mthomas08

Yeah I have had problems, usually when the timesync I use has decided to stop working and I have to do another source. Quick fix is manually make sure the servers time are correct. Bios on the PC is a good place to check too.

Thats a good idea, some times though temp files/ IE temp files are a cause of it. I tend to manually clear it all out and seems to help a lot. There is usually a reason for it though. If that all fails me a new account is usually the best bet it will at least narrow down the PC/OS or just the user

Most of our staff have been doing donations instead of cards. Although we have been given three lots of biscuits/chocs. I plan on going out with a load of people who tend to buy me a drink firday so I think I dont pretty well

Totally agree with that, especially if you deal with staff/students/all ages. If your IT system evolves often then you for sure got an advantage over some one who has a certificate. As a bonus though, I am currently doing a MCITP and I am learning things I never knew, redoing things I already knew and have already found a few mistakes! To me Experience is best but qualification and experience is top notch. I will soon be reaching the 10 Yrs of working in IT. And by then I would of completed my MCITP I hope!

It is nice to see its not just the IT Crowd who get stupid requests..... people these days.

I am currently doing this Welcome to OpenITtraining.com u am doing a MCSE/MCITP Also MCDST, MCSA, MCSE certificates. It isnt perfect but has provided me access to other courses materials which I have gone through and had a good look at to "Know" it. Price wasnt bad either, although I will add i did find one mistake in a question/answer/course materials.

I have seen this issue a few times, some got fixed and some still pop up every now and then. Home drive is the only one where the account is set to "Home Mapping". Its the only difference to me between this drive and the others. For sure everytime it happens it is wireless related. We have tried setting a script in the users profile to map directly to their own drive and created a script in the Netlogon folder which their account points to. This seems to of fixed a few of them but still get one or two who come back. With all mappings of their account going directly to their own drive not the %username% way we have said to them manually run a file on their desktop if there is no H. It is a temporary fix I am currently testing windows 2008 R2 and I plan on testing to see if this makes a difference on their H drive mappings. If it doesnt then my guess is it is the wireless type? if they resort to cable all goes through fine.

Same, I had to do what real world people did and work part time while doing a mon-fri 8:30-4:30 course....

Think the only answer not covered, unless I am blind is the fact its the worlds language. Most techy's of all ages will have a basic concept of Windows server/clients. Maybe I am wrong but to me every time you watch the news and there is a PC in the background its usually a windows logon/screen saver on, to me most business's would choose windows. I have found windows much easier to get in to and much easier to understand the basics and you only really need the basics to get going well enough. Some people might not agree but I would say thats my personal opinion. Windows is something I would always say "stick to". Linux is a bonus to know especially when it comes to "cost cutting" but if you have funding then I would go windows. Another school did come here to look at our system to get some idea of vanilla because they were Linux based, they have since moved to windows.

I got asked this, I turned around and said no. They wanted to created a folder for each student and again each student had read access to their own. They buggered off after that. There is no point adding a huge work load to do something like this not unless a program is created just for this. Untill that time I am not doing endless amount of scripting which could slow down the system/logon times. I personally would of thought thats the point of having VLE's?

Only two things I can think of is give the box a reboot. Check the ownerships? sometimes people play with the security but I learnt that sometimes its ownership. Take ownership and okay the boxes, go back in and apply to all files on the ownership. See if that helps. What if you tried copying it to another location? are you able to take a backup and then try and delete them?

It is usually a setting in active directory (GPO) that fixes this. And dont map to the root as well, I think there is a setting in there for that.

I my self am currently looking in to this, we just had to order another 10 laptops on top of our 40 already purchased this financial year and another 60 desktops for 2 new mobile rooms. We had breached 800 pc's/laptops and with an additional 70 thats close to 900.... And just yesterday came in to find our main home area server had a failed Hard Drive. Lucky its RAID so technically i should be able to plug the new one in when it arrives and hay presto. Anyway - I have just done some googling, microsoft and looked at some info about Clustering. From my indications what |Tron has said is spot on correct. It apparently is VERY EASY on 2008 R2 - but frankly it was a microsoft site that said it. I just know there will be something wrong. Fingers next year i get the budget for servers because this is the route I am going one way or the other.

Think I would rather not buy anything with RM. This used to be an RM school and was over priced for what you was getting.

That's the problem, it will cost more. We found out each user added to the system will cost. We had a long list here of the costs of anything extra you had and we couldnt believe it. Also what happens to something very basic when it comes to support. My boss worked for the post office IT before they out sourced and now (he keeps up to date) things are not at all peachy. What about that person who needs a quick question, quick job, like just now a file needed converting and a camera installed on a PC (needed admin rights). It took me 1 minute to fix the camera install and 25 mins to get a converter working. Also installing two pieces of FLV software to get youtube videos of a course and play them. Both jobs took a total of 40 minutes and would of taken them how long? to call up northgate and get it done? I just had to image a new laptop - done within 25 minutes. Staff now has the laptop back.

I think thats one problem with have had with northgate, they tell us in ball point that the way they are doing things is the way it goes. BUT they fail to mention that its not a must have. Our Heads were told BSF+ICT is the way it is, but we found out that out sourcing ICT was only a choice. You can go BSF and get the new buildings and not out source the ICT. Doesnt matter now

always one that has to be picky ...... stop drinking coffee i didnt want to make the post even longer by being specific! I am talking about the arguement about quality of teaching and blaming the day and age or blaming the kids or when we was kids etc etc. I dont really want to be specific. BSF was never about changing the above, maybe make the kids a bit less stressful and maybe more space for teaching is the only way it would of effected them. The main objective for BSF was to bring schools up to scratch and no crappy old buildings/ICT Equipment/Out source IT Support. Am I missing anything? yes it has to do with the kids well ....... its a school. But the arguement was going off topic, so i put a little sarcasm there. BSF was never a debate over our generation or the previous generation being better taught etc. Thats where the topic was going.

I will add to the A2Z part, they provided us desktops which frankly were rubbish. The tower buttons were breaking often, they sent us replacement buttons about a pack of 50 and we ran out of them about 8 months ago. The PC's are about 2 years old and they became our worst PC's by far. We have only 1 computer area thats now A2Z when we had 5, we changed supplier and have been happy since. We have had about 6 suppliers so far and 3 of which have been disappointing and A2Z Pc's were real bad.

I dont think its school standards that have changed, although schools have to deal with much more - social workers etc. I think its more like the life they have. It is so much easier, my generation was on the edge. We had it a bit harder, the generation growing up now have it easier with benefits etc. As for the Uni standards I dont think tests are getting easier I just think the availability of information is a lot easier and people dont have to wait for a book to sign out or carry 10 books around all day. They logon a PC and connect to the internet. There we go, they still spend hours and hours studying. A lot have part time jobs, then study and have 1 day every now and then for fun. And with CTRL + F they can usually find something much easier As for reading issues, the kids have mobiles and send texts which the short chat all the time and they do it because its simply easier and lazy. But then this is a BSF discussion not about what the kids are doing

Must say we are now stopped, we are very happy that this is the case. BSF failed to mention to our heads that the IT Sourcing was optional. I totally understand the basic good ideas of BSF - New buildings, new IT equipment, new systems. With all that - it could have saved us a lot of hassle 5 years ago when I first started working here. I started as a NVQ Technician and the current network manager left because they refused to pay him more. The current IS manager at the time was useless and the IT manager was no better. So you can guess we had 1-2 years worth of issues. Serious server failures, email going down, virus's. Things got better when the new guy started, we worked much closer to get things working and better. Today, we have multiple servers, very low downtime. Laptops are 90% up to 3 years old. 10% we are hoping to change next year. We didnt like the idea of BSF because we finally got the type of IT System that works, BSF spec PC's were lower then what we got. Biggest problem is when it comes to IT - heads, CET members etc have no clue how much work goes in to a server and are prepared to employ a basic tech like me (back in the day) to do the work of a network manager/systems manager. To me they should know it all And ofcourse, provide a very low budget. I am currently doing a huge MCITP/MCSE course and wizzing through it because I had to deal with it for the past few years. Ofcourse things are not perfect - SQL I could do with the know how. I think some schools IT wise needed BSF and still do. Also outsourcing IT on a school like this, we are so heavily reliant on IT, projectors, laptops, sims, software packages. We worked out that the cost of supporting our students would of cost far more with Northgate then what we currently spend on IT Equip/staff. And when you work out the cost of Northgate charging for software/new users etc etc it will add up even more. And for support which is not instant, we do our best to place support within 15 minutes. Sometimes instantly because we can drop what we are doing to connect up to a pc using netsupport.

We have had similar issues here, I wonder if they work for BSF they will get the same instant help me now support I look forward to it haha. Anyway, we tried a few things: Prioritised those who used the help centre Told those who didnt that we are currently busy and if they put it on there we will do them asap. Because it makes them wait a while it forces them to figure out the problem them self especially if they have had it loads of times. We have purposely forgot jobs if they were not put on the help centre Recently they have tried emailing the jobs all the time so I use the excuse that we are going to give CET/Heads access to the weekly summary reports of the help centre. So all jobs have to go through the help centre. We also tell staff at times, "Hang on, let me add that to the help centre job queue for you". Makes them wait even longer. We make sure staff are aware we are busy, we have sent out all staff emails often reminding about the help centre, if they want training we will give it, all new staff get trained on the help centre. So we really push it out to them. Constantly remind them thats how we do it.

Well weirdly enough after that, its back to rebooting it self - again loads to windows see the mouse cursor and BAM reboots. Anyone had experience with Windows 2008 backup ? I have been doing incrementals but can only access the restore date from when I 1st made the backup? Surely the point of the incrementals is so you dont have to do a full backup every day and do a restore from the latest date? * Have gone back in to the RAID manament and its doing another background initialisation this time though its at 0.00% and 56756hrs to go? I am guessing that perhaps the raid controller has failed? any Raid masters here? I am not even able to do a fresh install of windows...

No, didnt even tell it to do anything. This is getting weirder by the day! If thats the case so be it.... cant cry about it now!

thanks for the replies, well found a little more info on the problem. RAM is fine - did a test all is okay. Managed to boot in the RAID software had a look around, I updated it all and now it seems to be doing a background initialization... 3% so far.. going to take another day. Looked at system restore - for some reason it was logged back to september??? I couldnt believe it - i have scheduled to take incrementals and have even restored files from only 2 weeks ago. So anyway tried that because i was hoping the system would at least be worthy so i can get the data off but no after that still did the same thing. So I am thinking that possible a hard ware issue. i have tried booting up with only a monitor in the server but still same issue. Seems to be keeping mother board settings alright So guessing the battery is okay. Really not sure what to do next but I am pulling data from other backups but some of it is reliant on this 08 server backup.. which I do not get why its detecting the data from september when I my self have restored from 2 weeks ago. I am hoping the data on the server is alright so i can at least have that. I do have an older backup of a lot of the data which is a good thing if all goes pear shaped..

Well such a great thing to walk in to this morning, over the weekend I remotely did some updates and defrag. Had recently moved Home Drives from one server to another. New server being the one that is now rebooting... So after doing the main server and restarting every server then had issues logging on. Strange I know - rebooted them all again and was fine. Came in this morning our 2nd main server (new) didnt log in so i rebooted.. Now its rebooting it self - it gets up to the point where it loads the OS then you see a dark screen with the mouse and then reboots. Unable to boot in to safe mode, unable to load last good config (does same thing - reboots). Just doing a Mem test on it now and checking the raid but just wondering what the options are at this stage. yes I have a backup - so thats sitting there thank god. Now this server is a DC which I am hoping I can get back online.. Its pretty new as well. I will be living on this post if anyone offers any assist its 32bit as well.