Bruce123

Forgive me, but how did you redirect app data to their home directory? Is this feature available in the the Group Policy Folder Redirection setting? We created a custom template to do this (e.g. My Docs -> "H:\system\my documents") becuase we didn't think that there was a way to do it. Thanks, Bruce.

Ahh Terminal Services - You slipped that in at the last moment. Do you use TS extensively? Have you considered using local profiles, located on the TS server itself? Probably not a good idea, but just wondered as it would reduce the sudden load on the network / disc IO. Re removing/moving the old App Data folder. To avoid this issue, I would use a VBScript to move the folder for all users and add them to a group which applies to a folder redirection policy (actually using a custom template which enabled me to redirect to a sub-subfolder of their Home drive*). This group also enables a policy that excludes the app data folder from the roaming profile, which removes any redundant app data folder which may get merged back into the roaming profile when users log onto PCs which contain old cached copies. The reason for this is that we found the automatic move feature of folder redirection to be inefficent and unreliable (e.g. if it fails part way through the folder move after the user turns the PC off after getting fed-up after waiting for so long). *Documentation I found stated that the %homepath% cannot be used for the ShellFolder registery key which the GP Folder Redirection feature uses, as it's value is set after ShellFolder paths are expanded/processed. Now, I am not so sure if this was correct. I might look at this again and remove our custom template if possible and set the paths using GP (e.g. using the %homepath%\system\my documents). Thanks, Bruce.

Has anyone had any experience of redirecting Application Data? We already redirect My Documents and Desktop quite successfully (well 99.5% of the time). I think that you'd have to me mad not to whether you use roaming profiles, local ones or mandatory ones. I tested it a couple of years ago, enabled it for a user, but when I logged the user onto two PCs at the same time and opened Word/Outlook, I found that the computers just ground to a halt when in Office 2003. Some research revealed that this was due to Office opening and locking a file in the app data folder. Both instances of Office needed to open and lock the file, but of course they are unable to when it is centralised. A great shame, as it would have really helped with our logon times; the app data does tend to get filled up with all sorts of rubbish. We recently upgraded to Office 2007, and I was always hopeful that the issue may have been resolved with this version, and on testing I found that it was. No problems at all. I've now tested with with 40 staff users and their logon times improved substantially (by 60-80%). I have also now redirected the Cookies folder. The logon times will also improve when our multi-site network links are upgraded to 100Mbit. I just wanted to share our experience of folder redirection. What do other people do in this regard? Thanks, Bruce. Leeds, UK.

We use something similar. However, when logging to one log file I found that the size of the logfile would reset to zero intermitently, thereby losing the logs. I did some research and I think that this happens when two processes try to append to the logs file at almost precisely the same time (the first one momemarily locks the file, and then the second tries to append, finds that it is locked/can't access it and creates a new file, thereby deleting the contents of the original log file). So I changed the scripts to log to a seperate file for each user the same as yours >> \\servername\sharename\user\%username%.log This also allows you to see a simple history of where and when someone is logging on/off, and where they are currently logged on for remote desktop support (very handy). I also do the same but creating a seperare logfile per PC, rather than per user, which shows who has logged on and off to any particular PC. I think you can guess how it goes..... the same as yours >> \\servername\sharename\computer\%computername%.log quite simple really Finally, we have another logfile, one master file like you described originally, but I had to convert this to VBScript, which didn't suffer from the same 'bug' of it resetting the logfile to 0 bytes. So we now have 3 log files which are written to at logon/logoff. Thanks, Bruce.

The HP printers also allow you to specify the printer's host name rather than the IP address, so you can keep it on DHCP and the server will still be able to connect to it using the host name as the port. As regards to the user's issue, sometimes it's best to not use any custom ports (like HP...) and just use standard TCP/IP port (I know this was in the instructions sent by someone else). Also, with the printer driver on the server, sometimes it's best to just add a local printer, and select the port and driver, rather than running setup.exe from the disc, which usually installs all kinds of gubbins. One other thing, if you use HP's software to search for the printer it can automatically update the firmware on the jetdierct box, but for some reason it seems to take it a while. With the speed that suppliers try to get things to market, they often come shipped containing bugs. Thanks, Bruce.

I was just wondering how other people backup their HyperV Guests. As far as I can tell there are several options: Backup the Guest OSes from within each Guest OS (e.g. using msbackup/ntbackup) Backup the host (which also backups up the Guest OSes e.g. Win 2003..Win2008). Stop the Guest machines and copy the .VHD files to an external USB backup drive. Use third party backup software (e.g. Veritas) on Host or Guests. Microsoft's backup/DR system (can't recall its name). 1) Seems problematic: How to setup consequtive backups to one USB backup drive? Possible? msbackup (in Win2k8) seems very limited. 2) Seems simpliest, but big problem is that the MS docs I've read says that you can only restore the entire Guest, not individual files. 3) Would seem like the best/simplest option. Simply schedule the Guests to stop, then copy the .VHD files to an external backup USB drive. For Disaster Recovery this is excellent as it would be so simple to create a new Guest using the .VHD file. And someone has informed me that you can use utilities to drill into the file to restore individual files. 4) At £300 per remote license, I want to avoid this for now (!). With around 10 Guest OSes we would need to spend £3,000+VAT. Plus a new license for the main software (currently on V9). 5) I'm very interested in this option, as all our servers are Windows based, and hope that MS would do a hefty Educational Discount. But this would have to come out of next year's budget or Captial Bid for implemation in the Summer. Any advice appreciated, Thanks, Bruce.

Hmm. I never did CCNA.. Your original range seems to span two subnets: Original SNM: 255.255.255.0 (are you sure?) Range: 192.168.200.1 to 192.168.201.254 There must be some kind of routing between the two. This may actually change the answer to your question. If the printer remains on SNM 255.255.255.0, then it will think that any IP that not in it's own IP range (which could be either 192.168.200.x or 192.268.201.x) is on another subnet and send the packet to the router. To be honest this is getting a bit too complicated for me at the moment..... Are you sure that the original SNM wasn't 255.255.254.0 (making one subnet across the whole of the orgonal range)?

The only option is 60Hz? That's really low. May be that just relates to the LCD display on the laptop. Was the projector attached when you tried this? If there was a projector attached, I wonder if another refresh setting would become available which relates to the attached device (i.e. the projector)? Just an idea.... Bruce.

I have to concur (if that's how to spell the word) re mixing TDM digital phones with VoIP phones on the same system (in our case HiPath IP 3550). We've not had any problems with it. The telephones look and work in exactly the same way (from the user point of view) and configuration/administration (e.g. forwarding, pickup groups etc.) is done in the same way as well (transparently). The only difference is how you set them up in the first place (like assigning an IP address/ext number). IP phones do have one key advantage in that they will work on any physical site as long as it has IP connectivity (e.g. over Routers and WAN links) to the the Phone system, whereas digital TDM handsets need to each be patched directly into the a phone system. Thanks, Bruce.

Yeah, it does seem odd, but I have seen a few posts with this issue, but no solutions.

That's funny (really). No, the old system (Mitel) didn't work. The newer old system does work. It might be based on a 90s design, but the hardware and software updates have kept it current. The feature list is quite good. Thanks, Bruce.

Ok so this view come about 6 months too late for this thread. But we replaced our old Mitel phone system 4 years ago, with Siemen's HiPath 3000 series system. The HiPath system was designed in the 90s, and didn't orginally support IP, but the system has been upgraded to support IP using a card. We use around 80 telephones and chose digital (not VoIP) purely due to the cost of the VoIP handsets (which from memory were about £200 each), and we couldn't see much benefit anyway. It was the the right decision as the digital handsets work fine and can utilise the CAT5 cabling infrastructure. We'd also have to pay an additional £55 per IP device for IP licenses. We found this out when we added 10 IP telephones to a new site which was on the other side of a WiFi bridge, so could not be pathed directly into the phone system. Thanks, Bruce.

We are in the process of reviewing our backup strategy, and I wondered what software/hardware solutions other schools/Colleges are using. Hardware We recently switched from tape to using USB HDDs. This solved the capacity issue, but backups aren't as faster as we'd hoped. Software Veritas V9 (had for 3-4 years and some remote agents). But we don't have enough remote backup agents for the number of new servers (mainly Hyper-V), so we use Windows Backup for rest (in relation to Hyper-V running on the VMs themselves rather than the top level "Host"). Options We are reasonably happy with the hardware, but I'm not satisfied with using a combination of an old version of Veritas and Windows Backup. We are just moving to Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008 backup seems very very limited to me (particularily in relation to restoring data). Veritas software and agents seem very expensive (e.g. £300 per agent) and don't seem to over educational pricing. Microsoft have a new product (I forget what it is called), but we did a quick calculation and that seemed to work out at £5,000 (again very expensive). Our network We have 4 Geographical sites (about 120 PCs at each). One site has around 12 Windows servers (inc Exchange and SQL) and there are two servers at each of the other 3 sites. We have about 1,000GB of data in total to backup. The sites are connected at 2Mbit, so network backups between them aren't feasible. However, we are in the process of having these upgraded to 100Mbit. Advice sought What software do people use and how much do they pay for it? What backup media do people use? What types of backups do you do (e.g. full/differential & GFS)? Advice appreciated. Many Thanks, Bruce. Leeds, UK.

I thought about this and it should work, apart from when students need to do their online assessments using a system called Litmus. Basically, there is some software installed on each PC which works with the installed Office apps to assess students' ability to run through a certain set of tasks in a given Office app. These tests would need to work with both 2003 and 2007 versions of the Office apps. If a student wanted to do a test on Office 2003, then it wouldn't be able to find the 2003 app locally, and wouldn't work. That's of course assuming that the Litmus system cannot be run in Terminal Services sessions, so that may be worth looking into. However, even if it can be, we may then need to purchase additional TS CALs. Sheesh things are never simple are they. Bruce.

To be honest, I think I did disable it for this very reason. But I think that there are occasions when the logon script runs before explorer.exe starts, which I think is the drive mapping issue. I think I need something like (in pseudo code): repeat wait 1 second until explorer.exe = running net use J: \\domain\dfsshare$"

Sorry;I don't know the script to hand, but I don't think there is anything wrong with it. The script is in a group policy object linked to the domain I'm not sure if I have the setting "run logon scripts syncronously" set; although, the setting seems related to the issue, the two options: enabled/disabled, don't seem to allow me to ensure that explorer.exe has started before the script script runs, only after the script runs. If you enable this policy, Windows Explorer does not start until the logon scripts have finished running. This setting assures that logon script processing is complete before the user starts working, but it can delay the appearance of the desktop. If you disable this policy or do not configure it, the logon scripts and Windows Explorer are not synchronized and can run simultaneously. I've also noticed that the drive is rarely mapped users logon for the first time, which I think relates to there being no roaming profile to download; thus causing timing issues. Thanks, Bruce

Hi - we have been experiencing issues with a staff network drive not always mapping properly in the logon script. Specifically, the drive doesn't appear in My Computer / Windows Explorer, but if you go to Tools -> Unmap it is there. If you unmap it and map it it works properly and appears in My Computer. I understand that this is due to the logon script running before the explorer.exe shell process has had a chance to start (user's network drives are a feature of explorer.exe). Does anyone else have this issue? How is it resolved? The drive mapping is actually to a DFS link, but I don't think that it is relasted to this. Thanks, Bruce.

We are upgrading from Office 2003 to Office 2007 across the whole College. But regretably, we've had to exclude two computer rooms from the plan to replace Office 2003 with Office 2007. This is because these two rooms are used for BCS1/BCS2/BCS3 (formerly ECDL) and CLAIT IT Training. Students who have already started their courses on Office 2003 are given up to 12 months to complete the course. New students will start on Office 2007 when the sylabus is released in a few weeks, but meanwhile existing learners will be using Office 2003. We decided to install them side-by-side (chosing Outlook 2007 over Outlook 2003 as they can't both be on at the same time), but Outlook 2007 is causing some intermitent issues. All sorts of error messages appear when starting it, and sometimes you can get to into Outlook and sometimes not. In order to minimize issues we installed Office 2003; then did full updates and then installed Office 2007 with SP2. If we can't resolve the issues I may look at Virtual PC and run WinXP/Office2007 on the main "host" and WinXP/Office2003 on the virtual machine. One other option is dual boot. Having some PCs on 2007 and the others on 2003 doesn't seem very efficient. I just wondered if other people have this issue (or similar) and how you managed to deal with it. Many Thanks, Bruce.

Check the refresh rate in the display properties on the laptop. If it is 60Hz try increasing it to 75Hz (or vice versa). I presume the display size issue is the projected image size, and not the display size on the laptop screen? We happen to have another issue with our Dell (I think 530) laptops, which is why I started reading your thread. With some types of projectors connected the laptop boots up with it's own display turned off; and you have to press Fn F8 a couple of times to get it to output on both. And when you logon it then might switch back to just the projector again, and sometimes the projected image is unsynced/corrupted. It confuses some users. The project it happens on is a Toshiba/Acer (both the same but rebadged) we bought a few of for £200 each. Thanks, Bruce.

No Vista support unfortunately (PCs were purchased in 2002/2003), but it's very interesting to hear that XP drivers may work. We'll look into this. Thanks, Bruce.

We have exactly the same issue, and to resolve it we want to setup the netgear WiFi controller to hand out IP addresses (with DHCP) in another IP range. This is one of those high priority projects, which I really MUST complete this summer. We need to ensure that only WiFi clients (and possibly the Light WAPs) to pickup the IP addresses. The box will have to be able to route IP packets to and from the new range of IP addresses; I don't know if it can do this, or if we need another router? Routers on other subnets will need to be aware of this "router" and the IP range. I believe that this can be achieved through the VLAN feature? Netgear support seem to be unsure if there needs to be another router. Any advice really appreciated! Thanks, Bruce. Leeds, UK.

I was wondering if I could use an older version of the the Smart software, which we have, which doesn't have this restriction in the license agreement....

Hi all, I've various questions regarding SmartBoards/Speakers/Projectors etc., I was hoping people could help me with. We are planning to mount 3 or 4 portable SB560 SmartBoards before the end of the Summer (time's running out...) to accompany existing ceiling mounted projector installations. We have purchased some mounting kits to do this (not arrived yet). Does anyone have any experience of this? The reason is that the portable boards didn't get used very much while they were err... portable. One of our ceiling mounted projectors installs doesn't have wall-mounted speakers, can anyone recommend any? I'd prefere USB powered speakers, as the mains socket is quite far (about 2-3M away). I've seen some Smart ones for £223, but that is way too expensive. Can we legally mount mains powered speakers? One of our SmartBoards (i680, I think) had never worked; it has a pin hole (literally - hole cuased by a pin) directly in the centre. Can anyone recommend a fix, or should we just throw it into the bin? (I mean have it collected by WEEE registered recycler). Basically, the aim is to get as many SmartBoards fully working and useable before the start of term, but by doing most of the work ourselves, to save cost:D. Although, we have been allocated £2,000 for some work. I guess thats enough for one projector install (with SmartBoard...? probably not quite enough!) Any other recommendations? Thanks, Bruce. Leeds, UK.

What are people's opinions on the best aspect ratio for education? I've done some searches and found surprisingly little info on the web (specifically relating to education or in general). I'm not a fan of widescreen for the following reasons; You get between 8%-12% less LCD for the same size (diagonal length) display (depending on whether it's 16:10 or 16:9). Not particularily well suited to word processing because pages tend to be portrait (not landscape). Not well suited for webbrowsing for the same reason. The top of the monitor is usally lower in height than on 4:3, which could increase kneck strain if the monitor is placed directly onto the desk (H&S guidelines say that your eye should be level with the top of the display). The only advantages I can see are: Can use double page view in Word Good for widescreen video Cheaper than 4:3 I personally think that they are a bit of a con by the manufacturers, they are being pushed not because they are better, but because they are cheaper to manufacturer (due to less LCD being needed). But you get less for your money. Thanks, Bruce.

Another quickie. Out of interest, has anyone heard of a driver/software which enables you to using the Smart software with a CleverBoard? What's the legal position on this? Thanks, Bruce.