DavR

Not true I'm afraid, some other programs do. We have to keep it installed for Promethean Activ Inspire.

Thanks for the warning @john! I've enabled it, but I'm only running Win7 and Server 2012 r2 at the mo, so hopefully it won't hit my storage too badly. I always expect Server Cleanup Wizard to give more back than it does - I've just run it for the first time in 6-12 months, and it's saved me all of 26MB!

It's free, but does throw up an irritating registration box when you start the PC client.

I found uninstalling the device from device manager and then reinstalling has worked for me in the past, I seem to recall there are two types of driver, one works and one doesn't. Wish I could tell you more, but I really can't remember now! I gave up on plugging iPads in to get pictures, especially as now the iPads are supervised and in an MDM. Instead I use Feem file transfer, it's an app on the iPads and a program on the Windows machine, and can send anything on your camera roll between the two over your local network (no privacy issues over exposing your files to a third party). I did some notes, our teachers got the hang of it really quickly.

+1 for Toucan, they've been great for me and given me so much support for deployment etc. They know their stuff. Interestingly, last time I went out to get quotes on iPads, all three suppliers came back within about a fiver of each other, it was the additional items like cases and leads that made the difference. Unless you find someone running a loss leader, I think they're pretty tied with pricing for the actual devices.

We use the LapSafe Traveller with Gripcases for our Junior set, and it works well. It is a bugger to get up and down stairs though, so not ideal for stair-heavy environments. For our Infant set, there's nothing on the market to match the horrific cases the teachers bought with them, so I made my own with a plastic storage tub and a Cambionix PowerPad charge and sync block. I have used the Griffin Survivor, I gave that to our PE dept, who are trying their best to destroy it but only cosmetic damage so far! Good product.

It might well be... have you tried running the Flash uninstaller on one machine and then reinstalling? My script for flash upgrades is as below. I'm running it through SCCM, and using the file %Windir%\System32\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil32_22_0_0_210_ActiveX.exe as my detection method, you could always put an "IF FILE EXISTS GOTO END" line in to run it as a startup script.

Oooh, thanks for that, will have a look tomorrow. I guess it's because the express download files will take up more server space - as if WSUS doesn't take enough already!

It is more work if you didn't necessarily bother with the applying for a license business, and just used the openly available download page. Not that I would do such a thing to avoid pointless red tape, obviously....

Just a thought, but does your taskkill command need to be C:\Windows\System32\Taskkill.exe? I've found SCCM packages do mess around with your paths a bit, causing your script to behave differently as a package than running manually.

I was worried for a minute there that RM were aligning themselves with the government Prevent strategy... RM Inform, a handy way of reporting your friends or colleagues for subversion or radicalisation!

Oh the b***ers, just seen this. I've been using the same link to the downloads page for years, and now it's behind a blummin sign in. Irritating!

Last time I needed to do this, I created a custom mandatory profile for visually impaired.

Flash Player Removal tool can be run silently, I include it as a matter of course now when updating Flash player. Try it on one, if it works, shout and I'll dig out my install script.

I always found VAMT a right pain, although I can see it would be a good way to get an overview on a new network. I'm on KMS now, but in a previous job we used MAK keys and an activation script as part of the WDS install process. These are the commands to install and activate a MAK license key: "cscript C:\Windows\System32\Slmgr.vbs /ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX" "cscript C:\Windows\System32\Slmgr.vbs /ato"

Ok, so reading up a bit more here, there are security only updates and monthly rollup updates, which are this months updates only, and (eventually) cumulative update since last release version. To obfuscate the matter, they throw the words quality, security and rollup into the title of each one, in a different order. Unfortunately, with my WSUS set to pick up critical and security updates, I get both, which is duplication. That's pretty dumb, especially considering one of these will eventually be MASSIVE.

Single update my bottom. Patch Tuesday is here, and I have six... I can see that Silverlight and Office would have separate updates, they're separate optional products. I'm trying to work out the difference between the FOUR different rollup packages it's given me.... good thing I'm only subscribed to critical and security, who knows how many "single" rollups I'd have ended up with.

Keeping a whole year's worth of daily backups sounds a little extreme IMO. If you really want to be able to go that far back, I'd do two jobs. Have a Monday-Friday backup doing dailies, with say four weeks of restore points, then run a separate job last weekend of each month to do an "archive" backup. That gives you a years archive, and a daily backups for the last four weeks, but only using a total of 32(ish) restore points.

It's not this old chestnut again is it - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/172860-kb3170455-preventing-printer-installation.html? It's in a couple of different place depending on your OS - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3171910 Basically UAC blocking un-trusted printer drivers.

+1 for Password Control, I've used that for this in the past. Used to work out of the box on Server 2003, but you do need to do some permission setting in Server 2008 domains onward.

Wow, I haven't had to do a GUID fix for a while. I've got a couple of old DMI flash utilities that you're welcome to, between the two of them I usually got a result. Entirely at your own risk of course....

It sounds like a nice cheat doesn't it? I've never seen it done though. Tbh, by the time you've waited for each drive to replicate, you might as well have swapped out the disks and run a restore, it would be quicker.

We upgraded to Veeam 9 (from 7) a few weeks back and having been getting a lot of failures. Mostly they work on the second or third retry, but it's still a bit worrying. "An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine" for each VM is the error we're getting. I'm not that familiar with Veeam, so I've sent this one over to my third line support.

Usually your password policy will be in your Default Domain Policy, unless you've severely customised your network. Open this up in GPMC, and the settings are under Computer Settings | Windows Settings | Security Settings | Account Policies/Password Policy. You should have a load of different options around password age, length and complexity here. You may also want to check if the teacher accounts have "Password never expires" checked in AD.  

I'm using the proper GP settings wherever possible, with Search Providers pushed out by GPP registry settings. GPP IE settings are far more flexible, but as they are only preferences, can be changed (until the next policy refresh).