Computer Performance has a useful tip on installing printers via a login script. One thing I noticed when I tried it was that it needed the descriptive name of the printer (in quotes if a space is used) instead of the sharename of the printer ie
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /q /n”\\server01\sharp al-1655cs”
Ok – hopefully this will be the last DST post – until Monday morning of course when we discover all of the bugs that nobody thought of until it was too late. All of my customers boxes are now patched as of 8.55pm on Friday night. I dread to think how much time has been spent on this exercise. For those of you that are wondering, one of the reasons we didn’t do it earlier was the number of changes to the patches that have come out of Microsoft and other companies – indeed I spotted a post on one of the blog feeds about a patch coming out this afternoon!
I’m off to enjoy a relaxing weekend and some birthday cake on Sunday!
The remix (and original) mp3’s for code monkey are available and stay in your head a lot longer than the couple of minutes you listen to them. I particularly like the Kristen mix.
The Laptop song is good too – especially with the bit about the keyboard making a line across the screen – I’m sure that comes from a Dell laptop. The rest of the Jonathan Coulton’s songs are available too.
This may be the reason email has been vanishing from my parents in law computer. A couple of times they have had emails disappear from outlook express, normally after a maintenance period has occured on the pc. Although they have Onecare “installed” it’s not working properly as Microsoft still can’t fix the bug where onecare can’t talk to the activation server to let it know it has been installed on the pc. Some parts of onecare work, like the firewall and the ability to delete mail at random, but the virus updates don’t (and you get an annoying red box popup each time you reboot the computer)
1. Wait until the last minute before releasing patches, notifications and alerts to your customers and endusers.
2. Get your IT staff (or better yet somebody else’s) to apply the patch out of business hours, preferably after you have worked your evening overtime, so say 10pm BUT before 11.30 when the backup kicks in.
3. Hey presto, your IT staff are too tired as they were working late so they sleep in and therefore don’t use any extra electricity or energy whilst they are in bed in the morning instead of being at work – et voila – you have saved some energy.
I had to invoke Business critical support tonight (and I’m still working!) after a SBS2003 server would not complete the Internet Connectivity Wizard, complaining on the network configuration and website configuration. Microsoft give their partners free “Server Down” support if the problem is business critical affecting production. They will work with you 24/7 until the problem is solved. After 3 hours on the phone with remote desktop support we ended up rebooting the server and starting a repair installation of the server. For those of you who are Microsoft Partners and didn’t know about the support, then go to Business Critical Support on partner.microsoft.com, a registered passport account is required that is joined to a Microsoft partner.
I’ll update more on the patch problem when we get a resolution, but so far it’s been a long 7.5 hours working on this – dst can wait.
Skype have now introduced premium phone and data capabilities if you have the latest version. Funnily enough their blog post doesn’t mention anything about it being great for those who want to host their own “personal video chats” or voicechats for a charge – instead it focuses on the use for support calls and such like……. I’m not convinced this will be the number one use for the technology, after all I think i’d spend more time talking someone through setting up a beta version of skype than I would solving their problem – although it would stop people asking me for free support – I could just tell them to call me on my skype number after they’ve worked out how to install it 😉
Google have announced a partnership with BMW in germany to enable you to send directions to car when you need to find somewhere and have a suitable gps navigation. That’s a cool feature but a) are users driving along the road and googling directions at the same or b) have not learnt how to use the GoTo button on the gps unit already? Either option sounds rather scary to me.
After giving just over a weeks notice on the previous patch for daylight savings time, TODAY they announced a new service pack. Just what do they think IT professionals are doing this week? We don’t need to start installing more patches on servers 3 days before DST kicks in. I’m already working at 10pm as it is!
Our UPS started acting up last week so I contacted APC (who make Conext UPS’s) and I just received an RMA and notification of shipment – funnily enough their email routine is broken as the tracking number shows up as 5.0751E+14