ranj

Does anyone know of some free printer inventory tracking software. I thought there was a free web based system which worked with mysql and php but for the life of me I can't find it!

Can I roll from this version that I am currently on straight to ESX4.0 Update 2? I have just put a host in maintence mode and clicked on update manager and noticed that update 2 is on there. So am planning on doing that at some point in the next few weeks. When I roll this update out to each host do I need to update our vCenter box as well? Also I noticed there was a vmware tools update will i need to update every VM with this or will it do it automatically? I noticed in update manager that 4.1 wasn't on the list. Have they purposely left this out from update manager? On another note if an admin could move this thread into virtual machines section as i accidently put it into the virtual learning platforms area. Thanks

Hi Just have a question. I am planning on upgrading the host memory for all of our ESX4 Host servers to 32gb Ram. Any tips or advice on pre checks I should do. I know its only a memory upgrade but because we're so reliant on this if something did go wrong I want to make sure I did everything I could do to get it back up and running quickly as possible. Are there any configs I should backup or checks I should do? Any advice will be most appreciated. At the moment there are no issues as far as I am aware on any of the ESX hosts. All are running ESX4.0.0 175625. Thanks

Hi Currently doing some work MDT to deploy Windows 7 enterprise to our machines in an automated way. I have used WDS to deploy the image via PXE boot and also used WISM to create an unattend file and also a winPE unattend file. I am nearly close with it working but am having problems once the machine is live and ready to be used. From previous threads after a machine is sysprepped I wanted the machine to ask the user for a computer name but for all the rest for it to be all automatic e.g. regional settings, time etc which I have successfully done via the unattend xml file. I have even managed that once the image is deployed windows will ask the user for a computer name but once the machine is ready to be used and i attempt to login as a domain user i get the following message: "The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship" I have tried rebooting and looking at various forum. One forum said it could be GPO setting at domain level to do with the 'primary DNS suffix' which could be set but when I look at settings its al set to not configured. As the machine claims it was on the domain I checked in AD and in the computers OU the machine appeared in here. I have tried to disjoin the machine from the domain and put onto a workgroup and then rejoin it onto the domain and once this has been done it has worked but would rather i didnt need to do this to 400 machines. Anyone else had this problem. Thanks

A question I had with encryption for USB sticks was if I setup Windows 7 enterprise with Bitlocker to go and I enforce a policy so that for every USB stick a password is required and bitlocker manages this. What would happen if the USB is taken to a computer which is running Windows XP or Mac OS. does the encryption only activate for windows 7 machines?

I had this problem just last week and what I did was reinstall WDS in a different folder rather than use the folder I wanted to and it worked. It was a real shame as I lost all my driver injections as we are running the R2 version.So I had to reinput all this in again.

For other members who have used mysysprep with windows 7. Are you using Deployment workbench in MDT to create a task sequence. I was thinking if I create an image of a machine, embed mysysprep into this image and then use a task sequence to 'sysprep and capture' would it work? I need the image to prompt for a computer name. That is the most important part of it.

Hi Was wondering if I could get some tips on what other schools do when doing a spring clean of the Apple Mac Server. I am looking at simplier ways to do a cleanup of old accounts on our Open directory system on our Apple Macs. I have noticed when I delete a user in workgroup manager it doesnt delete the user Home Directory. Is there a way I can delete a user and it also deletes their home directory? Thanks

Thank you Tony for your reply I confirm this works and this will help a great deal. I am looking at another way (if possible) to recover more disk space. I was looking at if there is a way to again look at everyones home directory and delete the contents of the trash folder. Do you or does anyone know of a way to do this? Could this be done in Automator? Thanks

I just found this command on the Apple website which may do the trick called 'createhomedir'. Has anyone used this command to bulk create user home directories. Mac OS X Server: How to Use createhomedir Command to Create Home Directories I am thinking if I can delete a selection of home folders (mainly for the lower year groups) then run this command on the directory I want it to create the folders in, hopefully happy days!!

Hi As its coming towards the end of the year I am looking at a solution to delete all of year 7,8, and 9 data which is stored in their home directories on the Mac server. All of our users have open directory accounts and rather me delete everyones account and recreate them again is there a way I can run a script or application on our Mac server for it to interregate a selection of home folders and delete all the contents in there so in September all students come back using their existing credentials and they have empty home directories? Our storage is getting rather full and don't have the funds to buy additional storage so need to do something to clear it out a bit. Thanks

Am I right in saying that the line %Please input a computer name% needs to go under the component name =Microsoft windows unattended join section or can it just be pasted into any section of the imageunattend.xml file?

What Boot Images do you have on the WDS Server? and have you assigned a default boot image? Hi Yes I have copied a Windows 7 Enterprise DVD onto the WDS server and use the install and boot.wim files of the DVD and then created an unattend script and with the install image I have ticked the box which says allow image to install in unattend mode and pointed it to my imageunattend.xml file. have you configured a PC inside the Advanced Configuration/Database section of MDT? this would force a given MAC/GUID to use a sepcific set of options (under "Computers") or a specific Make & Model iof machines (eg Hewlett-Packard - HP Compaq dc7700 Small Form Factor) No I haven't done any filtering of any guide at the moment. Also the WDS server is not a SQL Server. My intention later once i have got a 'lite touch' working will be to look at SCCM2007 to do a 'zero touch' deployment but really need the lite touch working and getting used to the feature before I look at that. Thanks As for the Windows 7 - this is normal for WDS images - you have not specified an unattend script, so the image automatiocally runs through "Mini Setup" - to stop this you need to create an ImageUnattend.xml file and attach it to the custom WIM image.

Your so lucky its working for you I keep hitting a brick wall. I got a few issues which hoping someone can help with I don't know how I did it before but when we used MDT to create an XP image. I used imageX to capture a sysprepped xp image and then loaded this onto our WDS server. When I PXE booted a client to load this image I found it used the solution accellerators bootup process which I think is a customised MDT specific winpe process. When I have done the same with Windows 7, I dont get this option anymore but instead get the normal Windows 7 setup alongside a few options which make it talk to our WDS server. I give you an instance, when now I PXE boot any client computer the first screen I get is Windows deployment services screen which asks me for language and country details and then it lists all the images which are present on WDS. Can I change the settings so it shows the solution accellerators screens instead? 2) I have been using WISM with the help of lots of guides on the internet and have created an unattend script. This image where I used the unattend script is just Windows 7 enterprise with a few customisations and no additional applications installed. Still though I get asked country and keyboard layout, asks for local username, asks how i want to protect the computer with WIndows update and time and date settings. I think it is picking up the unattend script because it automatically joins the PC to the domain and gives it a name called ADMINISTRATOR. Is this setting being picked up from WDS rather than my script? Does anyone know how do I get it to pick up the unattend file I have created. I suspect its not picking the file up. BTW I am using the latest version of MDT with WDS on a server 2008 R2 server.

I think also there are far more group policies which are intended for Windows 7 in Server 2008 R2.

Agreed!! Something odd going on here.I have just rebuilt smoothwall onto a physical server rather than a VM and on the macs it seems to be working fine now. My conclusion is there is some config setup on the smoothwall VM version which we have set which the Macs dont like. Does anyone know how I can 'reset the network settings on smoothwall? Thanks

Hi We are connected to the BGFL network and Smoothwall who are trying to support us use teamviewer to remote onto machines. Now I was under the impression that because teamviewer runs on port 80 this shouldn't be blocked by the LA filtering. Does anyone know why this would be blocked. Does teamviewer work at other Birmingham Schools. The teamviewer website is also blocked. I have logged a call with the support desk but thought I would ask on here to see if anyone had any ideas. Thanks

Hi I seem to be having an issue with updating a calendar entry using Outlook 2010 connected to a Microsoft Exchange 2007 server. Earlier in the day I amended an entry in one of of my recurring appointments. I added some information and it was fine. Now when I try to enter something and press save I get a baloon message which says the following: "Could not complete the oprtation. one or more parameters are not valid" Has anyone seen this and can anyone help. I thought it might be that my Outlook needs a tidy up and found some articles which can clean my profile but I think they are all for Outlook 2000/2003 and dont seem to work with the latest version. Any help would be most appreciated.

We had that projector and tried replacing the bulb, giving it a clean with no joy. Its knackered mate.

We are currently evaluating smoothwall Network guardian product and having a really weird issue. I have contacted both Smoothwall and Apple enterprise support and still can't figure out the issue. Our network is setup as explained above, in terms of the networking, our Apple Macs are connected to the same network as our Windows clients and servers and we don't have a VLAN setup. I am encountering an issue where our Apple clients are not able to ping the smoothwall box. Whether i type the IP address or hostname. whats odd is it is able to do a lookup once when i run the ping command but I dont get repeated relays back to the client to say that it is communicating. The macs are on the same subnet as our windows client. I thought the issue could be with some management settings on the switch the mac was connected to so brought the Mac back to our office which is connected to a different switch and I have the same problem, whats odd is the my office machine which is windows can connect to the smoothwall box fine and is connected to the same switch. Our Macs have static IP addresses and this is managed by our Windows DHCP server which has reservations for all the Macs we have. I thought it could be an issue with this so removed a reservation for my test mac, and allowed this mac to get a IP from DHCP dynamically. Still I get the same problem. I was also suggested to see if it could be the firewall on the Mac which could be preventing it and have checked the firewall settings on our Mac and the firewall is set to 'allow all incoming connections'. Our Macs run 10.5 btw. the only thing I noticed is when I restart the smoothwall box, after the devices comes back online, the Macs are able to ping successfully to the smoothwall box but then stop after about 2-3 minutes. It seems like during the startup process of the smoothwall box, once it is online and begins starting up the configuration, its get so far in and then the Mac cannot communicate to it anymore. Can anyone help? So I am at a loss what the issue could be, basically after talking with smoothwall they are saying the Mac never reaches the smoothwall box, whats odd is if I ping any other device on the network our Mac is fine and ping's successfully and its only the smoothwall box that is playing up.

I received a letter about this and they want to charge £75 per user over a 3 year period which can be paid annually at £25. I am assuming that link2ict want us to only buy this product for laptops and mainly for staff who have the potential of carrying confidential data. If this was brought for all of the machines in the building this would turn into something very expensive and be as nearly expensive as our annual cost which we pay to the LA. My question is If schools are looking to move to Windows 7 which has built in bitlocker + bitlocker to go would we even need to look at this solution or could we get away with Windows 7 managing this. If anyone has compared the 2 products (bit locker and safeguard enterprise) it would be good to hear any feedback. I do rate Sophos products, like many schools up and down the country we use Sophos enterprise manager and it is a very good product, gives us admins a lot of power and in my experience have found it very reliable and good at the job its meant to do which is prevent viruses spreading.

maybe this may help Setting computername during deployment - www.windows-noob.com

Like other posts have said Microsoft has lots of documentation on it. I am in the same boat as you and found some resources very useful: http://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/techdays/video/Zero_Touch_Deployment_using_System_Center_Configuration_Manager_2007_and_Microsoft_Deployment_Toolkit_2010.wmv - Live video showing features of SCCM and whilst edugeek is the number 1 ruler, there is also another site quite close to it focusing more on deployment. Someone at Windows-noob has done step by step guides on SCCM which covers the following: * Setup SCCM * Updating SCCM * Deploying Windows Updates using SCCM * Deploying Applications * Deploying OS * Capturing OS * Task Sequences * Migrating Data using USMT * Asset Intelligence * Troubleshooting and Other You can access these resources at the link below: SCCM 2007 Guides - www.windows-noob.com

Hi fellow members I am looking at this HTC deal which I consider quite a good deal for a £35 month contract considering the minutes and unlimited internet. 3 questions I have: 1) anyone purchased from buymobilephones.net. Are they reliable, heard a lot of bad press on other review sites which makes me slightly reluctant. 2) T-mobile say unlimited internet but it has a 3gb fair usage policy for android specific phones. Do fellow members who are on t mobile and an android phone seen any issues with this? I intend to have my phone wired up to 3g most of the time, so am concerned slightly that 3g may not be enough in the way I am intending on using it. 3) This deal comes with a free ipod touch, my plan with this was to install skype and talk to other people via this way using my home wireless. Has anyone else used skype on a touch, does it work well? Any tips would be great or if anyone know of any better deals than this please let me know.

Hi Ok my knowledge of Excel is virtually nil. I am using Excel 2010 and have recently compiled a survey. Now the survey has finished and I have my answers I am now able to export this survey into a CSV file and now I have a number of different column which represent the various questions in the survey compiled and below this i have in each row the answers from each respondent. 2 things I want to establish. Let me create an example of a typical question with the answers: A Column What version of Office do you use at home? Office 2003 Office 2010 Office 2007 Microsoft Works Office 2010 Other Office 2007 Office 2010 So imagine I have different options selected for each person who conducted the survey in rows going down. I have about 100 rows. My knowledge of formulas but know I have to use the count formula so what I wish to do is for Excel to calculate the total number of answers and put this into a row at the bottom of the table alongside with the name of the answer as a reference. I then want to create some sort of graph with each set of answers. I am aware on how to create the graph I just need help on the first part and how best to do this. What would be best and easiest way for me to do this? Someone is going to look at this question and laugh because I bet its really easy to do. If anyone can offer advice on good websites as a reference guide, that would be really handy also. Thanks