BJG

One of the staff has some Powerpoint documents that open up in 2003, no problem. However, if you try to open them in 2010, it hangs with the message "Contacting the server for information". From tinkering and Googling, I get the impression this may be due to pictures that are directly linked to the web or something...haven't managed to fix it yet though, despite saving copies in both 2003 and 97 formats and trying different machines. Anyone come across this...?

Thanks for the help...compatibility mode does the trick.

I expect you're right. (Still not working for me though, with "Active Flash Player 11 ActiveX v11.7".)

Worth a try I guess, though I'm already on 11.4, and I generally find Flash updates a PITA. 99% of the time I get "Metafile download failed" for no obvious reason when trying the standard updater, the Adobe Flash Support Center just has a confusing and unhelpful list of "debuggers" and "projectors", and I can't see it on Ninite either. Just tried the download here but it's made no difference...

We use Dovestones after a mention on this forum years ago. http://www.dovestones.com/

I find the videos on this page... UCAStv - watch video guides: Personal statements (how to) Play OK in Chrome, but not in IE9...I just see a black box. Just wondered if anyone had any insights...?

(...no, it's just an erratic thing which sometimes affects a handful of computers...)

We have W7 clients and printers deployed via Group Policy, and on the whole this works fine. But in one of the IT Rooms PCs keep losing the printer and I can't figure out why. "A Gpupdate /force" followed by a reboot usually fixes the problem. There's nothing in place to delete or remove printers automatically, so once they're there, why don't the darn things just stay there? I've just tried enabling the "Printers preference extension policy processing" for this deployment policy under Administrative Templates / System / Group Policy, and deselecting "Process even if the Group Policy objects have not changed", so maybe that'll help? Too many policies, too little time.

Thanks for the pointers. I've been looking at SSDs, but the Dells we usually like would cost something like £200 more, so I'm wondering whether to look for a different supplier or try to fit them ourselves (not very keen on this idea). We've tried Stone and Ergo in the past, but not had great experiences with either (all our Ergo machines make a howling racket when cold). Never tried Lenovo. Maybe Ergo have improved...? Any thoughts welcome.

For teachers, though I'm wondering whether to differentiate. I was thinking of i3, 4GB. Interesting idea about SSD, we have none of those. We usually go for Dells.

What's the typical spec that people are purchasing as teaching PCs these days...?

I'm actually trying to cure a strange glitch when the students run Excel, whereby they frequently receive a "Could not open file" error when trying to open documents until they run IE and close it. (Strange but true).

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure what you mean...we have a working mandatory profile with Windows 7 clients, but I need to make a change to it.

Likewise. OK, I'm trying that, but getting confused. Is this still the relevant approach for Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7...? I copy the profile to a new .v2 folder, but when I try to log back in as the relevant user I get: "The Group Policy Client service failed the logon. Access is denied."

I've narrowed this down but I'm still stumped by it. So, situation is: There's an Intranet hosted on Server 2008 R2 / IIS with a mixture of pages, some that everyone should be able to access, and some that only staff should be able to see. If [DOMAIN/USERS] has file permissions over a certain .html web page, then everyone can reach it OK in Chrome and IE. If [DOMAIN/USERS] is replaced by [DOMAIN/STAFF], then staff can access in IE, students get access denied. Using Chrome, however, staff now get an "authentication required" logon box on that page. I don't know what username/password it wants - admin credentials don't work.

I've somehow messed up access to our IIS Intranet via Chrome. I recently made changes to the group policy for Chrome (though nothing that should have affected this, just homepage stuff) and changed the file permissions on certain .html pages within our Intranet (is there a better way to manage web page security?) Anyway, now IE still works fine, but when trying to reach certain staff Intranet pages with Chrome, staff get a logon window popping up saying "Authentication required - The server xxxxx requires a username and password". I think this must be connected with my file permission changes, but I don't understand what's gone wrong since staff have the necessary permissions and IE works. I basically removed "Users" from the permissions and replaced it with "Staff". I left "System" and "Administrators" intact, though I also hit this problem when logged in as an Administrator. I've tried the option in Chrome to clear the cache. Any thoughts...?

Most of our whiteboards are Smart, but we also have a handful of old Promethean ones. I recently upgraded the PCs running these to ActivInspire because the old version of ActivStudio wasn't Windows 7 compatible, and only just realised we're not eligible to a free upgrade to the Pro version. Unfortunately the free Personal version lacks desktop annotation, so I was wondering if there were any other options/workarounds...? (Not sure how much upgrading our ActivStudio Pro 2 boards to ActivInspire will be, but I doubt it'll be cheap.)

Of course with the cream filling. What kind of cheapskate gets the other ones? But No. 1 are these. http://images.mysupermarket.co.uk/Products_1000/97/011397.jpg

These constant Java updates are a plague. What's the best way to keep it automatically silently updated? Is there even any point in keeping it updated?

The Daily Mash. The Daily Mash | It's news to us

I've recently been looking at a couple of the titles in this series, and really like them. If there's a subject here that you're interested in, but just never been able to get your head around, this might be your way in - they're a zany and effective way to learn stuff. (Mostly IT-related, but also cover topics like stats and geometry.) Head First Labs from O'Reilly Media, Inc.

For anyone into developing their own games, this is a Kickstarter I've been following. It's a 2D skeletal animation engine compatible with various frameworks and programming languages - looks pretty neat. Giving it a quick plug as there's 60 hours to go. Spine by Esoteric Software — Kickstarter

I recently started looking at Gideros Studio which seems a good way in. Gideros Mobile There's a free version available (apps have a splashscreen), works with Android and iOS. It's based on Lua with a framework which resembles Actionscript.

This seems like a good idea. Kickstarter Open Source Death Star by http://www.gnut.co.uk — Kickstarter

OK, cheers - I'll give it a go... *edit* Fixed! Ta.