Work – Page 14 – Absoblogginlutely!

Dell Firmware and software update DVD

By Andy on Thursday, November 29, 2007

If you have several Dell servers (or even just one server) then I would highly recommend downloading the Systems Management Dell DVD. Inserting this DVD in the server drive will then show you a list of all the firmware, drivers and software that needs to be updated on the server. This is a great tool for ensuring that your Dell server is up to date and you don’t need to download all the patches each time on the server or even worry about where they are located on the Dell website. I find it really difficult to work out which files are needed and this DVD is really helpful. Included on the DVD is the OpenManage 5.3 suite of software that came out fairly recently. Note that if you install it then you will want to go back to the alerts page as there maybe new alert categories.

I know IBM do a similar service as I used to use it when installing Netfinity servers and I assume HP does too.

Incidentally I found out about this by subscribing to the Dell Technical Update Subscriptions

70-290 passed.

By Andy on Friday, September 28, 2007

My passing score was 928 (pass was 700) so I passed comfortably – which is a very nice feeling and something I’ve maintained in all the exams I’ve taken with Microsoft so far. I now have 1 more to go and then I get my MCSA exam. This exam was quite different to the ones I’ve done before – there were 45 questions and about 10 (or more) were simulation exams. Personally I like these questions as it’s a lot easier to recognise the process needed to go through as opposed to the previous “drag and drop to put in order” box questions where you have to remember the exact wording on the dialog boxes that in real life you pay little attention to as you use them every day.
After 20 questions the screen froze, for ever, and ever and ever. Eventually I went out to see the receptionist but when I came back the machine was waiting for the next question – it takes a long time to load some of the simulation questions. I was really nervous at this point as the first 20 questions were easy and I was confident I had about 19 of them correct. I really didn’t want to start again.
After this scare the questions seemed to get harder but a lot of them were similar to the questions in the official MS press books and there were some questions I had seen that were identical to various test prep software solutions although I didn’t use the MeasureUp software for this exam which I have used in the past. Now it’s onto 70-291….

Backup BackupExec Symantec Veritas Work WSUS

0xe00084af failure in symantec backup exec caused by wsus 3 installation

By Andy on Thursday, May 17, 2007

Fixed! One of my servers has been failing to backup with the error “0xe00084af The directory or file was not found, or could not be accessed. Final error category: Job Errors. For additional information refer to link V-79-57344-33967” I spent ages troubleshooting the errors and trying to work out what was going on and found that it would fail to backup any file on the local hard disk of the machine.
I posted a note in the symantec forums and didn’t hear anything back, but did find a post that upgrading to 10d might fix it (not a current solution as this would mean purchasing an upgrade of the software for the exchange agent and the exchange agent is currently working)
The other solution was to stop SQL servers on the box. This server was the WSUS box and I had also recently upgraded it to version 3 of WSUS. This created (at least) two new services – SQL Server VSS Writer and Windows Internal Database (Microsoft ##SSEE). Through trial and error I discovered that stopping the SQL Server VSS Writer service meant the backup would work, which is weird as why this should affect me backing up something like c:\jobs\fred.bat which has nothing to do with SQLI don’t know.
I’m hoping that my forum posting about the problem will get a better solution but for now I’m just pleased to be able to backup my file server.

Bugs Work

Sema4 drop down lists slow?

By Andy on Tuesday, April 24, 2007

We had a customer who had a new installation of Sema4 (accounting and timesheets package) installed on a new pc and the performance of the software was abysmal in some cases. It was reported to me that if they opened the package and selected timesheets and then selected the employee drop down list, there would be a long wait for the dropdown box to appear and the program would appear to hang. I timed it and it took 7 minutes (for about 50 users) for the dropdown box to appear after it was clicked when the timesheet screen was first loaded.
The very strange solution is posted in the extended entry….

Symantec Work

Symantec Tech Support phone number

By Andy on Wednesday, March 14, 2007

United States Technical Support – Phone: 800 342 0652 or 407 357 7600. Be prepared for a long wait

Blackberry Work

Blackberry at work

By Andy on Sunday, February 25, 2007

We got Blackberry 8703e leashes at work on Friday afternoon so I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the weekend playing around with the functionality and working out how to do things. It’s a shame that their legal department spends more time writing a HUGE software licence and warranty booklet – 133 pages in all the different languages yet the getting started manual is only 51 pages, 10 of those are the terms and conditions. Strangely enough there is no mention of how long to keep the blackberry charged before using it or any instructions as to the various lights on the device, normally there are warnings of dire consequences and doom if batteries are not charged for 18 hours OR MORE!

Gmail Google Lotus Notes Productivity Work

Lotus Notes Productivity

By Andy on Saturday, February 10, 2007

I’ve been doing a lot of research,reading and studying in improving my productivity and time management recently. This morning I came across the Getting Things Done with Lotus Notes document which really strikes me as an oxymoron. Notes seems to be the most counterproductive piece of software out there and it is not helping me in my productivity. So maybe I’ll get this document to see how it should be done.
One of the things that I picked up from one of the books was to use 1 calendar for everything which is ok if you are single and don’t have a spouse that also needs to see your calendar but they don’t work for your company and have access. As we both have google accounts, I thought that syncing the Notes calendar to google calendar would work as then my wife can see the google calendar and we could both use the calendars to ensure we didn’t doublebook events. I did find the Companion Link for Google Calendar software but it doesn’t work very well.
The synchronization takes forever (when it does work) and I’ve ended up with duplicate entries in google but with different times – 1 hour apart I could understand due to some funky dst issues, but these are a couple of hours apart. Recurring appointments are not supported (although recurring appointments that have been canceled appeared in gmail but active recurring appointments didn’t)
Still, at least I now have a base copy in Google calendar which I will hopefully be able to keep up to date.

Work

Verizon Wireless software

By Andy on Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Verizon software can be dowloaded from vzam.net for the pcmcia card – useful to know as it doesn’t seem to be easily found on the main Verizon website

FriendsInTech SBS Work

Friends In Tech Puzzler

By Andy on Saturday, January 27, 2007

I’ve posed a puzzler at Friends In Tech about an issue I had when upgrading a NT4 domain to Small Business Server 2003. It will be interesting to see if anyone comes up with the correct answer but also to get some responses from other techs and hopefully it will encourage conversations on the website and forums.

Sage Timeslips Work

Timeslips configuration/installation issue.

By Andy on Thursday, January 25, 2007

If you get the message “Another program is accessing your timeslips database in a way that prevents you from accessing it” then (in my case) the solution is as follows.

On the machine that is not having the problem, click on start/all programs/time slips/Station Administrator. Click on Help/About and make a note of the *install folder*. In my opinion this should really be named the config folder!
On the pc that is having the problem, do the same thing and you will find that the install folder is different (possibly c:\program files\timeslips).
Click on Options menu and then Change Database location – browse to the folder that was on the working pc and select the timeslips.cfg file.
Click ok (or done) and restart timeslips. You may be prompted to upgrade/update the timeslips data and then your timeslips data will be accessible again.

The menu names above are taken from memory but should be sufficient to get you working again. PS Sage’s phone support is 800 555 2542 but you will need a support contract.