DavR

Yep, found that out the hard way before!

+1 for the Sharpie! I've done this on the spines of some of ours, with their two digit number from computer name, eg, laptop79 is marked 79. This makes it a LOT easier to find a particular laptop for maintenance, also makes it easier to spot at a glance which ones are in the wrong place. Doesn't work on everything though, as some of ours are all over black, and also I haven't done this for location as things do get moved during their lifetime.

Hi Af! *waves* I'm not out for the dinner next week, but I will be out for a drink about 5ish, if you're still about.

We have trolleys per year group, so I have sheets of laser printed paper labels with the school logo and the year group on. Not ideal though, as kids can pick at / doodle on them. Those Sticky Things labels look quite promising, although not necessarily cheap. Do feed back if they turn out to be any good!

I'm only in testing, but I'm probably going for full Enterprise. We have EES Software Assurance, so we might as well. I did play with Education, but the difference is so minimal, it's just missing Cortana and Windows Store, which I can turn off on Enterprise with policies. You never know, I might want them back one day (unlikely, but why knobble the option permanently). I did have to have the discussion with my licensing provider and Microsoft to confirm eligibility and get the keys added to VLSC though, they're often not there by default.

Webscreen does all of this, according to the LGfL's own assessment anyway - see http://filtering.lgfl.net. See also http://kcsie.lgfl.net. I'm fairly happy with Webscreen as a product, although it took a while to get my head around. Certainly for a primary like us I wouldn't consider shelling out for another product when we already have this, much as it would be nice to have AD integration.

I do wish they'd come up with a more intelligible naming convention..... Security Monthly Quarterly Rollup Rolldown Ruby Tuesday Quality Monthly Security Updates!!! Seriously guys - Full update, or security only. That's all it is.

Surely not, that would be chaos! I've just checked on my WSUS server, and November Security Only Quality Update (KB3197867) is definitely superseded by November Security Monthly Quality Rollup (KB3197868). If you read the description of KB3197867 there is a heading for "Updates superseding this update" where it lists the full feature KB3197868. I'm not sure what you have to do if you want to enforce the Security Only, whether there are approval rules for that or if you have to run manual approvals.

By duplication, do you mean have both the "Security only" and the "Security and Feature" update rollup approved? I'm using auto-approval, so both are approved, but only the security and feature rollup has installed on machines. As far as I can tell, if you have both approved in WSUS, the full one supersedes the security only one.

I'm not aware of the server needing any policy changes - after all, the installation is happening on the workstation, it's the workstation stopping you. Have you got the server name in fully qualified in your policy? Have you done a gpupdate and checked RSOP on your workstation to make sure the settings have taken?

Yeah, should be fine! Trusted drivers and/or those policy changes should fix it.

Yeah, November Cumulative for Server 2012 R2 KB3197874 is server side of this. I don't know whether it's the server update, workstations update (November Cumulative KB3197868) or both that reinforce this behaviour. If it's happening on workstations that don't have November Cumulative, then it would suggest server also enforces this behaviour. Not that it really matters - long term, you will need to have this patch as upgrades are cumulative, we can't just uninstall and block "rogue" updates any more. I'd recommend looking into the policy changes discussed in the article above to "trust" your print server.

Yeah, it's really no biggie to implement - as far as I can see, the key points are "Do not show warning or elevation prompt" when installing drivers, and setting your print server name under "Package Point and Print – Approved servers".

Many thanks for that article @themightymrp! I've got mine working now using the October 2016 Mitigation from that link My clients and servers are up to date with November 2016 rollup, this prevents installation of unsigned / untrusted print drivers as expected. To get round this, I already had my Point and Print restrictions set to unrestricted, and "Do not show warning or elevation prompt" for installing drivers in group policy. The key setting for me was "Package Point and Print – Approved servers" setting. Having put my print server name (fully qualified) in here, Windows is now treating this as "trusted" and happily installing my dodgy drivers. Phew! I understand Microsoft's desire to close a security loophole, but once again doing it (very nearly) at the expense of functionality...

Yeah, thanks anyway Lee! It was a good thought.

Unfortunately, the whole program is just a .jar file (very lazy development on Teacher Gaming's part IMO), so I don't have an executable to set compatibility mode on. I would have to set compatibility mode on javaw.exe, who knows what unintended consequences that might have. UPDATE - tried it anyway, still no dice

Has anyone managed to get the legacy Java version of MinecraftEdu working on Windows 10? By MinecraftEdu I mean the TeacherGaming version, before Microsoft bought it out to create Minecraft Education Edition. We bought the licenses outright for this just before they got bought out by Microsoft, timing huh! I've had this working fine on Windows 7 for about six months, but when I install the latest stable release on Windows 10, I can get the launcher up, but can't get the main program, javaw.exe just crashes. I've tried: Running as administrator Disabling UAC Running from network share, C:\minecraft, appdata Two different graphics chipsets Older version of Java (as per bug here) I'm stumped tbh, it's just a Java app, it should work. A few teachers are just getting the hang of it, I'd hate to the have to dump it / re-spend the money on the MS version when we do our Windows 10 upgrade.

There are a lot of different options for sharing files on iPads, none of which are ideal. In the past I've seen it done with File Browser apps that can browse Windows shares, or using WebDAV to create a http share on your Windows server, although both of those solutions are a bit too fiddly for end users IMO. We're using Feem here, which pushes files between an app on the device and a receiver program on the Windows PC. Only valid for stuff on the Camera Roll, but it's doing the job for us, and with a simple set of notes I drew up, staff are coping. If you look at this one, my advice would be to use v3, I don't like their v4 very much. Edit - Also, +1 for Meraki. You can set the home screen out very easily, and makes the layout tamperproof. Bit of a steep learning curve though!

Hello all! Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I've just encountered another broken hinge on an E5530. In this instance, the laptop has been kicked about a bit (discovered the hinge replacing a broken LCD screen) and the lid is actually ok, so I'm just replacing the hinges myself rather than going through the warranty charade. Thought you guys might like to know original E5530 hinges are now on Amazon for £11.95 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01IPB8H5A/. Don't buy them all though! Latitude E5520 hinges are on there too for less than a tenner, although dunno if they're originals or generic - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00XJDIBM4.

Yeah, I've reverted now, although it did mean deleting the content and running the WSUS reset command to download everything again. Live and learn!

Not the ideal answer I know, but I had this on an old Win7 PC I had at home for media playback on a non-smart TV. It would ding / unding all the time, couldn't find out why. I just found the Hardware added / removed notifications in Sounds, and turned them off.

I'm only testing Windows 10 at the moment, deployment is a waaaaaaay off, but I found myself tearing my hair out over Windows Store. The group policy settings at best give you an application blocked and ugly error code when you try and run Windows Store, which you can bypass by simply logging in! This is on Enterprise and Education - what kind of enterprise allows their staff to buy programs on a whim?! Of course we want rid of the store. I eventually went nuclear and used Software Restriction Policies as in the link above to kill it off. This works REALLY well, I've used it for a lot of the other junk apps (ie, most of the apps). I'm probably leaning towards uninstalling them when I create a build, although I need to be convinced that the uninstall would be permanent first.

So, just a for info on enabling Express Installation Files. I did this last week, and my WSUS storage usage has rocketed from 40GB to 100Gb, ie 2.5 fold. It might've been more, except it's now used all the space on that drive. On further reading, this setting can cause a 3 or 4 fold increase in WSUS content size. USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION!

This thread came along at just the right time guys thanks, my teachers are on at me to get us a set of headphones! The Hills sound popular, so I just gave them a call for prices. Only £5 a go! I'm recommending these. Only snag is they're out of stock til mid-November.

For info, there is a deployable version of Firefox, put together by Front Motion - MSI for Firefox – FrontMotion. I've used it in the past, it has MSI and GPO support. But yeah, no-one seems that interested in Firefox in schools these days, Chrome is hands down the more popular alternative browser.