azrael78

Me too - looking forward to trying v1.5. Az

What was the error? DNS related? Az

A good idea to assist in your problem would be to disable (temporarily) dynamic DNS. For anything that requires a FQDN - give it a manual DNS entry. The reason I say disable it - simple, it sounds like you have multiple issues regarding DHCP AND DNS, if you take DNS out of the equation - it can make the problem easier to handle and repair. If you can post your DHCP server settings, we can help you more. It sounds though - like you added another DHCP scope without reconfiguring the subnet masks - check the DHCP logs. Find a client that is troublesome - release the address and renew while looking at the log. It may well give you an idea. What's your network infrastructure? We talking 1 DHCP server, no routers, no subnets? Az

Some of our servers give 'error' on the status page. Most of them are ISA 2006 servers so I'm guessing that's something to do with the firewall. Are there any debug logs for the WMI part of the tool? What exactly does the WMI part try to do - as I'm trying to ascertain why some servers have issues and some do not. They are all different domains and all have the same account as a domain admin. Any ideas?

Not sure if you're asking specific... oh wait... the forum is Windows 7 - haha. Well in any case, we aren't using Win 2008 and Win 7 yet but we have a single user profile that all students get. Their desktops/start menus are redirected to the server profile. Staff have regular roaming profiles. We did try application data redirection but the amount of hassle that caused (no idea why it should...) was insane - so we had to roll that out. To continue my learning - I'll be building up a Win 2008 domain with Win 7 clients and will be looking into how to move our current system, lock-stock and barrel. If I come across anything or find anything out - I'll post it back here Az

The error was due to setting the account/password in NT domain\user format - as opposed to just typing in the username. I do however, have a suggestion. Would it be possible to 'group' Services together? For example, keep services as separate entities - but allow the admin to create a group... say 'Domain Controller' - and associate services with that group, so you can add servers and then select the service group, rather than add many services? So that when you click on the server in the regular UI - it lists 'Domain Controller' (or the group name) and then lists the items in the group along with their status. Is this possible? I'm currently using v1.4 I think, whatever the latest posted in this thread is Az

Getting the following error (IIS 6, Server 2003 SP1) Microsoft JScript compilation error '800a03f7' Unterminated string constant C:\INETPUB\WWWROOT\MLSM\ADMIN\..\incs\db_connect.asp, line 2 It's having problems with ' ** <-- this. I'd assume it's just comments but I don't quite know why our IIS server is throwing it's toys out of the pram about them. We have all the pre-requisites installed for your tool. Any ideas? Edit: Ignore this - seems the IIS I put this onto was configured very specifically for something else... so have put it on a fresh IIS and it's fine and happy. Edit 2: When I use WMI and specify any services - it says 'UP' - yet when I click the server (in the non-admin view), IE complains with an error. (Line 56 - Char 1)

Well to be fair - the RAID controller was a 'extra' on the mobo and someone (not me) thought they'd make good use of it. Oddly enough, if it were me, I'd probably have made use of it anyway - just wouldn't be too fond of RAID-1 on a critical server (like SIMS). Give me RAID-5 or 10 (all of our other big servers are R5). Az

Rich, Sorry to hear about this event, however it does sound as if they are correct to some degree. We recently had a RAID-1 server fail. Now, what failed for us was Disk 0:2 - which contained the Database. This however was mirrored to Disk 0:3. Due to the damage on Disk 0:2 - this meant that we couldn't access or even attempt a rebuild of the Database. What also happened about the same time, was Disk 0:0 deciding it had given up too - but rather than it being a RAID failure - it just decided to have a spat. Rebooting the server didn't help - once we rebooted, we couldn't get back in. Short version of it was this: We had lost Disk 0:0 due to it having a spat attack. We had lost Disk 0:2 and Disk 0:3 due to RAID failure. While both arrays are Mirrored, it didn't help us. We had to blank all drives and replace Disk 0:2 with a standby. Once we had done this, we reinitialised all of the disks, rebuilt the RAID and restored the OS to 0:0, as it's RAID-1, it mirrored this to 0:1. The database was eventually restored from backup (made the day before) to Disk 0:2, this later mirrored to 0:3. If you only had 2 disks that were RAID-1 then in theory at least - you should have been able to keep going from the 1 disk that hadn't failed, but while that's great in theory - in practice it sometimes just doesn't work that way. If one of your disks was also on the way out, then it's possible the mirror may not even have happened as it was meant to. I don't think - from what you describe, that you could have done more except perhaps back up the server prior to it being taken - but with a faulty RAID that's always risky. It may be worth looking at your disaster recovery scenarios - our disaster with our SIMS server made us look at ours somewhat sharpish. When you say 'Admin Server' - I assume it's the server that teaching staff use, it perhaps houses your MIS as well? If so - what kind of backup strategy do you have? Is it 1 tape every day - full backup? Do you have data you absolutely-positively cannot be without? (Obviously you do, but what specifically - sometimes you can get away with simply copying this data during the online day using an intelligent backup that supports VSS). I hope this helps somewhat Az

This may well not be with JUST virtualisation - I've got a new Win 7 laptop - transfer times between it and my XP PC were absolutely awful. Turn off the 'offload' bits on 7, reboot and all was well... I'd make the assumption it's for all virtualisation platforms - but give it a go, you may find one that it doesn't need it. Az

Am using MSE now on Windows 7 x64 - it seems quite quick. It'll do until we get ForeFront out there Az

In that case - a repair-install may well be your only option. You could try reapplying the latest service pack but this may not help. Give dumpchk.exe a try as well though before you go down the repair route, it may well give more info than WhoCrashed. Az Edit: Ah, I see it's fixed... a fire-drill mid-post will do that for you

I've done a fair few things - nothing vast compared to some of you. From 1990 - 2004 I've been active in various projects mostly to do with IRC. This included overhauling various builds of IRC-Server software and IRC-Services (add-on) software. All of it in ANSI C, written on Linux which later compiled under Windows. On some projects I worked alone - on some it was a team based effort. I can't add up the man-hours because it was all over the place, never consistent hours, it was more for a hobby than anything. As for now... I'd love to get back into it, but I figure I'd have to learn C++, then C# to even think about doing stuff in Windows now. For the moment I'm doing lots of scripts with KiXstart and AutoIT. My current project is a Client/Server for basic remote tasks on PCs that can't (currently) be accomplished by other means here on site. Had to look over my old C TCP notes to get it to do some of what I'd like but it's all a learning curve I'm very interested in the project of stratispheres' - C#... sounds like something I'd like to do with our system here but I'm not employed as a programmer - did you learn C# just 'as-is'? Az

I'd go for option 2 - providing of course you have the budget. If you try option 1 - then you waste alot of time for potentially small/if any benefit. If the machines really are that flakey, I'd simply go the route of replacing - even if you have to do it peacemeal. If budget is an issue you can always buy what you can now - take the smelly elonex out of those rooms and use them for hot-standby spares or spare-parts to try and keep the rest going for as long as you can. Ultimately your decision comes down to budget - if you got the cash, go for #2 Az

If it boots in safemode - you could try downloading (and installing) the debugging tools and a copy of WhoCrashed. Then once you have all that installed, reboot it in normal, let it blue-screen and then reboot into safe. Run WhoCrashed and it may help point you at the culprit. On the other hand it may do absolutely nothing - if you have the time, suggest a repair-install from a Server 2003 SP2 CD. I'm assuming it's NOT a DC or a CA or anything that could be seriously harmed by a repair-install. In any case, before you do ANYTHING - ensure you have backups, even if you have to use NTBackup in safe mode... do it before you change things and try to fix it. Az

Just thought I'd share this as it's caused me a headache on my new Win 7 x64 PC. I use virtualisation and have an XP Guest - the file transfer between the Host and Guest was totally abysmal - unusable in many cases. After sniffing around online I found out the following: If you disable 'Large Send Offload v2' for both IPv4 and IPv6 on your network adapter (under properties -> advanced) it should speed up the access between Windows 7 Host and XP Guest. This worked for me wonderfully - it may also need it on other virtualisation platforms or to other OS guests. It seems if your host is XP it's not an issue. Hope this helps someone, Az

The most effective way is to ensure that no user (except domain admins) have admin rights on the laptop itself. This way, only software that is written for 'users' will ever install - and even then, it would have to install inside the users' local profile or any other area of the hard disk to which they can write. You could use local GPOs to do this as well - but the problem is that if you lock it down too much, the local administrator also gets hit by it. We got around this in the very early days of XP on our site by using NT4's Poledit locally with the updated .ADM files. This meant all users could be locked down tight, except the local admin account. While that would be horrible to do these days - this was before we even had a Win 2000 Server, let alone 2003/2008. Years and years and years ago. Az

So - for a Windows 7 party, you get a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate and some other bits and pieces... Imagine what would happen if you had a 'British Gas' party... Free gas cylinders? At least the BBQ would be cheap as it'd be gas powered and you'd have a reason to be glad about smelling gas - as opposed to mild panic. Az

In your picture - how did you get Windows 7 to look like that? Is the ObjectDock thing part of Windows 7 or is it a free add-on or something? Thanks Az

It depends whether these laptops are under the LFT scheme or not. I know that LFT laptop users here can pretty much use their laptops as purely personal resources, if they choose not to bring them in - there's little we can do. In any case - it should be possible to modify the network login script in such a fashion so that workstations that login to it get a registry 'timestamp' somewhere. You can write a small script that can live on the laptop, runs inside of local group policy that checks the timestamp, if it's not been updated in 'x' days or whatever - then you can make it do things. I'd probably go down the route of - if it hasn't been brought in, enumerate and disable all network connections to start. If they have home DSL, then it will nobble it - which means they won't be able to get on the net with them - which as they haven't been in school, is probably a good thing as you can bet they haven't updated the AV etc... It all depends on how far you want to go and what the actual position is in terms of laptop use... are these school-allocated (read: school paid for) resources that are given to teachers in-place of workstations? Are they allocated like the Laptops For Teachers scheme? Az

Now that's something I would love to do Az

fudge and marshmallow mix of many many many colours - which in turn...

Ironic question as I've been pondering this one myself for the past 3 months. I'm 30 now, starting to reflect... choices made, opportunities ignored and taken... all that. I'm in IT now simply because of my situation. I was born with a severe visual impairment. Because of that alone, my fields of work were severely limited and still are - perhaps even more so with H&S and everyone scared of being sued... I honestly don't know what I'd do. It's kinda like Brooks in Shawshank... IT is all I've ever known, if I wasn't doing it... I think I'd go crazy and not in a good way. But I dunno... as a kid I wanted to be a pilot, policeman... you name it, all the usual jobs kids come up with that are mostly unrealistic. Now... something that means I do a good days' work for a good days' pay - maybe something that lets me be creative in another way. Thought about working as Vet Assistant but my eyesight just ain't good enough. Not to mention I'd get attached to the animals, no matter how many times I'd tell myself not to. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them... I'm already looking at the variety in this thread and thinking them over... I mean... Porn Star would be great - but it'd be alot of moaning for nothing really... much like an agony uncle Az

Calories? Burgers? Sorry... I must have been watching another video... all I saw were scantily clad nurses Az

"Mmmmmm person pie..." drooled Homer, while Bart looked on - confused...