Cazale

Nope, but I will on Monday. Cheers.

One of our primaries has a Microsoft Money file they need to open. The version of Money they have (I think it may be 2004!) worked on Windows 7, but won't work on Windows 10 (we tried compatibility mode for XP, 7, etc and various registry hacks I've discovered on the net). We tried the Sunset version, but that won't open the file. Worst case scenario I'll give them a temporary Windows 7 VM, but obviously this is totally obsolete software, so I'd rather suggest a more modern alternative. Anyone come across this issue and found modern compatible software (which will open old money files)?

When a new teacher signs up on the web for Office 365 and confirms their e-mail address Office 365 automatically assigns them an A1 licence. I have to manually go in and change each one to a ProPlus license. Is there a way I can auto assign new sign ups on our domain the ProPlus licenses?

Yep, it was the xmlns:taskbar="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/TaskbarLayout" missing from the header that was causing it to fail. Thanks guys.

Looking at that, it looks like I didn't put in the XMLS:taskbar at the top. I'll have another play. Thanks for your replies.

Do you have it in with your start menu layout, or separate? I tried adding a very basic scheme to the start menu layout (as described in the Microsoft article above), and it broke the start menu layout and didn't apply any settings to the task bar. It just looked like it wasn't applying at all. I tried a few different of the Microsoft examples, and they all did this. Unfortunately I can't post the XML I used, but I need to do this again in a couple of days, so it happens again I'll post it.

Thanks. I already created a custom start menu, but didn't realise you could also customise the task bar within it.

Has anyone found an easy way to do this (script maybe? I remember there was one for replacing IE for Windows 7, anything similar?). It seems unnecessarily complicated compared to replacing desktop/Start Menu icons.

Thanks for posting this. I was getting a serious headache with the same issue and only found the answer by reading through this thread. What sort of drivel is that error message?! Microsoft really are the pits.

Thanks for that, who's that with? Is that for storage and data transfer btw?

Anyone using Veeam cloud backup? I was just wondering what sort of monthly cost you're seeing? (for the cloud services, not the Veeam license fee). Particularly interested in hearing from any small primaries doing this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Win server licenses included both host and VM licenses? 1 host 2VMs for Standard, and 1 host unlimited VMs for Datacentre. So (if I'm thinking right) unless you're using nested VM, the host is covered by the VM license anyway? (or the other way around if you prefer)

Hey, Scenario: small primary, fairly beefy, brand new server (a couple of Xeon Processors, 32gb RAM, RAID 1 SSDs, RAID 6 10k SAS drives) to replace an aging server from a few years ago. I'm going to go virtualised for the backup/recovery/snapshot advantages., but it's likely most services will run within a single VM (maybe 2 at most). I'm not based on site, and manage a lot of things remotely. We previously had an issue with Hyper V Server (2016 - although this time I'll be using 2019) where we were hitting all sorts of roadblocks trying to connect to the host remotely. We'd solve one thing then hit another roadblock (I think one of the issues may have been CredSSP - but it was a while ago, so I may be getting my facts mixed up). It became a right pain in the proverbial. Discussing this with someone, they said they no longer bother with the slimmed down Hyper V installs anymore, and they just install the full version of Server 201x, and then install the VMs under that, as the overhead isn't as vital on modern servers. I've just always installed the host from Hyper V Server. I can imagine it's certainly more user friendly/easy to do it the way he suggested. I'm just wondering what other people do? Am I likely to see any significant hit on performance with a full server install?

All our schools are effected with this. I've been getting e-mails and calls all day about it (again). Their advice was to click details and then proceed past the security warning. Almost every school has responded along the lines of "well that sounds dodgy considering what we're using it for!" (to which I reply that I'm just passing along their advice, so feel free to ignore it). It sucks, I don't want to be getting people into the habit of doing what they're recommending to do! It really doesn't look good for them, especially having happened twice in a month. Are there any alternatives?

Is the time set correctly?

I ran a script on all ours and one just absolutely refused to accept the key. I got so mad with it I rang Activation Support, went through the menu options for Volume Licensing, got through to someone, and this genuine conversation just happened: Support: "It's a Windows 7 Enterprise key and you're using Windows 7 Professional" > (me) Nope, it's a volume licence key and works for either. (we went round and round in circles for half an hour, with him insisting I install Windows 7 Enterprise instead. I eventually had to get him to remote to the PC and watch me click "Key" on Windows 7 Professional in the Volume License Service Centre). "Right, you need to connect to the server" > What server? What are you talking about? "The key server" > What 'key server'? "Your company uses a server?" > Err yes, are you talking about a key management server? Because we don't use that in this school, this is a MAK key. "Oh it's a MAC key? Well that's your problem. You can't use MAC keys on Windows. Have you tried contacting your IT department?" > Riggggght. I'll be off now. Thanks for your help. (this was the brief version, total time on call was 40 minutes, getting absolutely nowhere). I was in the queue waiting for another support agent when I tried the same script I'd tried 10+ times, and this time it thankfully worked. Absolutely no idea why it didn't work the previous X times I'd tried it, but there's definitely something dodgy going on. Not sure if it's the client or their activation servers, but it's a horrible waste of time when it happens. As I said above, we've seen this at multiple schools. I'm probably somewhere in the region of 10 hours wasted on this!

I think ours were Enterprise (I'm not at the school now so can't check, but I'm pretty sure they are, and the above bat file worked).

I got a fresh batch of this at another school on every W7 PC. This script (saved as a bat file and run as administrator) worked for us for most of them: net stop sppsvc del %windir%\system32\7B296FB0-376B-497e-B012-9C450E1B7327-5P-0.C7483456-A289-439d-8115-601632D005A0 /ah del %windir%\system32\7B296FB0-376B-497e-B012-9C450E1B7327-5P-1.C7483456-A289-439d-8115-601632D005A0 /ah net start sppsvc slmgr /ipk slmgr /ato Ones that failed I did: wusa /uninstall /kb:971033 Then manually activated them. That worked on nearly all the ones that the above script didn't work on, except one which needed telephone activation.

I sussed the cause of this (found this thread while googling for ideas so thought I'd return to it). The problem seems to be that WSUS post configuration will fail if you have the .net 4.7 Windows Update installed! You need to look for KB4054566 (Server 2012) or KB4054590 (Server 2016) and remove it. Annoyingly you then also have to remove the WSUS and WID roles (although make sure you don't have any other WID databases except WSUS before doing this), reboot, manually delete the WSUS WID databases (the two susdb databases) and add the WSUS and WID roles back again, reboot once more, complete the WSUS config and then finally reinstall the 4.7 update (which also requires a reboot). See here for more info. Microsoft

We've had one or two PCs suffer from this in our schools. Weirdly all PCs in the school have the same key, and were all entered at the same time (they were pulled from the same image quite recently), but Microsoft said the same as above, that we were using keys from a previous agreement and they were no longer activating old keys. So no idea why only a couple of PCs were effected and not all of them. We did use the latest key, but after speaking to MS it turns out for some reason a new Windows 7 key wasn't generated on our latest agreement. They generated us a new key over the phone, it was instant, as soon as he said it I refreshed the volume licensing site and the new key was there. It was the activation helpline I spoke to: 0800 018 8354 - if you get someone useless just hang up and dial again. It's completely random. The first guy I spoke to have never heard of Volume Licensing (despite going through the volume license option in the menu!!), and kept asking where I'd bought the key, insinuation it was from eBay or something. The second guy knew instantly what the problem was and fixed it in less than a minute.

That's pretty much how we used to set them up for our schools (load of devices on one ID with Meraki controlling them). I do think setting them up as supervised devices with ASM and an MDM (either shared or standalone) is the way forward. I just wish it worked better

Apple School Manager is, without question, the worst website/piece of software I've ever used and having wasted yet another full afternoon talking to support, I need to vent (forgive me). We've recently spent a lot of our time installing iPads in various schools. Different configurations (some standalone, some shared). Even different MDMs. Something has gone wrong on every install, and every time it's stupid Apple School Manager. Some recent examples of things that we have open (still open!) with Apple support: - One school keeps getting username/password errors on the admin accounts (plural because after it happened the first time I added two more admin accounts). When this happens a couple of times, and I get through to support, they have me keep trying the different accounts and passwords, and they inevitably all get locked out. It then takes a full 2-3 weeks (!!!) to unlock the accounts. During the last support call he said "don't worry if you lock out this account too, we can reset it". I asked him if he was sure, because the other times it happened it took 2+ weeks to get the account unlocked. He confirmed he could definitely reset the account. The last account get's locked, he says "okay, now go to reset password". That doesn't work on admin accounts for ASM (I could have told him that if he'd explained fully!). 2-3 week wait for the accounts (plural) to get unlocked! Again! BTW, this happens completely randomly, and only on this one school. It will work with the u/p combination in a morning (cut and pasted from a secure password file), then in the afternoon it will just refuse to log in with the same account details. I've given up trying to get this fixed. It's been months. - Another school we uploaded the SIMs database (using the Salamander tool). We got a couple of data errors that Salamander managed to solve for us, uploaded the data again and got "unknown server error" generated by Apple School Manager. Since getting that error the uploads have ceased to work. No logs are generated when we upload data (even manually SFTP'ing the data), and we no longer get the "updating data" dialogue. This has been logged multiple times (the responses are usually along the lines of "try manually SFTP'ing the data", despite explaining in the previous call/e-mail that we did that already). It's like ASM no longer recognises data uploads at all on this account. It remains unresolved (we had to create "test user1", "test user2", etc for the school to be able to temporarily use them while we try to get Apple to sort it - which doesn't make us look great!). - This afternoon (on a relatively new account) we were getting "Failed to Verify your Identity" errors when entering a correct U/P (entering a different password generated the normal "incorrect password" error). This only happened with this one school. We could log into all other schools correctly. Eventually this error went away, except we now get to the 2-factor page, and it says too many 2-factor codes have been generated, and to try the last one we received (which doesn't work). We're now stuck in a loop of not being able to get the 2fa code, and being asked for the last one generated (even "send new code" does this). - This seems to be a common one (judging by the number of posts on the internet), when using shared iPads we have to manually recreate all the users/teachers/classes/etc on the MDM, as it's not being pulled correctly from ASM (somewhat negating the whole point of ASM!). - Trying to add a VPP account kept generating "This Apple ID cannot be invited", even if we created a brand new e-mail address on the domain (so it wasn't a clash with an existing Apple ID). These are just from the top of my head (a head which has been banged on the table far too many times recently). I could probably list another 20 issues we've had in the past 6 months. It's just awful. Just to add to the pain, whenever you call Apple Support (which I'm doing on a near daily basis at the moment) you have to go through following crazy conversation: "Tell us in a few words what Apple service you're calling about" > "Apple school manager" "You said 'monitor', is that correct?" > "No" "Tell us in a few words what Apple service you're calling about" > "Apple school manager" "You said iPod Touch, is that correct?" > "No" (... and around and around we go for 10 minutes, until the automated voice thing realises it can't recognise "apple school manager")

Just a couple.

I know a school desperate for some Activepens (2 or 3). We've been trying to source some through ebay/Amazon/etc but can't find any. Anyone recently replaced their whiteboards and have some spare pens they want rid of? They're the orange and grey ones (I think for the old v2 boards?).

because SIMS is a steaming pile of horse manure. In this day and age it should be a web based, with support included. The number of (tech) hours wasted every year on this crap in schools up and down the country (not to mentioned LAs, etc) is beyond a joke. But yeah, let's just roll on and pretend nothing is wrong as they release another patch, to fix a patch, to fix a patch to fix a rollup! (sorry. I know that's not at all useful to you. I needed to vent about SIMS too).