AngryTechnician

There is a hotfix that corrects this: The logon screen appears two times when you resume a Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer from Sleep (S3) or from Hibernation (S4) The hotfix is included in Windows 7 SP1. All that said, I'm not convinced this is related to the OP's issue, especially since others here have said they experience the original problem even with sleep and hibernate completely disabled.

SOLD to @enjay, a pleasure doing business with you sir.

Cheater, you rasterised it. P.S. I'm loving how my initial comment about a knackered fuser is showing with an HP ad next to it now. Fitting!

+1 if it's a Server Core installation.

Why yes, it has been a slow morning for fault reports, how did you guess? GLaDOS EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN.pdf (click for PDF download) Doesn't have the 'worn-out' effect of the sign in-game, but if you want to replicate that, you could always print it out on a laser printer with a knackered fuser...

Might want to pixellate the swearing, but otherwise I think it could be a good way of making your point. Depending on the age though, the pupils might not appreciate the significance as much as we do - many of them were toddlers when 9/11 happened.

We current have GL Dyslexia Screener which is used by SEN to perform initial screening of pupils to identify if they may have dyslexia. Our SENCO has told me she is minded to replace it this year, and I'm not especially enamoured of it either, so we are looking for alternatives. What does everyone else use? We've heard of http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/73590-lexion.html via these forums and have requested a trial. Are there any others we should look at? Thanks, AT

Have you installed any recent Group Policy Preferences hotfixes at all? Even the version that ships with SP1 is horribly defective in some areas, I wouldn't be surprised if this was bugged too. Edit: try requesting the KB2460922 hotfix and install it on a machine to test. Ignore the description that it only fixes an x64 issue, there is an x86 version of the hotfix too and it contains all the previous GPP fixes.

According to the APC website, this takes RBC11 replacement batteries. It just so happens that I have a set of these for sale that I bought by mistake, and you're very near by! Drop me a PM if you're interested.

It's certainly not the laptop soundcard. It could be the USB ports, especially since the speakers seem to work fine on another computer. Is your laptop quite old? If it only has older USB 1.1 and not the newer USB 2.0, that might make a difference.

You can use Group Policy Preferences to create/delete shortcuts as needed for the user's Start Menu when they log on. I believe this is how Community Connect does it. I've found that shortcuts you set up to be created in this way are automatically skipped if the target is unavailable, so that takes care of your network availability condition. Personally I have very very few programs that run from a share, but I customise almost every .msi I install to move the shortcuts into a subject folder in the All Users start menu.

OK, it seems to be good news so far: After reconfiguring the FSMO DC to sync from a different time source, it synced correctly. Logged in to each replica DC via RDP and ran w32tm /resync /rediscover, and they synced correctly with the FSMO DC. I then moved on to the other servers, but before I could get to all of them, some had already resynced on their own. Same for some of the workstations I've hit so far. I've also tested a simple reboot and that kicks the time update into effect as well, so if any are being petulant tomorrow morning I can hopefully instruct users to restart them and all will be well. Finger crossed for tomorrow morning!

Having managed a vanilla domain in a school before I pretty much knew what I needed. Really it was just a case of going through each Group Policy setting and deciding whether I needed to configure anything for it. Painstaking, but effective. I don't have a particularly sprawling GPO setup to be honest, and the first few weeks was spent making tweaks here and there as pupils found the little holes I'd left.

Oh, just remembered: replacing the package manager. You will definitely want to use WSUS even if only for updates. To install software, you could use Group Policy Software Installation for anything that installs by .msi. I also recommend looking into Local Update Publisher as this can publish both .msi and .exe installer into WSUS.

If you are set on a new forest and want to migrate user accounts (i.e. keep their passwords), you will need the Active Directory Migration Tool and its associated tools and documentation. I did this a few years ago at another school and it's not the simplest procedure in the world, but it works.

I migrated from CC3 to 2008 R2 last summer. I don't have a checklist as such as it was a phased migration that started a year in advance, but I can offer some advice. You should also have a look through the last thread I can remember on this here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/64000-move-cc3-vanilla.html. There are probably others too if you have a search. Although simpler, you do not need to start from scratch - you can create a new OU structure right now in your current domain, with it's own GPOs, simply by disabling inheritance. When the time comes you will need to think about profile locations, unless you currently only use XP and will be using Vista/7 in future as the two can coexist in the same network profile location due to using separate subfolders. We didn't use RM Auditor, but I would suggest something like Lansweeper or Spiceworks could replace it. Pcounter can be used with non-RM networks, or you could look at PaperCut. To replace RM Tutor we used AB Tutor. If you have any specific questions such as "CC3 does X, how you did you replace it", fire away.

You certainly have no legal responsibility to help them, and it is their end that is the problem - nothing you have done is any different from what any other guest WiFi service would do. It's up to the school's management whether they want you to spend your working time on this in order to keep good relations with the school's neighbours. Personally, if management wanted me to spend time on it, I would ask them to drop in with their laptop so you can take a look. I don't do home visits as a matter of principle. Another option would be to add a PSK that is well advertised to users - even something trivial - and still keep the username/password login.

You forgot "hard-working".

Simply for improved accuracy? Or is it important that we have British NTP packets?

Only $1500! BARGAIN! Now I think about it, I wonder why all our phones that have GPS built in can't sync time from it? My Android can only sync from NTP or the mobile network, but the data is clearly available because I can see it in the GPS Essentials app.

We're independent, our Internet connection is a raw VDSL feed from Zen. Port 123 is not blocked on our router.

Right now it is behind by 52 minutes and 25 seconds, using BST: British Summer Time: UK Daylight Saving Time (GMT +1) as the current time source.

I think it must have been slowly working it's way out of sync since the internet time server stopped working. Over a long weekend while I wasn't monitoring it I could easily see it build up an hour. Will monitor the exact delta over the rest of the day and see if it creeps any more.

OK, the servers and workstations I've checked are getting their time from DCs as they should be. However, the FSMO is returning the following: Source: Free-running System Clock which is clearly Not Right. So it looks like external time sync has failed on the FSMO. The question is why it then fell back to an incorrect time. This server is a VM, but without the time sync integration, where would the CMOS time come from? Also, I will be giving up on time.windows.com from now on as I've found a slew of intermittent failures from there going back months. Planning to use europe.pool.ntp.org unless anyone has anything bad to say about it?

Timezone settings on the VM hosts are correct, and as stated above, the time sync integration service is disabled in Hyper-V for all DCs anyway specifically to stop time creep.