_Bat_

:!: :!: :!: Are you Santa Claus and is this what you do the rest of the year :?: :?: :?: regards Simon Hehehehe. I did a double take as well.

Unfortunately I don't have sky What was it?

I don't know why no-one said hello to you, but count this as the first As for touting for business, I don't think anyone will assume that of you... since I joined this forum myself i've got the impression that while it is made for educational technicians etc. everyone is welcome (with the possible exception of the odd student who comes here to blag about how their knowledge of proxies is so great that we are all doomed).

K, I think this thread might be leading somewhere. Leaving it in the BIOS didn't do anything noticably weird, so i've turned it off. I'll wait for it to cool down and clear some of the paste off the bottom of heat sink and let you all know how it goes. Thanks for your help PS: Thats taking the micky

I didn't realise too much could be that much of a bad thing to be honest, I probably did put too much on in that case. There was a lot of the old thermal paste still stuck there as well which I didn't remove. I should try clearing it off I guess? It could be the memory, but i'm more inclined to think its nearer the processor as this point because the computer hasn't shown any similar symptoms until I started fiddling with its intestines.

Can't monitor the CPU temp on this particular computer... it came from pcworld, what more can I say I just tried turning it on again and this time I actually got a BSOD about two mins in that said "page fault in non paged area". Unfortunately I failed to get any more details, but will write them down if there is a next time. It is currently in the BIOS now, i'll leave it in there a while and see what happens.

A few weeks back, I tried to clean the heatsink/fan on a computer i'm fixing up to give to someone, as I pulled the heatsink off, the processor was stuck to the bottom and decided to come out with it (before I had pulled the lil lever up). This of course bent the pins... because they are made of gold, I was able to bend them back with some ease. I shoved it back in the socket, put some thermal paste on and put the heatsink/fan back on top of it. I turned the computer on and after 10 mins it spontaneously rebooted. Hoping it was an operating system error as opposed to the hardware, I reinstalled winXP. That went fine and I was just starting to relax and update it, when during the update process the computer cuts off and reboots again. I assumed I had killed the processor but mentioned it in passing to my network manager today and he believes that it is a heat issue as opposed to a processor problem because if one of the pins was dodgy, the computer wouldn't even boot. Does anyone have ideas? I can't see how it can be anything but the processor as the fan works fine and I put thermal paste on. What my NM says does make sense though. Thanks James

Hi all, Have just realised that google maps doesn't work properly on my site due to a PNG workaround script I installed for IE. It seems to not work because of the copyright PNG image on the google map of all things. Anyway it seems there is no way around this so is there an alternative I can test out? Google maps was the only one I was aware of that I could use on my own site. Have looked an MSN but they don't appear to offer the same service. Cheers James

The bit they don't realise is the electricution bit involves the network manager and his heavily modified cattle prod and the death bit involves network manager strangling said teacher with an ethernet cable.

Explain, with the use of a cricket bat if required, that £20 is about 10% of the cost of a new lamp. Good point. It may be something i'll look into over this holiday - its not ideal that they are permanantly connected to the projectors anyway because sometimes the whiteboard is actually behind them. The other issue is remote controls, which have already been discussed to death on this board. They have managed to lose some which means they are either sharing or turning them on/off at the projector which is knocking them off centre on the whiteboard. There is nothing that can be done about this though at like £50 per remote. I'm gonna go through the classrooms over the holidays and make sure all the projectors are aligned etc and hope they stay that way.

Unfortunately the teachers in my schools leave their projectors on all day. The classroom pcs are connected directly to the projectors (making the monitors pretty much redundant) so any work on the computer has to involve the projector. I tried to encourage the school to buy some form of splitters so teachers could switch between the monitor and projector with ease, but this proved too expensive at about £20-£30 each. Does anyone know where I can get some kind of splitter quite cheap as I have to buy about 14 of these? The other option would be for teachers to use their laptops for the projector, but they refused to do so. 8O

Just thought of another one... My aunt went into pcworld and asked about home networking. The guy in pcworld she was talking to insisted you can't have a home network on a dialup internet connection 8O

I've had a few bad experiences with PC World as well. The first happened about four years ago when I was 16. I tried to take a component back because it was faulty but simply got "i'm sorry, but we can't take this product back without its original box, you were supposed to keep it". No matter what I said, he would not accept that the component was faulty therefore I shouldn't need the original box. I went home and phoned the store up to complain. I was then told that if I came back to the store I would be given in-store vouchers in return for the product. This I refused as I didn't want to buy anything else from the store and I demanded cash (it was just over £100). He accepted this eventually. I went to the store and told them of the conversation I had just had on the phone. I asked for the cash only to be told that there wasn't enough in any of the tills. I waited for over 20 mins for them to find enough cash to give me the money. The second was a similar experience, i.e. taking a product back. It was a processor heatsink/fan and it was very dodgy i.e. making rather a lot of noise it shouldn't have been making. I took it back to the store and I could tell they were very skeptical about what I was saying. They connected it to a test computer mobo and showed it to me. It wasn't making any weird noise at that point (I later found out that it needed to be physically on top of the processor for it to happen) so they were like "well if we can't see any problem with the product we can't replace it". I guess I would have done the same in their position but it still annoyed me at the time that they were so skeptical about what I told them. I have more but I can't remember them off hand.

Yup..coz you won't let me forget...! Talking of stuff ups...whats your worst one..? *cheeky evil grin* I know this wasn't directed at me... but mine was installing some random kids software directly on the server. Up until that day I had never heard my network manager actually scream out of fright.

Every classroom pc in both my schools is like this. Getting around to the back of the computer usually involved knocking loads of pieces of paper and toys off the desk by accident and then having to clear it up again. I don't ever remember a time that I have been told what an error said, i'm just told "my computer came up with an error". I have sooooo much difficultly with passwords. For some reason if someone tells me a password I'm expected to remember it for next time there is a problem with that particular computer. Usually the staff tell me their problems in passing in the corridor and when I get to the computer, it is locked. Finding said staff member again usually proves impossible. I go offsite for my lunch break most days because otherwise I would never get one. Lunch time is an ideal time to knock on the technicians door. This happens every day, its normal. I commonly go to the printer to find 50 pages of the same A4 multicoloured duck. I don't get this very often, usually questioning said person further reveals some answers. The annoying one though is the initial "my computer doesn't work" which I get nearly every day. This usually happens in the places I don't visit very often. I went into nursery once to find the cable leading to the projector on the ceiling was dangling from the ceiling and actually touching the floor - it had fallen down. They had wrapped it around the projector cage to stop the kids falling over it - was I told about this? No. This is something that annoys me a little bit. How often have you people been called out to a problem and had to actually sit down at the computer as it'll take a few minutes for you to figure out what is wrong only for them to say "oh it's okay, its not really important or anything". After someone says this to me, I usually figure that I'm just in the way and they didn't really expect me to take over their computer for more then a few seconds so I drop it. The next thing I know, they have given the next IT literate person the same problem. To be fair this usually happens away from work i.e. during my own time with family and friends etc. There isn't enough room for the computers by themselves in our classrooms, let along all the papers and stuff that gather up around them. So commonly the mouse and keyboard cables get tucked away under the computer. I used to shake our school keyboards upside down to remove all the junk in them. I don't any more because I was scared by the stuff that came out. This is normal as well most of the time. I'm trying to get rid of all our old inkjets though, so should die down. I think I am not the only one who feels that everything thinks unless we are fixing someones computer, we aren't working?

I tried this a while back, but it confused me to no end. For some reason I could not get it to do what it was supposed to, but can't remember why. IIRC, there is next to no documentation available about it online or from microsoft at all, as it is such a little known tool. It comes officially unsupported from Microsoft I believe. Has anyone messed around with this in the past and actually had any success? Cheers James

Haha, all I get is linux pages etc. Obviously all you

How can you do better than number one on Google :? Don't get pinickity about 2nd entry (I know what you mean BTW ) regards Simon Hehe, good point. As unofficial advice... whenever you register on a forum and it asks you to enter your website... enter a website that you need to do search engine optimisation on. Everytime you post, it usually gives a link to that website at the bottom of your post and they cannot say you are spamming this way.

Is this your site: http://www.geocities.com/siwalters_uk/chromashift.html The above is unfortunately what I am talking about. That was second in google I believe. That page is outside of the frameset and any user clicking on that page finds no menu. There are small work arounds though, like your home link at the bottom. I find frames are brilliant for everything other then search engines

Just thought I would start a topic on this as there doesn't appear to be one already. According to the instructions for this, I am required to visit every machine that it needs to be installed on, simply to install an activex control. The rest can be done by a mixture of potentially a batch script and running the bulk of the program directly off the server. Surely there has to be a better way then this... I wouldn't mind visiting that many workstations if it was the entire program that -needed- installing directly onto the workstation, but simply to install an activex control is taking the micky a little bit. Has anyone used this at their schools and if so, how did they get around this problem? Cheers James

Oh and just to add... NEVER use frames for a website that needs to be SEO. I made this mistake once and have never done so again. Also make sure your main menu is text links if possible and make the name of them as relevent as possible. Search engines do take into account the links on your own website even if it is just to another page on your own website.

As said before, links to your website play a big part. - The higher the websites that link to you rank in search engines for certain key words, the higher you will rank for those same key words. EDIT: If the sites that link to you have similar key words to your own webpages, you'll get more brownie points. So try and get sites that are of similar topics to your own to link to you. - The name of the link also plays a big part. For instance, a hyperlink to eudgeek called "ICT Technical Support", as opposed to just http://www.edugeek.net will improve ranking for the search terms 'ICT Technicial Support'. While a link called 'www.edugeek.net' will help a little, it will help even more to get the name of the link more search engine friendly. - Something most people forget is the title of the website. Search engine spiders DO take this into account more then the actual body of the page, so make sure it is relevant. - As webman said, meta tags, though all of the above is rated more important by spiders generally as meta tags are so easily faked and search engines like google know that. If I think of any more ill let you know.

I don't know - I just assumed it would be. Its not a file that comes with windows 2000 so wouldn't it be against the license agreement to copy the file from windows XP to all the 2000 machines? I know its only a minor thing, but where do you draw the line?

Yeah, this won't work for win 2000 as it doesn't come with schtasks.exe. I was -very- tempted at one point just to rip off a hacked version of schtasks.exe from an XP machine and stick it on the 2000 machines via a startup script. The only reason I didn't was because I believe it is most likely illegal to do so.

I had no problem getting the workstations to shutdown using psshutdown or beyondexec (I think thats what it was called) when they were logged off. The only trouble I had (and am still having) is when they are in standby. The issue I had is that most of the network is windows 2000 and therefore half the tools won't work as they were designed for XP.