Bubbles

While checking the state of a couple of Windows services, I noticed that listed are hundreds of services with what appear to be random numbers: Looking at the properties of a few of them, they all of them seem to point to an exe with the same name as the service located in C:\WINDOWS. Checking, these exe files don't actually appear to exist. I'm just a bit miffed as to where the services have come from/what they could be?

If you have SIMS Services Manager installed on your DNS server, be aware that ports 50000 and 50001 are within the port range that can be randomly used by the DNS service. You can add an exception to DNS which will ensure it does not use these ports with the following command: dnscmd /Config /SocketPoolExcludedPortRanges 50000-50001. Be sure to either reboot the server or roll the DNS and SSM services for the change to take effect.

It is within the 'SIMS Support Units' area. if you are a single school accessing it, rather than a support unit, it might explain why you are unable to access the thread.

@toffee_paul, link below: https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/forums/thread/SIMS-technical-su/5326aa10-5557-e711-80eb-000d3a264101

Spotted a post on My Account this morning. Seems to affect devices with .NET 4.7 and the SMART software installed? This would tie in with the couple of devices we've had to address. They did have SMART version 11 installed.

We've noticed that the Microsoft .NET 4.7 Framework appears to be causing the SOLUS 3 Agent UI to crash on load. Removing .NET 4.7 and rolling back to an earlier version of the .NET framework seems to get the Agent working again. Has anyone else experienced this at all? Is .NET 4.7 compatible with SIMS and accompanying software?

I have been playing this. It's extremely addictive and exciting, especially when you are down to the last 10 players. The upcoming additions also look interesting.

I picked up Batman: Arkham Knight for a fiver on the Steam sale over Christmas and just completed the main story in it. I really enjoy the Batman: Arkham series, I find the stories absorbing and the combat very enjoyable. Looking forward to completing the rest of the side missions. Surprisingly, I had close to no performance issues running Arkham Knight it on PC either, despite my rig not being top end. Think I'll have to play through the series all again.

Match times seem to be reduced now. There currently seems to be about a 2/3 min wait time on average. When did you last play? If it's been a long time, there might be a few additions you've not experienced or missed: - Frontline has been improved and you can now choose your ship rather than being allocated a random one. - Procedural generated lanes with new astroid types (this has been in the game for a while so you might have seen this) - Player vrs AI - AI replacements for any players that D/C mid game. The HUD has been improved and a few new ships have been introduced as well, as well as on going tweaking for balance.

Does anyone play Fractured Space at all? It's a really great F2P game that's of a similar style to DOTA but set in deep space with huge Space Ships. It's a lane based game where the objective is to capture mines in either lane to increase your teams power and eventually infiltrate their base and destroy it. It's an easy to get to grips with and you're not disadvantaged in any major way if you don't pay for any in game perks (most items you can purchase are ship skins, or credits to allow you to unlock ships quicker). Links to their site/steam page below. Also a trailer made from in game footage: Fractured Space | Official Website Fractured Space on Steam

I have a Nespresso machine at home with a companion milk frother. I mainly enjoy Expresso and the occasional latte on a weekend. I opted for a Nespresso mainly because I prefer the richer and more varied selection of coffees that are available through them and they appear to be slightly more 'artisan', where as the Tassimo range seem to be more about getting the 'big brand' coffee and drinking chocolates suppliers (Costa, Starbucks, Nascaffe, Cadburys etc) which I'm not a big fan of.

I'm currently reading NOFX - The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories. It's a bio of one of the most successful independent punk rock bands around. It's such an stimulating read. Genuinely thrilling, shocking, colorful, dark, exciting and appalling throughout. It's a struggle to put it down each evening!

It matters for Personnel links to FMS. You have to specify the path to SIMS which is a GLOBAL setting in the FMS database. If it's pointing to C:\Program Files, but you;ve got some machines with it installed to Program Files (x86), then the links between SIMS and FMS will not work if FMS is used on those devices causing all kinds of issues. If you have a mixed 32bit /64 bit estate, always install to C:\Program Files on ALL devices (easy if you;re using SOLUS3 as you can manually specify the master install directory in the SOLUS 3 UI). If you are running a fully x64 estate, then you can install to C:\Program Files (x86) without issues.

It's still broken. Capita's "work around" is to extract the BDE installer from the SOLUS 3 UI and then install it manually onto any workstations that will have the FMS client installed. It is apparently being worked on by the devs so I presume it will be addressed in a future release of SOLUS 3. God knows when that will be though as it's currently a major PITA, and will be more so when schools start re-imaging devices over Summer.

^^ This. You'd still have to manually define what software will be installed (SIMS/FMS/Discover) on the workstation via the UI even with an agent pre-installed, so you might as well just add it once it's been re-imaged and cut out all the faff.