ajs

Short of raising a call with Securus to get the latest firmware and client, the next best thing to do is to look at disabling Secure Mode within Adobe Reader X to see if that helps.

If you look at the Windowsupdate.log file on a station that isn't updating, what are the most recent date entries present?

As everybody else has stated, the 64bit build image is due for release soon. As far as I'm aware (and this was the case with with Win7SP1 image), smartclienting a 64bit station will require the 64bit build image on the server as that will update/install components required for the station to interact properly. If you really need it working soon then rebuilding as a 32bit station would be the only way I can think of.

I've seen that before when one of the global GPOs has somehow got its security messed up but I can't remember which. I suspect it's the All Stations one. May be worth checking that Authenticated Users have Read permissions on it and not Custom (as a start)

How is the policy linked? Is it in its own one or part of a greater laptop policy? May be worth looking at using RSOP to see if the setting is getting applied and if it is, what policy is actually the last one to apply it.

If you attempt to run the upgrade on the CC4 laptops as a staff user and wait until it fails, is there anything obvious about software restrictions in the Event Log? Also, what OS are you running on the laptops? I've seen some RM servers have incorrect software restriction rules that only affect Windows 7 and stops the upgrade from running. If you are on 7 then check your path rules and make sure that all of your rules starting with %userprofile%\ actually contain the last % - there may be one that just says %userprofile\

I had issues at one of the schools I support (although it was on both XP and 7) and the best solution so far was to update Flash from the version that was installed to a later patch release (which took some hunting via the web and some URL guessing to get the download from the old macromedia site) The update was easy to package up and push out via CC4's deployment but should be easy via scripting/SCCM/SCE. What version of Flash do you currently have installed? If you let me know I'll check what version the update takes it to and see if it may help you.

There's nothing in there that jumps out at me as stopping Teaching Staff from accessing the application. What groups do you have set for the Program Set?

Certainly an idea to check what groups you have assigned to the Program Set that the shortcut is in as it does sound like you may not have Teaching Staff listed in there.

The guy at pdfforge.org have recently released a PDF editor alongside their PDFCreator printer driver. Might be worth a look.

If the computers have decided that they don't need it then there surely must be some reason for it. Have you tried manually installing it onto one of the stations to see what happens?

Indeed, I was mostly just thinking out loud when I typed that as an answer to the original query. :-) Certainly not something that I would suggest as an acceptable solution.

I suppose you could mandate that the users save their exes into a specifically named folder with a specific name and then you can do a path rule to allow that particular file name to be run from n:\whatever dir\whatever exe. Don't really know how feasible this would be though. I think most other Staffs schools have gone down the VM route for this (mainly because of the time/effort spent getting VB Express to work)

There are quite a few high schools and primary schools within Staffordshire that have ordered iPads or are thinking of ordering them. I can't give you any specific names at the moment (cause my mind isn't working that well) but it may well be worth just getting in touch with the IT staff at a few of your local high schools and asking them.

It appears as if the driver that we have in the build disk is not a custom one and is actually from one of the RM Driver Updates. Unfortunately I don't have enough time right now to figure out exactly which of the Intel ones listed in the build was used but these are the ones that I've got listed for the build disk right now if you want to check against yours: RM PC 310 WinPE LAN Driver - 11.8.84.0 Intel Pro 1000 Ethernet NIC [RM Ecoquiet 965][Vista] - 9.8.20.0 Intel 82567LM Gigabit Network Adapter [DQ45CB][Vista] - 10.3.39.0 RM Ecoquiet 300 LAN Vista Driver - 9.52.25.0 RM Expert 300 LAN Vista Driver - 11.2.19.0 Hope that gives you some pointers.

Actually on closer inspection it looks as if the build disk here hasn't been regenerated for some time as the version included for the PXE boot is even lower than the one I mentioned. Makes we wonder if when the first batch of these machines were built (I wasn't onsite at the time) we needed a slightly different driver to get the build to start and then another for the OS stage. I'll see if I can grab the driver we have for the build and put it somewhere for you to get, worth a shot perhaps?

Right, just checked and the version I've got listed in the RMMC is 11.13.51.0 Don't know if that number will help with anything though.

Heh, I was going to get to those questions but (rightly) assumed you'd already done that. I would check what version of the driver I've got here is but I'm halfway through UPD110 so can't really do anything.

Are you using PXE boot or CDs for your build?

What OS options did you pick when importing the driver into the RMMC? Did you go for XP, 7 and Vista PE or did you split them up into different imports?

Does it just not pick up the driver during the PXE boot?

I'm glad it's finally been overhauled, it was starting to creak a little when I left and it wasn't even 5 years old by that point! Hope it goes well for the future.

We've got a block of them here (approx 20). The only issue I can remember having when building them was that I ended up getting the latest driver from the Intel website as the ones they came supplied with just didn't want to work for either the PXE stage nor the OS stage.

Personally I don't rate your sticking power :-P Was it an enjoyable couple of years?

My initial thought is to check what HDD mode the laptops are in. I suspect they may be in PATA (or compatibility mode) given that the built from the CC4 build process. I've seen a few Toshiba laptops over the years have dreadful I/O performance when they're running in anything other than the SATA mode for the HDD controller.