Azhibberd

If your running isa, you can just force them all to authenticate to use the internet this normally puts them off using mobile devices if they got the wep.... We also went threw the hassle of making a group in ISA which has all the domain pcs that way nothing can access the net unless its on the allow list.

Here i use drivermagician (Device driver backup, restoration, update and removal software for Windows, drivers backup, backup drivers) The trial will let you take the drivers of the machine for free, and well you can just manually add them on the new machine threw device manager, This software is great if you going to format someones machine

Currently we use ABtutor here and have been for about a year or 2 now atleast.... Its so nice and simple to use very rarely have any problems with it, Its nice enough to have an MSI install so we have it install on all machines once they are on the network and also automacally sets up the password. We dont regret going to abtutor and wouldn't look back now as before AB we did use netop...

Well we are blocking flash content but we have an exception list (Allowing things like mymaths) but unless its educational we wont allow the flash, for the first week of it we just had loads of kids constantly waiting for the game sites to load.... but after a week they realised it wasn't going to (well the site loads just the actually flash game wont)

We recently had a big problem with 50 brand new Dell machines kept crashing out on log on etc.... and it was only these new machines that was having the problem.... It actually surprisingly came down to the bios after we really ran out of ideas (we tried allot of things) we decided to upgrade there bios.... After that not a single problem

Silly normal comment but make sure you have all the updates on the word, Although not something i've ran into before although most of the site i work at is using open office now.

Know the feeling dont worry, But as i see it paid to keep it safe not to make friends. I think i managed to upset all the students when i set isa to block all Flash content, .exe's, streaming content, etc etc but the kids do allot more work now they aren't playing games all day.

Have you looked at those created them... And the time etc maybe help narrow it down for you!

Ye that should work although it was awhile ago so give it a shot make sure it also blocks the sub directories, the only problem with doing it that way is any students with a usb stick will still be able to run it off there usb sticks hence why we just block everything as default and have set allowed to what we want them to run. And ye ChrisH has a point if you use file server resource manager with R2 it has some good file screenings on it, although the main reason i wouldn't opt for it is yet again students can still use usb sticks to get around it Aaron

Ye I've had a few problems similar to this, i just right clicked on the server in outlook (so here its mail.westberk.org) click IMAP folders, Click query, select all the folders, unsubscribe them all, then subscribe them all again normally sorts the problem here.

Ye you'd think blocking cmd would stop .bat files wouldn't you but ye not the case... Anyway when i first joined this school i'm working for now they didn't have any security really against students they could run anything so at the first time i was able to sit down and sort the security i went straight into the students GPO User Config\Windows Settings\Software Restrictions\ Once in there i decided to set Security levels default to disallowed (This stops anything running unless its set as allowed in additional rules) Although if you want you could keep it to the normal unrestricted and just put in additional rules deny *.bat that should do it. We decided just to go straight for default block everything though as kids will soon realise they could just use .vbs or make there own .exe's etc etc, Also if you want to block them from running RDT just put in additional rules as well deny C:\WINDOWS\system32\mstsc.exe But anyway if you do decide to disallow all by default, i reccomend then putting in additional rules the following (We only added these because these areas the students can't write to): C:\program files\ - This allows all locally installed programs to run of which only admins can write into this folder. \\DC-Names\netlogon\ - This allows the student logon scripts to run for thigns like add printers and only allow one logon \\server-name\apps\ - We have some applications stored on a network share so it can easily be deployed, this allows the students to run these applications. C:\windows\ - Well i dont think this needs explaining much Think i've covered most of the useful things let me know if you have any problems, i'm more than willing to give any help. Aaron

Cheers for the help on that one I'll have a look on that when i get in on Monday morning. Cheers

We are running PMP where i work as well very useful, just woundered what rules do you have so that the file has to be saved first? Something i would like to put in place Cheers

Ye that or if you have another pc just throw the hard drive in there copy the info over reinstall once you have the data off.

ahh thanks for that AngryTech although some of us arn't on server 2008 yet.... although hopefully wont be long although i'll admit the test run i did of 2008 got abit annoyed at allot of bits but thats just me being anti vista

Thankyou very much one of the things on my todo list was changing all the local passwords was about to write a script todo it Cheers

just to let you know that program integrates its self with AD on that machine so you need to have the administrator pack on that machine first and ye not really the best way to shut them down regularly, at the moment we just use a batch script with the shutdown command from one of the servers, and for things like the holidays we just set it to shutdown all the pcs 10 mins after they auto boot on. Also i agree i wouldn't constantly start flickin about with trip switches, we have one room where they had a great idea of putting the trip switches right by the door and well the amount of times a kid just walks off in a bad mood and just flips them all, which also has a habbit of tripping a main fuse... O joy.... Ye gotta love it... most of the time when a building is being built the IT team is normally left out of the design and only asked when they realise they want something IT in there....we have been waiting for around 3 years for cooling for one of are IT rooms So hoe you have more luck than we do!

Ye we also run the if power fails return to previous state, but nice idea about the power switches although not fully automated really but nice idea.

Well even though its a very old one.... just to let you know you could just set the GPO to logoff if remote profile isn't found! that way it auto logs you off, just google it you'll find it if not just give me a shout i'll go find exactly where it is

mrbios sounds like you have the same kind of setup we are currently running on are two new IT rooms, All the pcs boxed away, hard glass monitors attached to the front (very hard to damage), either side of the room are cctv cameras which are motion sensitive to record Jpeg's on movement using a program called icatcher. Lucky enough are mobo's we have set them to auto start at 8:30 monday-friday and run a shutdown script at 5 to shutdown all the pc's (First problem we had was kids realised they could shutdown the pc from the logon screen so after a resource hack we removed the shutdown button for them. But in the rare case when pcs do shutdown we use a program called Specops GPupdate which is free (and works with subnet's networks) Specops Gpupdate - Remote gpupdate / Wake on lan (WOL) / restart / shutdown , This way we don't have to worry about having any power buttons available, So far these rooms have been in use since the 6 weeks off and there hasn't been any damage so seems to be worth it. Aaron

Ye make sure you can access streaming media threw Media player, also check if your LA is filtering all streams or something?

bizzel just sent you a link to them all as a pm if you want some more of the actually flash files etc that we commonly see on are network let me know and i can throw them to you once i'm in tomorrow.

i'm pretty sure it still appears even if its disabled... and when i see it if it isn't a staff laptop i just removed it from the startup didn't cause any problems this end although make sure u test it before u deploy its removal.

As stated earlier the best bet is if ur using either office 2003 or above you can block all the games they put in office by blocking all activex with a simple GPO, although if your like us and can't afford the liscenes we moved to open office, This doesn't allow the use of flash anyway so that fixed that, and well for the internal flash games, we have abtutor control and just blocked all .swf and just removed that rule when they actually had a flash class.

I'm gonna be honest with you... The secondary school i'm working in.... We have University just because it was thrown at us by the LA, and well most of the staff including myself can't wait to get out of it. We are currently running a test moodle site and looks like we are heading towards that, although all depends on the powers that be.