garethEds

I would give it to my son who is looking to move away from consoles and into a machine that can do more than just games - such as Creative Cloud and 3D Studio Max etc. Gareth

HI there - thanks everyone for pointing me to these folk. They do an amazing educational discount. So we will look at using them. Gareth

Evening All, I'm currently researching what hardware stock list software schools are using to inventory their IT assets. Anything free is good :-) Web based is also good. Cheers Gareth

Hi All, Amateur question here and I should know. Where is the GPO setting for redirecting a folder per machine and not using 'Folder Redirection' per user? Cheers G

Push for £2k Gareth

Over 3 years? I've had a classroom of major brand PCs fail with their hard drives over three years. Surely 10% over 3 years is not bad. ICT Direct are on the ball with repairs and replacement.s Gareth

Going to jump in on this one and recommend @ict-direct. We have had over 100 recon laptops from them and not a day's issue. They are all 8Gb RAM with 128Gb SSD. All Lenovo. They build with MDT (Lenovo Driver Packs) without any issues. Give John and Dave a shout - always willing to help. Just took delivery of 25 x 800G2 desktop as well today - excellent condition as well considering they are recons. We've not bought new PCs in along time. Gareth

Following on from my original post - has anyone put together a proposal to present to their Senior Management Team and willing to share? Thanks Gareth

Evening All, One of my next projects is to improve digital signage around the school. Ideally this would be free or very low cost and cloud based with design done in a web browser before being sent out. I don't mind hdmi/wifi dongles in the back of TVs as we have full wifi coverage across the school. So..... what are people using? Low cost/free/template driven (I'm no designer). Cheers, Gareth

Hi @Koldov, Get in touch when you are ready. The process was quite easy, despite taking time. The last reason you give about off-site devices is one of the reasons I have moved as well. 80 staff laptops than need updating. Gareth

Thanks @mavhc Happy to say I'm seeing UC reporting our machines are picking up updates properly now. Several called 21H1 and updated (based on the setting you told me yesterday). So hopefully at the end of February I will see where we are at. Going to give it a good month to settle down and then sort out any machines that have not updated. Gareth

Hi @Koldov - Apologies for not getting back to you. Just looking back over old posts and saw that I had not replied. Get in touch if you want info. I'm still working on the project as other things took over but we are set up and are now monitoring with the possibility of making minor changes. Gareth

Brilliant - thanks for this. Getting my head around terminology. So Feature Update versions are 1909, 2004, 20H1 etc etc I have WuFB set up for servers too but on a 30 day cycle. They are 2019 running 1809. Am I right to believe there is no Feature Update further than 1809 - only Quality and Security? Hopefully now will watch the numbers get smaller and larger on the Update Compliance dashboard as they all update and check in. Thanks all. Gareth

Afternoon All, So after playing with WuFB and Update Compliance based on advice given here I think we have it all working. 90% of the machines have reported in and my 0 day test and 5 day test rings have updated without issues. Waiting now for the rest of the devices on the 30 day. However - we are reporting that several machines are on out of support Windows 10 versions. I'm unsure, but will WuFB update Windows versions? From 1909 to 21H1/2 for example or does that still have to be a manual process (or PDQ Deploy)? Many thanks Gareth

I guess that was the point of my original question. Is there any point? If you have your drivers in MDT and a driver selection policy then this software is not worth the money? How do people update their drivers - or don't they bother? Gareth

Good afternoon Everyone, PDQ have announced a link up with Smart Deploy (smartdeploy.com) - does anyone use this deploy their systems? If so - how would you compare it to MDT? Is it worth the cost. Website shows as quote expensive starting from $1020. Interested to know if anyone does us it. Cheers Gareth

Good evening, I've updated my Windows 10 domain joined laptop to Windows 11 for testing. I am the only one in the school - but thought I'd go early. However, I now cannot log on with my staff user account. I can logon fine with the Domain Admin but not a staff user. Logging on Windows 10 was fine - then the update - then logon not allowed. Has anyone seen or experienced this after upgrading? It wasn't a clean install - an in-place upgrade. Many thanks Gareth

That makes sense. I am getting SCSI Disk (0,0) The Bootloader did not load an operating system I guess I need to change the format of the drive - I may have read something about that. Looking now.... Edit: Found it. Trying it. Gareth

Good morning All, I am playing about with our HyperV cluster this morning and one of the containers. I have never used Gen 2 containers and am looking then in general. I read on the web that Gen 2 cannot use IDE drives but the vhdx can be attached to a scsi controller. I have created the Gen 2 container but cannot get the vhdx to attach. Is is possible to do what I have read? Despite it not working for me? If so - any ideas? Many thanks Gareth

Hiya @mavhc Thanks for helping here. I've looked at one machine running 21H1 19043.867 - there are newer updates. The last scan noted is: 2021-12-08T15:38:02.149Z So with that in mind I assume it is not scanning properly for Windows Updates via WfB. G

Hiya - All GPOs relating to WSUS have been disabled. The UC data is from the 8th December at 19:00 Our machines restart daily. Shutdown at 18:00, restart at 07:45. Not sure what else I am missing. Gareth

Morning All, Can anyone help with Update Compliance and Windows Updates? I've set it all up and it's reporting back to the Azure portal - so assume it is working. HOwever it is telling me over 300 machines are out of date with at least two security patches missing. This is true.# So - this means my Windows Updates is not working. Does anyone out there update direct using WfB? If so - could they send me a screenshot of their settings? I have three rings, a day 1 (for my machine), a 5 day ring (for my IT lab) and a 30 day ring (for the whole school - including remote laptops). So based on what I've read this seems standard. I've turned WSUS settings off. MY desktop (0/1 day ring) shows it checked for updates at 1:13am. Fine. Nothing found. Forcing a WIndows update from Microsoft shows me there is 1 update to go on. SO why has it not been picked up? HOWEVER - nothing is updating. Any advice appreciated. Thanks Gareth

Good morning all, Are there any SIMS Merged Report Guru's out there? I am creating a new report for our Year 7 learners based on the new Wales Curriclum. We are using colours. The data will come in from a marksheet allocated to a teacher. So I have created the report and have managed to get a table to change cell colour if a certain number is inputted, but I don't want cell colours, I want a Wingdings circle to change colour. Again this is based on the mark that comes in from a teacher into the marksheet. So we have the logic: If effort = 1 then insert symbol and change to blue If effort = 2 then insert symbol and change to green if effort = 3 then insert symbol and change to orange Not quite sure how to do this in SIMS. As I say, I've managed to get a cell to change colour but it's not what I want for the design. Any help appreciated. Gareth

21H1 - not sure to be honest. I have a brief recollection that the LEA were not supporting it as it had a shorter support period than 20H2 - but maybe I am wrong. I'm waiting to see if machines update now. Gareth

Morning All, Checked Azure this morning and my machine has turned up. Hooray. That works. Have now set the policy to look at all machines in our OU. Yeah. Now - to get the updates for the test ring working. Seems easy enough. However - quick question - how to I stop it reporting anything newer that 20H2? That is what we are staying on for a while. I know things are missing after this. Gareth