Help with school lab

It sounds like you have dirty power. We've got a similar issue. We've had to put all our switches and servers onto UPS to ensure they don't get hit with small surges etc. Bit of an expensive exercise, seeing as we have ten servers and 17 major switches. But definitely looks like your switch could be busted. Probably find you had blown ports to start with. When you replace the switch, let us know what happens
 
graviti said:
It sounds like you have dirty power. We've got a similar issue. We've had to put all our switches and servers onto UPS to ensure they don't get hit with small surges etc. Bit of an expensive exercise, seeing as we have ten servers and 17 major switches. But definitely looks like your switch could be busted. Probably find you had blown ports to start with. When you replace the switch, let us know what happens
Click to expand...

It works out cheaper then downtime thou or bust hardware.
 
So....... I managed to get row a & d working. Hooked it up to the 24 port switch. All workstations can log in to the domain now.
Now im looking for someone who is really good with windows server 2003 and catlabs in general to consult with the cat teachers and advise them on a way forward.
I only recently started at the school and im more of a hardware guy. i have very limited server setup experience. All that they basically want is to limit users and be able to monitor user activity. I know this can be done via the gpo, but i really dont have the time to look into that.
The teachers only really know how to add a user and change a password. Anyone who is interested and in cape town please let me know.
 
Man, I wish I was in cape town! Adding users and changing passwords is very easy and fast...we used to add all the pupils every year, all 1600+! So yeah, I can do about 30 users in 30 minutes...and resetting a password? Used to do about 3-6 pupils an hour every day almost...can do 5or6 in 3 minutes, including giving them the instruction of logging in and getting a new password;-)
 
I wish I was closer to CT as well. We add about 300+ users at the beginning of each year, and it takes +- 5 mins to do so. Locking down users is easy as pie, if you know how. We've got a tight network up our end. 100 Student PC's all locked down, with roaming profiles etc.

I can't really suggest much, except to hope that a local company can come on board to help you out. I can do it, but I am 1800km away :)
 
Thanks guys. Too bad you not in CT. Dont you know anyone in CT that can give this people advise? Prefebly not a company cause they generally charge through the roof. I think the best bet would be for me to do a crash course in server 2003 quick.
 
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Too bad I'm not in CT. I used to strugg;e with a lot of problems like this. When I took over our IT department. Running 150 pc's now for the staff, CAT and IT, no problem. GPO's have solved a LOT of my problems. It really is worth looking at how it's done. I spent hours researching it on the net, now I really enjoy working on a tight security network.

There are many good tutorials available on the net regarding GPO's. Just google it, and good luck. They are actually much easier to work with than you originally think when looking at it for the first time!

Cheerz!
 
I got a few ebooks today on windows server 2003 including server 2003 for dummies. Ill start with that and see where it takes me. If im strugling with something im sure ill find some advise in the forums. Thanks again for the troubleshooting tips.
 
For starters, look at mandatory profiles for the users. basically limits the damage they can cause with profiles. Then look for GPO to delete cached copies of profiles. Then all the GPO stuff to limit user privileges, such as using the Run option, or having access to the Control Panel. You can always PM to establish some ideas. As I said, we got a pretty tight setup here, and I can try and step you through some ideas
 
Also make sure you don't make the profiles too small...our 1600+ users had very little space, like 100 megs, and sometimes it causes issues when they want to log out and they have overused the space...but if you implement good practices from the word go it will all go smooth! And also keep in mind: where there's a pupil, there is a security breach...they will find a way:-P
 
Bringing CT to Gauteng is as easy as a program called logmein, i use it for my remote sites, very easy and fun to use so i suggest any of you guys test drive it and give quick1 a quick 1 :D sounds funny but that would be my first take and once you use it you'll never wanna use anything else.

I'm available if you guys need any help regarding configuration.
 
Well, generally I just use remote desktop at home or on computers, or XtraLogic Remote Desktop Client on my Android...works without problems. The thing that they need done however is the teachers trained in Active Directory. Training is all good and well, but it is nearly impossible to do it over the phone, and video/remote conferencing is not the way...too frustrating. You can't strangle them if they keep stuffing up;-) I would probably have a different outlook on this if our country had decent internet, and everything weren't so slow doing things remotely.
 
Then maybe they need to gooi some budget and invest on the cbt nuggets, my 2c opinion.
 
Our biggest client is a big private school. More than R50 000 000 flows into their system yearly I suspect doing the maths the one year...and getting them to throw any money beyond the R100 000 - R250 00 at IT is a mission...even if it means better internet and such. But yeah, people get in the way...things will change...time is a great teacher:-)
 
In my view, schools haven't yet realised that if they offer CAT and have a number of computers in the school a network administrator becomes someone they should have on site. Support companies often rank schools pretty low on their priority list, and problems can often take days to fix.

I would suggest that the school looks into sorting out their power problems if it's dirty power, since far more than computers can be damaged by that.
 
Asha'man X said:
In my view, schools haven't yet realised that if they offer CAT and have a number of computers in the school a network administrator becomes someone they should have on site. Support companies often rank schools pretty low on their priority list, and problems can often take days to fix.

I would suggest that the school looks into sorting out their power problems if it's dirty power, since far more than computers can be damaged by that.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on that. CAT is becoming bigger and bigger every year. I'm currently IT department head at my school, and we are running three labs with 40 computers per lab. I'm teaching the subject as well with two other teachers, and between us we have about 350 students from Grade 10 to 12 taking CAT, and about 60 doing IT. This means that we spend so much time teaching and preparing that the technical part of the network is hard to keep up. I think that more and more schools need a dedicated IT technician so the teachers can concentrate on the subject. I'm currently pushing hard at school for someone like this, even if the person can only be at school 2 or 3 days per week.
 
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