mikemcsharry

one point - if you are a registered charity you shouldn't be paying anything like full, or even education, prices for software - also applies to a fair chunk of hardware. Are you aware of this - https://www.charitydigitalexchange.org/ I was trustee for a charity and we saved a load of money using these folks

One of our training groups needs the trainees to see a very limited menu when they right click on desktop. The machines are rebuilt each week and we could do with deploying the solution with config manager or GPOs. The ideal solution would be to not use any third party software if possible Thanks for any ideas

I've set up VNC to do just this. Sorry, I don't work in schools any more.. From memory, set up the pc as a vnc server and the ipad as a VNC client. You may need to check firewall rules etc in your school wifi - there's also a port exception for the PC - do it with group policy. If you have 3rd party AV you'll need to let that know as well

I'm not an admin of anything using Outlook anymore, but weird problem I came across a few times were the default printer and/or grpahics card drivers / graphics acceleration options. Do you have any more / less reliable machines. If everything having problems do you have a windows update problem? Have you been applying any servicing stacks required?? Are any seriously problematic machines struggling for connectivity back to the exchange server?

Ah, so the actual challenge is how to make the joins on word on the mac ... Is it possible to make a paragraph style to do the work. Also, the need for Macros makes my inner security geek very anxious

Try this .. I’m sorry but can’t be too specific as I don’t work in schools anymore ( if anyone wants a fascinating CV to browse…) Make a task sequence with no drivers, the device will boot up with a standard “Microsoft” NIC driver. After the build log in and “check for updates”. This should get you most drivers. Then find the poweshell to extract drivers, and delete any printer drivers. This is now your driver pack for next time you need it

There's a possibility that as the backup was starting (the initialise bit can take a while) then the SIMS thingie probably kicked in. So even though SIMS started after the backup start it actually came in dring the initialise phase and broke something. I've seen your follow on note and meant to reply to that one .. just having a senior moment

Long time since I used drawplus, but that looks like a 'holding frame' it's expecting something in there. Serif have got some really good user forums. (For what it's worth I'd contact Serif and see about options on Affinity Designer or Affinity Publisher), although I'm not sure if either of them can open any of the drawplus formatted files.

Hi I don't work with schools at moment (so am available!!) and don't have access to machine to check for you. Check on the config manager box - are all services running? Check Windows Deployment Services and if necessary re-start it. Also, check if the server is 'pending restart after patches' that can be a pain

Looks like the merger was approved. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/montagu-slash-parentpay-merger-inquiry

If you end up with a rogue PC (or three) here's a few things I found out over the years 1. Check the time on the devices and compare with your Active Directory 2. Run elevated command prompt netsh winsock reset (then reboot), that normally fixes things if after reboot you have issue, try elevated command netsh int ip reset Those last 2 commands clear out a big stack of garbage

Hate to ask the question... but what's the reason for logging on with a domain admin account? Not best practice especially as schools are already seen as 'low hanging fruit' by the cyber low life.

Me again.. I've found that RM have allowed a company to re-launch a Textease product on RISC OS (works on raspberry PI and RISC emulator on Windows). Robert Sprowson at Elesar may be able to give you more info., I've just been chatting with him - a really nice bloke who knows his way around RISC stuff. If anyone wants to contact him [email protected] I've also suggested that Robert joins this group so he can answer things directly with you.

I’ve spoken to one of the folks there and he’s asked me to give him the link to read this thread, as he’s not a member here. Absolutely nothing promised, but he will have a look at the thread. My thought... set up a PDF printer, print from textease, then open the PDF with word and save it? That might be handy for a few, but lots might be a bit numb.

Just2easy is the good folks that actually wrote text ease if that info is any use.. Have you tried installing it on a seperate disk partition? Some of this older software liked to write to the root drive

Do you have the correct ports open in your firewall? Also, Sims can be a bit poor at catching up with DNS. Can you ping the SIMS server by name from a PC and vice versa?

Hi Matt I've been in touch with them this morning and they say they've just made some changes. I'll be testing in the next few minutes Mike

Odd one here, The school I work with has Ekte filtering (was esafety4schools) and uses their capitalbytes proxy and filtering. We've just started using the Ekte supplied VPN and they've provided us manual config information and also a powershell. I have an old school laptop which I re-built with Config Manager the other day and the log in I use is a simple user - nothing special. I can log in to the PC 9with domain credentials), fire up the VPN, get to the file shares etc and at the same time run 365 Outlook, Teams and brose the web. I've also recently (last 2 weeks) re-formatted laptop for the SBM - she has almost identical set up as me, but when she uses VPN she loses internet / outlook / teams connectivity. We've tried her running with and without the proxy server, exactly the same problem. She can flick the VPN off and on at will to get either school resources or internet based services but not both together Config manager can see both devices (but can't remote desktop to any via VPN) Her user and her computer profiles / policies in school are slightly different from my old laptop / my login. Neither of us has any local admin rights The only thing that I know is different is that her machine has SIMS and SUM installed. I'm not sure where to start troubleshooting this one. Does anyone have any ideas?

Fingers crossed, it looks like I've been able to uninstall them all fairly cleanly. I do agree with all the other comments on here about a rebuild, that will happen this year. In the meantime, I've cleared a lot of crud from this server and it looks / feels a better installation already. Oddly, I wasn't expecting any performance improvements - all the SQL services have been off for a while - it does feel like it is running better for the uninstalls and reboots Thanks for the help and advice everyone

Thanks everyone, I had stopped all the SQL services on the server a while ago and nothing had broken. I have VEEAM and SIMS on separate HyperVs on this box and SCCM on a separate HyperV on another box. I uninstalled all the SQL packages and rebooted a few times during the process. I’ve been in today and everything looks good I’m chasing funding for replacement kit as one of these boxes won’t go past 2012R2, plus a lot going on with 365 etc

Hi kieran, thanks for confirming that SQL not needed, and also confirmng that SQL on AD is bad practice. I'm now looking to uninstall all the SQL from the server. I'm 99.9% certain that the SQLs were loaded as part of installs of other software, but weren't removed with it. Is there a way to find out what the SQL installs 'think' they are running before I uninstall them?

Help! I've been doing a 'self audit' of one of the servers in the school I work with. They have a 21012R2 box that is set up as the AD with a SIMS Hyper V and now has a Veeam Hyper V Over the years (and I'm partially guilty for this) various systems have been trialled on the host machine then discounted / removed I've noticed that I have a lot of debris of SQL of various versions. I've stopped most of the SQL services without upsetting my server, first question (I'm sure the answer is no, but just checking.. For an AD is there any need for an SQL installation? Main question Is there any way to find out what applications these SQL versions think they are running before I kill them off? there have been a few hacks on local schools recently and I'm just having a general look around and ditching anything not needed. Thanks for any help

Prajwal's stuff is very good, I've noticed him popping up in a few Microsoft channels recently

Jobos, I think there is another thread going where you've mentioned FireOS level, if it helps, please can you cancel that thread and put the info in here. Here's the one piece of info you really, really need to know The Amazon Kindle Fire is a shopping cart for Amazon You do need Amazon accounts, I've made extra accounts in 365 just to talk to Amazon. In addition, you can't get any apps from Amazon unless you link a payment method, so you'll need Google Play accounts for ach one - that needs a mobile to link to it to get a confirmation text You really can't get anywhere with these things unles the OS is above 7.2

I think that you might need to update the Fire operating system to 7.2 or above, my guess is you are on 6.3 As a matter of interest, whereabouts are you and how did you come to have the Kindles?