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Hi everyone, How are the "holidays" going? Over the past couple of days I have been creating an image for about seven/eight identical laptops... I have just completed it this morning and before running sysprep I decided to do a backup image just in case. So I loaded up BartPE to use ghost and attemped to connect to a share on the server only to be told "cannot connect to "\\server\ghost$". Tried again after reboot to see the same message. I guess bartPE has trouble with the network card, because it works fine in windows. I think the only option I have is to create a partition on the HDD and put the ghost image there, boot into windows and move the image across to the server. Then i'll attempt to put the image on the remaining laptops via CD if needs be... I have never used ghost in any way before other then the way that just failed, so i'm not sure if the above process has flaws, can anyone help me out or think of a better way? Thanks

Ummm... if it is a DNS problem, good luck! Over the past two or three weeks DNS has been on our minds constantly because it simply refused to work properly! We suspect that our DNS server passed on some bad DNS before we managed to demote and replace it (it has been in the process of dying for a while). For some reason it works now, but i'm still not entirely sure what we did that got it to work and it took two weeks to do whatever it was. I don't think any of us are really keen on DNS though...

Hi everyone, Hope you are all enjoying our much needed rain and thunder on this lovely weekend and that the hangovers don't last too long. Anyway, I have quickly been getting the need for a static IP address with my home internet connection. Blueyonder (my current ISP) I presume do not provide this from what I have read on the net. Does anyone know of a UK provider that does offer this service that they can recommend or anyone got any advice on how to 'encourage' blueyonder to give me one (they are very capable of doing so, it just costs them a little bit more - i'd be willing to pay a max of £5 a month extra). Cheers

I'm 100% certain it is not spyware, but overheating. I really don't know how hot it is, I tried to use MBM but this is discontinued software and I guessed it wouldn't work (it didn't on this PC i'm on now, which is old). Do you know of any other software that monitors the temperature? Eh, I was worried someone was gonna say that. I'm pretty certain we have no laptop fans lying around and even less likely one suitable for that model. We have another identical model with an identical problem, so I was hoping to find a free fix for this one so I could do it on the other. Do you not think a CPU cooler would work? I've seen them used at a company I worked for in the past.

Hi all - i'm back again! I've been playing with said laptop for a while now and it is starting to push me to that stage where I might get out the almighty hammer and be done with it. But first I thought i'd put it to you all A teacher gave me this laptop saying it keeps crashing. After testing it for a few minutes, I found out what she meant - after a couple of minutes of use the CPU runs flat out at 100% and refuses to budge making the laptop unsuitable for the purpose it was bought... or indeed any purpose at all. Thinking of teachers and their uncanny attraction to spyware, I did everything I could to find out where it might have hidden, but with no luck. To be absolutely certain that it wasn't a software problem, i did a clean re-install of XP. But of course, as per my life, the problem still remained. Knowing it was a hardware problem now, I did some research on the net about this laptop and it seems a -crazy- number of people who bought this model (and related ones) have had the same problem (is it any surprised tiny went bust?). According to this forum the problem resided with the fan below the keyboard being faulty. So I have removed the keyboard and turned the laptop on to watch the fan and there appears to be no problem with it spinning. But what I did notice after further testing is that the laptop runs perfectly normally (I tested it for about two hours) when the keyboard is not in position on top of it. Considering that I would receive my P45 if I forced the teacher to use the laptop with the keyboard dangling off it, I thought that there must be some CPU cooling software out there that doesn't seriously reduce performance yet does what I am installing it for and is free, yet i'm not aware of any. Can anyone help me out here?

I just downloaded the user manual for each type of projector we have and when it comes to changing the bulb I double check the process in the user manual to be sure. It's usually a very simple process though.. I didn't even take ours down, I just let it cool down and replaced it while it was still mounted.

Hi all, I've been trying to preform a software audit on our network (there appears to be very few records already kept) but before I start i'd like to find out how many licenses for MS software the school have actually paid for, I want to be sure we are not doing anything illegal. Anyone have any advice about how I can do this? I have contacted our LEA, who I thought we purchased all our licenses off... they have sent me a list, but according to this list we only have 8 win2k licenses, yet we have a suite with 15 win2k installations, let alone the rest of the classrooms (none of them came with a win2k OEM license). I can only assume another company has been used at some point, but finding out who will be a nightmare. I have looked at all of our license documentation in the office (about 100 sheets, some several years old) but this is little help. There is a few sheets with details of an account with Microsoft (eopen.microsoft.com), I logged in and found a series of licenses but i'm unsure if those are in addition to the details I got from the LEA or there is an overlap. *Sigh* I can't wait until home time. Has anyone been in a situation like this before when starting at a new school? How have people tackled it? Thanks

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I saw a link to this school site: http://www.emersonvalley.org.uk/test/ There is a calendar on there intergrated with joomla, does anyone know if this is done easily or even if there is a joomla addon for a calendar? I was considering mixing a calendar into the CMS via a frame, but i've tried this with webcalendar in the past and it didn't work.

Okay, thanks. I'll look into purple cloud. Joomla is popular around here, no? I'll be designing a lot of the school website myself, but certain pages will be designed by the young kids using some (vile) kids website design software that creates terribly messy code. Is Joomla a CMS where I can upload standard HTML pages (the ones created by the kids) and it will merge it with the templates used by the rest of the site? I need to plan this very carefully because if i jump into a CMS and design the site, then find that one simple thing like this doesn't work well, i'll be in trouble lol.

Hi all (again), I've been asked to create a website for two schools and I have three options. 1. I can use the space provided by the BGfL (Birmingham Grid for Learning) which is free, but doesn't allow server side scripts such as PHP, so all I get is the equivilant of a geocities webspace without adverts. 2. I can host the sites on the school servers, which I really don't want to do because the BGfL are not the most reliable ISP to say the least and I don't trust our servers to be powerful enough either. Also, if it gets hacked, i'd hate it to be a school server they have the potential to trash as opposed to a dedicated webserver. 3. I can get the schools to pay for webspace with some provider such as fasthosts. This is the option I would prefer, as I would like server side scripts to work. My question is, for those who had created commercial and/or school websites before, whats the best but not too expensive way of getting webspace? If it's the third option, which company is recommended? Also, does anyone have any other advice, mistakes maybe which they have made in the past or anything that makes designing the website easier? I have only ever created domestic websites before and obviously domestic and commercial are very different. Cheers

Talking of Epson printers... I had the same trouble (the heads getting blocked), in my case, it had been left idle for eight months but i'm pretty sure that drops of window cleaner (it's all i could find that looked suitable) on the heads and the cleaning sponges unblocked it. I think it has worked, but need to test it properly yet.

Two jobs... 1. Throw servers out of window 2. Throw client machines out of window Woohoo! Then no more things can go wrong!! No computers, no problems (for me anyway). We are designing a poster for my office door that says: - "Before knocking, please check the following: - Have you tried turning it off and on again? - Are you sure it is plugged in?" While taken from "the IT crowd", I think it will cut my work by 50%, haha.

Probably a different problem, but just before I read this post I have been playing with a toshiba satellite 1400 (like, six years old). It has a similar problem, it kept cutting out completely and the more quickly it was switched back on again, the quicker it would cut out. Even though the laptop registered the AC power as being connected, I swapped the power cable for one from the other working laptops and hey presto, it works fine (as of the moment).

The only advantage in my case is that I have less work to do at work. Our headteacher wanted all our projectors taken down each friday and put up again each monday until England are knocked out (so no-one gets tempted to steal one over the weekened). As they are now out... it need no longer happen lol.

Ye, that's the fun of a forum

Make that three people...

Not only that, but i'm sitting here at 1am in my swimming trucks having only come out of the pool in the back garden at about midnight... wow, I am so sad.

We must be the only two people mad enough to be up at this time posting on a computer forum.. haha.

Sorry it took me so long to reply to this, i'm always unsure whether hanging around on this forum at work is wrong or whether i'm learning by reading through the threads Anyway, when Jesus drank 'wine', it was actually nothing more then fruit juice from what I understand. It was called wine in the scriptures, but wine then doesn't mean what it means today. Some Christian religions don't believe this, but others do. We don't drink alcohol because of something called the "word of wisdom" which prevents and encourages a numbers of things including, no smoking, no alcohol to be consumed, no drugs (doesn't include medical drugs), no tea or coffee, meat to be eaten sparingly etc etc. It is interesting that all of these things have in recent times been proved to be the most healthy option compared to their alternatives. None of these things had been proved to be unhealthy at the time this word of wisdom was written. Sorry for the lecture, I get carried away easily

I can see where you are coming from, but I have always love patriotism. I -love- the England flags on all the cars and hanging down from people's windows. I love the fact that went walking through the city centre after we won a match that everyone was singing English songs in the street. I just feel we don't have enough of this in our country...

Ah come off it guys It may be a little sad that people cry because we lost a game, but you have to show a little patriotism, after all, it is your country that is being represented I was quite depressed for about two hours after we lost, but I soon recovered. Going along with the crowd in this one also gets rid of the 'geek' image that people tend to hold about IT Technicians, not that I really care about that, haha.

Following on from my previous post about the GIMP, I thought i'd post a link to a site that has helped me save one heck of a lot of money here at home, and may in future at work. Most of you use windows (as far as I can see) so here is a site dedicated to listing Open Source Software for Windows (organised by category - there a a large amount): OSS Win I hope some of you find it useful

Surprised no-one has mentioned this yet... The GIMP has a great reputation among the Open Source community and is actually a highly advanced graphics editor comparable to Adobe Photoshop in some areas (indeed some people have said it is better). Of course, like most Open Source software, this is completely free, so give it a try I pretty much only use Open Source software here at home (with the exception of windows on two of my machines) due to the expense of software like Adobe Photoshop and M$ Office. Anyway, download it here

They are never used with the charger in them, as the chargers are part of the trolley. The only three possibilities I have thought of are: 1. They are always left on charge when not in use (though I read that over-charging doesn't lower battery life or damage the battery in any way) 2. There could be some software running that is draining power - most likely a windows update thats gone wrong (not very unusual with MS really, lol) 3. The most likely possibility, the batteries have been destroyed due to "kid use". We all know what that means Also they are not service pack 2 yet. But I doubt this makes any difference...

Hi all, We have a laptop trolley of 16 of these laptops... I bet you know what is coming... the teachers have been complaining to me over the past few weeks that the batteries on most of them seem to die after about 10-20 minutes. As they are all charged from the same socket, I seperated one of them from the trolley and left it on charge all last night on its own (as soon as I plugged it in, the battery indicator insisted it was full but I left it on charge anyway). I turned it on this morning and got about 20 mins before it put itself into standby due to low battery. I understand that laptop batteries are a nightmare for domestic use, let along school use, but is there nothing else it could be that is draining the power excessively and unnecessarily on all of these laptops? I want to be sure before I upset our ICT co-ordinator by telling her that we need to buy 16 new batteries. Also, has anyone had a similar problem at school before and if so, what did they do (e.g. get rid of the laptops? keep buying new batteries? etc.)