garethEds

Hi John, Thanks for that information - might I ask who your contact is so I can give them a bell? Funds are low this year in school so getting two for the price of one is an offer too good to miss. Cheers Gareth

A quick search on here revealed this post: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/18218-reconditioned-recycled-pcs-large-corporations.html Do people still purchase recycled PCs? We've been offered the following spec: Model – Dell GX620 Dual Core Pentium D CPU – 3.0 - 3.4 x 2 Ghz processor Memory – 2 GB RAM Hard Drive – 160 GB Drive – DVD/CD Rewriter Operating System – Windows XP Professional with service pack 3 Network Card – Gigabit Ethernet Guarantee – 12 Month Replacement Warranty Accessories – Keyboard and mouse included The price being £175 per base unit. To include a 17" TFT would take it up to £220.00 - this is half the price we pay for new machines. It seems like a good offer - we have some Celeron machines in one room that need replacing. Would they see me right for 3 years with a possible Windows 7 upgrade on the way across the school? What are your opinions? Gareth

Sorry pal - I wouldn't like to take them from your bed :-) Gareth

We use it but with budgets being cut £1K per year is a bit steep for us so we are looking for free alternatives. GJE

HI Pooley, I don't think so. Machines are named in the MDT database and linked to their mac address. I'm not yet an MDT expert (trying to get there), but we shall see if the above hotfix sorts anything out. Regards Gareth

Hi Mounters, Thanks for the advice. Believe it or not I cannot log in to the machine as a local administrator either. So I've left it this evening. The hotfix I mention above has been injected into the .wim image ready for deployment to other Windows 7 machines. At the moment I have only 4 W7Ent machines built in a little test area of my classroom. Pupils are using them but like I said they keep loosing their trust. Hopefully the hotfix will stop that happening on other machines. As for the machine that is broken - I will re-deploy and see what happens. Thanks again Gareth

If this is the correct hotfix then I shall have to add it to my image. Why does it happen? Gareth

Nope - lying again. It isn't letting me do it. There seems to be a hotfix: Error 1789 when you use the LookupAccountName function on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 - I think this is the one - but I cannot log in so it's a pain. Gareth

I lie. Local admin is up. Hmmm - need to turn that off. Gareth

I would, but I cannot log in. GJE

Right - have you seen this one? Build a machine with MDT - all goes well. Machine is used all afternoon and then when the next user tries to log on we get: 'The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed.' Machine then has to be rebuilt. I've read about it but nobody explains why it has happened in the first place. Gareth

Afternoon People, I wonder if the MDT gurus out there know of a way of getting the machine to join certain security groups after they have been run. I've got them restarting after deployment, but they are not in their proper groups for some reason - even though they have been added into groups in the AD. Does the database offer this functionality? Gareth

No but we will be discussing cultural things which England seems to be lacking (also a joke - I was born in Lancashire). I can almost guarantee it will be raining - although we've had around 12 weeks of very good weather. Occassional rainy day but nothing to worry about. Now - where are my matches.... LOL

Where abouts are you Pooley? Gareth

I think we should look to set up a Wales Meeting for Welsh Edugeekers. Not sure how or where - just an idea. Gareth

Well I have followed the book - we have two deployment shares - one is a capture share and one is a production share. We have a sysprep and capture. We then import the image file into the production share. As for sysprep - it's not the same as WIndows XP is it - I haven't made any sysprep.inf files this time around. Just followed the book - it works. Gareth

Hi Jamo, Sorry about that. I've tidied the post up quite a bit now. I'll add things to the Wiki I think - saves making a huge post :-) As for Windows 7 SP1 - we had problems with the slipstreamed disk downloaded from the Microsoft licensing site. For some reason it didn't have the drivers in WinPE - really strange. Sooooo I used the original Windows 7 Enterprise disk that I downloaded a few months ago. Then in the capture image I put a pause in there (following one of the books) - this paused the capture image and let me install SP1 and CS3. I then kicked off the image capture resume and it worked fine. MSI Generator for SIMS - Doubtful. It works though and our LEA have adopted it. A quick search on the internet for 'Mini Solus' finds the site is still there: http://www.schooltechnician.co.uk/knowledge_base/sims/sims_workstation_msi_for_network_deployment.html - it installs an older version and then updates itself based on the settings you set it for. Gareth

Sysprep - We had MDT do it all Sims - there is an msi generator somewhere online. CS3 is the only thing in our image now. MDT takes care of Office as well. Gareth

Um, what wifi points? I have a memory like a sieve but I'm pretty sure that I didn't purchase wifi points. Gareth

Where would we find that windows you show in your post? Gareth

Well we have been running the BTL SecureAssess software for two years now - three ICT exams (another one on Friday), Applied BUsiness last week and GCSE Electronics and this year has been pretty smooth. HOWEVER... The software is PITA - especially on Windows XP. Installing it is a nightmare. If you send out the MSI with a property then it installs to the 'Documents and Settings' area. You can set an INSTALL path in when you install. I've asked them countless times to write an MST Creator for schools - guess they have not got around to it. Our exams officer hates it. It doesn't update properly and this week we have had an error on some of our machines. Seems we now have to install Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 - rubbish. It should work straight away. This year our exam server didn't update properly. Who knows why - but they had to access the server to fix it. It took them so long we missed the trial exams period. In addition when you request the return of a paper (or a pupil requests it) there is no way to print out the pupils answers so you have to screen shot everything. This is a pain where the pupil has filled in double the box space as it means two screenshots. We send a list every year to the WJEC/BTL of suggested improvements. Finally - try getting the WJEC on the phone during the exam time if there is a problem? Ring ring? ring ring, ring ring. Gareth

With whom? Where? How far from the exchange? Which speed check? Gareth

Wow - seems the school where I work has the second best 'value added' score in Wales in 2010. BBC News - Secondary school performance in Wales revealed First table down. How cool. Gareth

Not a problem. A 'Thank Post' would be nice :-) MDT 2010 is my new obsession now. I'm working through various search engines to see what I can find. Page 9 of Google at the moment LOLOL. Gareth

Just a quick post to close my initial question - we're all sorted here now with WDS and MDT2010 Update 1 running on a shiny 2008R2 server. It all works brilliant. Gareth