Maintaining Windows PCs for adult education class

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Rikkitic

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#2082819 2-Sep-2018 16:53

As a side note, I have some older working desktop PCs and various bits and pieces (display cards, PSUs, etc.) as well as some really older legacy stuff (many, many, many dial-up modems). I would love to find a home for some of this. The PCs are duo-core and Pentium. Not sure about Win 10 but they have mainly been running Win 7 without problem. If you have a use for any of this let me know and maybe we can work something out. I could also include some hard drives with the desktops, but they would be without the OS.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Gordy7

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#2082837 2-Sep-2018 17:13

Rikkitic:

As a side note, I have some older working desktop PCs and various bits and pieces

Thanks for the offer....

The class has three working PCs and more crippled PCs (need SW updates) popping out of cupboards...

I will get back to you if things expand...

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

robjg63

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#2082856 2-Sep-2018 18:22

You could investigate faronics deep freeze.
Don't know what your budget is, but I have used it for a while at work on trainee PCs.
The PC always boots back to the frozen point.

You can set it to shutdown at preset times and also set it to 'thaw' to run windows updates for example then lock itself down again.

They do have educational pricing that is pretty good - you would have to contact them for that.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

epr

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#2082863 2-Sep-2018 18:52

robjg63:
You could investigate faronics deep freeze.
Don't know what your budget is, but I have used it for a while at work on trainee PCs.
The PC always boots back to the frozen point.

You can set it to shutdown at preset times and also set it to 'thaw' to run windows updates for example then lock itself down again.

They do have educational pricing that is pretty good - you would have to contact them for that.

This is what I would suggest if possible.

wratterus

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#2084332 5-Sep-2018 13:50

I've used reboot restore with good success in the past. Does take a little management with Windows updates etc, but nothing too major.

gzt

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#2084598 5-Sep-2018 22:17

A separate hidden partition with an image would be my pick for this scenario. Images can be unique to the machine with drivers and so on. No backup storage load, no network load or even needed. It's not a backup and does not matter much if the drive is trashed, and won't fail if the network or nas is down or worse.

Gordy7

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#2084681 6-Sep-2018 07:50

gzt: A separate hidden partition with an image would be my pick for this scenario. Images can be unique to the machine with drivers and so on. No backup storage load, no network load or even needed. It's not a backup and does not matter much if the drive is trashed, and won't fail if the network or nas is down or worse.

I have decided on the simple approach...

Creating an image with Macrium Reflect for each machine...

Create a partition for data...

Create a partition for the image... I like the idea of using a hidden partition for the image...

Will look into how to create and access a hidden partition...

Thanks to all for discussion on ways to manage a network of computers...

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

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