Nozza

Hi Is there a way to get admin rights for things like windows firewall whilst the PC is logged on as a student? I know one can usually use the runas /user command but the students don't have Start-Run option. Right-click is disabled too but I notice it is not for exe files on flashdrives. I tried creating a bat file with the runas command to open an admin command prompt so I could run things like firewall.cpl but the bat file won't run due to s/w restrictions and it doesn't attract the Run As option so it cannot be run as admin either. Is there an exe out there that will do this or am I missing the wood for the trees? Thanks Nozza

It's hosted externally.

Hi Wasn't sure which area to post this one in as it's Windows but also CC3 and firewall related. Let me know if I need to move it :-) I have a teacher using Moodle but on his laptop he gets problems where the RMSmartCache proxy stops him navigating around at seemlingly random points. E.g. he'll log in, be using it for 10 mins and then when tries to move to another page within Moodle, the proxy/firewall error reports he cannot get to the page. This is not the RM blocked warning, just the smartcache box reporting no access. The Laptop is set up on XP using CC3 and on IE7. Any ideas? I'm stumped at the moment. Cheers Nozza

Yeah that's what I'm thinking but not sure how to fix this whilst away for the hols

Hi I have my work laptop at home so clearly not attached to the doman. Some apps just won't run in this condition. Namley Firefox and Virtual PC 2007. Firefox just doesn't start - no reaction at all. Virtual PC reports and error has occured and closes. I've also noticed that I cannot logon locally with any local accounts like Administrator etc - not sure if this is related. Thing is I realy need to use VPC this weekend so any help much appreciated Thnaks

@Potato peeler: Forgive the naivety of my questions but how does that work? Why do you need 11 servers if the power of 7 boxes is enough? Is it just that a box say 2x as powerful is cheaper than 2 boxs of 1/2 the power? @Duke - so that replies on very good fault tolerance on the VM server? If that goes down then you lose more? @great_Scott - why does doing that via virtualisation work better than a standard terminal services setup? Thanks guys

So what are you guys using virtualisation for at your schools. How has it helped provide better IT for the school?

VirtualBox doesn't run slow for me but I have found it annoying with regards to the networking implementation compared to VM Workstation and VPC. I could never get it working with W2K3 Server RRAS so that ithe server had an externally facing interface and an external one. The others worked on default settings just fine. I didn't however have any ping problems that I noticed. I've ended up using it on some MacBooks because they do a mac version and it's free. They work just fine as far as the school network is concerned the setup is transparent. I did have problems with having two bridged adaptors (wireless and ethernet) but they went away when I gave them static IPs and left the default gateway blank. For my home setup I use VM Workstation which I find slicker for what I need it for.

In the end I decided to use VirtualBox. Seems to work well. They get the Mac to do all the music things that you just can't do on PCs (sarcasm) but get to join the CC3 network as normal - access to their Outlook, shared areas, SIMS etc etc. They can be managed from RMMC as any other computer and with the Mac's virtualisation support it runs pretty slick

Although I'm sure it shouldn't be an influencing factor when making such a decision but...I don't think running an RM network does much for your career prospects.

The music dept has some macbooks. We are an RM CC3 site and the teachers would like to access their Outlook etc from the macs. I'm thinking either Bootcamp or some virtualisation app like VirtualBox. Anyone used virtualisation to do this? Any comments or pointers very much welcomed. Thanks N

When we get new RM machines that are CC3 Ready we rebuild them as soon as we get them. RM suggest filling in the domain etc info and going from there. However this doesn't appear to create a working backup partition. There is a 30GB parition but it's just labelled as empty space. Trying to use the cc3 rebuild/backup floppy fails. Is this how we should be doing it? Thanks N

I've ended up setting half the trolley with a fixed alternate IP, with the others on DHCP. I cannot, as yet, be sure if this has worked - partly because we also had a wireless network fault fixed during the test period. I'll try to check them today to see how many of them are stuck on using the alternate and how many are on DHCP. Maybe that will give an indication as to whether this setup has at least kicked in. One thing I'm looking into is the "Always Wait for Network at Computer Startup and Login" policy which was suggested to me by someone.

An easy way to mess around with the basics is to get Virtual PC - it's free from Microsoft and install an OS. You soon get the hang of the concepts once you try configuring it. I've set up a little virtual network on my home PC, to assist with my MCSE study, with servers, workstations, domains, DNS, DHCP, subnets, NAT server etc. Only took an evening and I don't know what I'm doing!

From experience, I now think think that rule 1 with BIOS and other firmware updates is: don't do them unless you absolutely have to. They can be a very quick way to break valuable h/w.