J4K

Has anyone used video conferencing software to connect with clients? What have you used to accomplish this and what were the results like for you? I've been instructed to research video conferencing tools for a pilot that will allow our staff to connect with clients via video meetings. We use Google G-Suite and initially I thought we could just connect with clients via Google Meet, but one of the conditions of the pilot is all the users in the video session need to have a blurred background by default for confidentiality purposes. Google doesn't allow you, from an Admin perspective, to enforce blurred backgrounds as a mandatory user policy so it can only be set by the end user which I've been told isn't acceptable. I've been told Microsoft Teams offer this feature but it means that hosts will need an Office 365 account and subsequently this can only be enforced via an Office 365 Admin policy which is something we don't have because we use G-Suite. I've also looked at AttendAnywhere as a solution which I know is something being used by a lot of organisations however the pricing for this is extortionate. We're happy to subscribe to a product plan but a five-figure annual subscription cost is a bit too high. Has anybody ever had any experience of setting up a similar thing using another video conferencing platform? Due to it being connecting with clients the security, privacy and confidentiality of every session is critical. I'd just be interested to see other peoples experiences or suggestions. Sorry in advance if this is in the wrong feed

Hi, I've got a Windows 10 Home laptop running on version 1903 (Build: 18362.356). It's extremely slow and laggy! I've looked at the CPU status and it is pretty much always running at 100% with no user tasks or processes in the foreground. Under close inspection, I've noticed that Services and Controller App process is pretty much continuously consuming around 80% of CPU processing capacity. Is there a fix for this, as its clearly this which is causing such a dramatic slow down? I've seen some other forums where people have said that v1903 of Windows 10 has caused a similar problem, but the only thing I've seen as a 'resolution' is to clean boot the system, but I can't actually see how this could resolve the problem long term when its pretty evident what's causing the issue? I have considered rolling back to v1803 as I don't believe the system had the problem before the update, but I'm hoping that someone might have an alternative solution?

Hi, I work in a large SHARED building which has multiple organisations which rent rooms in different parts of the building. We're the largest organisation in the building, thus we have our own patch cabinet and switches etc, which are stored within our own comms room. The rest of the building has its network operated by the landlord (different comms rooms) and virtually all the other organisations use the internet/network access from the landlords network. However, very soon we are going to be taking over the rental of a brand new room separate to our current office space. The new office has 12 ethernet ports (6 network/ 6 IP Telephone) but will need its ethernet ports redirecting so that access through them points to our domain and server and not that of the landlords network. The downside however, is that the wiring for the new room we've acquired terminates in a patch panel which is on the opposite end of the building to where our main office (comms room) terminates at. Currently the landlord has their own networked switches on the opposite end of the building and its these switches that the wiring for the new room currently connects to. What I need is to be able to terminate these ports (redirect) so that the ethernet ports are on our local domain and not the 'building wide' generic network. We have no infrastructure which resides on that side of the building. The building is quite large and shared with around 15 other small organisations. Unfortunately, the landlord only employs a single IT chap who has sadly gone on annual leave for the next few weeks. As we don't have any dealings with the landlords infrastructure and the infrastructure is currently providing network access for other tenant organisations, I'm limited in what I'm physically able to do as I can't create any disruption for other tenants. I can't physically move cabling as the new room we've taken on is rented and therefore, in the future the landlord may take that room back to be leased to another tenant organisation. I wasn't consulted about this move before the agreement was struck with the landlord - so unfortunately I'm left with quite a difficult task it would seem and a very small budget. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

It's definitely not the local account. As far as I'm aware when these machines were setup they were almost immediately placed onto the domain network so the local account will most likely have Admin privileges and this account is fully locked down with restrictions.

Apparently, around 9 months ago my predecessor deleted a Windows Login account in Active Directory. I've looked through the AD on our server and the account in question has been removed as I've yet to come across any mention of it. However, some users are saying that they are still able to login in to the account on some of our Windows 10 machines. I can't work out why certain PC's are still allowing login of this account onto our domain when it is no longer an authenticated account within Active Directory. How is it authenticating? I assumed that maybe the computers have stored the logon credentials locally as it's only certain PC's so my guess is its only the PC's where the account was used originally? I've removed all temporary files from these PC's and done complete disc cleanups but they're still logging into the account. The account in question has definitely been removed from Active Directory and its not possible to login to the account from newer workstations. Ideas?

Yes the default is IE not Edge. Thanks

Hi All, I'm not sure whether I'm posting this in the exact right location or not - if not I apologise. The network I run has all PC's running Windows 10 with Windows Server 2008 R2 server. The problem I've got is that I want all network PC's to be defaulting to using Google Chrome. By default they all have Internet Explorer as their browser. I've also individually on all of the PC's to set the default browser to Chrome but every time the users log off and log back in again, the PC's automatically default back to Internet Explorer. I've also tried setting a specific GPO for Chrome but this didn't seem to change anything. I found out my predecessor hated Google Chrome and Firefox (not sure why?) with a passion and swore by IE so I'm not sure whether he's created a policy on the server or not which defaults domain users to IE - if there is then I can't find it but he did have quite strange and complicated ways of going about things from what I've seen. I've looked on the GPO and I can't find anything which would suggest that IE is set as a default policy. IE is causing real problems for the network because many of the users have desktop links to cloud services they require to do their jobs. However, whenever they click the links they always open in IE and not Chrome but some of the services they log into are no longer fully supported in IE - which causes interface problems. Google Chrome fixes all user issues regarding this. I'm just wondering whether there is any other kind of domain setting or policy which I don't know about that could have been setup to always default network devices to IE? I couldn't find anything in the GPO so I'm pretty stumped.

We have Office 365 already! Cloud computing isn't an option for our charity due to the nature of the information that we sometimes have to handle, we're obligated by law to ensure total data security and confidentiality and that's something which can't be truly guaranteed using our Office 365 subscription to start storing things in One Drive etc. At the moment it looks like I'm going to have to get a new server and run the thing alongside the current system and just migrate stuff that way. I would love to Virtualise the new solution, but I also have to consider the type of end-users which currently use our systems. Our users are primarily Dinosaurs when it comes to computers and even migrating across to using Google Chrome from IE and Skype to Microsoft Teams has been an absolute nightmare in terms of training and getting people to understand how and why they need to use things. I've wanted to Hyper-V or VMware the new system but I just feel this would be more hassle on me than its worth - given I'm one person stretched over 50sq miles. Plus, some of our sites are only running from a max 20mbps LAN-to-LAN ADSL connection (which can be temperamental at the best of times) and can't be improved because of the local infrastructure, so working from VM's could quite easily become a massive headache. SteveB_NI, I've also thought the same thing about migration from 2008 R2 to 2019. I'm guessing there shouldn't be any issues as long as all network firmware etc is up to date but it's something I'm not sure about either as I've never actually managed moving anything between servers running OS which are so far apart in age. Unless there are core differences between 2008 R2 and 2019 I don't see why migration would be difficult but again, it's something that would be good to know.

On 11th January 2020 Microsoft are ending all support for Windows Server 2008 R2. I started working for my new employer around 5 months ago and we operate across a multi-site environment using a single Server 2008 R2 domain controller for all sites (5 offices in 5 different towns) and no virtualisation. The server is a relatively old Tandberg branded setup with only 4Gb RAM and a single 2Ghz Xeon E5504. But I know that Tandberg defunct around 2010 so the server is at least 10 years old and the spec sheet on it isn't great given the size of the organisation and level of dependency on IT. The organisation I work for is a national charity but as we are an independent branch, we don't get direct funding from anyone unless it's for a designated project - and even then the funding isn't massive. Which means I hardly have an IT budget to work with. My concern is that with Server 2008 R2 losing all support from Microsoft, we are going to NEED to move onto a more up to date version of Server. I know that it's possible to 'upgrade' the current server onto Server 2012 R2 but in my personal opinion, I would prefer to move across to something more future proofed such as Windows Server 2016 or 2019. But this would mean doing a totally clean install of the new OS and then migrating the servers data from backup as I know its just not viable to upgrade to these from such an old version of Windows Server. My major concern comes from the fact that I believe that in order to safely move up to a more up to date version of Windows Server that we will need to purchase a brand new server? I'm the head of IT within the organisation by default as I'm the only IT employee so I'm trying to gauge what is going to be the solution moving forward. Cost is a significant factor since the organisation actually doesn't have an IT budget - even though we have over 120 PC's, laptops and other mobile devices (40 paid staff and over 90 volunteers) across the 5 sites. So this increases to the pressure on me to find a solution which will both work and be a realistic cost for the organisation. To add to the frustration, any work conducted will have to be done during business working hours since our building is leased and has a compulsory lockup between 6pm and 6am so no personnel are allowed in the building between those hours. Any ideas? Am I just overthinking the whole situation? It's a difficult one really. I just fancied getting some other technical opinions on the situation before I go into a gradual decent of madness and see whether anyone has any thoughts or alternative solutions that I haven't considered (be sensible) xD

Yes. I've checked the logs and even tried replicating the issue real-time to see whether I can register an error or warning but it doesn't appear to identify anything. All current users are totally unaffected by the issue. Its only the username of new users which appears to be the problem. It will allow you to add any user into Active Directory but Windows will only allow that user to logon if it has a simple username like " steve " etc.

We only have 1 domain controller.

Probably a straight forward answer to this but I'm having an issue with Active Directory within 2008 R2. I can setup new users perfectly fine however, the most recently added users haven't been able to logon on the first occasion from their machines. There is no fault with the machines they are using as anyone else is able to logon to them and they are on the correct domain. The new users have logon usernames like JoeB or BobT. All of our other active users have logins like this, however the recent additions are unable to logon. I changed the usernames to remove the last letter (e.g. BobT became Bob) and this solved the problem of them not being able to login for the first time. I just can't understand why when the majority of our users from the last few months and years all have logon usernames in this format and they don't have a problem. I didn't set the system up - its a system which was setup a few years ago now so I don't know if there are any restrictions in place - but this still wouldn't explain why all our other current users have this format for their Windows usernames and now new users aren't able to login with them. Even stranger is Active Directory doesn't seem to have a problem with BobT or JoeB, but our machines just won't login with those details if they're a recently created user. No changes to the system have been made from what I'm aware. I have previously added users using the format above but it's just been over the last couple of weeks, it doesn't seem to want to play ball. Any ideas?