rocknrollstar

Thanks for everyone's help- I'll probably have to contact the LEA. I'll post what I find out. Thanks!

THanks for your continuing help. I spoke with a friend who also works in a Hampshire school. He uses logmein without a problem - he gave me temporary access to check it out. All works fine, but frustratingly, all the settings are the same as what I have. We have the same broadband provider too. Obvious difference is that his school has an RM network, ours is not. We simply have Windows2k, and nothing else sitting on top of it. If anything, you would think that an RM network would make it more difficult. Do you think a port is being blocked on my side of school, or at a county level? Cheers for your help.

Hi, I think Hampshire is SEGfL- but I'm very interested in the idea of a staff proxy, not heard of the before. Anyone know if SEGfL has this? Makes sense to have one... Maybe as we are primary, we don't get it. Cheers.

Does anyone know if port blocking or incoming access is set by windows server, or by the county internet supplier? Our SWAN internet line (?) is run by the county IT people (EdICT). I'm trying to see if there is anything I can do, or whether I need to contact EdICT, which I'd rather not do. Thanks.

Hi Marvin, thanks for your post. The broadband internet comes via the LEA. We don't have any control over the filtering of the websites, although I can access the logmein website fine, without any worries. What I don't understand is that the computer I want to access can get to the internet, and it only uses ports 80 and 443- but I guess these are blocked someone or something. Can't figure out what. I presume it might be the LEA? I tried removing McAfee, still no avail. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for your help on this. I came across Sorting in Excel which lets you define custom sorting orders (so that a 2b comes before 2a) etc. I'm also looking into using VBA macros to help with finding sub level progress. Many thanks

I'm going to try disabling the antivirus software (McAfee)- shouldn't be an issue but some support site suggest this. It's only antivirus, not the whole security suite thing.

Well, the icon on the computer does have a red cross on it, with a tooltip message 'enabled but offline'. Windows XP firewall is disabled by GPO on all machines, I've double checked this on the PC. I got errors like 10060, and 'unable to connect to webgateway' and 'trying without proxy'. In IE, the proxy is enabled for all protocols, and bypassed for local addresses. The proxy server is a name, not an ip address. This all seems to show proxy problems, but there isn't a firewall. Could it be the LEA blocking it with the proxy? I think the logmein product uses port 2002, and 443 - Is this an issue? Would I have to open 2002 on the proxy server ? Which I don't know how to do! Thanks again.

>>Can you access the PC from within your school network using LogMeIn? Well, from another PC on the school network, I can access the logmein website, but haven't tried accessing the PC from another PC on the schoolnetwork- to be honest, I'm not sure how to! I thought you have to access the pc via the logmein website? The trouble is that the PC I want to view can't access/connect to the logmein website in the first place to tell it 'I'm here and I'm alive and ready to be connected to'. Thanks for any ideas

Hi, I am very interested in using the logmein remote access service. I have a PC at school with the software installed. The computer can access the internet fine (eg google). However, logmein fails to talk to it's server, so when I access me logmein account from a home computer, it tells me the school computer is offline. The school computer is definitely on, and has internet access. Logmein knows about the proxy settings for the school, and IE has the proxy settings enabled (it accesses the internet no probs). Also, the logmein service is running (I get the message that Logmein is "enabled but offline"). Any ideas about what this could be? Hampshire LEA blocking logmein? Thanks for your time and efforts.

Hi, we use Excel for pupil level tracking. Levels are stored as 2a, 2b, 3c for example (according to QCA/SATs levelling). I'd like to be able to sort these sensibly, but in Excel, 2a will come before 2b and so on. When we want to sort ascending, this won't work as 2a will be before 2b, but it should be the other way round. Has anyone got any ideas for doing this? Also- if you wanted to produce graphs of pupil progress, this will obviously make it difficult- drawing a graph using letters and numbers won't really work. Any thoughts? Thank you

Thanks for your help. I've now setup NTBackup to do a system state backup to the shared hard drives. Nice to know that it's safer than it was Thanks.

Yep, I've got a few attached USB drives that I back up to... David - I thought that if I did the system state backup, that was effectively backing up the domain controller? We only have 1 Win2k server on the network. I'm not really sure about VM stuff to be honest. BTW- I see you a lot on the TES ICT threads- very helpful! There are some real idiots on there, so nice to have some genuinely helpful people

Hi, I am looking to create an MSI by using WinINSTALL LE, and having it make a 'system difference' msi. However, does anyone know if this MSI would include a usb device installed during the system change? I.E. if I create an msi by comparing a before and after state of a machine, will this also include the usb driver installation? I was thinking of... Step A - using MSI creation software, take a 'before' snapshot' Step B - fully install software and usb driver and plug it in and get it working Step C - Using MSI software, now take the 'after' snapshot and voila! Any thoughts? Thanks!

Awesome, thanks for your help on this. A very useful discussion. I'll do a NTBackup System State backup on Monday (to a file- I hate tapes!). Great to have positive and helpful posters

I am thinking about our backup situation at school. We have a Win2k server with XP Pro clients. Our data is backed up regularly, so I'm not worried about that. My only concern is that if the server went down. How do I backup all the settings like GPO policies, AD, Domain controller settings & IP addresses etc? I guess there isn't a 'save your settings' button, but if I had to rebuild it, what's the best way to do this? Thanks

I think that's the easiest solution! I've also thought about writing a small program that allows for multiple ips to check that those computers are on, and sends an WOL command if not. I'll post it here when I'm happy with it. Thanks to everyone for their help:)

Great, thanks for your suggestions. I think the regirsty setting or group policy options might be the way forward. However, I do like the idea of a seperate machine being able to turn a computer on if it does turn off! I'll post back on any success on Monday. Thanks.

Hi, just wondering if anyone has a way to keep a computer on all the time? One of our machines has a usb hard drive attached to it that we keep a backup of important data (not the only backup we have!). But it's a network share so the computer attached to it needs to be on all the time. It's not a NAS Drive (wanted NTFS). Is there anyway to make sure a computer stays on? I've changed the power settings in XP to 'always on' and made it so it does nothing when the power button is pressed, but the user can still do start->shutdown. 2 possible ways are to prevent the computer shutting down, or having a way of constantly checking that it is on (and turning it on if it isn't), neither of which I know how to do! Thanks

Just wondering, if I create an msi by comparing a before and after state of a machine, will this also include the usb driver installation? I.E. Step A - using MSI creation software, take a 'before' snapshot' Step B - fully install software and usb driver and plug it in and get it working Step C - Using MSI software, now take the 'after' snapshot and voila! Hopefully.... Do you think this would work? Perhaps not ideal, but a possible solution?

Thanks for that Mike. I thought as much. USB ports are a pain, particularly when there are loads and the kids plug them in the wrong one. Oh well, worth a shot

Hi, we have just purchased several USB Data Loggers from TTS. Just wondering if it is possible to install a usb driver for these devices across a network, to prevent me from installing it on each machine? Can this be done through GPOs or scripts etc? The software to use the data loggers doesn't include the usb driver, but the driver is in a seperate directory on the install CD. Hence why I can't just install the software across the network (as it excludes the driver). Many thanks for any ideas

Brilliant, thanks for your help. I think this summarises the reponse: If you want a Network attached storage device (NAS), at present drives are limited to FAT32, which can have the limitation of 4gb (although it can be formatted to NTFS, it can't be used as a NAS in NTFS format for some reason). However, a USB drive can be NTFS with no file size limitation, but must be accessed via a shared drive over the network (if network access is required). NTFS data can be coped to a FAT32 drive no problems (and vice versa). Thanks again.

Hi, I am looking to backup our server data (ie teacher files) to an external hard disk. I have a program that will synchronise 2 folders, which is basically a backup of the server data. So that's all fine. It's a windows XP network, with 2000 server. My question is regarding NTFS and FAT32. The server hard drive is NTFS so that permissions can be used. Does the backup hard dirve also need to be NTFS for it to work? I.e is it possible to copy an NTFS file to a FAT32 drive? If so, I guess the file permissions would disappear, but they could be reset if a restore was needed. The reason for this is that it appears a networked external hard drive can't handle NTFS files, but they can handle FAT32 files. Also, is there a limit to a file size that can be stored on a FAT32 drive? I come across differing answers. Many thanks for your time.