woody

We bought some budget ones which where unbranded. The majority failed within a year. The cable was cheap and soon started to lose connection when you 'wiggled' it! We have used trust ones which have been fine. Logitech ones are good too. We have many of them which are in their fourth year now. Microsoft have to be the best though. I dissagree with Ric though (sorry) about the smaller budget MS mice. We use many of them and they are great for the classroom. True, for your own mouse you might want something bigger, but for the pupils who are using them for one or two hours a week they are perfectly Ok. However with ALL the microsoft mice, we have had a problem with a minority of pupils pulling the muce buttons up and snapping them off. Of course, any mouse is vunerable to willfull vandalism and this can only be controlled by the class teacher.

Does it do import of users from a csv file? Does it do print quotas? How will it integrate into already networks that have already been set up? There's a few to keep you going.

We have just had a professional wireless system installed by a company called Madge. We are planning to use it for teacher's laptops so they can register electronically. I am expecting big problems from January onwards when we start using it across the school. We have already been having problems with inconsitant connections / applying of group policy etc etc. I will let you know how it goes!

I think this could be something to do with the route from the access point through to the DHCP server. We found that we could plug an access point to the network through one particular switch, and all connecting laptops would not get an ip issued. Then we plugged the AP into the switch which had the server connected directly in and there were no problems. I don't know exactly why this happened but I presume it was a routing issue. Stewart, maybe you could try this. If that doesn't work, then you've stumped me!

Filled in!

I don't know much persnonally about it myself, but I can relate the gist of comments from the staff who do use it. Apparently, it is reasonably functional, but you do have to go round the houses a bit to get what you want out of it. There is quite a bit of work involved initially to bring information through, and we had to buy some local sims consultancy time to get us on the road. Th word on the street is, there are better apps out there than assman (ignore the pun) but if you already use sims and it's payed for, it will probably be cheaper to go with it. Hope this is of some help, though probably not!

OK, so I want to set syncronization of offline files up for all the teacher's laptops. Where in group policy can I set it up to make all of 'My Documents' available offline? My Documents is a redirected folder on my network. I have found an option in GP entitled 'Administratively assign offline files' but I'm not sure what path to add in there, if indeed that it the correct place to put it. Any pointers would be welcome

Thanks, will try this

I don't use romaing profiles.

Yeah, it sound like it should work! I have logged on as myself, and the default domain administrator. I presume you don't mean the local machine admin?

Thanks Jonny, I have tried all of the above. There are no files remaining to be synched in the offline files folder at all. Whatever I try, the little offline files icon will not go, unless I completely disable offline files locally on the PC. I do this, restart the PC and then enable offline files again, and currserv1 is still there. I can untick it and click OK, but when I go back to the list, it re-appears. It's status is 'offline' and the information given is that it is 'unnavailable for reconnect'. This is really bugging me now!

Clearing out the offline files folder doesn't stop it from trying to sync. If it can't see the share, it complains and says you sre working offline.

I've found an entry in windows registry here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache\Shares There was an entry here for currserv1 and 3. I have deleted currserv1 entry, but I had already turned off synchronization on my own PC. i will try this on another PC now.

The story so far... Initially, we had one server (currserv1) running AD and GP and storing files. Synchronization was turned on in GP for staff. It worked fine. Then we got a NAS server (currserv3) running Windows storage server 2003. I copied all of the files with permissions from the original server onto the NAS. Shared the folders and set up the necessary links. Then I unshared the original folders on currserv1 Now when a teacher logs in, Synchronization tries to sync files from currserv1 and complains that the network folder is unnavailable. I have tried and tried to stop this from happening. Microsoft have recognized the problem on their support site but basically say it is by design and that a user must stop synchronization from working locally before they change their files to another server. That's too late for me now! Anybody experienced the same problem and possibly come up with a solution? Is there a registry setting where you can stop it looking for currserv1 or equivalent name?

If this is the case, then I will be truly embarassed! I will find out.

I have used the same method to restrict internet access to individual users. Two groups for each year (eg. year05 & year05-ie) Two GPs. The first GP named 'pupils' contains all policy settings for all users, but does not have a proxy configured. The second GP named 'internet' contains the true proxy configuration. All pupils are members of the first group 'year05' which applies the 'pupil' GP. When we want a pupil to have access to the internet, we add them to the second group 'year05-ie' which then applies the 'internet' GP. When we want to remove that access, we remove them from the group 'year05-ie' It works every time here but you do need to log off and on again for it to apply straight away. Plus you do need to get the GPs to be applied in the correct order.

I totally agree, and I'm not too proud to admit that to get to grips with Linux yourself without an expert at your side can take a long long time when you come from a windows (or apple) background. And this is exactly why many schools stay with Microsoft windows and get it to do everything they want it to. However, I can't see how pre-conceptions can cause problems when all you want to do in Linux is get the network card to work properly with the right drivers, or to mount a usbpen drive. Granted, Linux is getting better at this, but it is not without it's problems. Again, it all comes down to know how, but it is so much simpler in Windows. It is common sense. In Linux it feels like you need a degree in programming languages.

Just a word of warning for anyone contemplating buying a HP deskjet 1220C or it's modern equivalent the 1280. If you are thinking that they will print on card, FORGET IT. We have a HP DJ1220 which will not print on card, and an Epson stylus colour 1290 (also A3) which quite happily print on card. The techie dept wanted to buy some more printers which they planned for printing on card. I warned them not to buy the HP. The reply? "Oh it will be ok, it says it will print on 260gsm so it will be ok and besides, its not the 1220 but the 1280 we are buying" Of course, they bought two and both of them came to a grinding halt when they tried to feed them with card. Then they bought an Epson 1290C and it worked fine.

When I first came to the school I now work in, there was one red hat box being used soley as a file server. All the clients were win2000 but there was no control over the desktop, and the kids were messing them up no end. Everyone logged in as 'user' and then clicked on a link to the linux fileserver and typed in their name and password to get their files. It was a nightmare. I had two options. I could have investigated a linux alternative to Windows's group policy to try and gain some control over the network, or I could buy windows server 2003 (which I might add I had no experience of either) and use Group Policy itself. The other technician who had originally set up the linux fileserver could find no alternative to Group Policy, he tried to set up roming profiles, but was not successfull. This took many weeks. Finally, I bought two new Dells with Windows 2003 server on them. I set them up as DCs and had one running AD services and file services, and the other backing up and print serving. I set up all the clients onto the domain. I set up Group Policy, running scripts, locking down desktops, controlling individual internet access etc. It took me less than a week in the main. Remember, I had no experience of it, yet I could work my way through it and it made sense. Afterwards, the ICT co-ordinator could not beleive the change sin the network and how it run. Staff were happy and Pupils couldn't fiddle about anymore. We do have a linux proxy running and a web server, and we are happy with the job they do too. I now have a working helpdesk running on Fedora. But all of these things took untold time to set up to just the way we wanted them. In fact, we probably spent more time trying to get drivers for the various components in the PC for linux, than getting it doing what we wanted. And with regard to Apple, my last school was in Oldham LEA who from the early 80s have pushed schools down the Apple root. My school had ALL apple macs with an apple server. That was the easiest network one could ever run. Apple designed network server software for the classroom and alltough it had its niggles, it was very good. The only argument you could really find with regard to Apple is the fact that few pupils will actually use it when they get out in to the big wide world. But believe me, if everything were Apple and not Microsoft, the world (or at least the school) would be a better place IMHO.

XP manages the wireless before you log on? How do you get it to do this? Every time I log on, it takes a few seconds before the wireless connects. I would love to get them to connect the minute they are switched on.

I have already tried this plus a few other options, but they don't seem to work. I can still log on and not receive the mapped drives. It usualyy takes me a few attempts at logging on depending on the level of signal before it catches up and runs the scripts. I thought if I manually map the drives, they will sit there happily even if not connected wirelessly until the connection becomes live.

At the moment, we have several drives mapped through a script that is run through GP. We are testing laptops on the network with a wireless connection. The problem is, if the wireless takes a little too long to connect when logging on, the scripts don't run and the drives don't get mapped. I thought of mapping the drives manually and set them to reconnect at logon, but of couse when I do this, if the script runs as well, you get an error saying that the local drive is already taken. Is there an easy way to edit this script so that it only maps the drive if that letter isn't already taken?? Here is the script I use: ---- Dim pub Set pub = CreateObject("Wscript.Network") pub.MapNetworkDrive "P:","\\Currserv3\public" ---- I want something like, if P: is taken do nothing else continue Make sense? My other alternative is to put all the laptops in a seperate GP where the script doesn't run, but I would like to try the script route first. Thanks

Our school is taking part in the KS3 onscreen test for 2006. I have had to fill in a network questionnaire whic was fine. But why do I have to run an audit on my network??? I know what spec my server is and of the PCs it will run on. This is a complete waste of my time (as is typing this message but hey, I gotta gripe) And why do I have to audit 20 PCs individually??? We will be using 20 PCs in the same room, which are identical. Why would we use a room with 20 different spec PCs? I know there are some schools where they don't have sufficient support to give them the correct detials, but hey, most secondarys not have at least one technician. Give us some credit and ASK us about what equipment we have. Anybody feel the same?

I think it is a little overpriced, but then I haven't seen anything that does what it does, ie create screenshots rather than just log events. Stewart Knight upgraded to version 3 but then said he had problems, not with it not working, but rather with how it did work. I can't remember what he was said though. Stewart???

Thanks!