JRA

Set DNS scavenging and DHCP lease duration across the board to 1 day. DNS records were previously 7 days and DHCP leases set to 8 hours. Let's see how that does me.

I'll read through that one, thanks. Yes definitely worth mentioning! No statics though.

Hi everyone - just ironing out a few things and uncovered this. Which I thought I'd solved previously, but then hadn't. This manifests itself when I use VNC to connect to a PC, (pc A) and get a different PC (pc B). In DNS, they'll usually both have the same IP address. How do I stop this going on? I remember vaguely trying DHCP leases a while back, set to 8 hours, but I never did get on top of it and it's still happening. Will be very grateful for any hand-holding! Thanks everyone.

Hi all - that's going to be a very odd one to describe, but we previously used something called MIS2AD, which has become ropey and stopped working. I don't think you can download it any more. What I'd ideally like to do is, probably with a .csv, export a list of teachers and students and classes from SIMS and have email groups created overnight for: - Teachers of classes - Teachers of each student - Students in each class These would ofc need to be AD groups with email addresses, and gmail *should* be able to create the groups and modify members itself. I'd also definitely want to be able to manually add teachers to groups, so I have the option to include other staff in emails and not have my automation bin them every night. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about and also any idea how to achieve this old garbage? Lol, thanks anyone who's read this far!

Hi all - we found a rogue group policy was causing the issue. No idea why it started to do so, but removing it solved the problem, at least for the time being. It was: User Configuration Policies Administrative Templates System/User Profiles Exclude directories in roaming profile - prevent the following directories from roaming with the... - AppData\Local;AppData\LocalLow;$Recycle.Bin Limit profile size - max 55000kb, show registry... - disabled, notify user... Enabled, Remind every X mins - 30. So, now at least people are working but amassing huge profiles. Not sure if this policy itself got corrupted or not, will try and creep back the settings of it in a new policy and see where that gets me.

Hi - students get a redirected start menu (to a folder in netlogon) and also a script that pins some icons (office etc) to the start menu, but the 'All Programs' bit is all users yes. Hi - no pictures just now but only blue arrows on shortcuts as I'd expect to see, nothing different. Hi - yes they are.

I don't think Windows Update is sorting anything. If we remove them from local admins problem remains. We did wonder a single login as local/domain admin might just shunt whatever it was holding things up along enough to fix itself, but shot in the dark really. It's adding staff as local admins that seems to fix it for staff, for the duration of them being local admins.

Just had a find - If we make staff local admins the problem goes away. However, students don't have any problems at all. If we blow staff profiles away and they're created anew it solves the problem too.

You also getting the red X over network icon?

Still spreading, honestly this is killing me. Updated all DCs, time correct on those and on workstations. Blowing away user profiles and logging on with freshly created ones seems to just solve this. Logged on earlier and ran gpupdate and did get a gripe about "could not evaluate wmi filter for {policy number}" message. So removed that policy and also thew WMI filter (hangover from the old transition days that just specified "where OS is Windows 7" ) but this hasn't fixed anything so put it back. I am out of ideas and this is getting worse. Begging the LA for help.

I suppose so? Not sure. :/ Three DCs, time looks to be the same on all three. Profile server (also home drives server) is Ubuntu.

Yep that's it. Mandatory profile for kids also. This might be a red herring but it's the only way so far I've been able to reliably make it not work.

Okay, slightly odd one but if I blow the profile away from a MoS experiencing this issue then log on, thus creating a new profile then there's nothing wrong. If I even copy the desktop folder back to the profile and log in again it goes wrong with all symptoms. Whiskey tango foxtrot... I'll dig through the above too. Thanks so so much everyone. <3

Hi - thanks for that but it's not the same problem. Symptom list seems to be: - Red X over the network icon in system tray. - Can't open eg My Computer from desktop, users get "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item." - Can't open a file browser at all, same message as above. - Maybe unrelated, but "Applying Microsoft Offline Files policy" takes AGES at logon. - Chrome sporadically won't work. It was one PC yesterday night (thought it was only a one-off) then most of them today. I'm as clueless as I was at 8am. :/

Is this limited to specific users or specific computers? - seems to only be staff Can you browse to the location on the affected computers? - I can unc to their C: drives yes Is your virus/malware protection up to date? - yes, sophos Check the time of the computer is synchronised with the server - sounds odd but if they are more than a few minutes out the server may reject the connection and cause this kind of issue. - yes, time correct. THanks for those.

Okay, still no closer to fixing this. Random PCs show a red X over the network icon, users get permissions/access gripe message as above when accessing Windows explorer, anything on their desktops... It seems that they CAN open recent work documents from within Word and edit/save them. Bad bad day here.

Sticking in a batch file to pull that update, this is spreading. Jesus what's going on?? :/

Cheers for that. It *looks* like KB4503277 is the culprit! Users also seem to get a disconnected network cable icon too, but can log on. Cached profile maybe allowing logon, then all bad news from there? Rolling it back now.

Thanks Dave. Yes, redirected to a share in netlogon (for universal icons, Office etc) and also profiles. Working fine for years up until the first one yesterday which we put down to a faulty PC, then came in this morning...

Morning all - just got in to this one. An increasing (eek) number of users are logging on and whenever they try to open anything on the desktop (eg My Computer, SIMS, Office anything) they're getting "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item." Rumour has it this is going on with start menu items too. Anyone getting this? Suspecting an update somewhere. Defo not what I needed! Thanks all.

Hi all - very very new to Hyper V. Just getting to grips with a few bits, now proper keen on having it backing up. Have one test VM on it now, buzzing away happily. I'm not really looking to back up the VMs themselves, more just the disks. I'll also do file-level backups of the VMs. In the event of losing a VM, the disk could be restored and the VM settings copied out of a spreadsheet when making a replacement VM. Anyone have any walkthroughs of doing so? Thanks all!

Morning all, Got an HP G8 in, some config on the server previously. I filled it with drives, turn it on to delete the old RAID configs and the F8 menu won't delete the old/failed arrays, tells me to use a Smart Start disc for other options, but the disc I have won't recognise that RAID controller. Anything I can do to just forcefully delete the config off it and start anew? Thanks everyone.

Hi folks. We used to run a little Chillispot VM for our public wifi, which would allow users into our unrestricted internet VLAN from the Public WiFi VLAN if they passed the captive portal page and entered the daily username and password. Following a powercut Chillispot is no more. Are there any alternatives anyone can think of? I've looked at setting it up again and it's a little prohibitive. Thanks for reading.

Just checking back in - all done! Robert got it sorted. NTLM seemed to work with both on Leeds 12.

Hi - thanks for that. Yes I did so, but as it's a child node the settings just change back when it's restarted. I'll give support a ring. Thanks again.