Absoblogginlutely!

MT to WordPress Migration.

By Andy on Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I’ve just migrated the blog from the crusty old MovableType to WordPress. I was getting really fed up of really long build times in MT and only some of my pages keeping the current style. Some documents were just not getting republished. I think there may be some database corruption as I did have a few issues in the migration with Categories not being correct. I figured I could loose a couple of hundred blog posts – they were fairly old so probably out of date now anyway.

I stil have the theming, plugins, rss feed redirection etc to happen so you won’t see this post until I’m ready to switch over.

Kevin Donahue’s Export howto was very helpful but I did have to use a clean export file to get it to work correctly.

Vista XPSP2

Cleanup after Vista sp1 is installed.

By Andy on Friday, November 14, 2008

vsp1cln is a useful utility that removes files no longer needed after Vista sp1 has been installed and you are sure that you will not need to remove sp1. A useful utility but I’m surprised it is needed – after all you just needed to delete the $ntuninstall*$ files in XP

Exams Microsoft SBS Training Work

SBS2008 loadfest in Springfield 2008.

By Andy on Friday, November 14, 2008

I’ve never been to Springfield (any of them) before and tomorrow is the SBS2008 loadfest in Springfield, Ohio where people bring their machines to load SBS2008 on them and find out ways to automate the installation and demos and discussions about the new features in SBS2008. I’m really looking forward to this as it will be some great training and also a chance to network with some peers. I’m curious to see how it all works as SBS insists it is the only DHCP server on the network when the connect to internet wizard is run so I’m not sure how it will like all the SBS machines being plugged into the Lan.

I must admit I cheated/was too impatient/needed to test the installation of SBS2008 on my hardware so I kicked off an install before work this morning ,answered the remaining questions at lunch time today and now have an installation on the hardware. I wanted to make sure that the installation would work with my hardware and my disk layout. Now that I know it works I will either reinstall over the top tomorrow or install it into a virtual environment under hyper-v. The latter will enable me to snapshot the machine when playing with various what-if configurations.

This is all really good timing as yesterday I received my “fee” exam voucher from Microsoft for SBS2008 – there was a typo in the subject of the email that gave me the free voucher code for the exam. The only downside is that this will have to wait until I’ve passed at least one of my Windows2008 exams.

I had the beta of 2008 on my home training machine but it ran really slow as it was a virtual machine and the server didn’t have enough memory. Yesterday I purchased 4GB of ram for $70 (plus tax) and added that to the pc. I had an added bonus in that 1gb of ram had to be removed to make way for the 2gb sticks so I put these two sticks into my normal home pc.

I’m not sure if there are still spaces available – the click to register page still seems to work.

Exams Microsoft Training Windows 2008

MCSE upgrade time.

By Andy on Monday, November 10, 2008

It’s been a while since I got my MCSE qualification and I’m now starting to use Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 so it is time to update the certifications! Microsoft has a useful page on the transition path from MCSE on Windows2003 to MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional) – looks like a lot more studying to do, although the first exam 70-649 gives me three new MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist )qualifications immediately which is nice. The good thing is that I have until the end of the year to pass with the second shot offer AND to fulfill my annual review goals.

The training book has been ordered from the library and the virtual server has been fired up, updated and my vpn configuration tested to allow remote access back home (I managed to break this when upgrading my dd-wrt router)

Bugs Microsoft Technet Work

SQL2008 installation failed to install with 0x84b30001

By Andy on Monday, November 10, 2008

I got the 0x84b30001 error when trying to install the latest Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP) this evening. Taking a look through the error logs gave me the message “A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file: c:\e….0\x86\setup\x86\sqlncli10.msi”, each time the directory name was different. I tried running the SQL2008 express installation manually and got the same message. However double clicking on the sqlncli10.msi file from the log file would work – or seem to. Trying to do a repair gave me the same message. I then chose to delete the 2008 native client installation (the sqlncli10.msi package) as I knew that a successful installation would result in the client being installed again. The uninstall was successful so I then reran the sql2008 installation with no problems. MAP then installed successfully. I posted a note on the technet forums here in case anyone else has some follow up comments/questions. Now that I’m home I can’t actually run the assessment tool, but I’ll be able to do this tomorrow – hopefully it will give me the results I am after.

Dell OMSA Work

Dell Open Manage Server Administrator (OMSA) alert setup – updated

By Andy on Friday, November 7, 2008

Further to this post on how to set up Dell Open Manage Server Administrator (OMSA) for alerts I have amended the configuration files required to correctly configure OMSA.
I discovered that Dell’s documentation is incorrect and that running a batch file in an alert directly does not work – you need to call it with cmd.exe BUT you do not (normally) need to provide the path to cmd.exe – I have therefore changed the alert commands (shown in the extended entry).
I have also amended the dellalert.bat file as I also found that blat would not always work as there is no working blat profile when called from OMSA and there is no obvious way of setting a profile up. You could add the setup into dellalert.bat, trigger an alert and then remove the setup. Alternatively blat can have the mail server and the sender name provided in the dellalert.bat. This makes installation easier as all you need to do is copy the blat files to the windows directory. Again the updated dellalert.bat is in the extended entry.

SBS Work

I won a prize in the SMB Nation survey!

By Andy on Thursday, October 30, 2008

A while ago I filled out a survey as a Certified Small Business Specialist and my thoughts on Vista. There were 75 prizes up for grabs so the odds were pretty good for winning. I had completely forgotten about it until a package arrived in the post this morning. I won a rechargable torch (flashlight for the US readers). Alas I didn’t win a Microsoft jacket but a torch is always handy – I have a small keychain LED light that I use way more than I thought, so this one will also be helpful to have in the office toolkit – beats having to work in the dark when the normal torch has run out of batteries. It’s pretty powerful and I now have green spots in front of my eyes as I looked at the LED’s to see how many were on.

Microsoft Patches Security Windows 2000 Windows 2003 Windows Update Windows XP Work WSUS XPSP2

Windows 958644 direct download locations.

By Andy on Friday, October 24, 2008

I have spent all day patching servers, workstations and trying to find a direct download for the 958644 patch that got released last night. I was amazed when Microsoft even called us to join in a webconference for Microsoft partners about this patch – that is something new.
I was not so pleased when I called PSS to ask for a direct download to the patch as kb958644 does not have direct links, windows update services was timing out and the catalog website is badly broken. PSS informed me that as it was not a hotfix they could not provide me with the file and there was an 8-12 hour delay on callback from the server team. So instead I’ve been configuring wsus for servers (that were not already configured), approving patches and downloading by visiting windows updates – a VERY time consuming.
Anyway, without wasting more time – here are the download locations – I’d grab them before the server falls over too.

Thanks to Larry and Derek for the help in finding these.

Dell Work

Dell’s omclean to remove Open Manage remnants

By Andy on Wednesday, October 22, 2008

If you ever get a problem with Dell Open Manage failing to install because previous components are already installed AND you can’t remove the old components as the setup program will not initialize, take a look in the support\omclean directory and double click omclean. Click ok if it prompts you with the same errors that you got when you tried to uninstall from add/remove programs. You will be prompted to reboot at the end of the process. I’m not sure if clicking the ok button forces a reboot, but you can click the close button and the machine won’t reboot. At that point in time the offending software is no longer listed in add/remove programs. Arrange a reboot when convenient and install the new version of Open Manage, – 5.5 came out earlier this month. (omclean is also bundled in this download)

Exchange / Outlook Work

Outlook address not updated from AD when not in cached mode

By Andy on Wednesday, October 22, 2008

There are tons of reports on regenerating the offline address book and forcing outlook to download a new version once a change has been made, but that doesn’t really apply when outlook is not being used in cached mode.

I had renamed a couple of distribution lists but they were showing up as the old name in outlook for all my users. Turns out that I had renamed them on a server without the exchange add-ins which made it harder to troubleshoot as it all looked good on there! However, because of this I had not changed the Exchange General tab which includes the Display Name – sure enough this was showing the old name. I changed this and the users address book came up properly. Next time I’ll do ALL renames on my exchange server 😉