AngryTechnician

It sounds like your problem could be solved using Remote Assistance, which lets you connect and view another user's session while they are in front of it. I frequently use it to see what the user is seeing when they call in with a problem, and it works very well.

Curious. Anything in the System event log for the Time-Service source that might suggest what the problem is?

Yahoo search uses Bing as the backend, and Smoothwall have acknowledged that they currently can't do deep URL inspection on Bing images. The built-in SafeSearch is also not nearly as good as Google's.

Is it a virtual server or physical?

What version of IE are you using?

Have you tried downloading the update and installing it manually? Download Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (KB976932) from Official Microsoft Download Center

Pre-existing users that match an AD record will be 'adopted' by DirSync if and when you start using it. If I remember correctly it matches on the email address field. Personally I had a new virtual server with DirSync up and running within a day, and that was with the added complication of using Server 2012 for the first time. The docs make it look daunting (like almost all MS technical documentation) but once you actually sit down and do it, implementing DirSync without SSO is pretty straightforward.

One thing to consider is that if staff use the desktop Outlook client, it will save the Office 365 password when the account is set up and they will rarely have to enter it again.

Even Microsoft suffered a worldwide Azure outage due to an expired certificate. It's one of those things that seems so trivial that people literally forget to document the date on which they need to renew it and set a reminder. What really surprises me are the reputable cert providers who don't issue automatic reminders (*cough* Verisign *cough*).

Pretty sure there is no way to remove that option. The real issue here, as you are no doubt already aware, is the access to a staff logon. I'm sure if you have a think you'll be able to list a dozen much more damaging things the pupil could have done, so this should be your first priority. After that, I suggest moving the data folder to a different location from the .exe, so that getting to the file location via the shortcut doesn't present as much opportunity for vandalism. It is also possible to set granular NTFS permissions to remove deletion rights while leaving write access intact.

Anyone...?

Try contacting the local Trading Standards officer. Mail Boxes Etc is a mail holding company; I used to work for one of them and know for a fact they have a policy of being VERY co-operative when the local TS bod shows up. Chiswick falls under the London Borough of Houslow, contact details here: Trading standards

If you can't even get into your admin portal, I think you're going to need to phone support. The UK number is 0800 032 6417.

You're right, the GUI is useless. I configure all mine via the CLI menu. Just type menu once you're logged in and then you want options 2, 7, and 3. The only thing I ever use the web GUI for is the traffic graph.

Provision here is largely driven by what the staff ask for (for better or worse). If the IT labs are always full, we expand resources. There is some temperance of that based on what the IT steering group think will actually get used (rather than staff just asking for the moon on a stick), but computer numbers have never been a big issue for us. Even in my last school, when Becta was still around, we never really paid much attention to suggested ratios, we just looked at demand vs supply. The biggest problem is getting SMT to pay attention to the stuff that staff DON'T make a fuss about about: e-safety, legal compliance, etc. Without Becta there is no official guidance on e-safety in particular, so SMT are only concerned with as much of it as is inspected. With Ofsted, that means some of it gets done. With ISI: none of it.

Question is, why the Horror Channel? Surely the production values weren't that bad?

Mine has a front and back door, no windows. The doors are reasonably solid interior doors. I have a key, as does the Bursary, and anyone with a submaster key. It is not used as a route for access to anywhere else and there are signs on the outside of each door saying that thoroughfare is not permitted. This is quite easy to enforce as I have line of sight on the front door in my office, and a webcam running motion 24/7 for anyone who slips past. The cabinet itself is also locked at all times with a key that only myself and the Bursary have access to.

No problem, I just wanted to get in there quick with that information. It seems like every time we have a thread about Google Apps/DropBox/Office 365/etc. we get a discussion on DPA compliance, complete with out-of-date or plain wrong information given out by an LEA's legal team, so wanted to nip it in the bud early.

Worth noting that Barracuda Networks does NOT appear on the list of signatories to the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework, so use of their services to store personal data as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 is probably not legally compliant with the terms of the act.

The first dialog in the screenshots above ("Your Java version is insecure") should only be shown when you have a Java version that isn't the current one. The only way to get rid of that is to be running the latest version. The others can be toned down by altering the deployment.security.level, which can be done via a variety of methods (personally I use a deployment.properties file). I set ours to MEDIUM which doesn't eliminate them in all circumstances, but in my opinion is a decent trade-off between security and usability, and was the default setting before 7u11. You need to be pretty sure that you have a secure desktop environment* to consider doing this. I certainly wouldn't do it if anyone was routinely running with admin rights, for example. I would also not recommend setting it any lower than this on any machine that has access to the Internet. (* Yes, I'm aware that "secure desktop environment" and having the Java plugin installed is something of a contradiction)

Further to my last post about the mess of our 'new' website, we are at the point where we need to approach alternative companies who have experience designing websites in Joomla (other options are off the table at this point). If your school website is done in Joomla, and you're happy with the company that did it, could you post contact details so I can get in touch with them? Same goes if you know anyone professionally. Thanks in advance, AT

Depends on the age group. In my last school (secondary) we filtered very little and went with monitoring, as you suggest. We even had Facebook unblocked for students. In my current school (primary) we block a lot more. Obviously whenever students are allowed access to their phones that changes the game; as you rightly suggest, they will just bypass on their phones if they want to get to something that is blocked, so there is little sense in heavy filtering.

And this right here is the problem with RM support. Their default answer is to get you to throw money at them to fix the problem. A few years before I started at my current school, the IT teacher discovered that a bunch of our internal machines - including both Domain Controllers - had externally accessible IP addresses and no firewall. RM's answer was to sell the school a Cisco PIX for about £500. All they actually needed to do was configure NAT and firewall rules on the existing Cisco router that RM had supplied and (mis)configured. I've also still got the quotes for when they asked me for nearly £2,000 for two days work to install new hard disks in our primary server. The hard disks were also almost double the list price of the same drives on Dabs, which was apparently "because they have to be tested by RM to make sure they are suitable".

I bought network management cards for our APC UPS that came with temperature and humidity probes. Have temperature and humidity on the front air intake for the rack, and a separate temperature probe inside the rack.

My advice is this: DO NOT MOVE TO CC4. And don't buy client hardware form RM, it is poor quality and overpriced. Even if you can't afford the big brands, there are schools hardware specialists here on Edugeek who can do you a much better offer. CC4 was utterly bug-ridden when it was launched a few years back, and despite the improvements made since, there is a still enormous scope for it to go wrong. For every school RM can put you in touch with that thinks it is great, someone on these forums can put you in touch with another school that despises it. We have a school near us that is CC4, and every year their NM works on the RM stand and evangelises about how great it is. Meanwhile I know teachers at the same school who tell me that nearly 4 years after adoption it still takes 10+ minutes just to log on. We went from CC3 to a plain Windows system 3 years ago, an approach that was recommended even by the RM specialist support company who had been managing our CC3 network before I was appointed. We haven't looked back since. Rebuild the machines with a standard image. If you want you can even re-use the domain and existing user accounts so long as you set the new machines up in a new OU with inheritance disabled. As for imaging: if your network is big enough, consider SCCM. If it's a smaller school, you can get by with WDS and WSUS/Local Update Publisher for application installs. In the meantime, CC3 has a system called the RM Smart Client that allows you to join non-RM imaged machines to CC3. Be prepared for RM to utterly wash their hands of any problems with it, though.