The Hotel Vista

Had some problems at a hotel client last year when the first new Vista laptops started appearing with guests and delegates. The guest wireless has no password so its as simple as its gets really. Some of the laptops failed to get an IP address allocated and therefore wouldn't connect out. The laptop would associate and then do nothing or report Limited Connectivity. Other times they would work for a short time and then appear to disconnect. Also saw what looked like a normal connection, you could ping an external IP but website site addresses and hostnames wouldn't resolve - bit strange to diagnose. Needed a Gregory House moment.

I managed to track down a couple of registry keys that helped. Thought I'd better post them now just for the record following a discussion recently about dodgy wireless connections.

First one is from Microsoft KB933340
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dhcp\Parameters\DhcpGlobalForceBroadcastFlag \1
"0"= dword:00000000

I was reminded of the second one by Susan Bradley who pointed out Steve Riley's post.
Start a Command Prompt
(there's a cool short cut to this by shift-right-clicking a folder such as Documents)
(or use Windows-R key combo and type CMD)
then run the command
netsh int tcp set glo aut=dis

Which came first - the memory dump or the rainy day?

Just came across a useful sounding MS blog post c/o SMBManagedServices group at Yahoo. Talks about resolving 80% of memory dumps using the debugger, sounds easy really.

Anyway thought I'd best save the link somewhere prominent for a rainy day.

http://blogs.technet.com/petergal/archive/2006/03/23/422993.aspx

Whilst I'm on the theme of useful SBS Yahoo groups, also worth a look at ...
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/UKSBSG/

Symantec AntiVirus 10.x license expired at client

Got an SBS2003 network with around 20 clients on. I installed the new licence at the server but one of the clients refused to cooperate and just appeared in the Symantec System Center Console with a license expired and refused to deploy the new one even though there were unallocated seats. The error I was getting was 0x80004005 - helpful yeah!

Turned out the Windows Firewall was getting in the way. Disabling it fixed the problem temporarily so the licence would install but there was no client management available. All the tools like view event log failed. I found Symantec doc 2004070817071248 which talked about using port 2967 for client communications. Using the Group Policy Management in the server management console let me add a firewall port exception to enable this for all PCs on the network.

I updated the Windows Firewall policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative templates > Network > Network Connections > Windows Firewall > Domain profile
and edited the Define Port Exceptions to include this line:
2967:TCP:*:Enabled:Symantec AntiVirus Management - Port

Media Player authorisation

Recently put a new SBS2003 R2 Premium server in at a client. We're using the ISA Server 2004 component of Premium to provide monitoring and some internet access control. Someone spotted that you couldn't play video files from itv.com, in particular the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) ones. They use embedded media player for playback and kept giving an ISA server authorisation prompt.

The ISA logging at the server showed this error:
Denied Connection
SERVER 13/06/2008 09:31:10
Log type: Web Proxy (Forward)
Status: 12209 The ISA Server requires authorization to fulfill the request. Access to the Web Proxy service is denied.

Tracked the fix down to this article http://www.freelists.org/archives/isalist/11-2007/msg00016.html which talked about an error when Media Player tries to resolve the proxy name. With Microsoft ISA Firewall Client installed you can disable the Media Player proxy setting for HTTP (Tools>Options>Network>HTTP>Configure and change from browser to do not use). The Firewall Client will then handle ISA authorisation correctly.

Using the GPO method to apply the change across all PCs made life easy:
"User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Media Player\Networking"
set the "Configure HTTP Proxy" option to "Disabled"

Who to blame - Microsoft or cheap kit?

So that cheap router you bought to connect to the internet was meant to save you some £. Turns out one of the cheap models out there, the Billion 5200 series doesn't get on with the latest big update from Microsoft - Windows XP Service Pack 3. Billion blame Microsoft - which I can't see. Surely the router should be stable and not go into a constant reboot cycle, irrespective of what random data gets hurled down the line at it. I'm sure there must be worse hitting it from the internet side. At least they've made updates available.

So next time you have to make a choice on cheap kit or recommended kit that costs a bit more but is likely to have had better design and testing, you might want to think twice.

Wonder if there are any other dodgy routers to come out of the closet yet? Just waiting those phone calls once SP3 gets the green light through Microsoft Update ...

Best data recovery ever?

Just came across this story c/o the front page of Slashdot. I'm always warning clients about backups. They need to be done religiously. The only people that I find doing that though are the ones that have had a massive data loss in the past. I usually recommend online backup as the simplest, most effective approach. You get your critical files offsite every night automatically. As soon as people and tapes are involved the chances of having a good backup when you need it most start dropping.

Wonder what the recovery bill was for getting 90% of the data back from this drive that survived the Columbia Shuttle explosion? Or do you think Ontrack just went with the publicity generated?

Did your backup work last night?

XP SP3 finally puts in an appearance

After a false start or two in the past month Windows XP Service Pack 3 finally arrived on the server's Update Services list this morning. So much for a quiet time catching a rare sunny day.

I dived over to the Microsoft Downloads page to get a copy for my test machine, no luck can't see it. Surely they haven't pushed it out to Update Services .... and yes I can see it on WindowsUpdate too ... without making a download available for techies.

Anyway tracked it down from the notes on the Microsoft Update site in the end. If you're looking for it you'll need to go here for the Network Install Package.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4

Install went smoothly, rebooted and no errors in Event Viewer. Everything looks ok.

Be interesting to see whether that rumoured 10% performance boost comes off, would certainly help this 3yr old PC :-)

Offline Files warning won't suppress

A client PC on an SBS2003 network kept giving a warning about a PST file not syncing at logout. It was an archive copy of an email account stored in My Documents that was located on the server. At the end of every day the Offline Files would sync and stick with the error, annoying the client who was keen to get out of the door at 4pm ... wish I had those hours ;-)

There's an MS document, KB811660 that talks about suppressing the warning for particular file types and locations. Its a bit obscure but the key point is to add this to the registry to skip warnings for Outlook PST files.

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\NetCache\ExclusionErrorSuppressionList \\\\*\\*\\*\\*.PST = 0x0000000 (REG_DWORD)

Unfortunately that didn't clear the error, even after the obligatory reboot. The trick to get it to take effect was to reset the Offline Files cache too. Go into My Documents > Tools > Folder Options > Offline Files and use Ctrl-Shift with Delete All Files. For more info take a look at KB230738.

New software from Apple, OS X for your PC

I guess its only a matter of time until a client starts asking about the Safari update to iTunes and I have to explain about Browser Wars 2. Seems a bit of a storm in a teacup but I was interested to see Apple at least separating Updates and New - thanks to Gary for the breaking Apple news. So how long until we see this dialog then.

Tell you what, I'd be front of the queue. Its turning into quite a talking point with clients. I'm regularly getting asked about iMacs and MacBooks whenever anyone needs a new machine. Even last year the answer was don't go there, the transition for your business isn't worth it. However now, I explain Parallels or dual booting and that you can choose Mac or Windows at startup, its a different proposition.

Take into account the compatibility and stability, the security benefits, the fact your staff can't download as much crapware onto the machines and the big impression Apple design gives to everyone, be it clients or staff, sounds like there could be a business case for switching there.

Vista, Suse 10.3 and multiple drives

Just managed to sort out a dual boot with Vista and Suse 10.3. Vista is on the second HD, a Samsung 500GB SATA. Suse was installed to the 200GB Seagate IDE drive which has boot priority to load GRUB. Unfortunately the auto boot settings of Suse were carefully stepping around Vista, insisting on these settings for Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (0,0)
chainloader (0,0)+1
Even going into YaST Administrator Settings > System > Boot Loader and choosing Other > Edit Configuration Files > /boot/grub/menu.lst and over-writing the Windows entry didn't help. YaST must have known better, not.

As I couldn't boot Vista at this point I tried booting off the Vista DVD to repair startup with bootrec. Using the /fixboot option failed with an error that the volume wasn't compatible

The solution I sussed in the end was manually editing /boot/grub/menu.lst using Kate started via su in terminal and amending to these settings
title Windows
rootnoverify (1,0)
chainloader (1,0)+1

Novell's document on dual booting Vista and Linux has a similar solution.