Archive for the ‘Sys. Admin.’ Category
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
The SMART .notebook format is simply a zipped set of XML and SVG files, This may be common knowledge but it is certainly the first time I have come across it.
To test it you can create a file in SMART Notebook rename the extension from .notebook to .zip, double click to open, you will be presented with several files named pagen.svg where n is a number, as well as a series of other files and folders including settings.xml, preview.png and metadata.xml.
The XML and SVG files can be edited in notepad, or perhaps more useful for the SVG files in a program such as Inkscape.
Posted in Sys. Admin., Things You Find | No Comments »
Saturday, September 1st, 2007
Seeing as Catherine and I finally bought our own house and it looks like we might be staying here for much longer than we have ever stayed anywhere else, we are looking at options for home networking, our current solution involves a 802.11b Wireless Network for laptop connectivity and a cable for my PC, that has to be removed each night to close the living room door.
Posted in Misc., Sys. Admin. | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
I am currently trying to diagnose several Windows XP SP2 computers with severe network problems, the bottleneck is in the network. Whilst deploying a group policy object the Windows Installer Service crashed due to a network time-out, and this was the resultant response from Error Reporting:
So there you go the problem with Windows XP is Windows Vista!
Posted in Sys. Admin. | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Recently purchaced and installed a new HP ProLiant DL320s to run as the site primary file server, had some issues with Windows 2003 R2 32-bit as it repeatedly BSODed before getting into graphical setup, tried the drivers for the SAS controller also tried the disc on a different computer to no avail. After chatting with a few people someone asked why I wasn’t going for 2k3 R2 64-bit, the main reason for not using it was it I had not had a chance to test it out in a test environment and wasn’t overly happy putting it into a live environment, looked at the software that was going on the File Server and all seemed ok, installed the ProLiant Support Pack migrated files, setup file screening and quotas. All was well, server running very fast and very happy.
Came to install BackupExec 10d yesterday, BIG mistake seeminly when I checked to see if BackupExec supported Windows 2003 R2 64-bit on a x64 Architecture I got confused, yes remote agents are supported on that architecture and the media server is supported on IA64 Architectures, however the media server is not supported on Windows 2003 R2 64-bit (x64)… wooops.
Fortunatly it seems that all is not lost as BackupExec 11d looks like it will work and the options from 10d can be upgraded to 11d, now all I have to do is cost it all up. Note to self and other system Administrators read Symantecs compatability lists VERY carefuly.
Posted in Sys. Admin. | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
I have done this a couple of times at the request of BT and NTL engineers when internet connections haven’t been working as expected:
netsh int ip reset [log_file_name]
Very useful if you a struggling to figure out why you can’t even ping 127.0.0.1.
Posted in Sys. Admin. | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 21st, 2005
Found a very useful tool called ISORecorder for creating ISOs from CDs, it works well with daemon tools, and burns ISO images created with nLite, pretty good replacement for the ISO Burning portions of Nero.
If you wanted a burning tool similar to Nero with the ability to add individual files and directories to a CD Image take a look at the free CD Burner XP.
On a totaly different topic, there is a heated discussion going on over here about the relative merrits and disadvantages of Wireless Mice over Wired Mice… if you feel like a bit of an expert feel free to join in!
Posted in Sys. Admin. | No Comments »
Monday, June 6th, 2005
Started a new job today, won’t tell you lot where 
Seems like it is going to be a challenge though… I am sure I am going to be making an occasional post about what I am doing, but basicly my task is to take the Environment up from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2003… sound familiar?
Posted in Sys. Admin. | No Comments »
Friday, May 6th, 2005
n Aprils raft of patches, hotfixes and updates delivered via SUS, WSUS or Windows Update; Microsoft chose to release Windows Installer 3.1 the updated version of the install engine Microsoft has been pushing for the last 2 years.
However at the beginning of the week Steven Bink of bink.nu noticed that the update had been pulled from SUS, further inspection showed that it had in fact gone totaly missing from the Microsoft Website. Many have pointed to KB Article 898628
This blunder by Microsoft could cause some major headaches for IT Administrators who rely of Group Policy Software Management to install and update software throughout their enterprise.
Posted in Sys. Admin. | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 28th, 2005
We have been having a couple of problems with the soon to be replaced Software Update Services (SUS):
First and formost, large files do not syncronise between the Master SUS Server and the Slave at a satalite site. The two that have caused us the most problems have been Windows XP SP2 (266MB) and Windows 2003 SP1 (337MB). The error message is the rather criptic “0×80072EFE: The connection to the server was lost“. The soloution, however, is a simple one. Simply take the files from the Master SUS server on USB key or CD and dump them on the Slave SUS Server.
Second problem, was Active Server Pages EventID 5 messages in the application log, seemingly caused by SUS in the Default Application Pool. What it turns out is permissions on the IIS directorys were preventing the SUS application (or any other application for that matter) from writing fairly meaningless information to disk. The steps for resolving this message are found at this KB Article (842493)
However! put up with SUS for the time being, WSUS is on its way soon™
Posted in Sys. Admin. | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2005
I have discovered a serious gripe, I have been trying to deploy all sorts of applications via GPSI into a Windows XP domain. For the most part I have had great sucess, old executables with a setup.exe I have been able to extract the files and install them manualy, or take an instalation image. Some new installs I have just been able to copy the install MSI files.
However there is a certain company who creates a product called InstallSheild, that produces the most convolute, screwy, malformed MSI packages you could imagine. Why? I don’t know, everyone else manages it perfectly well, maybe it is so that we all have to use their AdminStudio package to re-package our software, who knows.
Anyway, if you value your systems administrators don’t use this software, you could be causing them a nightmare.
Posted in Sys. Admin. | No Comments »