mickeyh080

Thanks for the link, by any chance have you used this specific one as looking at the reviews for most of the splitters on Amazon generally they don't seem that good. Was hoping someone could recommend a specific brand/type.

We've recently had a 75" BENQ interactive screen installed in one of our classrooms but I'm having problems with the set up so would be interested what others use to solve the problem. The Classroom is configured with a PC with VGA and HDMI out and 2 monitors both with VGA and HDMI input together with the BENQ screen. Ideally I would prefer not to use the VGA option as the resolution and picture quality compared to HDMI is poor. Have tried using an HDMI 2 port splitter for one monitor and the BENQ but possibly the splitter is not man enough for the task as its frequently loses connection especially if the teacher logs out of her PC and another one logs in resulting in the second monitor not showing any signal input. Replacing the HDMI splitter is more likely the option but this still means I have to use VGA for the other monitor. Is it possible to purchase an HDMI splitter which will enable 3 outputs although I expect these would all still be mirrored not extended or would installing an additional video card be the best option to replace the VGA output.

Have had a recent request from the Head Teacher to install Zotero software within school and after looking at the software I have reservations even though I can see its benefits. The software now thankfully works with a connector for Google Chrome as initially it was a Firefox add-in which is a broswer we don't allow within school. My concern is with the storage of data and the implications of syncing files with the servers in the US. Before I investigate further I wondered if anyone else had any dealings with this software. https://www.zotero.org/

As of yesterday we migrated our main DC from server 2003 to a new 2012 R2 box. As part of the process we moved DHCP and DNS to the new box before demoting the DC to a member server ready for switching off and all roles look correct with no errors showing. My issue is that even after changing all static network settings to reflect the change in DNS server IP address on all servers and flushing the DNS resolver cache on the clients, web pages are taking over 30 seconds to load where as before migration they were pretty swift. I suspect the issue is DNS related as the internet speed seems fine. The usual checks of nslookup and tracert show fine showing the DNS is resolving but something is slowing the process down. Any ideas as to what the issue might be or how to resolve it would be most welcome.

New one for me, bit of Google-ing required but thanks for the pointer.

Thanks Benjie When I tag the port 18 which is connected to the Apple TV and set the port on the other VLANs to no the Apple TV reverts to a 169 local address and not the 172 address issued by the Smoothwall DHCP.

I was hoping someone could assist with a VLAN issue I'm experiencing. We have a 3 VLAN configuration on our network labelled Default (1), Guest(2) and Voice(3). Now the Guest is for a BYOD Wi-Fi solution which works fine keeping the Guest traffic separate from the main network. The Guest VLAN is linked to a Smoothwall UTM which provides DHCP for the guest Wi-Fi devices and generally this works fine. My issue recently is that we also use Apple TV's connected to projectors which are on the Guest network using the WiFi SSID all secured with passwords for staff to use. My problem is that in one area we want to hardwire the Apple TV using the Ethernet port to try and remove any Wi-Fi lag currently experienced with this devices location. When I connect the Ethernet cable to the Apple TV and configure the switch port to the Guest VLAN it still picks up DHCP from the domain DHCP server instead of the Smoothwall DHCP. With the IP phone system I was able to configure the phones so they knew where to look for DHCP and which VLAN they are a member of but with Apple TV there is no such configuration option. Any suggestions on how to configure the Apple TV or edge switch to only see the Smoothwall DHCP ?

Over the last month we've encountered a problem with first Powerpoint 2010 and now also Powerpoint 2013 in that when you open a Powerpoint presentation and try and create a hyper link to another file within the users My Documents or Shared areas the computer freezes with a not responding on the open window, sometimes it will then allow access and othertimes requires a reboot. If the system allows access from there on there are no future problems until the computer is rebooted or the user logs off. Normal navigation via the My Computer or mapped drives for MyDocs folders works without any problems and the problem is affecting staff and students. Staff have roaming profiles where as students use mandatory profiles. Initially I thought it was a Powerpoint 2010 issue and perhaps a suspect update but since then we testing and migrating to Office 2013 and its occurring on that platform also. Any ideas would be welcome.

Currently waiting for more info from Lenovo support. My initial enquiry fell on deaf ears so had to make enquiries through my supplier Misco who helped raise the priority. We have had a case reference raised and an idea from Lenovo to possible return the laptops but not quite sure how well that would work with 35 units and no original packaging. My obvious concern due to the random nature of the Wi-Fi dropping is that Lenovo support will find them all serviceable and return them all in factory default format ready for me to have to reimage the lot and have the same issue. I suggested a possible Wi-Fi card swap for maybe Intel but have not had a reply yet.

I agree we do need to look for the future in terms of upgrading or changing to another solution but with budget restraints and the planning of any migration done properly will take some time. What I'm after is a short term solution to give us time to migrate correctly hence keeping the Exchange server running until then.

Have looked both at Lenovo site and Broadcom site tried all the latest drivers and no change. Yes they are all 64 bit machines and to be honest if the Wi-Fi worked correctly I would be suitably impressed as the build quality is good !!!

That would be most useful if you wouldn't mind. I could give him a bell in the morning a at present returning the complete batch is preferable if unlikely under the remit of not fit for purpose.

We purchased 30+ Lenovo B5400 laptops over the summer and as always with new equipment wiped the drives removing the bloat ware and installed our own software and then imaged the remainder so all our identical. We obviously used the manufacturer's drivers from the Lenovo website to configure and presumed all was well initially. Unfortunately now we have discovered that the Broadcom WiFi cards seem to be frequently although randomly if that makes sense dropping there connection. Initially I presumed we had an access point issue but via support and swapping the arrays internally the problem has not gone away. The laptops show a strong connection but then just drop the connection sometimes reconnecting automatically and other times requiring manual intervention. We have looked at the WiFi settings and ensured that there are no power settings switching off the device or card and looked at roaming settings which are set to conservative. The issue happens both on mains power and running just on batteries. Now after flashing the latest Bios for the chipset we have come to a point where I've kind of run out of ideas. It seems Lenovo support are very quite and have only suggested returning the device to factory settings which of course cannot be done on site as the drives have been wiped. Anybody else had similar issues or possible ideas or suggestions

We currently have a 6 year old server installed with server 2003 as the OS and running Exchange 2007. Unfortunately within the last couple of months we have noticed a performance issue which is not only noticeable on the server but the end users Outlook is slow to access emails or shows as temporarily not responding when selecting emails. Having run the exchange tool kit performance monitor the tests reveal high read/write times when accessing the drives. I suspect this could be a drive performance issue and was contemplating doing a hot swap for the drives, one at a time after the RAID has rebuilt using the new drives. Would my logic sound reasonable for this issue and has anyone ever tried hot swapping drives on a an exchange server. Wasn't sure if I needed to possibly dismount any of the storage databases or stop some of the exchange services before attempting this task. We obviously have backups of the Exchange mailboxes together with the system state of the server but with it being such a critical piece of kit any recommendations or suggestions would be welcome.

Just a thought but hopefully someone might be able to advise but could this issue be in relation to our DC still being a 2003 server and although its schema has been extended to incorporate 2008 R2 which is where the test accounts are created successfully, could this issue of folders not being created be due to the DC not having the schema extended for 2012 R2. I might be going off on a tangent on this one but am still bemused why it dosent create the folders automatically on the server 2012 R2 box.