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Tried to do something about this a while ago myself. I found myself at B-ham university for one reason or another a few months back and realised they had overcome the problem of remotes being casually 'lost' by fixing a metal plate to the wall that has two holes on either side of it and fixing the remote to this via a cable tie going through the two holes. Not a bad idea essentially, but they had cunningly stuck a piece of paper in the corner of the room directly above it to bounce the signal to the projector. So bit of a botch job.

K, it appears they ignored me because they no longer provide directly to schools. As i'm not a potential customer I wasn't worth replying to.

Just thought i'd make a point about this company (steljes) as they are now getting on my nerves. Apparently the school have used them before to supply SMARTBoard equipment and they have no other contacts to provide them with spares. Anyway I have now e-mailed them twice over the past two or three weeks via both my own e-mail account and the form on their website and neither has been responded to. I'm now getting the questions as to where the new cable is. I'm about to phone them now, but I wish I didn't have to. How often does a company ignore its own sales e-mails? :?

Hi eean, sorry about the (very) late response, been busy with other jobs and have only just got back around to focusing on this. Thanks for the offer, but thinking about it, your current MSI settings are perfect. I have since figured out how to deploy MSIs over the network as well. I had have one remaining question... will this task work on both win2k and win xp? We have both in our network. I seem to remember that the schtasks is a winxp only thing. Will this cause trouble with the MSI? Thanks a lot for your help.

If you need any extra help on this matter, I know a guy who works for the MSN department of microsoft and has direct access to the hotmail backend. He has helped me with problems a little bit like this in the past.

Though not new to website design, I am new to Joomla, but since around July have been developing two school websites using it. There are people on here much more experienced then me using this CMS, but i'd be willing to help if you needed it.

Okay I have just had a scoot around the school and deployment appears to have been successful. Thanks everyone

Yeah, I know. Trying to get that message across though is a nightmare, as you have already found out and I am slowly starting to find out, haha. I'm trying to avoid this if possible. Thats why I wanted images I could use off the net instead. I thought it was a very devious and flawless plan of mine, right up until I realised such images don't really exist. Plus it rules out having anything even like a virtual tour, because we aren't even allowed pics of any room inside the school . I could have a word with management, but it's not a conversation i'll look forward to. They were pretty determined last time I discussed it with them.

Hehe, that is exactly my other reason. It is obviously my job to do the website so other staff assume they don't have to do anything for it , even if I plead with them. This is understandable, websites are a reasonably new thing for schools and if I put myself in their situation, I would also think the same. It'll take quite a while for them to do what i'm asking and it will automatically go to the bottom of the priority list.

I'm guessing not taking into account what Geoff said... i'll find out soon enough though.

Okay, I think I got it. Instead of just selecting the domain, select the group of computers. Duh! Haha. I assume its okay if i just remove the policy I just added and re-add it to the group only?

Very good point... I thought of that literally seconds before I saw this. It's too late though, I have already done it. I did it Geoff's way by creating a new GPO, but obviously this will go out to all the domain machines still. For most that is fine, i'm a little bit concerned about the admin machines and worse of all, the servers though?? I haven't forced the update yet, so is there any way that I can change this? I have no idea how to send it out to only certain groups of computers.

Yep, I agree with you completely. I don't really want to have to redesign the website again though, this one has already been through two makeovers and its not been online at all yet. I am -still- trying to find decent images for the site.. I found three or four off the site recommended above, but no-where near enough for what I need now. The other school website I am doing is proving much easier simply because they are much more relaxed on the rules. That website is getting closer each day to going live. This one I have been stuck on for about two weeks now simply because of the above mentioned problem. At the end of the day though, i'm employed to work around their rules as best as I can, not try and change school policies. If they ask why it is taking so long though, this is one of the reasons.

Hey all, Little advice needed. Am trying to deploy an MSI over the network for the very first time in my life and am a little bit worried about following the instructions provided by an educational software provider. Though they are extremely basic and easy to follow, I quite frankly just don't trust them. So I wondered if someone here could confirm these details are accurate and they haven't missed any vital info out? 1. Go into active directory 2. Select domain >> properties >> group policy tab 3. Select current default domain policy and click edit 4. Select computer configuration then software settings 5. Using 'software installation' select new >> package 6. Enter path to MSI and click open 7. On 'deploy software window' that appears, select 'assigned' radio button. They then go on to talk about file permissions, though I am not sure any of that is needed. I think by default it should inherit the standard permissions? Finally, they say to enter gpupdate /force into run. Cheers!

Hey all, Little advice needed. Am trying to deploy an MSI over the network for the very first time in my life and am a little bit worried about following the instructions provided by an educational software provider. Though they are extremely basic and easy to follow, I quite frankly just don't trust them. So I wondered if someone here could confirm these details are accurate and they haven't missed any vital info out? 1. Go into active directory 2. Select domain >> properties >> group policy tab 3. Select current default domain policy and click edit 4. Select computer configuration then software settings 5. Using 'software installation' select new >> package 6. Enter path to MSI and click open 7. On 'deploy software window' that appears, select 'assigned' radio button. They then go on to talk about file permissions, though I am not sure any of that is needed. I think by default it should inherit the standard permissions? Finally, they say to enter gpupdate /force into run. Cheers!

I have only just read this thread... I wasn't a member at the time it was started. This is highly interesting though. I know we have been asked not to ask which files on the windows OS it uses to collect the data, but this subject really fasinates me. I have only ever read on one website that windows records internet activity in a location other then the standard history etc. The website in question said that it was a place in windows that couldn't be seen from the standard explorer window. It gave the location of the files and a way of deleting them, but this website happened to be an anti-microsoft website and at the time I took what they said with a pinch of salt. Now i'm not so sure they were lying though... Why are the files used being kept so secret? Surely these details would be published all over the internet if it is true... people aren't keen on having their activities monitored in a location they aren't aware of and there would be uproar. This program seemed to be shrouded in secrecy, but i'm not entirely sure why and it makes me very suspicious, not just of the developers, but of microsoft themselves. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Isn't saturday night/sunday morning supposed to involve alcohol somewhere?

Aren't we all supposed to have a program that generates a daily excuse to give to callers who say "well what was wrong?".

Is this what you guys do on a weekend or does it happen at work as well? hehe

Hmmm... *goes and crosses off 'has attention to detail' on his CV*

Haha, I watched my NM do this while I was being trained. The three servers and his own client machine were at the time all connected in a four port KVM switch. As you can imagine, he shut down the curriculum server accidently instead of his own machine.

Lol, I really don't think I have done anything bad yet... the worst I have done is waste between 10-20 mins a day on edugeek lol.

Lol!! Thanks for that... some of those are hilarious.

Okay, so what is the weirdest error message you have ever seen a computer throw up with a legit off the shelf program? As of today, mine is: "You EEeediot!! Theese ees NOT Cheecago!!" Which according to their support website translates into "I don't like being installed on windows xp, as I was designed for windows 98". Yes... I think this one beats anything that M$ can throw as us. At least M$ haven't got around to calling their users idiots yet, haha.

90% of the machines in one of my schools are windows 2000, but they didn't come with that. I've had to repair a couple recently and noticed these two had "designed for windows 95" stuck on the side. I'm guessing there are a few more "designed for windows 95" machines around, but most I think originally came with windows 98 (at least I hope).