speckytecky

Thanks @Mordy T - only problem there is I have taken the laptops off the network and they are in a workgroup now.

I'm trying to rename calc.exe so it's not available on our exam set up laptops. Trying to do it by renaming it but it refuses saying I need TrustInstaller Permissions to make the alteration?

Download Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 10 from Official Microsoft Download Center

We recently went over to SIMS for registration and behavioural assessment - what is the standard practice when supply teachers are in?

Ah - just realised, the letter i have is from Wiltshire LA your LA is probably continuing funding your contract - for now?

It's dated the 31st of Jan -addressed to Headteachers. I will see if it's available electronically and send it on to you. BTW thanks for the .bat file. Much appreciated.

Thank you @synaesthesia your input is highly welcomed. We currently have SWGfL's Easymail - one of my big worries is how we migrate the messages and settings to another system - assuming we move away from SWGfL?

Hi Fellow SWGfL Edugeekers, particularly those in Wiltshire. I have just seen a letter from the Wiltshire LA giving details of the planned changes to Broadband provision in the SWGfL area effective from 1st of April 2013. In a nutshell the LA won't be picking up the tab any longer and are giving the choice of where to go. We have been offered a briefing to outline the LAs suggested way forward. However, the timescale - as ever is tight! What are other Wiltshire (and presumably other SWGfL area schools where the LA is sidestepping funding this service) planning to do? In the past I did explore the options and Talk Straight seemed to offer a pretty good package.

Yep, I have decided to pull two laptops off the domain and set the two lads up with limited local accounts. I'm going to disable Office on the laptops and set them up so the boys have just Wordpad on their desktop and save to a DVD RW. This seems to be the easiest way around the issue the laptops have Windows 7 Pro 32 bit OS on board - what would be my best bet for setting them up so they were screwed down for this task?

You know that when you call Insurance companies and other similar organisations, a message is played informing you that the call may be recorded 'for training purposes' etc. We are looking for something at will enable our receptionist to record 'abusive' messages. Ideally something that will record calls at the push of a button and a message that warns callers that call may be recorded for monitoring and training. Any thoughts on this fellow Edugeekers?

According to the BEEB Google is funding a give away of 15,000 Raspberry Pis for schools BBC News - Google to give schools Raspberry Pi microcomputers Unfortunately the article doesn't seem to indicate how schools can register interest?

Thanks for all the very useful replies folks - very much appreciated. It turns out that I need to set up just two laptops for this task and they would like them ASAP. The SMT want the two particular lads using the set up for all their GCSE lessons and of course the exams. As this is all brand new to me if anyone has a complete muppet guide I could use to achieve this I'd really welcome reading it. I'm currently thinking of pulling two laptops off the Domain but not sure where to go from there without creating a heap of work for myself!

I thought ours was a duff battery initially but further investigation revealed it was the charger at fault.

Recently one of our HP 625 notebooks suffered a flat battery. Traced it to the power supply being duff. The laptop was still under warranty and HP promptly sent a replacement power supply. Unfortunately, the end plug was a different design - far bigger than the plug it was replacing. Getting onto the very helpful HP Support again they duly sent an adapter that slotted onto the new plug and fitted perfectly into the laptop. It was about two inches long with a plug at each end - I looked the part number up on the Internet and discovered it was something like $3 on the North American site but in the UK the same part comes in at over £50. Ouch!

That's one way to pick up some thank yous!

We have an Ellion HMR-700A HD Media Recorder which our Head of Science was using connected to his PC to share Multimedia on. That worked fairly well except every time the PC was turned off we needed to enable the share again. I'm now trying to set the device up as a proper network sharing device - I have given it an IP address and connected it to the LAN but when I type that IP address in I get a web page with:[h=1]A simple html+cgi example[/h] with two boxes which will add up two numbers if they are inserted! Looking in DHCP the IP address which was unallocated before is now assigned to a device with a name that I don't recognise DL2-PC but trying to access that from Explorer fails to bring a connection. Any suggestions on what I might need to do please?

Is it just me or has the very useful latest posts button vanished from the Forum. All that's available on bot an iPad and PC is Todays Posts?

Apart from the colour being linked to the now Kraft owned Cadbury which switched it's Bristol production to Poland; isn't Purple the colour of UKIP!!

Thanks Steven. I was just wondering before spending more time on this - what is the purpose of this satellite installation anyhow. I haven't many hours at work and I'm just wondering if chasing my tail to try and get this up and running for the lady on Monday so she can practice for her course on Wednesday is a worthwhile venture?

One of our members of staff has now taken on Timetabling with SIMS Nova T6 and is asking me if I can set up a machine for her to use offline - is this achievable - if so what do I need to do. I'm guessing it's a pretty big PITA job for an inexperienced SQL user like me?

Just had a request to set up some laptops for GCSE exam use. Windows 7 Pro machines with Office 2010 on them and they apparently need to be set up so spell check is disabled and they print directly in the classroom at the end of the exam. How are others meeting this requirement?

Some very useful answers here. I'm surprised that so far I'm the only one who has hit the TY button?

Sadly and clearly, RM - SWGfL haven't learnt from their previous disasters. CC4, and the Hosting issue the last bad winter. We have moved our hosting, not only for reliability but also because our current provider who is an Edugeeker with a big hart provides the full works - not just a cut down version of C-Panel which won't even allow running of Akeeba backup! Come on SWGfL, you have some fabulous people working hard trying to provide the service but somewhere the package just isn't working.

Wouldn't it have been 'nice' of Microsoft to put out some sort of warning about this - my Server 2008 took the best part of an hour to complete the update and I must admit I was at times wondering if it had actually gone TU!!

Just had a strange experience with our Server 2008 Standard. It wanted to restart post updates so being in on a snow day I let it restart. It came back up really slowly, took ages configuring memory for one thing. Anyhow when it allowed log on all seemed normal. Then I noticed it was actually asking for an Install Updates and shut down - never seen this on a server before. I allowed it. On starting it up again it was slow and on the stage 1 of 3 took ages without the % actually moving. Seemed to be going ok but then it restarted again and came back up with stage 3 of 3 again with no visible movement of the %. It's now up fully, logged on and seems happy. I'm currently updating a Windows 7 Client and again this one wanted to install and shut down. I thought that with Server 2008 and Windows 7 we were told there wouldn't be so many of these types of updates?