Windows Live Mail is very flaky!

Sorry but there is no other way to write that. I have just had it up to here with the flakiness of WLM compared to Outlook Express and Outlook. Especially on IMAP accounts. WLM's support even of ordinary IMAP is patience-testing enough before you try to set up access to Gmail IMAP and get a further increase in the voluminous error messages that every send/receive operation generates.

When I first saw WLM I liked it a lot. The interface design is very modern, it being designed for Vista. But beneath that appealing appearance is a product that is flakier than its predecessor. WLM went through a public beta program that I participated in. It is quite the norm to get lots of error messages when downloading mail, particularly on IMAP. Yet MS could make IMAP work on Outlook and Outlook Express. Even Gmail works just fine on those platforms.

Next gripe: neither of Outlook 2007 or WLM can do RSS either. Apparently there is some component that has not installed itself properly and none of the feeds will automatically update. Thunderbird can do everything and doesn't throw the errors like WLM can. Out it goes!

Using Loopback Policy to set a per-location default printer

Last year I talked briefly about how loopback policy works. This is the system that Microsoft has built into Group Policy to enable a user policy to be applied to a computer that is dependent on the OU that the computer's account is stored in. This is a great system because it enables a policy to be applied to a user that can be targeted by according to the physical computer that they are logging onto. One obvious example of this is to set a default printer for a user that changes depending on where the nearest printer to the room they are in, is located. Because the setting is set for each user individually, it can't be done in an ordinary GPO, because the computer account does not set user policy settings; these are set by the directory location of the user account.

Previously to set the default printer, we would have a mandatory profile with the printer default defined in it. The best we could do with this is to define that users in one particular part of the school would have a particular mandatory profile for the nearest printer to their home room. But if that user or users went to another part of the site, their default printer could not change to reflect the fact that they had moved, so this system has obvious limitations.

One important issue to deal with when using loopback policy is the way in which it becomes retroactive on other GPOs in the same branch of the directory tree. When I did my MOC training classes at the local polytech, all the material showed the use of the same OUs to store both computer and user accounts. Naturally this is the method that I followed to set up our school's directory tree for users and computers. However this gets messy when a loopback policy is applied to an OU because the user policy is combined with other user policies and these policies get applied to every user, not just the users they were targeted at. For example, in a school, commonly pupils are going to get a locked down desktop with a restricted Start menu and limits on local hard drives, say.  A teacher or technician on the other hand might not have the same restrictions and they should have a full Start menu and be able to access all drives. If your user and computer accounts are in the same branch of the GPO tree then applying a loopback policy to a computer in that branch will also result in the rest of the user GPOs applying to every user who logs in to a computer in the branch, regardless of the user accounts being in different OUs or some of them (not all) being in different branches. The fix for this is to put computer and user accounts into different OUs that are in different branches and then the loopback policy will only have effect on specific user GPOs.

Setting the default printer itself is easy, just two lines of VBScript code in a logon script:

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
objNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\DC02\18_Colour_Printer_4050_Vista"

One thing to watch out for is that the default setting will not show up in your printer list (i.e. a checkmark next to a named printer). This fooled me in the past when I did this in a login script because it looked like the script wasn't working. This time around I tested it out and it does indeed work, but the lack of visual confirmation in the user interface is offputting. There are several ways of setting the default printer including registry settings but the login script is probably the simplest to apply across a site using GPOs and thereby leveraging the advantages of centralised administration with the server tools.

UPDATE: If you are using printer deployment policy on Windows Server 2003 R2 you may find your default printer connection script fails with a message saying the printer cannot be found. The solution I have found to this is to insert a new second line in the above script so that in this example it reads:

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")

objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\DC02\18_Colour_Printer_4050_Vista"

objNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\DC02\18_Colour_Printer_4050_Vista"

Classroom AV 1: USB & VGA Faceplates

This is the first part of my forthcoming series of articles on classroom AV system installation. This article will specifically address, the thorny subject of how to get USB and VGA cables into wall plates. Firstly, we much prefer to use premade VGA cables, which have moulded plugs on each end of the cable and are supplied in standardised lengths. Making your own cable up is very fiddly due to the tiny little pins cramped close together being very hard to solder. I know of one organisation which found that the wires tend to break off and had to have both plugs resoldered on at considerable expense because of the difficulty in working on the plugs. So, even if you are installing a cable inside a wall, use premade cables if at all possible.

Second point is, don't use flying leads except at the fixed end. That is, the end which connects to your ceiling mounted projector (or a wall mounted device such as an electronic whiteboard, etc). That's OK because the connector won't be disconnected that much and the equipment for the most part doesn't get moved that often or is out of reach anyway. But it's a different story for the end that connects to the PC. The cable will come out of the wall. The plug will be connected and disconnected often. The wear and tear is enough that the plug could get damaged easily as well as the flying cable. You don't want that plug getting broken or that cable getting damaged because then you have to replace the whole cable.

Thirdly, use a female connector at the PC end of the cable, even though the PC requires a male plug. That is because male connectors have the small pins that can get bent or broken easily. Far better to have the fragile male connector on another attached lead that can be replaced easily rather than your in-wall cable.

Now, how to get the cable to come out into a faceplate. There are two ways that I have investigated. The first is a specialised faceplate connector made by Switchcraft called the EH Series. These are essentially a gender changer mounted onto a faceplate. You may be familiar with VGA gender changers already which are a male and a female plug or socket connected back to back in one metal shell. They make very handy cable joiners as well. Switchcraft make their EH series VGA faceplate adaptors in all possible combinations and they are reversible. The biggest issue is that they are not readily available in NZ, and will have to be shipped to you from Australia or the US at considerable expense. I was quoted around $12 each in a quantity of 10, but postage was a minimum of $40 from either Australia or the States.

The second option, which I have used before, is to mount a modified cable plug to a special plastic faceplate supplied by electrical manufacturers. PDL and HPM both make a special version of their standard faceplate series which have a VGA shaped cutout and the standard mounting hole spacing. HPM make variants which will carry two connectors. To fit a premade cable's plug into one of these you have to modify the connector shell, which I'll show how to do in a future article; basically you cut off the thumbscrews which gives you access to the plug's mounting holes and you attach the plug to the faceplate using hex threaded nuts (which you can buy from Jaycar as cat no. PM0852).

Once you have this mated to the faceplate then you can use a standard male to male patch lead to connect the PC into the wall.

The USB connectors are also available in the same Switchcraft series, with the same availability and cost drawbacks. This time, however, I was able to find a similar product made by Neutrik which can be purchased by mail order from Farnell or over the counter from Jansen. The NAUSB is a reversible A-female to B-female gender changer mounted on a standard Neutrik faceplate assembly, designed to fit onto a standard XLR panel. Let's suppose you have a standard USB cable coming out of, say, a projector or electronic whiteboard. There is a B female socket on the equipment which you connect using a standard A male to B male USB lead. The end to the PC will be an A male plug. Instead of bringing that out of the wall as a flylead, you set up one of these faceplate connectors so that it plugs into the NAUSB's female A connector. On the open side is the female B connector. You connect another standard A male to B male USB cable to this connector and the A male plug goes right into the back of your PC without any other adaptors needed. The NAUSB costs $10 from Farnell (ex GST) or $12 over the counter from Jansen (incl GST). 

The insert can be reversed to place the ends on whichever order suits your situation. For example suppose you want to use one of these to get the signal into the wall from the equipment. You would set it up so that the A end faces the equipment and the B end faces the wall cable. It works perfectly every time. The only other connector of this type I was able to locate on my travels of the Internet is an IP68 rated connector on a flying lead that Jaycar sells. Not only do they cost almost $20 each, they are on a short lead that terminates in a five way header. You would have to fit a matching plug on your USB lead to connect it to this adaptor. Both the Switchcraft and Neutrik adaptors have the advantage that the cables just plug in on both sides. The one issue for both these and the VGA connectors is the depth needed behind the panel in the wall. If you have limited space you may have to find an alternative way of mounting the faceplate to allow for this.

Classroom Audiovisual System Series

I'm going to write a series of articles on AV system installations with particular relevance to school classrooms. A full AV installation embodies a number of possible components:

• A projector or other display device
• A sound system
• AV source such as Video player or Computer
• Electronic whiteboard

These are the ones I'm familiar with. Over the next few months I'll be doing 13 permanent projector installations at our school, many of them in conjunction with electronic whiteboards. These articles will cover all of the technical aspects related to the different parts of a classroom audiovisual system.

Windows PE REQUIRES 512 MB RAM!

This short little article is the postscript to an extremely frustrating afternoon at work trying to image a PC using Windows PE as the OS environment. It is stated somewhere in the WinPE documentation that 512MB of memory is required to boot. However if your PC has less than this, you won't see any warning message; instead, your computer will just behave strangely and bizarrely, causing you huge frustration. The following are the problems that were encountered on a PC that, unbeknown to me, only had 256 MB of memory, and appeared to boot WinPE normally:

• External USB devices were not detected and could not be used
• Diskpart hung and could not complete some commands
• Some applications would not run at all
• Some applications would give a spurious error message like "The system cannot find the file specified"
• Some applications would terminate abnormally with error messages like "Not enough storage is available to process this command".

My last resort after trying many things such as burning additional CDs with different software on them, trying to copy applications to the PC's hard drive and so on and so on, was to take the HDD to another PC whereupon everything worked normally. It wasn't until the next day that I remembered the 512MB memory requirement for WinPE and that this PC only had 256MB. I increased the PC's memory and then reassembled it with the HDD and this time everything worked properly.

Logitech Z4 2.1 Speaker System

If you've ever set up DVD players with projectors in a school classroom, you know that you need something better than the tinny little speakers in the projector itself for sound. It was quite apparent that small computer speakers, which often have an output of 2 - 3 watts, would also be unsuitable, lacking both power and fidelity. We started off using wooden Genius PC speakers, which cost about $60 a pair, and have an output of 10 watts. These produce enough volume but are not high on sound quality. We have begun to install projectors permanently mounted off the ceiling in our classrooms together with electronic whiteboards and it was an opportune time to look for better speakers.

After a bit of hunting around I ordered in a set of Logitech Z4 speakers for evaluation. I already have a set of X230 speakers attached to my work PC, which can be thought of as a step down from the Z4; they have similar functionality overall but less power and are cheaper, and the speaker cables are permanently attached to the satellites, which is not convenient for any application where the speakers need to be much further apart than the width of a computer screen. We had a look previously also at the Altec Lansing MX5021 system which is a more powerful edition at a higher price. The Logitech speakers have enough power however to fill an average classroom.

Inside the box is the sub, the satellites, a wired volume control, power cord and audio cable. Setting it all up is easy enough. The sub plugs into the mains and then all the other bits connect to the sub. The speakers each have an attached lead fitted with an RCA plug, so that they can have extension leads fitted if more distance is needed. An audio input socket is provided on the rear of the sub. The volume control, which also provides power switching, bass level adjustment and a second input socket as well as a headphone output, connects by a cable using a 9 pin D plug. The sound quality is about what I had expected; whilst not perfect it is very good for the price of the system, and the speakers handled being cranked up to nearly full power, very well. The wired remote volume and bass adjustment controls are very convenient and the sub is well made, with a good solid grille that should withstand the rigours of classroom use. The satellites have a screw slot for hanging on the wall and a cable guide which is accessible after removing the attached stands.

I expect these systems to handle all of our classroom needs and be a much more worthwhile setup with the electronic whiteboards and hung projectors in the classrooms that we are fitting out for these.