Chriss31

Thanks for this. We did run a patch to update the establishment number but it didn't change anything with regard to admissions data. By the sounds of it, it should have, and we need to go back to our support provider? Thanks

Morning all We have a school in our MAT who joined at the start of February. They were required to change their Establishment number when joining and we are now having an issue in preparation for the summer census, in that a query for each pupil (1881Q) is being flagged as their admission dates are still set to when they joined the school under the old est. number. Our understanding is that the admission number needs to be changed to the date of est. number change, and therefore the previous est. number will sit as an entry in their historical school record. As they are using SIMS, is anyone able to provide guidance on how to easily do this for all pupils, please? I may also be interpreting this incorrectly, so if anyone can offer any guidance on the issue it would be most welcomed. Thanks Chriss

Thornden is an oversubscribed, outstanding secondary school serving Chandler’s Ford and the surrounding area with just over 1470 students on roll. We have an ambitious ethos based on high expectations for all. Our students are proud of their academic and wider achievements, having a belief in their own success and ability to succeed which continues beyond our school with a high percentage of Thornden students excelling at local colleges and then at further and higher education. About the role: We are seeking to appoint a highly motivated IT Technician to join the team, with experience of client/server based applications to support the students and almost 200 staff. As a team, we endeavour to provide a fast and friendly response to staff and students seeking assistance to ensure that the IT provided is a positive contribution towards teaching and learning. Behind the scenes, we support a large number of IT systems. Across the Trust we run a mainly Windows environment, using M365 Apps for Education, and we maintain over 600 domain computers and laptops in Thornden school. Whilst this role is based at Thornden school, you must be willing to travel to and provide IT support to local schools within the trust when necessary. We are seeking a professional individual who: Can provide exceptional IT support and advice to schools Assist the Trust IT Manager to maintain a highly efficient and effective network Has the ability to work both as part of a team and independently with a flexible and proactive approach Further details can be found on the trust's website at https://www.hispmat.org/vacancies?vacid=209. Closing date: Monday 28th February 2022.

Thank you. I am in discussion with someone from Wasabi now about a UK reseller. FYI Backblaze don't currently have any UK resellers, apparently.

Hi all For those of you using Wasabi or Backblaze for your cloud storage solution, can anyone recommend a UK reseller to speak to please? Due to our finance setup we can only pay via monthly invoice for storage use and not via credit card, for example. Thanks

Thanks for your reply. Would you suggest Wasabi over Backblaze? Also, do you know of a UK reseller that could provide pricing for Wasabi in GBP?

Hi all I'm looking at adding the cloud backup bolt on to our BackupAssist licenses and have been quoted pricing for Azure Blob Storage as the backup destination. Having a little look around here I see Wasabi and Backblaze mentioned a lot and was wondering if I ought to be looking at them instead. BackupAssist is able to send data to both I believe. Has anyone used any or all of the above? Anything I should be concerned about?

It probably is. I just like getting to the bottom of issues so this is bugging me!

Hi all Having an issue with a Windows 10 upgrade task sequence in SCCM on the last batch of Win7 machines on our network. I have had other task sequences succeed for other machines so I'm fairly sure SCCM is set up correctly. On these machines though it appears from the SMSTS log that the upgrade succeeds before rolling back and undoing changes made. There's very little I can see in the log to point me in the right direction and I've tried everything I've found so far online with no success. When the machines roll back, however, they are left in provisioning mode and with the CCMEXEC service stopped, which necessitates me manually taking them out of provisioning mode and restarting the service. I then have to uninstall and reinstall the CCM client as it attempts to resume the unsuccessful task sequence. Any pointers? Happy to provide the SMSTS log if it would help. Thank you

Hi all Can anyone recommend a decent IT hardware repair vendor in Hampshire? I have some Lenovo laptops needing looking at and to get Lenovo to fix them will cost a fortune. Thanks

Morning all Been having an intermittent issue with one of our managed Netgear switches and I'm unsure exactly how to diagnose the issue. Essentially we have two switches (Netgear GS752TP) that our IT suite computers are connected to. Those switches are linked to each other via an ethernet cable and then we have fibre linking that back to our main cabinet. Every once in a while we get an issue that knocks out our IT suite printer and wireless access points. Ethernet connected PC's appear to be unaffected, but the wireless network gets knocked offline. I seem to currently only be able to fix it by powering off the two switches and restarting them. It's very similar to what I used to see at my previous school, where a kid would plug both ends of an ethernet cable into the same switch and cause a loop, knocking everything out. I have investigated the room and cannot find this to be the case anywhere, never mind the fact that it is only intermittent and certainly not a regular occurrence. My question is, signs point to either the room itself or one of these two switches, however I am unsure what exactly to look for on the switch, or what to monitor that might shed some light on the issue. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks

We use Trend Micro for our web filtering but nothing has changed and we've been using it successfully for a few years now. I've sent a portion of the log file to Capita. No response yet

I think you may be right. The log file has this: "Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority 'www.simsteacherappactivation.co.uk'. ---> System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel. ---> System.Security.Authentication.AuthenticationException: The remote certificate is invalid according to the validation procedure."

Hi all Been using the SIMS Teacher app for a few years now, but as of last week it's stopped working. When I check SIMS Services Manager, it seems stuck on "Transitioning" on the Login Service for Teacher App section. Capita have been predictably useful and suggested I restart the SSM service (obviously done). Their only other advice is to reinstall SSM, which I really don't want to have to do as it's used by another service as well. Has anyone else had this issue, and if so is there a fix? Many thanks Chriss

Hi all Does anyone know of a free (or cheap) system that could enable me to broadcast a notification (a fairly prominent one) to a select range of teacher PC's at once? We're thinking from the perspective of a critical incident taking place. Thanks all

What on earth are they talking about? It is of course for deployment of SIMS. I resolved my issues by removing the DNS records for the questionable PC and re-adding it to the domain.

Further follow up. All machines currently connected to SOLUS have received their SIMS update automatically today with no issue. It seems to be just an issue with adding/removing new machines and having SIMS install onto them.

To follow up, this appears to be a wider issue. SOLUS 3 just doesn't seem to want to interact with any clients. The only thing I can think has changed is that we are now on a different proxy server, but I have moved all devices over to it now, (SOLUS included). I've removed my own PC from the SOLUS deployment service, but it hasn't uninstalled either the agent or SIMS itself. However when I now try to reinstall the client it says the remote machine cannot be contacted. This was working fine for years. Such a pain.

Likewise. SOLUS client installs fine. I've now updated to the latest .net framework and no luck. I'll try removing it from the domain and re-adding.

Afternoon all Been happily (!) using SOLUS 3 for a few years now. Pushing out the SIMS client is usually not a problem. I do however have one PC which SIMS just will not install onto. The SOLUS 3 client installs fine when deployed via the SIMS server, but then nothing else happens. The PC is sitting in the list of clients, but there is no SIMS version listed and SIMS isn't installing. When I check in with the agent it responds to a status check. I've not seen any errors come up. Any ideas? Never had this issue before. Chriss

All sorted. Had to remove it from AD, not just the domain.

Yup, checked my hosts file. Looks fine to me.

Morning all I've come in today to find a laptop which yesterday was working fine. It is a Windows 10 Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, which is being assigned an IP address via DHCP, as well as correct gateway and DNS details. It can access the internet fine. It was even receiving a DHCP reservation from the DHCP server. However, I can only RDP into a server via its IP address (and not by name), I cannot ping any devices on the network, and no mapped drives are showing up. Group policy will not complete due to a lack of connectivity to a domain controller. I've tried taking it off the domain, restarting and re-adding it to the domain, which it does absolutely fine, but with no success. Both the WI-FI and ethernet adapters (I'm using a Plugable hub) are having this same issue. Any help would be most appreciated.

Very disappointed to hear about this new lineup. Raises a real question for us as to whether we continue with Apple at all. I just don't understand this decision to not offer a lower-priced device akin to the Mini 2.

That's what I ended up doing. Thanks for taking the time to reply.