dhoward_westexetc

For Office 2003 SP3 I would ensure all of your Windows 2000 machines are up to SP4. I have had a load of problems getting Office 2007 to deploy properly via group policy software installation. Even when I specify an MSP file to remove Outlook and Infopath (for student machines) it still leaves them in anyway!! Just as well that we are sticking with Office 2003, works, stable and SP3 makes it work well. Compatibility pack also works well, no problems with that at all in my experience.

We'll be using Version 9 hopefully from September (once I have received my reply to an application I made for a distribution agreement). Currently we deploy 8.1.0 as standard, the recent batch of XP SP3 machines we deployed are 8.1.2 but they will change to V9. I have noticed that V9 also installs an AIR package aswell. Is there a way of ensuring that the MSI does not install this (i.e. just the reader) ?

Thanks for the reply. I followed the steps you outlined and that worked a treat. Thanks a lot!

We have a problem with PCs with Windows XP Service Pack 3. Teacher's are set with Local Admin rights on ADUC, which gives them the right to install programs and set some screensaver settings. This happened correctly under XP SP2. But under SP3 they no longer have these rights and hence cannot install programs, it comes up with Administrator rights are needed. I have tried the loopback processing method and this does not work, the same problem recurrs. Has anyone has this problem under SP3 and know a way to fix this?

Don't think so, when I disable the wireless card completely it is absolutely fine. As soon as I enable the wireless card the 'Preparing Network Connections...' takes ages.

We use 802.1X authentication, encryption is a standard WPA-TKIP.

When looking at starting a new thread I observed this thread which directly relates to a problem we have. When a laptop PC running Windows XP SP3 starts, if the wireless connection is enabled the 'Preparing Network Connections...' stage takes ages (often up to 1-2 minutes), then go through 'Applying computer settings...' which takes another minute or so. We find that if we just use the ethernet connection, and disable wireless, the 'Preparing Network Connections...' stage takes far less time (about 10 seconds on the faster Core 2 Duo laptops). I have tried removing the policy 'Always wait for the network at computer startup' in a test bed, then tried logging in wirelessly, but all that happened was that Windows logged in and the wireless icon takes ages to appear. We have to have this policy enabled to ensure that the system starts with wireless working, but it adds a huge amount to the startup time. I have never known a laptop PC running Windows Vista on the same network take this long to do this at startup with wireless enabled, and the wireless connects really quickly. Does anyone have any clues as to why it is so much slower to prepare network connections with a wireless connection enabled on Windows XP? If anyone has any ideas as to what we can try to speed this up a bit, it will be much appreciated.

We are fully licensed for all our PCs with Volume licenses. Most of our PCs had XP OEM licenses in the box. We also bought in the past a sizeable number of Windows 98 and 2000 licenses.

Dell offer Latitude laptops without any operating system installed - the 'N' series. This is what we have been buying recently and we can then take the XP Professional license from the old laptop to the new laptop and decomission the old one. If we are adding extra PCs then we just buy another Vista license by our select agreement and that gives us downgrade rights to XP. In our experience it has worked out about the same cost as buying a laptop with an OEM license. Driver support is excellent for both XP Pro and Vista, we bought D530s recently and they have no problems running XP.

Impero is an excellent product and is still very much in active development, we have a direct contact with the developers at Impero and are always willing to listen to feedback and incorporate it into new versions. The server is very configurable and the policies are very customisable, they can be as broad or as specialised as you want. We like the recent feature that ensures strict safesearch on Google is always used. Other features include URL blocking, program blocking, caption blocking, and controlling printing and sound output. Impero is also really useful for administration purposes, and I use it all of the time to maintain laptop trolleys each half term. Features such as remote login, remote running of websites or files, remote command prompt and MiMiC script support have been huge timesavers. I really recommend anybody looking to install management software for schools at least have a good look at Impero. And they have recently started to release versions that work on Windows Vista.

We have just had delivery of a new server that will be our new Exchange 2007 server. Although we could have put Windows server 2008 (as we bought a new 2008 license with 2003 downgrade rights) we put 2003 R2 x64 on it to save on CALs. We can still put 2008 server on if we want to on that server without an extra cost. If you are already mostly 2003, then it is perhaps best to put 2003 R2 on a new server (and buy a new 2008 license and use the downgrade rights). You can then install 2008 when you decide to migrate all servers over to it, which makes the CALs purchase worthwhile.

We have 19 laptop trolleys at our Establishment with 15 laptops in each, shortly to go up to 20 trolleys. Our laptops are a mix of older Fujitsu and HP laptops, and newer Dell Latitude D520 model laptops. Every trolley has a Nortel 2330A WAP on the trolley that is placed into a dedicated wall point clearly marked with a large 'W'. Every room has a dedicated wall point. Teachers are told that they need to plug the trolley WAP into the wall point two minutes before starting to use the trolley. The WAP connects to a Nortel security switch. Laptops currently run Windows XP SP2 with the wireless client V3 update. They will have XP SP3 from September. We have WSUS set to only notify for updates and not download them. Each half term we then download the updates to each laptop and install them. This reduces wireless usage to only the necessary traffic. At the same time they are checked and necessary repairs done. Having had several problems getting them working correctly (incompatible wireless cards, the infamous svchost.exe problem caused by WSUS on XP SP2!) they now work very reliably. The only problems are the occasional 'domain not available problem' when Windows seems to lose the wireless settings and you need to do a 'gpupdate' to refresh them. That and occasional vandalism of keyboards. If maintained to a strict maintenance regime laptop trolleys can be nearly as reliable as computer suites (but I still prefer cable connections!!!)