TechPublishing Now MS Certified

TechPublishing Now MS Certified
Professor Robert McMillen, MBA Microsoft Certified Trainer and Solutions Expert

Friday, August 17, 2012

We use UltraVNC to connect to our customers but we've been having problems since Windows started going to 64 bit. It ran so slowly it made it difficult to use. The refresh rate was horrendous. At first we thought it was because of the Windows Aero scheme, but even when we turned it off it still didn't act right.
I found out if you completely uninstall the product, reboot, and reinstall without checking the box to install as a service it works like it did in 32 bit. Pretty weird!
So all of us uninstalled and made the change and now the program works great again.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

This heat is causing some problems. I realize that the NW hasn't gotten the horrible heat that the rest of the country has gone through, but this area isn't ready for what we got either.
The VOIP phone system was down all day Monday. Then Tuesday had a short internet outage on one of our lines and last night it was down for 6 more hours.
Fortunately we have backup ISPs but what a pain.

Had a weird Outlook issue. When a customer went to send emails to over 600 people from his contact list Outlook threw a generic error saying it won't send. After some troubleshooting we found that all it takes is one address that has a space in it or some other format issue and that's what you get.
Fixing the emails with bad formatting allowed the customer to finally send the emails out.
Some detail from Outlook would have been helpful.


Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Backup Exec 2012 has all kind of strange issues. The main one I've found is that backups can work fine one day and get a writer error the next. The quick fix is to reboot the server but not all customers can appreciate that.
They really need to fix this problem. It has been going on for many versions, but it appears worse than it used to be with Windows servers.
Backing up VMware is easier than ever, except when you do Debian versions. It doesn't appear to work no matter what way it is configured. I haven't yet tried it with the VM turn off. Hard to do on a production server.

Monday, August 6, 2012

I created two new arrays for an Exchange 2010 high availability group. One was done on an IBM SAS controller while the other was done on an IBM ISCSI controller. One of the weird things about HA in Exchange is that both servers have to have the same drive letters or they cannot sync.
It doesn't matter that one is SAS and the other is ISCSI however, but the SAS controller is much faster.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

We just got the new Google Nexus 7. It is pretty awesome. I made some videos on it to post to You Tube http://youtube.con/user/clickx3

Went to the Hillsboro Oregon Air Show. Had some great front row seats thanks to KUIK. The fireworks were so close we could feel the heat. I put those videos up on the channel as well under Non Technical videos.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

I have an IBM ISCSI DS3400 and I went to add capacity to it today. I wanted to give more hard drive space to a partition where I'm running Exchange 2010. I had no problem adding the drive and adding free capacity to the array. The IBM GUI made it very easy. When I went to expand the partition with all this extra space it became clear I would have a problem.

Apparently adding to the partition has to be done by command line, and in this case I have to use the magic IBM cable and connect it to a laptop with a serial to USB adapter. I haven't had to use that cable in so long I don't know where it is or what the magic password is. Once i do find it I have the command ready to go. But that could take a while.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

You never know who you will work for or who will work for you. Today I had lunch with my first employee from ten years ago. He came with one of my customers who now works at my former employee's office after losing his job in January.
 Confused? I understand.
It reminds me of one of my staff who used to be my boss in 2001.
Who knows if I will work for one of my staff years from now?
It's best not to burn any bridges to possible employers of the future.