andyt57

I have already tried this. A Windows 7 Pro licence validates Windows 10 Pro. But I can't get rid of the Microsoft bloatware by GPO. Some newer boxes install Window 10 Pro directly, but same problem. Some laptops (bought cheaply before i took over the school) install Windows 10 Home, so I'll have to buy a licence for those. I'm inching towards Windows 10 Education and will have to price up the Select+ and OVSES prices for the schools. Andrew

I know I'm a bit late in the game here but I support 4 small primary schools who are now being forced to look at upgrading by the end of the year. They are all currently running Server 2008 R2 with Windows 7 Professional clients. All the devices were bought with Windows 7 licences or the schools bought Select licences for older machines. None of the schools have an OVSES licence for Windows or Office and cannot afford them. I am trying to get my head around the upgrade options so that I can put costed details to the heads and governors. Looking through the messages on here it would appear that Windows 10 Professional is no longer an option as I cannot remove all the Microsoft installed bloatware, even though it would cost £52.62 for an upgrade licence. I have been quoted over £100 for a Windows 10 Enterprise Education perpetual licence which is totally unaffordable. What have other small primary schools done in this situation? Andrew

I'll have a go with that. The only problem is that both the desktop and the program menu are clamped down by group policy. Thanks Andrew

When I right click on a USB drive I don't get the Turn on BitLocker option and the Microsoft site indicates that BitLocker is only available for Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate, not Professional. How did you get it working in Windows 7 Professional? However, as a work around, I installed BitLocker on a USB drive on a Windows 10 Professional test machine, inserted it in a Windows 7 Professional machine and it works! Many thanks. Andrew

One of my schools has bought encrypted WD Passport drives for their teachers. My suggestion that they use One Drive fell on deaf ears as they are out in the sticks with poor internet connections at home. The problem is that the WD Drive Unlock.exe file asks for the administrator account and password to run on the school system. There is no way that I am giving all the teachers the admin password! The school system is a server running Microsoft Server 2008 R2 with Windows 7 professional clients. Has anyone else resolved this problem? Is there any way of setting up a GPO to allow the teachers to run this one program without requiring the admin password? Andrew

Did you get any response? I've been asked by one of my primary schools to install an Android emulator so that Year 1 can use Scratch Jnr. The teacher wants it by next Thursday afternoon and I am only there for 3 hours on Thursday morning! Andy he's got some little RM notebooks with Intel Atom processors and 2Gb RAM and a few RM One laptops with Core 2 Duo processors. I think he's out of luck. Andy

The school just uses eSchools as a web site, not as a VLE. But they do use a form on their Contact Us page as they found that it vastly reduced the amount of spam they were getting into their office@ email account. Andy

Yes, the school is a .dorset.sch.uk so it looks like we need an SSL certificate. But I'm a bit annoyed at getting a letter like that which gives me less than 2 weeks to investigate the alternatives, especially as I only work at the school for 15 hours a week and, since the school is part of an academy, this is the end of the financial year and there's not much money left. Andy

Can you post the text of the letter (the bit describing the certificate and the issue) so we can see what they're trying to sell? Letter attached. Andy SSL Certificate Letter.pdf

One of my primary schools has their website hosted by eSchools. They have just received a letter from eSchools stating that an upcoming Google browser update will change the way that they will display information relating to website security and since the school has a DfE allocated domain (i.e. http://www.school.area.sch.uk) the school will need to buy a certificate from eSchools (by 13th July!) at a cost of £95+VAT per annum. Is there a cheaper way of adding a certificate to an externally hosted web site? Andy

A teacher brought me a laptop complaining that she could not log in over the school wifi and got an error message about no logon servers available. I tried all the normal things without any luck but eventually found that if I go into the Network & Sharing Centre and then Manage Wireless Networks there is only one profile shown for the school's wireless network. When I right click on the profile and look at the Properties the Network availability is shown as Me only, whereas it is All users on all other laptops. I have tried deleting the profile, but it just gets restored about 30s later with the same setup. Even if I un-select 'Connect automatically' it reconnects again. How to I irrevocably delete a wireless profile from the laptop? Andy

One of my schools has a Dell PowerEdge T620 with a single SSD for the O/S (Windows Server 2008 R2) and 6 x 2TB drives in a RAID 5 array on the PERC H310 board provided with the server. One of the drives has failed so I want to replace it. I installed Dell's OSMA 8.5 on the server and it seems to run fine, but it does not see any storage controller. Has anyone else has this problem and is there a solution? Andy

The server has now been running without any problems for over a month. The last hard reboot was on 5th Feb and it even survived the power outages when we had the snow down here a few weeks ago. So the ESET Enpoint AntiVirus seems to have been the issue. Many thanks for your help. Andy

I went in to school this Wednesday and between us the deputy head and I turned on logged in about 35 machines. I had previously set them to updated Flash and Java on boot-up and after they had completed that we logged in and connected them all to Lexia. The server ran flawlessly the whole time. We'll see what happens next Monday when all the children return to school. Andy

I can't say that I am. When I got in to the school yesterday I first had to deal with a laptop that wouldn't run Lexia and complained that Flash wasn't installed and then one of the little angels in Reception had knocked the VGA connector out of the backbox. Actually the teacher complained that her interface whiteboard was a funny colour so I had the track down the cause. Only after that could I get to work in the server. Not bad for 3 hours. Andy

Okay, fully updated the server as advised on the ESET site, rebooted and uninstalled ESET Endpoint Anti-virus, rebooted again and installed ESET File Security for Microsoft Windows 6.5. We'll see how it goes. Andy

Back at the school and the server is indeed running ESET Endpoint Antivirus 5.0.2225.0 which is the same as the clients are running. What should I be running on the server? Andy

I have already changed the SSD. The server is inside a floor mounted soundproofed cabinet and it's an absolute pain to get at. I may have to start playing with the RAM if nothing else works just to eliminate it from the issue - if I can get at it. Andy

That's a good point; the school does use ESET. I didn't set up the server, so I'll check the next time that I'm in school. It won't be this week as I'm off to BETT. Andy

An update. The server froze and required a hard reboot about 9:30 every work day and sometimes again a couple of hours later over the last couple of weeks. I set up the server so that when it next froze the staff could press the right Ctrl key and then the Scroll Lock key twice to produce a memory dump file. I have been through the file with WinDbg and can't see anything untoward. So I have asked the staff to toggle the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys on the keyboard directly connected to the server to see if the lights still go on and off. That will hopefully point me in the direction of a hardware and software fault. Unfortunately it doesn't freeze when I'm actually in school.

One of my primary schools has asked for a new hall projector. I can't get at the current projector without scaffolding. The hall has windows round all walls near the ceiling - with blinds but they're not brilliant. How many lumens should I be aiming for? Andy

Yes, it's a hard reboot using the power button as the server is totally non-responsive and users cannot log on. If you look at my first message I initially surface checked the 256Gb SSD the operating system is on but didn't find any faults and took an image which I restored on to a replacement SSD. The data is on a RAID 5 array of WD Black drives and they are all good. The server has 16Gb RAM, but I don't know what type without opening the box - which isn't easy as it's in a cabinet. I have been through the logs and cannot find anything obvious before the report of power loss. Well, I've now rerun the Dell deployment toolkit ISO, removed IIS and WSUS from the server and installed the latest updates but once again have run out of time. I'll try the in place upgrade for Server 2012 R2 next week. Andy

Well, having run the lifecycle controller diagnostics and the Dell firmware update ISO I arrived at the school this afternoon to find that the server was even worse than ever, locking up and having to have a hard reboot 10 times during the last week. Andy

Don't get me started. The problem is that it's a small primary school with only about 145 pupils so they run hand to mouth. The school obtained a number of RM Minibooks from another school, but with only 2 power supplies. Using those power supplies I have created a Windows 7 image, installed it on all the devices and joined them to the network. But the school can't afford to buy the extra power supplies. So all this stuff from the government about the new funding formula is a load of cr*p. And the local council has just withdrawn all SEND funding for newly statemented children due to lack of money. Andy

I downloaded and ran the firmware update ISO, which took about 45 minutes, and it updated a number of things including the iPERC. I noticed that some updates didn't install, as they required prerequisites, so I'll try running it again next week. I also booted into the lifecycle controller the system check gave an ePSA 4233.1 Failure, with error code 2000-0251 and validation 83529. According to the Dell site the ePSA 2000-0251 error message means 'Event Log - the log contains failing records'. The description states that 'this relates to BIOS events in servers only' and advises that I update the BIOS and repeat the diagnostics. But I have updated the BIOS and the firmware update ISO passed over the BIOS update stating that the BIOS was the latest version. So I'll try it all again next week. Andy