DavR

Interesting to see a little more detail into the issue, thanks! I was always thinking of it more of a power issue, rather than response timings. I can confirm that the OptiPlex 3020s we have exhibiting this are the 8 Series USB chipset, which I knew was a known issue. Updated chipset drivers haven't resolved the issue though, and I'm sorry to say we have newer model OptiPlex 3040 (Intel 100 Series chipsets) giving the same issue. When you talk about putting a USB2 hub inline, would you recommend powered or just a regular one? I've shied away from doing this thus far as I'd assumed it was a power issue, and was dreading trying to find extra power points in the rooms.

You mean using the USB2 ports instead of USB3 on the same machine? Have you had any success with that? I've heard that the USB3 driver can be fairly dominant and control some USB2 behaviour also :/ I think I'm running my test case PC out of a USB2 port on the back, but that is something worth checking for sure tomorrow.

Hi all, I have discussed some of this with Promethean support, but I'd be interested to hear others experiences. We have a lot of older Promethean ActivBoards, chiefly ActiveBoard 1 & 2 models, which are still plodding along because on the whole, they do work. I'd love to upgrade to touchscreens, but the money just isn't there, so we just keeping replacing projectors. I've started to notice that these are not all that happy working with USB3 devices. Looking in event logs, the boards are occasionally disconnecting, and then coming back a few minutes later. Anecdotally, teachers have reported the Windows device removed chimes, which would fit in with it. I say USB3 as Promethean confirm this is a recognised bug with older boards, with USB3 seemingly making less power available than USB2. This is confirmed by the one board I can see running connect to an old USB2 PC just fine. Things I have tried to prevent these disconnects: Latest ActivDriver Latest board firmware Latest USB3 drivers Reducing cable runs to under 3m, PC to controller Active USB repeater cable Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour with older Promethean boards and USB3 connections? It's with Dell OptiPlex 3020 or 3040 workstations if that makes any odds. Thanks!

Yup, that was my exciting afternoon read. Sets out all of what is known on the principles, but as yet very little on what it changes for us.

I've been reading up on this one today and have come to no concrete answers yet... it's another one of those pieces of legislation that makes plenty of broad points, but is going to need someone at central government level to actually translate into what the actual obligations for IT systems will be. Be nice if they could get on with it, I have seen talk about more encryption being required at various points, if so I'd like to get on with given we've only got just over a year to implement it.

Really?! Wow. I did a posh B+B with a cliff top view for £80 per night for a few nights last August and I thought I was splashing out...

In my experience there's always something under cover worth seeing within dash or brolly distance Even if you wouldn't normally bother if it weren't raining... If not, just the luxury of spending a whole afternoon in a hotel bed reading a book is a rare treat IMO. Holidays are for resting after all!

In my experience there's always something under cover worth seeing within dash or brolly distance Even if you wouldn't normally bother if it weren't raining... If not, just the luxury of spending a whole afternoon in a hotel bed reading a book is a rare treat IMO. Holidays are for resting after all!

You know, I was going to do Cornwall last year, but wimped out at the thought of six hours on the train and stopped at Devon. I could perhaps be convinced this year though...

Sure - can't comment on purchase and set up though, I wasn't around for that bit.

I'm not going down the Security Only route myself, but that just sounds like another unnecessary complication. Are there that many people out there who have stripped IE out of their Windows builds to justify changing the update mechanism (again) for everyone else? And they still haven't made the ONE common sense change that this method needs - make Monthly Quality and Security Only rollups different classifications in WSUS, to allow sys admins who use auto approvals a simple method of choosing which route to approve!

Just been looking at my budgets for next year, and have spoken to someone at our licensing company about our next year's EES bill due April. As well as this hike, she also mentioned there was another 15% hike from July 16, so we're looking at a cumulative hike of about 25%! I'm told there's another similar hike planned for July 17, so if you're renewing any time soon, now might be a good time to get into a three year deal. Evidently we should have last year

Be sure you mean it when you say plenty of disk space - even with just one OS you could be looking at several hundred GB. I maxed out a 100GB partition doing that for Windows 7 and had to go back...

Apologies, yes, you're right there @sonofsanta. Monthly Quality Rollup is cumulative for all previous months, security is just that months. Such a shame really, a wonderful opportunity to simplify Windows Updates, but ballsed up once again.

Interesting, I've not played with command line to the chassis on the VRTX much, but I wonder if I could script this from my VMware Virtual Appliance.... would have to be careful with timings and sequencing etc, but could be workable!

@garethedmondson - that's something only you can choose I'm afraid! Security Monthly Quality Rollup will give you ALL MS fixes for the month, security and feature, but take a bit longer. Security Only Quality Update will just give you essential security fixes, but not feature and functionality fixes. Quicker and lighter.

Bandwidth, install time, hard disk space, failure risks..... that and the fact doubling up is just plain unnecessary! That being said, most of mine are currently installing both as there's no way to choose between full feature and security only updates via WSUS without manual intervention :/

Not the same kit, but I'm in the middle of a right mare with an entire floor of Promethean boards due to cable length.... these were installed ~8 years ago with a 5m USB cable trunked PC to board then plugged into a mounted box on the side of the board that then adds another ~1.8m. I know, how were these EVER working huh? During my research into this I've read that 5m was your maximum for USB2, but the recommendation was reduced to 3m for USB3. I've reduced the length of my cable runs to 3m, direct from PC to board, it hasn't completely fixed my problems but has vastly reduced them. I wouldn't trust anything on USB over 3m tbh, unless using active cables. There is also a known issue with USB3 ports not playing nice with USB2 on Intel 8 series chipset, if that includes you.

I use the snappily titled freeimages.com - they're ok, but a bit limited. Interesting to see the other suggestions on here, I'll save those for later

Another VTRX user here, with two blades running VMware EXSi, hosting 10 x Servers. We have one LAN connected UPS, and a virtual appliance running on one of the blades. When the battery runs down on the UPS the virtual appliance shuts down the virtual servers gracefully, then we let the SAN cut out when the battery dies. I'd rather there was a graceful shutdown on that too, but it doesn't seem to be an option on a lot of SAN technologies, so I assume not a big issue. One thing I did have to do when I took over this kit is to of course ensure that at least one switch was powered via the UPS, as otherwise the virtual appliance doesn't get the signal from the UPS that power has been lost. We had a few unplanned shutdowns before I uncovered that! Edit - just seen the second page of this thread, oops! No, we don't keep a physical DC. We do have one DC on each blade, but that's the extent of our redundancy.

Update on this one that I've just seen in another thread - Microsoft have changed supersedence for December rollups - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...ollup-updates/ (cheers @psydii for that). It looks like Quality Rollup no longer supersedes Security Only, it only supersedes the previous Quality Rollup... I just checked on my workstations and they're now doubling up and installing both! (I have auto approve enabled for security updates) Does anyone have any ideas for how to exclude Security Only from an automatic WSUS deployment? It's not the end of the world but it is stupid having such large updates duplicating.

Just caught up on this one.... my clients are now installing both the Quality and Security rollup from WSUS Supersedence was working logically in my mind (Full Quality trumps Security only), and now they've broken it and clients are doubling up on what they install!!!!

PowerShell is useless out of the box, it won't run any of your own scripts. You can change this behaviour in group policy - Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Windows PowerShell | Turn On Script Execution.

To be honest, if it's exhibiting that sort of behaviour and you're unsure whether there's a virus involved, I'd wipe it and reinstall (assuming you're using some kind of imaging solution like WDS/SCCM/MDT).

True enough - I've done numbers with a Sharpie thus far as it's something I've had to hand. It's something to consider, although hopefully I'll be getting rid of the black case laptops next budget year anyway!