adhutton

I presume it is part of a RAID array? If so, depending on the type of RAID you have on that server, it probably needs to rebuild and become part of the array. That process should start automatically once the new drive is inserted. Andrew

Thank you for everyone's help with this. We 'think' we have solved the issue! It has been fixed by updating the BIOS on the affected PCs to the latest version. We haven't been able to find any virus or anything else nasty and once the BIOS is updated they work correctly again. It's just very strange how quite a few of them have all gone down at the same time!! Bizarre. Andrew

We have a strange problem with our Dell OptiPlex 390 PCs and I am wondering if anyone has come across this before? Last week, a couple of our Dell OptiPlex 390 desktop PCs (which are just coming up to 3 years old) started to report they had no HDD and could not boot. Ok, we thought, dead HDD. However, upon running the diagnostics, the HDDs appear to be fine. Then, a couple more OptiPlex 390s reported the same problem. By Friday, we had about a dozen OptiPlex 390s with the same issue!!! This cannot be just a hardware problem I thought - maybe a virus!!! We have virus scanned the affected PCs (strangely they will still boot with a little coaxing), but that doesn't find any problems. By this morning we have a few more around the school in the same state!! Thankfully, we have a total mixture of Dell PC models, OptiPlex 380s, 390s, 755s, 3020s etc....only the Dell OptiPlex 390s seem to be affected at the moment!!! Has anyone ever seen this or heard about this problem? Is this something like a boot sector virus??? Any help/suggestions greatly appreciated. Cheers_ Andrew

Which version Steve? Cheers - Andrew

Autodesk Inventor - Has anyone installed this software? Inventor Professional Free Download | Free Student Version If so, how did you do it? Our D&T dept. are asking for it, but its a HUGE package with several ways of deploying; I just wondered if there was any easy way to install it? Cheers - Andrew

We have one and use it regularly. Ebuyer are good and always deliver quickly. The financial side of the account was a bit of a pain to set up, but once in place its dead easy to use. Just make sure that your Finance people pay the bills regularly as Ebuyer will suspend your account at the drop of a hat if invoices are not paid in a timely fashion. Andrew

We already have Emerge on a few teacher ipads and, in the main, it gets well used. It can be a bit bothersome sometimes, but is generally ok. We already have hosted SLG, so got the SIMS app at no extra cost. I installed it on the teacher ipads and asked them to use it/compare to Emerge. Without any exceptions, they all said that Emerge was better and they found the new SIMS app to be slow/not as easy to use. I then gave the new SIMS app to a few teachers who hadn't ever used Emerge and they also weren't very keen, stating that it was slow and not very easy to use! So, in conclusion, I think we'll be sticking with Emerge for now. Andrew

I 'got' the lads a corker this morning! Changed the hosts file on their PCs so when they opened the school web site it automatically redirected to some random, nasty web site! The Technician who looks after the school web site nearly had kittens! We laughed!!! Andrew

For anyone who is into making electronic music give this a try: Acid Machine Beta Hours of endless fun...a bit like the old Roland TB-303 Bassline. It seems to work best on the Google Chrome browser. Enjoy! Andrew

We use this: https://ninite.com/pro Its not free (or that cheap), but works brilliantly. Andrew

This made me laugh Investigation uncovers children young as four being groomed for tech support How true is this??? Andrew

Yes you can. However, we buy the second hand CISCO ones off eBay for like £10 each. Had a couple of duds, but most work fine - much cheaper than the £150 each or whatever they are new from CISCO. Andrew

Anyone got a car dashboard camera? I'm considering buying one, but don't know what features are best to have? Anyone got one or can point me in the direction of a decent one? Cheers - Andrew

We now block all student USB sticks and staff need to use only encrypted USB sticks or encrypted portable HDDs. Students have remote access/Office 365 etc. Andrew

If you are a student and have a valid NUS card then you can get Amazon Prime for half price, including Amazon TV: Sign-up HERE. Andrew

We use these in school and they are solid: Kingston Technology DataTraveler Locker+ G3 Hardware Encrypted 16GB USB 3.0 Secure Flash Drive - Ebuyer Andrew

I find that Solus 3 is very picky about DNS and if you change anything you need to confirm that you can ping your target machine from the SIMS server. You may want to check that the host name of your target PC match the IP address in your DNS and then do an ipconfig/flushdns on the SIMS server before trying to push out the agent again. Cheers. Andrew

I found this which looks like it might have possibilities??? PassCore: A Self-Service AD Password Change Utility - Home I haven't installed myself, so cannot comment but it looks ok. Andrew

If its the Solus 3 agent you mean then it can be removed via the Control Panel in the add/remove programs section. Andrew

There's one built into Impero if anyone has that? Andrew

Anyone else having problems with Office365? Our users are reporting that Office 365 email is running dog slow and when we have investigated it does certainly seem very laggy. Thought it might be some kind of a memory leak in O365, but I'm not totally sure. Microsoft support have been next to useless on this one and its starting to drive me mad!!! Before the summer holidays it was working fine, but now its really slow and is slowing-up everyone's computers as well. We have used IE11 for a little while now, but something has changed in the last few weeks and its really unresponsive now. All suggestions/info. greatly received guys... Andrew

The school has 'bought-in' to Class Charts in a big way, so that's not likely. Anyway, I am pretty sure that the culprit is Office 365 (OWA), as Class Charts is just a pretty bog-standard web site and other (non-teaching) users (who don't use Class Charts) have been reporting 'slowness' as well. I need to do a bit of head scratching I think!! Andrew

Possibly. Don't really want to go down that route, but might need to consider it as an option!!! Andrew

We are using IE11. Most of our Teacher PCs have 2gb RAM or more. We've never had the problem before...until MS 'Upgraded' Office 365 in some way over the Summer... Now its driving us MAD!!! In addition, we've started using a thing called Class Charts (Class Charts - seating plans and behaviour management software) from September and I think that isn't helping. If I upgrade the RAM (to 4gb) on an affected PC then the problem vanishes. If I cannot find any other fix then we may have to add extra RAM to all of our Teacher PCs sooner rather than later!!! Andrew

We are getting this problem right now! Its driving us MAD!!!!! Most staff PCs have 2gb minimum RAM, some have more. Andrew