andyt57

I can't find Unifi 6 Lite anywhere and AC Pros also seem to be out of stock. Does anyone have any experience of the Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC HD? Andrew

John, Thanks. From my reading Azure is not yet there as a DC replacement and we will need something on site, but I just wanted confirmation. Andy

One of my primary schools is single form entry with about 25 staff and 210 pupils. The server is currently a Dell PowerEdge T620 with 16Gb RAM and a single Xeon E5-2609. Microsoft Server 2016 runs on a 224Gb SSD and the data is stored on a 5.46Tb RAID array of hard drives. Since the server was originally installed the school has moved to Office 365 and online storage. All the pupil Windows laptops have been replaced with Chromebooks. There is an IT Suite of 17 machines but that has not been used since the start of the lockdown last year so it may well be converted back into a classroom. Since most data is now stored on SharePoint and OneDrive less than 1Tb of the RAID array is being used. We still need a local server as a DC for local logins for all the staff, Group Policy, DHCP and DNS. There are still PCs for the office staff, each class whiteboard PC, and PPA room, etc. It will also provide print services and local scanner storage. The T620 is starting to give issues and I am thinking of replacing it. Will Azure give me what I want, or am I better off buying a small refurbished server for such as ICT-Direct? Andy

I did an in-place upgrade from Server 2016 to Server 2019 and that did the trick. I also replaced that failed hard drive and left the array rebuilding. Unfortunately the school had a visit from Ofsted this week so I made myself scarce. Andrew

Thanks I'll try that. The server is fully updated; I meant that it had not installed any new updates prior to this. Andrew

I was called in to one of my schools on Friday (my day off) as the wi-fi wasn't working. I actually found that there is a problem with the server, which is running Microsoft Server 2016. One of the discs in the Raid array has failed, but there are 4 other discs so it is still working (Perc 310). However when I try to log in to the server I get a black screen, just showing the mouse pointer. On another machine connected to the wired network I can log in and connect to all the shared drives. I am getting a network IP address and can browse the Internet. So the server is running, and Activ Directory, DHCP and DNS are all running. I have tried logging in to the server in Safe Mode but still get a blank screen. The server has not done updates, and trying to revert to previous setup in Safe Mode made no difference. Does anyone have any idea how I can recover the situation? Or do I just bite the bullet, rebuild the RAID array and reinstall Server 2016 and rebuild the server? Andrew

Most of the devices in the school are 802.11n, with only the handful of new Chromebooks being 802.11ac. Bearing in mind the cost of replacing the wi-fi system I don't see any of the laptops or desktops being replaced in the near future, since they are all happy running Windows 10 with 8Gb and an SSD. Even then the school will only be able to afford to buy refurbished machines so they may have 802.11ac. So I can't see any reason for spending twice the money to install 802.11ax. If we can afford it we may go for 802.11ac Wave 2 but I reckon that even the UAP-AC-PRo will be good for another 5 years. And I can run the controller on a Raspberry Pi. Andrew

One of my schools has an old Netgear wifi network with a WC7520 controller and ten WNDAP360 APs (though only 8 are working at the moment). It is 802.11 b/g/n and is set to a maximum of 16 users per AP and 64 users on the system. The school is a single-form primary school, so has 7 classes of up to 30 pupils from Reception to Year 6. It's an extended first school so a bit spread out but all in the same building on the same level. Since the Netgear system was installed the number of devices in the school has increased such that there are now 2 full classes worth of laptops and a number of Chromebooks. The laptops are mainly 802.11n and the Chromebooks 802.11ac. I am looking at replacing the wifi system with a Ubiquiti Unify system as installed in a number of my other schools. My question is, should I just install the UAP-AC-Pro, which would cost the school about £1500 or UAP-AC-HD at over £2000? What advantages would the HD give over the Pro? Andy

I'm having problems too. It timed out adding a user and now won't open the Admin page at all!

I tried that change and it worked, thanks. I then investigated a bit more and they were both forwarding to their personal email accounts. That is not allowed so I turned off automatic forwarding again on the Security & Compliance page and also disabled automatic forwarding in their mail settings. I'll leave the Asst Head to have a word with them. Andy

Our school Office 365 domain has about 35 users. We have just discovered that 2 users are bouncing internal emails. If anyone tries to send an email to either of the users they get: Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups: xx ([email protected]) Your message wasn't delivered because the recipient's email provider rejected it. Diagnostic information for administrators: Generating server: AS8PR01MB7606.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com [email protected] Remote Server returned '550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)' I have checked both of the users accounts and neither have any mail forwarding set. And it is only affecting these 2 users. Does anyone know what might be going on? Andy

Yes, I've used that before but none of those do what I want to do. I think the fallback is that I add office@ to the Covid Team group and they will manually respond to any emails. Andy

I can't see any way of doing your first suggestion in the exchange admin centre. You second suggestion is how we deal with the office@ email account now. The trouble is that they don't tend to notice when emails come into the account. Andy

One of my schools has asked me to set up an Office 365 email address which parents/carers can use to report a positive COVID test. The aim is to send the originator an email to thank them for the report, and to forward the report to the senior management team. If I go into Users in Office 365 Admin and open the account details I can select Mail and set Automatic Replies and Email Forwarding. But Automatic Replies only work if Email Forwarding is disabled. Then I found this hidden in the Microsoft site: By design, a mailbox cannot have forwarding rules and an Out of Office notification active at the same time. Very helpful. Their suggested workaround is to leave Automatic replies on, disable Email Forwarding and then go into the Exchange Admin Centre for that account and create a rule to forward the email. I tried that and mail forwarding works but Automatic Replies still doesn't. Has anyone found a way around this? Andy

One of my primary schools has 60+ Chromebooks with a shared Kyocera TASKalfa 2551ci printer/copier and I have managed to get the new CUPS printing working through GSuite Admin. The Windows 10 driver on the server running Microsoft Server 2012 is set so that each class has a PIN, and their job sits on the printer until they go and type in their class PIN. That way they think twice about printing and we can keep a track of usage. That worked fine with the old,not retired, laptops. I have looked in all the GSuite documentation but can't find anything which would allow me to do the same on the Chromebooks. Does anyone have any idea if/how it can be done? Andy

The head wants it in case of school shutdown between now and September. I can download all the children's info from SIMS with any issues and upload it to Google Admin. I'll have a look at the setting for in-school use. Since it's for use during shutdown they will be accessing at home. Andrew

One of my head teachers has decided that she wants to implement Google Classroom by the time school closes next Friday! It is a single entry primary school with Reception to Year 6. The school has Chromebooks for the students but to make things easier, and since they generally use online sites such as Purple Mash and Times Tables Rockstars (where they have individual logins) they have a single class login for each year group. The question is, how do I give the children individual logins? There is no way that a Year 1 or 2 pupil is capable of typing in an email address such as [email protected] What is the best way of giving them individual accounts? Andrew

I looked at the Classic Shell web site and is says that as at December 2017 it is no longer under active development. I'm not keen on using something that might not work in a future Windows 10 feature update. Andy

Combo, If I change the Internet Group to row 4, they appear in row 4. But the Internet group heading still appears in Row 0 Column 6 and the Chrome and Edge icons appear rows below to the right of that! See picture. Andy

I think I've got some it working now, but still have a could of issues. I can't get File Explorer to work. I have tried both: and But both just show a blank tile. Also, how to get the two groups of tiles to appear vertically one above the other instead of horizontally? Why can't Microsoft just provide a simple GUI drag & drop tool that works? Andy

My schools are upgrading this summer. I've just about finished the install of Server 2016 and Windows 10 Education, got everything connected to the domain, got printing working and copied across all the data. Now I'm trying to get my head around the Windows 10 start layout. I set up a simple layout on a machine and exported it using Export-StartLayout -Path "$Desktop\StartLayout.xml" -UseDesktopApplicationID, as disccussed in one of the other threads. The layout looked like this: And the resultant xml looks like this: xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout" xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout" Version="1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/LayoutModification"> [indent] [/indent] [indent][/indent] [indent][/indent] [indent] [/indent] So I then deployed it using group policy and on the same machine, logged in as a domain user, I got this: WTF! Okay, what am I doing wrong? If I browse to %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ as the user I can run all the programs. So why don't the links work and why do all the tiles appear in a row instead in two groups as I wanted? Andy

I currently support 4 primary schools, two of which have replaced their Windows laptops with Chromebooks. They are not 1:1 but a classes worth in KS1 and KS2 which are pre-booked by the classes. One school has had Dell Chromebooks for nearly 3 years. My only problems have been broken screens, which I can replace, and now headphone sockets are failing/getting broken. The other school started with HP Chromebooks, initially 14" models. The children prized off the keys and the keyboard ribbon cable frayed inside - a known fault - so the keyboards became non-responsive. Then some newer 11" HP chromebooks last year. The biggest problem I have had with the HPs are the charging plugs and sockets. They are just not up to being removed and re-plugged by primary age children a least twice a day. So some of the newer machines will not charge as the charging sockets are broken. They have now bought some Dell Chromebook 3181 and were looking to but more but have been informed by the supplier that they can no longer get the cheap Dells, so they're now looking a Lenovo 11" models which have a USB C power connector. We'll see how that survives! Andrew

Thanks for your suggestions, but I eventually ended up re-imaging the laptop which cured the problem. Andrew

The problem is, as I understand it, that Windows 10 Pro from the 1805 rollout no longer implements some of the policies that remove the bloatware and lock it down - you need Windows 10 Education for that. Andrew

I spoke to them at BETT yesterday and that may be one way to go. But they provide Windows 7 or 10 Pro installed so I would still need a Windows 10 Education licence for each machine. Andrew