my world of IT

PRTG is by far my favoured tool for monitoring IT infrastructure. With its built in sensors you can check the PING time for a server, check that windows services are up and running or with a little tweaking monitor paper trays in a MFP (and so much more). A recently discovered feature for me is the sFlow monitor. This tracks… Read more

When trying to capture a Windows 8.1 (Enterprise 64bit for anyone that wants to keep track) using the System Centre Configuration Manager Capture Image ISO I kept getting the error message Task Sequence: Image Capture Wizard has failed with the error code (0x00004005). For more information, contact your system administrator or helpdesk operator. The image was as normal as any… Read more

As some readers maybe aware I work in a Secondary School; part of working life at any school is the odd fire alarm/drill. Looking up at my PRTG status monitor screens its quite easy to see at what time that drill happened. Nothing more than a novelty but hey thought it was intresting to see 🙂

There are lots of great reasons to replace personal printers with centralised photocopiers but one of the overlooked ones can be the greater ability to monitor these copiers using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). This article looks at keeping track of the status of the paper trays (how full they are!) using PRTG (http://www.paessler.com/prtg) on Sharp photocopiers. To get rolling… Read more

In this guide I will show you how to create a deployment of Greenfoot 2.3 using Group Policy Software Deployment while ensuring that the software is available for all users of the computer and removing the unnecessary desktop and start menu shortcuts. If you don’t feel like reading through the guide and you want to use the modifications listed above… Read more

School maybe out for summer but that doesn’t mean that the ICT Services team is having time off. One of the high priority tasks since starting my new job as Network Manager at an Academy in Oxford has been updating the storage and no I don’t mean SANs or DAS storage… add in some basic shelving from Rapid Racking and some… Read more

Since the upgrade from Hotmail Calendar to Outlook.com Calendar the import features for calendar files (namely ics) has become a lot easier/simpler. So to see how to import a ics file (for example from a British Airways booking) see the screen shots below.

A bit of a silly one this time round but when running a deploy/capture (with application installation half way through) SCCM 2012 task sequence just after installing the applications I got the error message. Task sequence: <task sequence name> has failed with the error code (0x00000032). For more information, contact your system administrator or helpdesk operator. As it turns out… Read more

The first thing that will strike you about any thin client is how small (in physical dimensions) they are and the 5818v is no exception. In the past this small size meant poor hardware specifications; however, this time is long behind us. The 5818v comes with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a Intel Atom D2550 dual core CPU, 16GB of local storage… Read more

One of the great features of the 10ZiG 5818v is the WE8 operating system. Based upon Windows 8 this thin client includes the same software that makes full Windows 8 PCs fast most notably kernel hibernation. The premise goes that when you click Shutdown on your PC the core components of Windows are hibernated and saved to a single file… Read more