BJG

...aha, hadn't seen that. Will have a read, thanks...

We recently renewed our OVS-ES agreement with a different company to save a few quid, which was something I always had misgivings about in case it broke our licensing...and indeed, this is currently causing us all kinds of problems. In particular, we're finding a whole bunch of Windows 7 PCs are suddenly reporting "Windows not genuine". We've been told that the licence key we originally used is no longer valid and we need to use a different one, but by the time Windows hits the not genuine thing it won't let you activate it with either...we've tried the usual Googled fixes like slmgr -rearm etc to no avail, and so far the only thing that's worked is reinstalling Windows. Just wondering if anyone else has encountered these kinds of problems with licence keys expiring...?

I've been asked to get a price for a system whereby our DT Dept could set up a camera in a small room containing some CAD equipment (laser cutters and stuff) and monitor it on a PC or iPad or something. Any thoughts...? (We have a proper school CCTV system and I've asked the company for a quote, but last time we added a camera to this I think it was quite expensive and this needs to be as cheap as possible.)

^^^ (...for the record, this was evidently a CPU failure even though the built-in diagnostics didn't find anything wrong. It failed completely shortly after, and swapping out the CPU brought it back to life along with SpeedStep etc. I think that's the first time I've ever fixed a PC by swapping the CPU out...)

That's great news, thanks Ross...! *edit* ...and online warranty checker now shows 2019. That's black magic.

Oops...couple of students just dropped in to point out that I'd taken over their IT suite with "demo" mode in AB Tutor, broadcasting my desktop while browsing information about laser projectors. Thank goodness that's all I had open.

...I think it must be. Just fixed it through my usual method of random tinkering, but it's a strange one... I found it worked if I turned off loads of stuff in BIOS, then narrowed it down to a setting called "Intel SpeedStep" in the "Performance" section. If this is enabled, the machine cannot be persuaded to work, but it's fine if you disable it. All the other identical machines in the suite have it enabled without any problem, so, dunno, something awry in some chip somewhere I guess.

Thanks for replies. The original invoice was dated August 2015. Entering the serial into Smart's warranty checker reports that it expired 16/2/2018. We were advised that it was probably a board failure, and that: "...as it is out of warranty and the main board it is very expensive to repair it has to be couriered in packaging to the Netherlands for an assessment (there is no guarantee of a fix) but they will assess it and then advise the additional costs / parts to get it fixed and then returned. From experience we are looking at near the £1000 mark...unfortunately Smart do not let any of their partners replace parts it all has to be done at the Smart repair centre."

...thing is, it can't be the drive...a second identical machine will work with its own drive, or the faulty machine's drive, while the faulty machine won't work with either. Same with the RAM. The fact that it will boot as far as the Windows logo, or into Safe mode, but no further, I find very strange. If it was a problem with the CPU, or fans, say, I'd have thought it would either boot fully or not at all...and I've also tried resetting/updating BIOS. (It's all worked fine until now.) I'll see if I can get it into Safe mode and run hardware diagnostics...

One of our Smart E70 boards which cost £4K+ two or three years ago, months out of warranty, has given up the ghost. I've been advised that the only official route to getting it repaired is to have it shipped out to the Netherlands with an estimated bill of £1000. Not happy.

This is a bit strange; a Dell 9030 AIO (out of warranty) will boot into Safe mode, but won't complete a regular boot or a re-image. What's surprising is that if you swap the SSD and RAM with a known good machine...the fault stays with the same machine. I've also successfully updated the BIOS with no change.

We've been asked to clear out any photos with students from a public folder for GDPR reasons. We started leafing through the results of a JPEG search, but there's a ton of stuff in there and it would take ages. Can anyone suggest an effective way of searching local folders for photos with faces...? (Might not be perfect, but I'm thinking it would be a useful start.)

The system of staff shared folders has become pretty messy here. Any tips to control the sprawl...? Is it common to put quotas on departmental folders, for instance, or run reports on things like disk space usage by owner...?

...thanks...I've just been looking through this refurb thread, and since that's clearly regarded as acceptable, it sounds like a good plan...

...yeah, sorry, perennial boring question. I'm used to buying fairly high-end PCs, but our IT budget is severely curtailed so I'm looking for something basic and inexpensive to replace old failing dual-core machines, preferably all-in-one...i5 or even i3...any suggestions...? (Heard someone mention cashback...haven't done that before, sounds interesting.)

It's another tough day in tech support. Someone brings chocolates...gift of chocolates...someone brings more chocolates...oh, support call-out. Bublé isn't playing. Turn volume up...job done. Right. Any more chocolates yet...?

Agreed, but I've been asked if I can implement both, so trying to figure out if that's doable and how it would work... *edit* Perhaps this way we can stick to O365 for email for everyone, but people can still use the same credentials for Google Classroom...? (Because that's the main reason for having GSuite. But I'm not familiar enough with the Google Classroom workflow to know if it makes sense to use it without a Google email account...)

...OK, correction. What we're now finding is: 1) User can sign into O365 or GSuite with the same email address and successfully send messages. 2) Email arrives in Office 365, but not GSuite.

The reason I went with the same domain was on the basis of the answers in this thread, about using Google apps with Office 365: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/blue-skies/184186-office-365-google-apps.html That was what I had in mind... *edit* Hmm, well, with no further tinkering, we seem able to log into either Gmail or Office 365 using the same email address and send/receive OK. Seems neat, but confusing...!

We've now signed up for G-Suite, using the same domain we used for Office 365. Next basic question...how do the two email systems interrelate...? If the school's working with both types of email, should we come up with two different username conventions, or do they meld somehow...?

For the past few years we've opted into an email system provided by our LEA, which generates Gmail-like accounts for students for local schools automatically, based on their MIS (we use SIMS). It generally works and it's very low-maintenance for us, but there are a few niggles with it, we don't have much direct control over it, and the SMT has asked us to look for a smiliar alternative that we can control ourselves. Staff and students here are used to Gmail accounts and the associated storage, Google classroom etc., but we haven't looked at creating/managing these ourselves. So...how do you do it...? Is this a common / straightforward approach to student email...?

Cheers - in the end I got this working on a Windows 10 client via CCProxy. (Requires a bit of tinkering with IPv4 metrics to enable wireless and LAN connections simultaneously.)

Is there a way for us to set up a PC with a wireless dongle as a proxy server that we can use to bypass the LEA firewall on one of our domain PCs...? (Trying to find a temporary workaround for an urgent online server-based service that's currently blocked.)

We've got a virtual SIMS server (2012 R2) running under Hyper-V which is currently failing on an urgent online synchronisation task (SIMS Agora) due to the LEA Firewall. They're being slow to make the necessary changes, so I'm wondering if I can use a Wifi dongle to temporarily bypass our filtered Internet connection and get this sync done. I'm not sure how to set about it though...any thoughts...?

At the moment the school is requesting that an IT tech remains present for every ECDL exam to deal with any problems that might arise. Is this normal?