andyt57

That worked. Thanks very much.

I had found the first setting, but not the second. I've now set it and see what happens. Thanks. Andrew

One of my schools has about 90 Chromebooks and is having a problem. The children have worked out that if they open a new tab in Google Chrome then an icon appears at the bottom right entitled "Customise Chrome". This enables them to change the colours on the screen and play around instead of doing the work that they should be doing. I have searched but I can't find any way of disabling this in the Google Admin console. Does anyone know how to disable it? Andy

I've tried that, without any luck. The problem appears to be on the motherboard, and since a replacement motherboard is 2/3 of the cost of a new Chromebook it's just not worth replacing it. Andrew

One of my schools has retired its old server. To get printing to work afterwards I had to install the printer driver on each of the teacher Windows laptops. The printer is a multifunction device so I also went into the settings and enabled AirPrint for Apple devices and Cloud Print for the Chromebooks. DNS and DHCP are provided by the router. SWGfL/RM provide SafetyNet filtering. Andy

One of my schools has 55 Lenovo Chromebook 100e 2nd Gen MTK. Of these 10 have currently died and will not charge. I'm not impressed and will recommend that they buy Dell Chromebooks to replace them. Has anyone else had problems with this model? Andrew

I used Fing to determine the IP addresses and then used SSH to reset them. Unfortunately the school can't afford to replace them, but we're hoping to get some money from the Connect the Classroom initiative. Andy

It's hosted online. There is no local MIS. Andrew

An update. The school reported 3 more failed devices in the last fortnight. Two won't charge and the third has the ChromeOS missing failure. Another failed earlier when the wi-fi stopped working. Andrew

One of my schools has 4 x Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC (the square ones). There are being managed using Unifi Controller 5.6.42. The server was recently upgraded from Microsoft Server 2012 R2 and I foolishly omitted to take a backup of the Ubiquiti data. The upshot is that I need to reset the devices so that I can re-adopt them. The devices were installed before I took over the school, and I have not come across the square ones before. My question is, how do I get them off their mountings so that I can reset them? Andy

As I said the Server is currently providing DHCP and DNS as well as print services. The staff log on to all their machines (which are running Windows 10 Professional) with their Office A3 or A1 accounts so there are no GPOs or logon scripts. The staff use MSOffice/OneDrive and there isn't really any choice as documents that come from the council and academy come in Microsoft format. The academy made the school go down the Google Classroom route during the lockdown and, with Chromebooks is the classroom, that made sense. I have manually installed the printer driver on recently arrived machines, along with other specific software that is required. As I said it's a small school so it's just as easy to go to each machine rather than using remote access software.

Thanks for that. I have a Synology DS 218+ on my home network and am impressed with its functionality. The school doesn't currently use PaperCut, but with just one MFD it shouldn't be too expensive. Andy

I have recently taken over a small primary school which has a server running Microsoft Server 2012 R2 and which is only used for DHCP, DNS and print services. The school previously changed to using Microsoft Office 365 A3 licences for all the teachers and office staff and A1 licences for all other staff. All data is stored on One Drive. The children all use Chromebooks. So there is no requirement for AD. Since Microsoft are withdrawing support for Server 2012 R2 in October 2023 I am considering how to replace the server. We no longer require a large server with loads of storage as everything is stored in the cloud. Would something like an HP Microserver with the latest version of Microsoft Server do the job? Or should I consider using a Linux server to provide DHCP, DNS and print services? Has anyone else gone down this route? Andy

In one of my schools we have 5 dead 100e 2nd Gen MTK Chromebooks. The symptom is that they initially show the ChromeOS is missing or damaged error screen and then just die. They won't take a charge and won't start up. In one of my other schools one device in a class set of 30 has just done the same aftter about 3 months of use. We have some old Dell 11 Chromebooks that are time expired so have GalliumOS installed on them and are still going fine after about 5 years. I'm not too impressed with Lenovo at the moment.

That worked! Thanks very much. RWEverying portable is definitely going on my USB stick! Andy