing in a VM that had never visited the site before and there's no proxy in the school. When I visit using my own laptop, i.e. not joined to the domain, I can view the site without problems and the certificate is still in date. I went into WSUS and made sure everything IE/Root Certificate related was approved and the computers have run Windows Update, but this didn't fix it. I had a look in Internet Options/Content/Certificates but didn't see anything that looked unusual. Does anyone know what's going on?

Rookie mistake: I thought we had no 64 bit Windows here. Looks like this one is and I didn't have the 64 bit drivers added. Thanks guys.

I've a GPO with three shared printers being deployed through GPP. Two are applying fine but the third one is failing with Event 4098, Group Policy Printers: This is working OK on other computers (i.e. the server driver cache is serving properly) and the printer has been added manually to the problematic computer (with a different printer name), so there should be no driver issue. The only notable thing is the driver is "Generic 25C-2/25C-2P VPS". I Googled around for a while but didn't come up with anything.

This is an FYI to Promethean and a warning to others. I deployed version 1.6.5 last week over 1.6.43. Group policy did not automatically place 1.6.43 in the "Packages that this package will upgrade" section of the deployment's properties. As a result, 1.6.5 installed over 1.6.43 rather than it uninstalling it beforehand. The desktop shortcuts on teachers' computers were left pointing to 1.6.43 which attempted an MSI repair but this halted with a warning about a newer version being installed. Similarly for file associations, flip-charts were associated with 1.6.43 and a repair was attempted when trying to open them. ActivInspire could not be opened by any teachers in the school. The quick fix is to deploy a simple shortcut to the ActivInspire executable and have teachers use this instead of the 1.6.43 Windows Installer shortcut still on their desktops. The full fix is to uninstall 1.6.5, then uninstall 1.6.43, then install 1.6.5 again. (start - run - msiexec /uninstall \\path\to\ActivInspire.msi) For others to avoid this happening, after adding the MSI to your group policy object, choose Advanced rather than Assign (or go into properties after) and under the Upgrades tab, manually add any previous versions of ActivInspire (from that or other group policy objects). To Promethean, I think it's just a matter of adding a GUID into the Upgrade table of the MSI. I don't really know enough to point out exactly, but Group Policy should know what MSIs to upgrade. In this case, it did mark 1.4 for upgrading, so maybe it's something to do with point releases vs. build. This happened before with a previous version of ActivInspire but has never occurred with anything else I've deployed with Group Policy, so please look into it!

I was. I did another test just now and it failed-over as it should. I'm not sure what happened earlier that it gave the network error.

I have DFS set up, replicating across two servers, but if one of the servers goes down (tested earlier today) the clients report the shares as offline. What do I need to do to have the client start using the other server? I tried setting up print redundancy by installing the printers on both servers, both of which are domain controllers and DNS servers, sharing the printers as \\printers\printername then adding a cname entry to each server for printers pointing to itself. Once the server was offline, I couldn't print. I was hoping the server that was still online would serve itself as the DNS entry for \\printers and everything would run smoothly! I guess in both cases I need to flush DNS for \\namespace.dfs\ and \\printers\ if they appear to be offline. How are other people achieving this?

I'm not back there until Tuesday but want to order everything today. I'd just like clarification on "please check compatibility". Do the modules work with either fiber type? I was planning to order patch cables for both fiber types and then the two modules, then install the appropriate patch when they arrive. Why are the modules so cheap on eBay? The usual website I order from (where I got the switches) prices them at €300, while second-hand ones start at £20 on eBay. Have people moved to 10Gb? I was planning to order some non-Cisco branded ones because they guy offers expedited shipping, or Cisco branded ones if you question the compatibility. Thanks again for the help.

Brilliant responses, thank you very much. The buildings are pretty close, maybe 20m apart (plus internal distance). It's currently an orange cable, black and red at each end. Would I be correct in buying 1M Fibre Optic LC-ST Multi Mode Patch Lead 50/125 OM2 from eBay? It seems almost perfect, but does the LC end fit directly into the Cisco SFP or do I need a converter? I'm a bit thrown by calling the same thing SFP and LC, if they are. The converters look to be about €100 after delivery, so ideally the eBay link will do. It's less than fun trying to map out networks other people have set up! There's at least one room and one mystery port that I haven't figured out yet (no, they don't match!).

I'm working in a school that has two buildings connected using Allied Telesis AT-MC101XL 100Mbit converters. Is there anything I can slip in their place that will upgrade us to gigabit? We have a couple of Cisco Small Business SG 102-24 gigabit switches w/ 2 x combo SFP set up, if that's any use.

I tried it with 2003r2 Terminal Services and it would close windows etc. on the second terminal when the window was closed on the first and vice-versa. I never checked if 2008+ had fixed that. I had no problem logging in on two terminals at once.

I've a terminal server that one of the teachers wants Windows Movie Maker on. It requires a graphics card with Pixel Shader 2.0 so I need discrete graphics. It's a Dell sc1430 which has one PCI, two PCI-X and one PCI-e 4x (in an 8x connector). I couldn't find any non x16 PCI-e graphics cards for sale except in the US. I already have a SB Audigy in the PCI slot, but I figured I'd use the PCI-X as PCI slots and put a graphics card in there. I purchased an "EVGA 512MB Geforce 8400GS" and tried it, but it wasn't detected. I swapped cards so the Audigy is in a PCI-X slot and the GeForce is in the PCI slot, but it's still not detected. Has anyone any idea how to get this to work? Or where I can get a suitable PCI-e card that will do the job? I'm running Server 2008r2 on it.

We're using the v10 Terminal Server version of it and it does the job. I've had more trouble with the software we need it for being too old to run on 2008r2. Some software, if using SecuROM, e.g. WordShark, won't run when it finds any virtual CD software. That was also a pain. Had to upgrade to the network version to get around that. Can anyone comment on DaemonTools's licence for education? It explicitly says now that it's not free for education use, but I deployed 4.35.6, certain that I was abiding by its licence, and now can't find where it said it was ok.

I want to set up MDT for disaster recovery in a small school. There are about ten computers here and the previous admin bought retail Windows 7. I saw a post elsewhere suggesting the retail version files won't work with MDT and I figure the retail keys won't work with the volume licence files. What's the best way to proceed?

There's something about SMB2 that Office 2007/2010 doesn't like. Just implemented the fix myself this week though yet to get feedback. I wasn't getting a dialog box like you, it was just taking an unreasonably long time. Office 2007 and Windows 7 Slow saving file to the network

I'm trying to set up Outlook 2010 with Google Apps IMAP servers using .prf files. I'm intending to put them in HKCU\RunOnce. While testing, when I launch Outlook with the /importprf switch, it seems to configure the account (i.e. no prompt) but then it says "Send/Receive Error" in the status-bar. As there is no way to include a password in the .prf configuration file, it should be prompting me at this point. Hitting send and receive again or starting Outlook normally also don't prompt for the password. When I go into Account Settings/Change Account, the password box is blank and the Remember Password check-box is ticked. If I enter the password here, everything works fine. In order to try force it to prompt for the password, in Group Policy, I enabled "Disable 'Remember Password' for Internet e-mail accounts" and "Prevent saving credentials for Basic Authentication policy". This resulted in the password box and Remember Password check-box being greyed out, but when setting up the profile from scratch there was still no change. The .prf file was created using the Office Customization Tool so it should be ok! I also tested this on two different Outlook 2010 installations, one retail and one Professional. I've uploaded the .prf file for inspection. I need a setting somewhere to force a password prompt! Any ideas appreciated.

This may help: Allowing Vista Standard Users to install printer drivers

I need a virtual CD drive per user on my terminal server. Daemon Tools only works per machine (and only up to four devices), Microsoft's Vitrual CD Control Panel won't install of 2008r2, and I'm waiting on a reply from Alcohol Soft (Alcohol 52%) regarding it, but I don't see any mention of terminal services on their website. Virtual CD seems to be the only one with support for terminal services. Is it my only option? It seems like something that might even be built into the OS.

I'm trying to deploy Forefront from Server 2008 to Windows 7 clients using the MOM 2005 Administrator Console. I've added port exceptions (tcp and udp) 1270, 135 and 445, on the server and client, but always get an error: If I turn off the client firewall, it installs fine. The most detailed page addressing this problem (on winserverkb.com) suggested adding the program exception: but this didn't help either. Has anyone encountered this and know what ports to open/programs to allow?

It's a DFS issue that I don't have time to figure out right now. I'll share out the folders directly for the time being. And by issue I mean I've never used DFS before and obviously have it configured wrong.

I've a network share for staff that I'm having an issue with. I've just migrated to Server 2008 (clean install) so this has yet to be configured properly. Clients are Windows 7. The teachers are using Word 2010 and when they save to the network drive, it appears to save properly. When they try to open the file again, it's appears to be missing. When I'm looking at the shared folder on the server, I can see the file, but I can't see its permissions without taking ownership. The permissions on the share and ntfs seemed correct, but since being informed of the problem I've set sharing permissions to Full Control/Change/Read for Administrators, staff and Domain Users. And set NTFS permissions to Full Control (everything ticked) for SYSTEM (inherited), staff, Administrator, Domain Users, Administrators (inherited) and Users. When I take ownership of one of the saved files, there are no entries in permissions and "Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent" is greyed out and ticked. In 2003, this would've worked fine!