Tricks

This thread seems to be more about the performance of peoples own rigs, so I might be posting in the wrong place I thought it could be useful to create a list of generic machines that are being used in schools and how well they run Windows 7. This may be impossible due to the amount of hardware out there but since I'm testing it on our own hardware anyway it's not a problem to share what I find. (All drivers installed by Win7 unless otherwise stated) Windows Experience Index: Processor/Memory/Graphics/3D/Disk Working Acer TravelMate 6293 - 5.5/5.6/3.1/3.4/5.1 (TPM, cardreader and FIR driver req.) Acer 5630 - 4.5/4.5/2.2/3.1/4.6 (camera and cardreader driver req.) HP dx5800 - 5.9/5.5/3.3/3.5/5.9 (modem driver prob) Acer L100 - 4.7/4.5/3.3/3.0/5.6 Problems Lifebook S7010 - No WDDM driver so no aero plus poor graphics performance in general.

Okay I'm hoping someone can clarify this for me, as I'm getting mixed messages reading around. When deploying printers from server 2008 to XP clients is pushprinterconnections.exe still required? Some seem to say that as long as client side extensions (kb943729) is installed on the client then printers just need to be added to the group policy. I've not managed to get this working however, so not sure if I'm doing it wrong. Also on a related note, when adding a printer to a group policy, what is the difference between adding a printer under preferences/control panel/printers and adding the printer via Print Management/Deployed Printers on our print server? Thanks!

Thanks guys, will give your suggestions a shot.

To be more specific (and you are going to put your head in your hands with this one) but the package in question is one of the .Net frameworks and the reason it's failing is some machines had a newer version and won't allow the older version to uninstall as it depends on it. Due to the quantity of machines (and staff laptops) I'm keen for a registry hack to stop the uninstall.

Thanks meastaugh1. On a related note I have another issue I'd appreciate some help with. I have a package I removed from a group policy (selected to uninstall from clients) but the uninstall is failing on some machines. This isn't really a problem, other than every time these machines boot up it tries to uninstall this package again. Is there anyway to cancel the uninstall, so to speak. Thanks

Hello, I have removed some software that was deployed via a Group Policy, and had chosen to "Allow users to continue to use the software" (was hoping to upgrade the software). I have now decided I should have uninstalled the software when I removing from the policy. Can anyone recommend a way to the uninstall software? Window Server 2008 / Windows XP clients Thanks

Should just be a case of downloading sp2 and extracted it into the Updates folder. eg, http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/28/slipstream-office-2007-with-sp2.aspx While not integrated as such, it's easy and installs automatically at the end of the Office installation.

Wouldn't it be easier to just setup a script to shutdown the other servers that is launched by PowerChute. On the section where you set when to shutdown, set the time to run a script.

This problem is now solved, it was a bug that was fixed in the latest kernel. The tricky bit was knowing how to update the kernel since the autoupdate wouldn't work over our proxy/firewall and while you could do it manually the website didn't seem to explain how! At some point FOG will be updated with the latest kernel but in the mean time, to fix the problem you just need to replace /tftpboot/fog/kernel/bzImage with latest kernel.

That may well be an option, but the scalability still worries me. I know, for example that Business Education have over 60 students. So even if I create accounts in bulk it's still going to require a lot of preparation and sharing of the home drives of these accounts with the right teachers and keeping track of which student is using which of these 60 accounts is no small task. Since the account names are generic the teacher would also have to a fair bit of moving/renaming to ensure work is connected to the right student. As Andrew says, I think some of this moving of files would trouble quite a few of our teachers, could get quite confusing. Although probably something we could support them through.

Giving the students a second account worries me a bit - it's quite possible that every student in the year could do some controlled assessment in at least one department what if they could overlap? would we need -another- login to ensure students can't access their other coursework in order to comply with the exam board? All these extra logins add a lot of complications in terms of managing passwords and collecting completed work before these extra logins get reused for different coursework. The teachers are going to have to let me know when and what accounts to collect work from - I could go on and on. As I think I posted before, we use extra logins if it's just one class but I think it becomes too larger maintenance task doing a whole year with multiple subjects.

We're going to have at least 4-5 departments after a solution to this for next year. Although it seems not all may need a water tight solution. I'm in contact with Lanschool at the moment to look at tweaking their sending/collecting files feature. So we could restrict the internet and network drivers from a suite. The students then work in a local folder on the PC's and at the end of the session the teacher clicks a button on Lanschool and it collects all the work and saves it somewhere secure - with each in a folder with the students username. Then at the start of the next session it can distribute the files back out to the correct machines and they can resume. So it would be similar to the USB memory sticks solution without the cost and no worries about them dieing on us.

We have started having discussions about Controlled Assessment to prepare for next year. From the feedback I've received from department heads EdExcel are quite explicit about students work not being accessible outside of the scheduled lesson time. It seems QCA may not be so firm on this. At the moment the only practical solution we have found has been the one you mention TheFopp, lots of USB sticks and a single locked down account with no internet/email/network drives access. Teachers hold on to USB sticks, as they would have with paper assessment in the past. While we think this would meet the requirements, we need to allow for memory stick failures and how backups could be done without it becoming a massive job. We have used extra exam logins for IT exams when it's been just a dozen students or so. I'm not sure I see this has a scalable solution for all departments doing controlled assessment. Could be a bit of a nightmare in terms of setup/permissions/enabling accounts at the right time/collecting work. Since TheFopp posted this has anyone made any progress on alternative solutions? I'm close to saying LanSchool could solve this problem by automating the collecting and distribution of work. At the moment I can't get it to work though.

Thanks for the replies, unfortunately nothing really stands out in the BIOS.. pretty standard Phoenix BIOS setup. There are cpu power saving and memory power saving options which I've tried anyway but didn't help.

Hello all, The last few weeks I've tinkering with a FOG server and it's gone well on the machines I've tested with. I've now got a set of 16 Samsung NC20's which I'd love to image with FOG but it's not working. With the FOG server set to upload an image, I PXE boot one and get as far as; Loading fog/kernel/bzImage................. Loading fog/images/init.gz................... via_rng: cannot enable VIA C3 RNG, aborting via_rng: RNG registering failed (-19) sky2 0000:02:00.0: cannot assign irq 0 My linux knowledge is quite basic, any support would be appreicated.

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I'm having the same frustration with noisy 48port switches. One switch we've had to just put up with (DGS-1248T rev B), which I'm not happy about. I now need to replace an old 48port switch (located in an IT classroom) and am concerned about replacing it with a noisy switch. Has the situation with the 1248T improved at all? I tried Andrews (D-Links) email but it bounced so clearly he's moved on since this old thread.

Seems to be 'standards compliant' by default, and broken websites can add a meta tag to tell IE8 to run in 'IE7 Standards mode'. To quote blogs.msdn.com