eean

I think you need to bite the bullet and link admin and curriculum. There are a million threads on here discussing this. With any decent network setup there should be no real reason why not. You could still have separate domains if you like, but really there's no need. Getting staff to use SIMS is difficult at best but they will only start when it's easy - i.e. on their computer. Start with electronic registration and move on from there.

I don't think it can work on workstations. TBH it'd be quicker to use a xcopy script or one of the many file replication tools out there. You can't merge 2 files from different servers as the OP wants to do... windows wouldn't be able to cope with 2 folders potentially with the same name. If you set them up as a replica then you will have a copy of everything on each server. Windows should (depending how you set it up) spread the load accross the servers. This would make reads quicker (because it's only accessing 1 server) but writes slower - because windows is having to communcate with another server to update the replica.

OP - are you on a 2003 or 2008 domain? 2008 - then do what chazzy said (which is what I was trying to say, but not so clearly!) 2003 - options are more limited. XP will set a default printer for you, but if you've got (for example) an XPS driver installed, then that will become your default printer. However, I've written a add in for group policy and a script that will set a printer on a per-machine basis. See here (read some of the troubleshooting steps below too). EDIT: Actually, read some explanation above too (post 6). Explains how the script works. Good luck.

It can be done in Group Policy on 2008. You must have the group policy extensions for 2008 installed on the computer. I think it can only be done in the Per User section, so you have to create it on a GP object for users. Then if you want to have different printers or defaults installed for different rooms, you must restrict them. (You use the 3rd tab along, can't remember what's it's called).

Yeh, but no time limits set.

3pm. Windows Update install time. 3.02pm All the computers in the restart without warning, even with users logged in. I've certainly had it before so it will simply nag the user until they hit restart. These are the GPOs I've got set: Allow non-administrators to recieve updates - Enabled Configure automatic updates - 4 - Auto Download and schedule install; 0 Every Day; 15:00. Delay Restart for Scheduled Instillations - 30 minutes No auto-restart for logged in users for scheduled automatic instillations - Enabled Reschedule Automatic Updated Scheduled Instillations - 10 minutes after install Specify Intranet location - Enabled with WSUS server name. What am I doing wrong? I remember it being a bit picky in the past. (Just a thought - the users are 'Domain Users' but also 'Domain Guests', that won't have anything to do with it, would it?)

BSOD often relates to a hard drive driver. Is your base RIS image from another type of machine with a different kind of hd? i.e. IDE rather than SATA. Some new Dells have RAID enabled driver. Try going into the BIOS and changing the HDD type - that may help with your troubleshooting. Another thing I found was that some of our older Dells didn't like the new Intel mother board drivers. I would remove all the drivers and see how windows loads. If it doesn't, then you've got a HDD driver problem. Then start adding them one by one so you can which of the exisiting drivers is causing the problem.

Obviously there's no error handling in the script! So, you need to follow the instructions to the letter. Have you mapped (i.e subst) the q drive to c:\MSIs\Extracted1? Check this, when you go to my comptuer there should be a q drive that actually goes to the above folder. Are the source files from on the sherston hard drive. Is that hard drive located on drive e? If not, change the $SourceDir = "E:\RM CC3 Packages\" to the root folder where all the MSIs are located. Just check they're in there. (You may have a different version). Make sure you've included the trailing backslash. Check the variables on the top of the script. Good luck, let me know if you get stuck.

We tried these. Like everything from TTS it costs 80quid and like everything from TTS you wish they had just spent 20 pounds more and made it good! It's crap. Difficult to position (very difficult to get it straight), screen resolution is poor. Our basic test was "Can it display a page of A4 with size 12 font on screen". And it can't, really. We also did a direct comparison with the Promethean (Avervision?) goosneck visualiser and were disappointed to find that it wasn't much better and 4x the price. In the end we forked out and went for Elmo visualisers. Proper multi-directional arm makes it very easy to position. Proper 5x optical autofocus zoom and, proper expensive! (400 quid). Very easy to use and staff are using them. You might have some luck going down the 'HD' webcam route (e.g.) and trying to botch something up. I felt the Gooseneck on the TTS and AverVision was partly what let it down. You need a proper arm - like a desk lamps (that would get round the lighting problem too). Even then, you've still got to get some software. I too don't see why they are so expensive - it's not a webcam on a stick but it is a sub $150 digital camera, on a stick. It's a shame that most digital cameras can't feed live images to the computer any more.

Cheers, Kinda wanted something with a big red button that that means record and a big camera button which means capture picture! Was hoping to use it with foundation stage.

Hi, Anyone know of a simple piece of software that can take pictures, and possibly even video and timelapse from a webcam. We got the TTS Easiscopes and it comes with AmCap, which is crap. A 20 second video was hundreds of MB! We need it to be really simple (like Photobooth for the mac) for use by primary kids. Oh... and at this point in the budget year it's got to be free! Thanks,

Thank you all for your thoughts - apologies for the delay in my relpy. We've been lucky enough to be on holiday this week. Well, that was my initial thought when Bodywize (300mb) failed more than any other app. But in the next room it was ZigZag tudors (<10mb). Do you know if that leaves a trace in the event log? These apps claim to have installed correctly. Sorry. Don't understand what you mean here. I'm using DFS but only on one server, so replication shouldn't be a problem? Only got one DC on this site (yikes! I know! Will hopefully get another soon.) Thanks all. Any more theories on this mystery are welcome!

Hmm. Don't know. Without making a new gpo and manually putting in all 100 apps then deploying it into a room it's a bit hard to say. I'll have a look at those things. It's a tough one as it works for most apps most of the time. Why can't problems be binary - either working or not!

Clients: Win XP Server: 2008 We're installing a lot of applications via group policy. In the past, on other networks, I've never had problems with reinstalling 25+ computers simultaniously from one server - even over wireless. It's slow, but I leave them over night and by the next day they're done! On this network (much larger: 200+ computers) if I try to install even 10-15 some applications will fail to install. It's not always the same app and not the same computers. Last time I reinstalled a room Bodywise (300MB) failed more than any other app. This time it was IE8, WMP (MSI wrapping an EXE) and Zig Zag Tudors (6MB)! What's annoying is that Windows thinks the application is installed. There are no errors in the event log and if you try to install the program again, it will bring up the repair/remove dialogue. Normally if an app fails it will keep trying to reinstall it. I thought it was dodgy networking - in the first room computers took ages to get an IP but in the 2nd room I tried they were getting IPs in 1second and network speed is 80mbps. Some ideas I've had. Load balance accross multiple servers - I've used DFS as path names so we could easily set this up in the future. Have packages installed as admin installs - so the cabinet files are extraced on the server rather than compressed in the msi. Does anyone know if this makes any difference? Anybody got any idea if these might work or a better idea? Thanks.

Anyone found a proper solution to this problem? Summary of problem: The problem occurs when a user with a mandatory roaming profile logs onto a website that generates a really long file name (e.g. many of the BBC games). Even though that file does not exist on the server copy of the profile, windows thinks it's copying it to the local machine and this causes a Windows to throw a hissy fit because the file's too long. Sort of solution There are various workarounds (many of which don't work) basically involving delprof/script deleting the profile on shutdown. I've added my users to the Domain Guests group, which causes their profile to be deleted on logoff. This seems to work most of the time however, the problem still occurs. It's often enough still be annoying. I think it might not work when the user visits a problem site and there is an ungraceful shutdown – so the profile is not getting deleted. I could spend half a day faffing about with Delprof and startup scripts but if anyone’s got a combination that works, that’d be really appreciated. Why the hell hasn’t Microsoft fixed this? It’s clearly a bug and I’ve never had it until IE8. Eean is off to consider Firefox!

We had a going green week and we recorded the our day time energy usage, just by looking at the meter. We displayed that on the digital displays around the school. We set a target of reducing energy consumption by 10%, but actually managed 30%. All by making people aware of switching off their lights and aircon (we're in Malaysia, it gets pretty hot!). So I think this kind of thing can have an impact if you actually hype it up to the children. 6 months on, however, I would recon that our energy usage has creeped up... but I do try to switch off my lights now so it might have changed some habits. As we're abroad, we're not eligible for the offer - does anyone know what the unit actually is, where we can get one and how much they are?

OK. After half a morning of faffing about I have a query that does what I want: Year, Reg, Surname, Forename, Reason Code Giving me only the absent children. If I do the standard template RTF output I can put each year on it's own sheet. But, as you say, the output isn't ideal. Ideally I'd like a sheet per year group. With a subheading and table for each class. If you do a custom report then the page breaks option seems to get ignored. If you create your own table then you can't seem to use the command. I see in the reference that there is a command. But this document says Used to group the report. A further help sheet will be produced in the future to cover its use in more detail. Any idea how to use this command or the whereabouts of said help sheet? Thanks for your help.

Magic. That's exactly what I was trying to do for 2 hours but couldn't quite figure it out. I will try it tomorrow. Cheers,

It was more that we didn't like the idea of printing out 36 pages every day. 7 being less bad. Save the planet and all that! Thanks for the tip with the multiple selection.

That means we've got to print out 1 A4 page per class. We might as well print out the complete register! Also, with 36 classes, it'll be lunchtime by the time she gets them all finished!

That's wierd. I've done it from Lesson Monitor. I select Year 3 and it just gives me a list of names, sorted by surname. Which is sort of what I want, but I'd prefer it to be sub-divided by class.

Thanks for that. The only problem is it sorts the children by name. It would be easier/better if they were sorted by class then by name. Also, in order to get just one year group on a sheet, we have to run the report 7 times - each time for each year group, which is a bit of a pain. And you need to select the date - it's a bit of a faff and quite easy to select the wrong date. Is there a way to automate this task and/or provide a custom layout?

Sorry! We're on SIMS 7.120 Thanks

Hi, So I thought this should be easy. We're on SIMS 7.120. I want a printed report that looks like this: Reception Class1 List of children not here today Name & Reason Code Class2 List of children not here today Name & Reason Code ---New Page--- Year 1 Class3 List of children not here today Name & Reason Code Class4 List of children not here today Name & Reason Code --New Page--- For each year group upto year 6. (We're split site so I don't want secondary). I want the secretary to be able to hit a button at 8am and it will print the list. We'll use the list in the event of a fire and also for various other reasons when we want to see who's not here today. Where do I even start? I can't even manage to make it print out a list of children not here today! Argh!! Any help in getting to this, or even close to this, will be greatfully recieved!

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem - perhaps we should set up a special bi-monthly support group, perhaps meeting in a church hall, to help technicians who previously had an automated Windows XP build on Server 2000 and 2003 but since 'upgrading' to 2008 have found that they have to spend hours searching the internet to find work around and obscure Microsoft patches. Anyway, I didn't find a resolution but I do have a work around. It's a bit messy but it does the trick. 1. Create your blank image (minus drivers and sysprep.inf), delete any unknown devices in device manager, all as you normally would. 2. Create the DevicePath key with c:\Drivers\00;c:\Drivers\01;c:\Drivers\02;c:\Drivers\03 up to c:\Drivers\99 3. Capture your image as normal. 4. On the server create your $OEM$ folders as normal. Create the sysprep.inf minus the OEMDrivers bit (which gets ignored anyway). 5. In $OEM$\$1\Drivers put each driver in a different subfolder called 00 or 01, 02 etc.. I organise mine so chipset drivers are all 00,01,02. Network card drivers 10,11. VGA: 20, 21 etc... Then have an index text file so I know what driver is in what folder. Make sure your DevicePath is REG_EXPAND_SZ not REG_SZ otherwise some drivers don't work!