BJG

Have a good one folks. http://www.tenerifeforum.org/tenerife-forum/images/smilies/tenerife-forum-christmas-cheers-smiley.gif

This is kind of connected with the "Oftsted/ICT Poor" thread. The IT teaching staff were in a huddle this morning discussing this and wondering what programming language to teach. Would be interested to know what you people do...? I've included a few choices from the Tiobe index, but maybe that's not relevant here...?

We're planning to migrate to a new server over the Christmas break. Is there a way to copy all the home folders directly from one machine to another, while retaining file permissions, and without querying or quitting if it encounters problems...? (The old machine is Server 2003 and the new one is Server 2008.)

When it comes to Office versions, I'm always torn between thoughts like, the kids never use functionality they can't find in Wordpad, this looks expensive, this looks out of date, etc etc. I'd be interested in a cross-section of views on current versions and upgrade plans.

For those interested in typographical trivia... BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - Book of the Week, Just My Type, Episode 1

Series 3 now up... BBC - BBC Radio 4 Extra Programmes - Elvenquest, Series 3, Episode 1

(Thanks Synack...will investigate when I get more time...)

Thanks for that. I just discovered that the accounts which had been pointed to the domain-style share couldn't access their documents, so I've zapped them all back to the original style for now. Under the original style, accounts were mapped to home folders by using the "Profile" setting in the account properties. These have the form: Connect H: To \\[servername]\[share] Several year groups had been changed to the form: Connect H: To \\[domainname]\users\home\[year folder]\[username] The file structure for the home folders is D:\Home\[year folder]\[username]. When these users signed on, they saw two folders called "Home" and "Profile" where they expected their documents to be, and couldn't get anywhere with them. Any guesses what the person who configured this was trying to do, and why it didn't work...? (Might have been sensible for them to test it before messing several hundred accounts around...*sigh*)

I'm back at work after several weeks' absence to find that the school has installed a new 2008 fileserver running a distributed filing system with the old 2003 server which is currently replicating the home folders. The person who set it up has now gone off work, and I'm fairly rushed off my feet with it being the first week of term, so I was wondering if there was someone with experience of this who could give me some quick reassurance; tell me it was a good idea etc. It looks like some of the user folders are currently mapped using the old system, which was to individual shares on the old 2003 fileserver, while others are mapped via a new domain-based method (if you know DFS you hopefully understand what I'm talking about better than I do.) Is this mix-and-match a pressing concern? Anything I need to watch out for? Cheers!

(Thanks for the idea, but I'm wondering about personal/home email addresses...)

This is a general query about email from Yahoo, Mail.com, site5 domains, etc., ending up in people's spam folders. (Eg, in Yahoo). Could this be caused by something specific to the home computer it's being sent from...? Seems to happen randomly, but quite frequently, and I'm not sure how to identify the cause. (All I can find is stuff to check whether certain mail servers are blacklisted, but that's not much help with something like a Yahoo email address.)

I was setting up a PC, when it gave out a loud bang and I lunged for the off switch. Turning it back on again, it seemed OK, though when I opened the CD drawer the disk had been reduced to shrapnel. After removing the drive and shaking it vigorously over the bin for a while to clear out all the bits, I plugged it back in, and it now seems fine. I'm often surprised how robust electronics can be. CDs are still as useless as ever though.

(BookIT here too.)

(Thanks for the feedback - will try these out...)

Grrr... I've got a Vista PC with a browser hijack problem. The two free anti-malware programs I tend to turn to are Superantispyware and Malware Bytes. But I can't seem to install the first for some reason, and the second hasn't cured it. Any other suggestions...? I have to admit I'm hazy on the difference between malware and viruses in cases like this... (Thanks for any ideas.)

Wonder if someone could recommend a suitable wireless access point to support 10 laptops in our library...? Shouldn't be rocket science, but we seem to have endless problems with the ones we're using at the moment. Thanks!

(Thanks for the feedback...I've tried it in IE8, Firefox, Chrome, still getting the same problem. Starting to wonder if it might be somehow firewall-related or something...I'll try it outside the school network.)

Would appreciate some advice. I'm trying to access the "Edexcel Examwizard Online" link from this page: examWizard - GCSE Mathematics Online I get a dialog box saying: "Do you want to open or save this file". Same on different PCs/browsers. Staff say this has been working up until now. Their tech support say it's working fine. What am I missing here?

Someone contacted me today to say that steam was coming out of their HP1320 laserjet after a long print run. I've seen this before on another desktop HP printer. It's slightly alarming. I can only imagine it's moisture being ironed out of the paper, but it's not like they're storing it anywhere damp. Anyone else encountered this?

We've currently enabled "Remove Windows Explorer's default context menu" in Group Policy so that students can't right-click on the desktop, but I've been asked to allow them to do this for searching etc. Out of interest, do most people tend to allow or disallow this...? And is there a straightforward way to customise the options they get when they right-click...?

Cheers... If I ping icecast.commedia.org.uk, it says: "pinging 195.10.228.4". But if I then try: telnet 195.10.228.4:8000 ...it says: "Could not open connection to the host on port 23: connect failed". So I guess maybe that's disabled or something. I get the impression Shoutcast uses the same port. Does Shoutcast work on the college PCs...? (It does here.)

I'm wondering if Port 8000 is accessible from the PCs at your college. I'm a bit hazy on this stuff so I wouldn't know how to test that.

Does this problem crop up when they're deleting files from the local machine they're on, or from a server folder they're accessing via some kind of remote access system...? And what's the Vista workaround...?

Cheers...so for info, the link for Listen Online is: http://www.streetlifefm.com/streetlifefm.m3u When I clicked this, it tried to open in VLC player, which gave the error: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/streetlifefm.mp3'." However, when I use File...Open URL in Windows Media Player with either of these, it plays fine. This seems to work even if I put garbage in the Network settings (proxy etc)...which confuses me a bit... This is Version 11 of Windows Media Player. Maybe you could try opening up those two URLs directly with that version on a college PC and see what happens...

If it works on your home system, are you saying this is a publicly accessible website...? (If so, what's the URL?)