woody

I have figured that out now. Is group policy one of those FSMO roles? If so, how do I transfer it?

I have my shiney new dell server which I want to take on the role of the main domain controller and to take authority over group policy settings on the domain. I have promoted the new server to become a domain controller, but what do I do to get it to take the reigns from the current main server? I also downloaded and installed Group Policy Management console but this wanted me to change the domain controller to a different one - presumably the current server from which I edit group policies. I'm sure it's straight forward, but thought I'd post here for a quick answer before I start trawling through Mr Gate's website.

Set up a new laptop yesterday for the deputy head. I have group policy set to allow staff to configure offline files if they so wish. On all other laptops, teachers can right click on 'my documents' (which is redirected to the server) and 'Make available offline'. This was not available on the new laptop after it had been joined to the domain. The option to enable it in folder options was greyed out. I logged on as myself and I was able to enable offline files from the folder options box. Then logged back on as deputy, and 'Make available offline' was there, so selected this, syncronization occurred and everything was hunkydory. Until he went home and found he could not even access his 'my documents'. Turned out that when the laptop does a restart or is shut down and started back up, offline files is disabled again. So then started to look into whether group policies where fully applying. I ran a report from Group Policy management on the server and it tells me that the security part under computer configuration failed. The reason given was: 'No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.' I'm not sure if this has anything to with the offline files problem, but I want to get this sorted too. Has anyone got any ideas?

If the link above doesn't work, I've scanned the printout I have of these instructions and attached it here.

We have some Acer Pcs that came with MCE pre-installed on them. The option to join a domain was greyed out. I tried THIS and I can confirm it works! (Use at your own risk etc etc lol) No, if you follow the instructions line by line (lines 13, 26 and 33 are really important) it WILL work. As to the legality of it, I'm not sure but it is XP Pro with a few things disabled so I don't see why not. Hope this helps!

Where did you get your disks and licenses from? We use Ramesys and all their discs are full versions and bootable even though the licenses are upgrades. In fact, if you ring them, they would send you media out for about £20 per copy.

It won't be difficult to change the drive to S: You can get all the PCs to map drive S through group policy and if you are installing on a new server, it will be like a fresh start in many respects, so a good time to do it. There are a few ini files which you will need to change to S: but your Sims help team will be able to advise you of these. As I said, get them in if your not sure. As to where your responsibilities lie, speak to the relevant people at the council. I have a feeling they will pass any hardware change responsibilities onto you.

We use lesson register for teacher access to mark their registers, and lesson monitor with the admin staff for reporting etc. Sims also now do a Mobile version of lesson register for PDAs but it does take a bit of setting up and their instructions aren't exactly user friendly either. (They have said they are working on this).

If you've never done anything like this before, I would also advise you to get local sims guys to do the switchover for you. I would definately change the letter to s: as during the process.

Ok, newest thing we have done in our school is actually tidied our room! 20+ years of junk has been skipped or recycled where apporpriate! We now have enough room to hold a reasonable size party (to up our image in the school, we are the it crowd) and everyone who comes in can't beleive the tranfsormation! A rumor even got out that we were moving out and several staff had an evil eye on taking over the room. Soon sorted that out!!! Ok, I know it's not technology, but you must admit most techy rooms are full of old junk! (Forgive me if yours isn't) so in my view, that is something we've done that's different!

Single all round here! Changed from two seperate domains a few years ago and never looked back. The biggest security risk in any school is a teacher leaving themselves logged on. Now that teachers require access to sims for registration in the classroom, it makes no difference if you have one domain or two. If a teachers leaves their machine open, pupils will have easy access to admin resources whatever your domain structure! Educating users and regular shootings make up for half of our security policy here!!!

Well, I've done some investigating over the past day or so and basically I've got nowhere. I ran a port checker and when I do a connection test to the document server in sims, the port checker shows that port 8080 has connected successfully :? Made sure the local firewall is off disabled the proxy and I've run a complete virus check which has shown up nothing. I'm beginning to think I will need to get the restore CDs out of the cupboard.

Thanks for suggestions. Will try these tomorrow and report back.

These settings are already set through group policy. All local addresses are bypassed and type specifically into the box.

I have this problem on one laptop. Every other client works fine. Teacher is unable to run reports or access documents stored in the document server. When I log on as SIMS Administrator, and look at the Document server settings, all the details are correct. However, click on 'Test server connection' and you get the reply 'Document server not working.' I have checked all the obvious settings on the laptop, re-installed SIMS .net, checked firewall settings, etc etc. Our Sims support team have been unable to sort this out and are now talking about changing the port that the document server uses to 8081 (currently default 8080) but I don't want to mess up the rest of the clients or the server for the sake of one laptop. I do agree that it's a connection problem and the help desk seem to think there may be something conflicting on port 8080. Any way I can check this or are we barking up the wrong tree?

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Here it is, the final sign proudly presented on our newly painted door! The green text does look darker than it actually is in the pic. I did want to use a brighter green but that's all the tech dept had. I think if I had a second go, I would have had the text done in yellow. But beggars can't be choosers!

The reason for asking about Boardworks was because I want to get teachers using their IWBs for more than just writing words on a canvass - something for which a standard whiteboard and dry wipe marker will do much more cheaply It just looked like a good way of giving majority of departments content in one go rather than spending forever and a day routing out individual titles for specific subjects. Having said that, if the content in boardworks is not very good, then perhaps more time and effort will be required to provide tailored content.

Well, I've desided to go with the design I posted above, and it's ready to go up! Just waiting for the site staff to put a coat of paint on the door before I put it up. Will post the result on here when it's done!!! It's been enjoyable to hear what everyone has got on their door, and to see a few pictures of them as well. Keep them coming.....

Had a flier from Boardworks advertising all their content across all subjets that they do for £12k. Was wondering if the stuff is good and whether it is worth the money?

OK, this is my second attempt at a sign. The first one was dreadful. I got this idea a little of the opening sequence of the IT Crowd. Thanks to webman for the font! What does everyone think?

Sorry, I should have said that I want the sign to say "ICT Support Team" Here is a piccy of our door. You can see the red patch where the old sign resided. I am really just looking for something different - maybe a geeky font or something ICT related. Please tell me if I am just being stupid and should go for a plain lettering style!!!!

Haven't got round to photographing the old stuff yet. I have a vintage SONY tuner for hifi seperate system. Also an Acer anywhere 386 laptop with MS-Dos and Windows 3.1 on it (had great fun booting this up). I also have 20 or so thin-clients which are acorn but will run windows off a citrix server if anyone is interested for a nominal donation. Will maybe post about this in the thin-client section. Will port a photo of the door in a bit

Ok, so we spent all of half term (last week for us in cumbria) clearing out 30 years worth of junk from our workshop. Wow, the space is incredible - I can see the floor! I also ripped down the old sign off the door which read "Audio-Visual Technician." Long gone are the days where the IT technician would sit around recording educational TV programs all day then copying them onto several other tapes just for them to end up lying around. (During the tidy-up, I eventually got rid of a 'portable' betamax player and 50-odd tapes.) So to get to the point, I need a new sign!!! The Tech dept have all these fancy cutting machines so I can have virtually any design I want. I fancy something with a technical/IT theme, but it has to stand out and not be too complicated. Any ideas on font and maybe a bit of a computer related design would be greatful!!!

Finally got my hands on the SIMS Mobile software. We have bought one license for an initial trial to see how well it works. I started to read through the installation manual for the server side and realised that MS SQL Server 2000+ was required. (I wasn't told this when I was in consultation with capita. We are running our Sims DB on MSDE. Is there anyway I can install the Mobile software using MSDE? Any instructions? I've logged a call with Capita but it will probably be a few days yet.