When I do personal backups I prefer file based – in this manner I can keep current “live” data on my production disk and still have “live” access to old files on my backup disk.

I’ve used Robocopy and Robocopy GUI for that purpose for many years with Windows NT, 2000, XP, and attempted to with Windows 7.  Robocopy must be downloaded with Server 2003 Resource kit for Windows Vista and older, Robocopy ships with Windows 7.

Robocopy – Windows 7

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 and modified my trusty old Robocopy scripts to hit all the new data locations and “Libraries” which 7 brings to the table. Using Robocopy I was copying 120 gigs of data to a freshly formatted 200gig disk and the process would die because the disk was running out of space. What the heck! I tried twice with a freshly formatted destination disk and both times no luck.  I checked two processes which can generate “hidden” data – System Restore and Volume Shadow Copy service. Showing all hidden and system files showed nothing on my backup drive, not even a recycle bin (freshly formatted disk).  Somehow data was coming over with the copy, but from where I have no idea…

I turned System Restore off deleting all restore points (not much on a new system).

I checked Volume Shadow Copy Services using VSSADMIN there was no Copy for my D: drive and only 400meg for my C: drive. I deleted all Shadow Copies. Thus eliminating a common reason disks fill up without showing where the data is.

C:\vssadmin /?
Delete Shadows        – Delete volume shadow copies
List Providers        – List registered volume shadow copy providers
List Shadows          – List existing volume shadow copies
List ShadowStorage    – List volume shadow copy storage associations
List Volumes          – List volumes eligible for shadow copies
List Writers          – List subscribed volume shadow copy writers
Resize ShadowStorage  – Resize a volume shadow copy storage association

After deleting System Restore Points and Deleting Volume Shadow Copies I was still stuck – Explorer showed that I had 124gigs of data, but Robocopy was filling a 200gig disk before it was 75% complete. I hit the web for alternate file copy methods and landed on Richcopy. If anyone has thoughts as to what could be causing this massive file growth let me know!

Microsoft Richcopy

I would call Richcopy Robocopy with a powerful GUI. I fired up Richcopy and liked what I saw, my probelm was how to schedule it. This excellent post on the Symantec site to the rescue – “How to Replicate File Shares Using Microsoft RichCopy“.

I tested a Scheduled backup using the method posted at Symantec and boom I was good – 1-1 files size, fat and no apparent issues or files missed. But… one huge problem – 68% fragmentation. sixty six. whoa. My guess this is from the Multithreading feature of Richcopy – I used the default of 3 threads. This was very suprising as I had a freshly formatted disk and expected to see little to no fragmentation.

I’ve been using Richcopy a few weeks no and am backing all the PC’s in my house over the LAN. So far so good with the initial fragmentation issue not as major once the primary copy completes.

Richcopy Issues:

1. Copy Options – When I choose a subfolder of “Application Data” in XP or “AppData” in Windows 7 Richcopy returns either a single letter like “R” or what appears to be Chinese text.
   Solution: select either only the top level fodder or manually add the specific sub folders in a text editor before placing your backup string in Task Scheduler:  \\host.fqdn\c$\Users\user\AppData\Thunderbird;
2. Fragmentation – 68% on a freshly formated disk – whoa. I haven’t confirmed but my guess is settings threads to 1 may help here?

All in all Richcopy looks like a good solution save for the two issues listed above.
What are you using for file copy? Anyone have thoughts on my unexplained file growth with Robocopy?

Richcopy Fragmentation - 68%

Thunderbird 3.0 – I am pleased

• Download fom Mozilla – free
• Add-ons – free

Pros

• Calendar +  Tasks – via Lightning add-on (still in it’s infancy but working well here)
• Smart Folders – single view for multiple In-boxes
• Tabs  – I initially did not like but I’m being won over
• Spam filtering – quickly tag mail as Junk or not Junk and adaptive junk mail learns from you via Bayesian filtering
• Archiving – I save all email, I blame my mother
• Search – way mo better with a new back-end database, cross account searching, time-line based results, complex search strings…
• Add-ons – ThunderBird’s Extendability is picking up steam with Add-ons like Shrunked which re-sizes image attachments before sending

Cons

• Follow-up – still can’t tag an email for follow-up on a given date/time
• Exchange – still no Exchange server love
• HTML Compose bug – Bug 250539 (work currently in progress 01-18-10)

Thunderbird 3.0  Screenshot

ThunderBird 3.0 RC1 Email Client

I found myself once again wishing for a better email solution after a clients web host (cough, site5, cough, cough) lost email during a server migration. The customer, who travels a lot, had converted from POP mail to webmail on his own (iMap or leave on server with POP would have worked) and any email which was not downloaded to his local machine during a 3 day period was lost forever. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. It got me thinking again about the importance of email and how hard it is to manage. Can improved email software help save the world or is it simply how we use what we have?

I’ve used Pegasus, Eudora, Pine, Outlook, Lotus Notes, The Bat, Entourage  (with & without Exchange), Outlook Express, Evolution, Pine, Opera, RoundCube, SmarterMail, Horde… and more I’ve surely forgotten.  I love and hate bits and pieces of them all.  At work I’m using Exchange and Outlook, does the job pretty well. At home I have 12 years of email stored in my ThunderBird 3.0 beta client and the poor stuff has been through some hard times – servers, protocols, local based, server based, backup, restore and forced into about any mail box format there is. Until I installed Copernic Desktop search a few years back it was getting hard to manage productively.

My ideal email tool operates locally but leaves mail, contacts and calendering accessible from anywhere. It’s highly searchable,  (Exchange wins here, Gmail can’t search my attachments yet and not sure I want them too!), cross platform, and uses standard portable calendaring, contact and mailbox formats. A Frankenstein of Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail perhaps.

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After having the umpteenth request for an asset management tool rejected at my office I built one. Not a spreadsheet, not an Access or Filemaker single user database. This project is web based PHP and MySQL with CSV reports. The project was built in Dreamweaver, not required but could help.

The database is designed to manage IT assets from a desktop management perspective: computers and associated hardware, printers and software.

I’m offering the software for free here to anyone who has a use for it.
Test it out and contact me if you like it. I’ll send you a zip file with simple instructions.

Requirements

1. PHP, MySQL, Apache, MySQL management tool and optionally Dreamweaver.
   I used WAMP Windows + Apache + MySQl + PHP + phpMyAdmin & SQLiteManager  =  download, install, done. )
2. Extract folder to web root.
3. Create a database, use supplied SQL dump file to populate.
4. A web browser to login…

Launch the demo here
user: eam
pass: eam123

Request source – contact

Steps to deploy Windows 7 Beta with MDT 2008

1. Download Windows 7 Beta and extract files from the ISO – I use 7zip
2. Upgrade to MDT 2008 Update 1 if you’re not already running it
   1. Via Components Update to WAIK 1.1 which will also download WinPE 2.1
3. Launch Deployment Workbench
4. Add a new Operating System under Distribution Share
   1. OS -> New
   2. Choose “Custom Image File”
   3. Browse to the “Sources” folder of your extracted Windows 7 ISO
   4. Select “Install.wim”
   5. Choose option 2 “Copy Vista or 2008 setup filefrom the specified path” and browse to your extracted ISO files.
   6. Name it
   7. When done you’ll see four Windows 7 Flavor OS’es
5. Add a new Task Sequence for Windows 7 -
   1. ID and Name= whatever you like
   2. Template = Standard Client Sequence
   3. Choose your OS – Windows 7 Ultimate
6. Go to Johan’s site (duh – as always!) and read this
   1. I followed step 1 and 2. 3 I didn’t need because I’m not messing with user data
   2. Step1 “ZTISupportedPlatforms.xml can be found in your \Scripts folder of your distribution point.
   3. Step 2 “Unattend.xml” edit via the Properties of your OS Task Sequence for Windows 7
7. I booted a ThinkPad T42 off my LiteTouch ISO and viola, Windows 7.

Windows 7 is running like a champ on my Thinkpad T42 1.7ghz single core with 1gig of RAM and 32meg Intel integrated video. I’m looking for ward to Windows 7!

Lenovo to release ThinkPad laptop with 2 LCD screens.  If you can’t afford to drive an SUV anymore, carry one! 17 inches of the brightest laptop LCD ever with a builtin Wacom tablet… of course it needs a seoncd display!

Lenovo has gone all old school releasing crazy products like it was the heyday of IBM Thinkpads with Butterfly Keyboards, overhead projector displays and general cool inovative design -  Thinkpad inovations and curiosities

Strongbads Thinkpad

My Comcast / Giganews account was unhappy the last two days so I went to find out what had changed. Guess NNTP doesn’t work on iPhones…

http://www.comcast.net/newsgroups/
“The Comcast Newsgroups service has been discontinued. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have already signed up for Comcast Newsgroups, please be aware that this service will be discontinued on 10/25/2008″

Dear people hear me and hear me now.
Next person sends me a 9meg “screenshot” is getting signed up to the Ron Paul contributors list.

PrtScn takes a screenshot of your entire display.
Unless you hate someone do not send them the results of this action.

Alt + PrtScn takes a screenshot of the current active Window.
This is the action of an enlightened soul.

Macs… this is why macs lost to windows. Print Screen makes a sound like a camera shutter. WTF? Especially lame because Mac doesn’t put the snap on the paste board, but stores a pict file in a secret location that you have to find. PrtScn and Solitaire, pretty clear why Microsoft won the war…

Bonus rant – Microsoft Word is not required to send a screenshot, seriously, I’m not kidding. Try an image editor like the one you play with but could never figure out what it’s for – MSPaint.
Start -> Run -> type mspaint -> hit enter -> paste -> save as 24bit BMP, or JPG.

Thats my rant, don’t like it I’ve got a three finger salute for ya…

So I’ve aquired an IBM Thinkpad model T30. Thought it would be the perfect machine to install, test and play with Ubuntu on. Oops!

Major issue #1
You cannot install Ubuntu. Not. At all. Partitioning starts then hangs at 15%

Solution – IBM forums
Ubuntu cannot handle the extravagant 32 year old video on this space age machine. The solution is to select Safe Mode “F4″ on the install screen. Sweet, like Windows 3.11!

Major issue #2
I’m up and running and guess what, the video card and display are both “generic” and I’m stuck with 256 color 800×600 display with zero options to change. Guess issue #1 should have given me a clue eh?

Solution – aquire computer science degree and spend weekend hiding from your family. I ain’t doing it! “edit the xdork conf file using the transom converter while closing your left eye, smacking the monitor while doing a shot of tequila”.
Hey I always kinda liked 800×600… Ooops the OS doesn’t!!! Silly OS has GUI widgets with confirm/deny (yes/no) buttons off the screen!! The OS forces me to 800×600 but it’s own components won’t function at that resolution? Looks like Tequila is a common solution.

Major issue #3
No sound. Click the volume control with the big red X through it and I get this valuable feedback “No volume control GStreaming plugins and/or devices found.”
Well thanks for that awesome feedback! I guess that once again the space age nature of my T30’s sound card and drivers (so old it’s unsupported by IBM) baffles this cutting edge Linux distribution known as Ubuntu.

Major issue #4
No further major issues. I achieved the critical space where I either loose a weekend to compensate for an OS that cannot handle a six year old Laptop model used by millions or move along to more important issues like my second cup of coffee.

I’ve played with GUI based Linux installs on and off for 10+ years. Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Ubuntu… seems the more things advance the more some stay the same. Sad as I was pyshced to use Ubuntu.

Updated: Obviously the Ubuntu developers read this post…… and unlike the folks who sent me love mail decided to improve the planet instead of hate it. Ubuntu 8.10 – Intrepid Ibex fixed the install problem, recognized Video and Audio and had all kinds of nice updates and changes
http://bizarrelinux.blogspot.com/2008/11/improvements-in-gnome-224-and-ubuntu_05.html

My whiteboard sometimes has some interesting mods.

Mac vs PC – updated for accuracy. Added Allow/deny box for realism. PC people can portray Mac people as wussies but keep in mind PC people have to ask their mommy’s permission to fire that big ole gun.

Mac vs PC

I’ve been tired of the constant iTunes updates for some time. DRM updates, iPhone updates, more iPhone updates, Quicktime (iTime?), iWank, iShank, iSpank… 40megs, 60megs, 80megs, reboots… oh and actual updates for iTunes. So when I logged in to find Apple wanted to push me Safari as an update? Safari? As an Update? Say what!?

For a music player I use Songbird – http://www.songbirdnest.com/
“Songbird is a player and a platform. Like Firefox, Songbird is an open source, Open Web project built on the Mozilla platform. Songbird provides a public playground for Web media mash-ups by providing developers with both desktop and Web APIs, developer resources and fostering Open Web media standards, to wit, an Open Media Web.”

And iUse Zune cause like I own a Zune player.

and I browse with Firefox and Internut Exploder.

Man it’s great getting to complain about kickass free software…..

“The Vista”
So I was talking to HR Block Tax Cut Business tech support (i.e. a nice lady with some docs to read from) because their product refuses to launch for me “you must have Internet Explorer 6 or higher installed”. I apparently have an MSXML issue on my machine that neither I nor her docs could repair. I was running v4 and v6, her docs said to install v3. We started from scratch, registered DLLs etc. My case has been escalated. During the course of the call the support tech asks me…

• “what operating system do you have”
• “XP SP2″
• “Oh good, “The Vista” causes a lot of trouble for us”
• “oh really” (and then she informs me…)
• “yes… at our church a member records all sermons and gives out copies to our Church members, he’s been doing it for several years. Well he bought a new computer and it had “The Vista”. “The Vista” won’t let him make copies of his videos, it says he doesn’t have rights or something. It’s horrible…”

“The Vista” protecting god fearing citizens from themselves. How much are people paying for that?

My Patch process using ITMU v3 and SMS 2003.

I’m patching desktops only and my process accommodates a business requirement to patch machines but not force a reboot for 4 days. Due to this requirement I patch like so:

1. Install patches use SMS Notification of the need to reboot. About 65-70% of users reboot within 1 business day.
2. Notification Nag continues for 4 days from install
3. Use ITMU to force a reboot at 5pm on the 4th day

Patching details

1. Microsoft Updates Tool Sync – Downloads the latest Windows Update Catalog on Patch Tuesday
   • Advertisment schedule for every Tuesday @ 3pm and 11pm. 3pm for normal MS patch release and 11pm to catch when they are a little late.
   • Confirm ‘wsusscn2.cab’ has a current time stamp: \Program Files\Microsoft Updates Inventory Tool\PkgSource
2. Microsoft Updates Tool – Distributes the above Windows Update Catalog to clients and scans for status
   • Advertised to run daily at 4am
3. Create Patch Packages - * See details below
   • I create per OS packages to limit download size for field/VPN and slow link clients

1. Create Patch Advertisements – * See details below
   • Set to run daily
   • Download if no local
2. Test - Wednesday through Friday
   • Did I screw anything up test – Local on 3 OS’es in my lab to ensure packages and advertisements are all functional
   • Real testing – deploy to field and office machines on all OS’es. I use IT and a set group of customers that use a variety of apps and connectivity scenarios.
3. Deploy
   • Friday afternoon
   • Send out per OS Advertisements scheduled to run Sunday morning at 6am recurring daily
4. Reboot - 3rd Wednesday
   • Update the patch packages to force a reboot for anyone who hasn’t
5. Monitor Compliance
   • Using the above process I generally get 65-70% compliance by end fo day monday with another 30% pending reboot
   • After 4 days and the Wednesday forced reboot complaince is around 90%
   • Over the next week I monitor as field users and offline boxes connect and bring complaince above 95+%

Creating Patch Packages

Command line switches for Patchinstall.exe http://www.myitforum.com/articles/8/view.asp?id=8052

After upgrading my development system from ColdFusion MX and MS SQL 2000 to ColdFusion 8 and MS SQL Express 2005 I was getting the dreaded SQLServer JDBC Driver errors. The fix is in the Adobe link below – custom config the TCP/IP settings. In my case I used the existing “Dynamic port”

Connection verification failed for data source: {data source name}
java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver]Error
establishing socket. Connection refused: connect
The root cause was that: java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer
JDBC Driver] Error establishing socket. Connection refused: connect

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb400255&sliceId=1

SQL 2005 TCP Settings
- Protocols for SQLEXPRESS
- Set “Enabled” to “Yes” For IP1 & IP2
- Note the port for IPALL

ColdFusion Datasource
- SQL Server Port

As someone who benefits greatly from the myITforum community and the Blogs therein I was interested in the blogging software – Community Server

Having recently setup a personal learning lab 2003 SP2 test server with DNS, DHCP, WSUS 3.0, Microsoft Desktop Deployment and SQL 2005 Express I was eager to try out the Community Server software.
Well one major problem, I could not get past the Database install step and gave up.
Several weeks later and having learned a bit more about SQL 2005 during installs of Microsoft Desktop Deployment workbench and SQL 2005 SP2 I was ready to give the Community Server install another shot. Once again no go… no meaningful errors on screen, no problems with 3 other installs that required DB creation and connectivity. Then I remembered an issue with my MDD install, the name of the server. The community Server install defaults to “localhost” which is what usually worked for me with SQL 2000 and always works for me on my MySQL websites. So I tried my SQL host name, IP address etc. No luck. Then I tried the full SQL 2005 name “Serverhostname\SQLEXPRESS” and viola I’m in! This is the exact opposite of MDD, which requires the hostname only!

The Community Server install using SQL Express 2005 requires the full SQL server name like this
“Serverhostname\SQLEXPRESS”

This was exactly the opposite of my Microsoft Desktop Deployment install only days earlier which failed until I used “Serverhostname” only.

Additionally:
- Community server requires you enable “Named Pipes” under “SQL 2005 Network Configuration -> Protocols for SQLEXPRESS”
- Make sure during your SQL 2005 install you have allowed for “Remote Connectivity”, if not you can run an upgrade/repair install and enable.

What can I say that this doesn’t?

Finally dumped my Netgear WGT624 v2 Wireless Firewall Router today. Since purchasing based on excellent reviews we had had issues with dropped connections and with machines returning from sleep mode being unable to connect. Talks with tech support and support forum surfing yielded that this was a common issue for DSL and Cable users. Firmware version 4.2.11 solved my sleep mode issues and provided better stability overall but we still would occasionally loose connectivity especially wireless (4.2.11 available only from the support pages, the Netgear automated system always reported I was running the latest firmware). Finally Yesterday after returning from an 8 day Holiday Tour De Indiana I fired up my my Motorola 5100 Surfboard Cable modem, the Netgear WGT624 router, my Windows 2003 Server and finally my laptop and desktop. 30 minutes in connectivity became very poor then varied from normal to null every randomly. 45 minutes in the calls can from about the house “where’s the internets!” Thinking Comcast plus 5 inches of snow (sunrise, sunset, light, dark… seems anything can affect ISPs….) to be the issue I power cycled the Cable modem and then the Netgear router. Same thing happened again. After the third time I simply hit the red reset button on the Netgear and that fixed the issue. Twice more with the red button over the next hour and I was in the car on my way to Best Buy.

At Best Buy I gravitated to the latest technology as I always do justifying it in that mad rush of flourescently lit spending adrenaline. “N” sounds nice, and it’s “faster”! But I knew it wasn’t an approved standard. It’s only on the shelves to help vendors sell more gear. But still it is faster, and it is the latest, and G seems like 20 years old right? So as I’m about to pull the N box of my choice a young lad walks up and asks the question I generally loathe at Best Buy “may I help you” which regardless of department on the sales floor often translates to “how may I embarrass myself”. But knowing that the “N” box in my hand was a bad decision I replied “yes you may”. My attention did not drift at all after the young lad rattled off spot on info about wireless spec and issues. Then he nailed me – “N” will not support some devices, like Nintendo Wii. Say that again please? No Nintendo Wii. Hell yes young lad just saved me from much teenage torture! He also confirms that he’s heard of the same issues with the Netgear though mostly from DSL users. So with “N” dumped I let him steer me to the G box of his choice. Young Lad hands me the one I had at the top of my list, the D-Link WBR-2310. He checks the price as it’s on the wrong shelf and the last one in the store – $34. It’s worth $34 to stop my sons whining about Call of Duty 4 drops let alone potentially solve my basic networking issues.

Setup was a snap
1. Power down Cable modem
2. Blow off the install CD
3. http://192.168.0.1 user = Admin, no pass
4. Setup exactly the same as my Netgear, same SSID, WPA password etc.
5. Get a connection
6. Download v104 Firmware upgrade from D-Link support
7. Upgrade Firmware
8. Disable DHCP server – FW update turned it on. (I use my own DHCP for a local AD Domain)
9. Add Port Forwarding exceptions to the Firewall (Remote Desktop etc)
10. Release/renew or reboot all machines in the house. Done!

Two days in and we’re good so far with the D-Link WBR-2310. At $34 an easy call as a device that can last me till I’m ready to go “N”… at which point there will surely be something new to tempt me!

Do your photos display with an odd brownish orange tint in Vista’s WPG – Windows Photo Gallery but look fine in any other program? Yeah me too. The issue appears to be the default ICC Color Profile Vista chooses for for video display device. In my case a perfect match appeared to have been chosen for my Dell 1907FP monitor – LCD color management and conversion – 1097FP.ICM.

The solution was to simply Remove the ICC Profile. Doing so caused no other issues I’ve noticed.

1. Check image in another program to confirm the color issue is with WPG
2. Open Control panels
3. Open Color Management
4. Highlight the “Default” ICC Profile
5. Click “Remove”
6. Close Color Management
7. Close WPG
8. Re-open an image in WPG and it should appear as expected

Problem – brownish tint images

Solution – remove ICC Profile from Color Management

Result – I can see clearly now..

As a user – I started out with Mosaic and then moved to Netscape as my primary browser. Then IE5 came out. IE3 was lame, IE4 was okay, IE5 was a sign Microsoft had finally realized the Internets actually did impact their business. I dumped Netscape (NN 4 was their last useful browser and it was showing signs of impending death…) and moved permanently to IE 5 and then 6 until 6 started to show the signs of years of neglect and alternative browsers were kicking it’s butt all over the place. I settled on what was to become Firefox as my primary browser as it decimated IE at pretty much every level.

Professionally – I’ve had to develop for and use pretty much any browser on Mac and Windows platforms. I built, tested and delivered applications that guaranteed functionality on all platforms using common browsers. Oh the joy…

Today I use Firefox for personal use and IE 7 for work – IE7 because I’m running Vista and must use 3rd party vendor tools and public sites that fell into the gulf of IE only for ease of development and can’t adopt to change because the proprietary tentacles are so deeply buried in their code. You have Macs!? (um yes about 1,500) Why would you use Opera? (um cause it kicks butt?) Fire-what? (Fire your development team that’s what!) And my personal favorite… IE7? we don’t support that. But wait IE is all you support!? Sigh the web was supposed to free us of all of this was it not?

Well thankfully IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari have all put out strong products in the last year. Unfortunately Internet Explorer had so far to catch up it’s lacking some very basic areas.
Additionally what troubles me beyond IE7 lacking some basic essentials is the lack of follow through by Microsoft on their promise to not let IE7 sit idle and rot as they did IE6. To wit, there has been next to zero public activity by the IE team since release in October 18th 2006 save for what might possible be the lamest Major Product update ever released by Microsoft. So lame it’s almost impossible to find any information about the “update” and it’s been expunged from the IE7 homepage. The major non cosmetic change from the “update” being the ability to install without WGA, apparently to combat the continuing market losses? So what now… IE8 of course! Sigh so much for IE7!

Regardless of IE7, 8 or 9…. here’s my list

Speed, way more speed.
Not page rendering, speed of the application. Running IE7 on Vista with no other browsers for several months I installed Firefox to see if it could handle an eRoom intranet site issue for me. Wow it was like Ben Johnson vs me. Firefox was so fast to load, respond, tab etc it was like I’d doubled my CPU or my RAM. I hope IE8 is getting some tips from old Ben.

Improve the Find function
IE7 relies upon the OS based Search function, the same function that IE has relied on since it’s first version. It’s slow, it’s limited and it’s frustratingly linear. Firefox is so far ahead of IE here it’s actually a compelling reason to use Firefox.

IE 7 – Next + Previous on a single page. That’s it.

Firefox 2.x – Find as you type, Next / Previous, highlight all, case match, finds search pattern on future and past pages, notifies you if the text your typing exists as you type and more.

Improve Cookie management
Internet Explorer has made no improvements to it’s cookie management in IE7. You either delete all Cookies or manually browse a directory containing potentially millions of files and try to figure out which cookie is for what site. And this is if you’re some what savvy.

Firefox destroys IE7 in terms of Cookie management. You view all Cookies in a folder tree by originating Domain. You can delete cookies from all domains, individual domains or individual cookies from from within a domain. You can even control how long cookies last. For web development it’s beyond priceless, especially if the browser in question doubles for personal or work use.

Add spell check
IE has no spell check. Firefox has inline as you type spell check for all web forms. Priceless when blogging, commenting, submitting online forms etc.

Internet Explorer Find function	Firefox Find function

Internet Explorer Cookie management

Firefox Cookie management – click to enlarge

Internet Explorer Spell Check	Firefox spell check

Error message when Windows loads – “Logon Process Initialization Failure”
– Interactive logon process initialization has failed
– Please consult the event log for more details (I would love to but uh I can’t)

Clicking OK in the dialog above simply returns you to the same dialog.
All ur logons are belong to us?

Windows LSD – Logon Screen Of Death

Yep that’s my title for what I experienced less than five business days into testing Microsoft Windows Vista Business edition. After having issues with activation, wireless, app compatibility, UAC, system speed, memory use, and having to learn a completely new GUI I am locked out of my machine with no way back in.
The Microsoft website returns zero hits on the error dialog below.
The greater Internets returns nothing I can find beyond “me too” and “re-install Vista”.

I card into the office, snap my D630 into it’s port replicator, boot my machine, get my apps fired up (860 megs of Memory for Lotus Notes, Internet Explorer, McAfee VSE 8.5, McAfee CMA 3.6, and SMS 2003 SP2 clients) and go get some eye opener while the system settles in.
Five minutes into my day I’m browsing the Dell ImageBuilder website when my machine reboots with zero notification. During reboot Vista runs a Chkdsk and reports no errors. Then I’m greeted with my first ever Logon Screen of Death. I cannot log in and am advised to “consult the event log for more details” which of course requires logging in to do. Clicking the “OK” on ther error dialog box simply returns the error again after 2-3 seconds. Sigh.

I try safe mode. Same thing. I try over and over. No way I can log in. So I boot off a BartPE/XP custom recovery disk and run a full Disk Check – no errors. I browse the contents of my disk and everything appears fine and dandy. I go hunting for the mysterious log files I’m supposed to consult when Windows is on LSD. Well it appears Vista abandoned .EVT as the system log file extension. XML nowadays and I can’t make much headway there as of yet.

Solution: Boot from the Vista CD – select Repair

Just back from a week at the 2007 Microsoft Management Summit.
Excellent sessions, good people, tons of new products and strong direction forming up from Microsoft.

Kinda wild for a first timer like myself. From the gold rush style session selection in the opening days to the plethora of topics to choose from it was go go go! Once I settled in I adjusted my schedule quite a bit. I took up an SMS 2003 & BDD track booking as many sessions as I could with Michael Niehaus and Johan Arwidmark and filling the gaps with hands on labs. Killer stuff, exactly what I’ve been needing. Microsoft couldn’t be getting their management tool set rolling at a better time for me (well 4, 5, 8yrs ago woulda been nice too…). Hope to be back next year!

Pics from the trip here.

Just spent 15 minutes tracking down a phantom machine on my home DHCP network. I was working on my wifes laptop figuring out why it had lost it’s IP again and wouldn’t renew. I checked my DHCP server and noticed one too many machines had addresses. I deleted the IP from DHCP but it came right back! I couldn’t access it or find anything out about it. A Tracerout to the IP took 1500 mils… yow that can’t be in my house!! I quickly inventoried all my computers in my head and matched them against my DHCP list, yep one too many.
So I went to this site and queried the MAC address to see who the manufacturer was. Nintendo?! before I could mouth WTF! I realized it was our new Nintendo Wii online in the basement… what a dork.

Audio/Video

• VLC Media Player – Cross platform do everything player
• Songbird – Open Source music player.

Editors

• Notepad ++ editor – Fast light and does about everything a text editor needs to do
• PSPad editor – Do everything Unicode editor

Image tools

• Paint.NET image editor – Very nice Dot NET 2.0 image editor
• VisiPics – Find duplicate images on your hard drive by how they look
• Artweaver – Robust imaging tool
• The Gimp image editor – Photoshop for free – A serious editor
• Photo Story 3 – Make slide shows from digital images
• Windows Movie Maker – Nice little movie making app

Web and other tools

• Opera – Excellent web browser
• Thunderbird – Email, News, RSS
• Pidgin – Cross platform all IM client
• Filezilla FTP client – Solid easy to use FTP client
• PDFCreator – Works like Acrobat standard also includes encryption and password protection
• 7-Zip – Compression program that handles all formats
• Copernic – Desktop search

I rebuilt my work laptop and instead of installing Firefox or Opera I went with Internet Explorer 7. I installed from a test build I’d made using IEAK 7. The install went smoothly and after a reboot I was ready to go. Yes I had to reboot.

Thoughts and comments:

• A very nice upgrade to the very arthritic Internet Explorer 6. Tabs and all that.
• Tabs. Nice addition but IE7 tabs aren’t quite there yet. If a tab is busy so is the entire application. If lil ole Firefox can do this why can’t IE?
• A lot of security upgrades to help battle Spyware and what not but man they’re a pain especially in sites that have apparently custom coded for IE6.
• Slow feeling. Does not provide the smooth fluid workspace of it’s predecessor or of it’s competitors. If the system or the browser are busy the browser lags. Open 6 tabs and click on each tab in IE 7 then try it in Firefox as an example. This feels like a 1.0 release issue.
• Crashes Webex remote and conferencing tool and fails to work with Avocent. This is not an IE7 issue but something to consider as I have to use other browsers for these tools.
• Disable Phishing unless you want IE 7 to run even slower.
• Waiting for a update and here’s hoping it’s not going to be Vista specific.

If you’re not using Firefox or Opera then this is a required upgrade to protect your machine for spyware & malware and to bring IE’s functionality up to par with it’s competitors. IE7 is a nice step forward but no quite equal to Firefox 2 or Opera 9. I’m hoping for a fix release within a year to smooth out some of the first release blues or I’ll return to using other browsers for everything but sites that require Internet Explorer.

IE7 Flash plugin error

Don’t upgrade to Windows Media player 11, yet. (01-27-2007)
I bypassed my usual Audio app iTunes on a newly built machine in an effort to force me to use Microsoft’s new Windows Media Player 11.
I experienced a major issue right away: Inline Videos would load the web page plug-in for WMP11 and WMP would re-size the ratio to a 3×2 format which would badly distort the video ratio and quality. Viewing same videos in WMP 10 did not produce this affect. Is this a WMP 11 bug or must video hosts update their code for 11? Either way, extremely lame. Thankfully many popular sites use platform/format independent Flash video player otherwise I would have had to downgrade right away.
11 has a nice skin but the interface is still a mish mosh of confusion. For example it took me two days of looking to find how to get Radio Stations (I can’t tell you how as I can’t find it again). Speaking of menus, where are they? Of yeah right mouse click the title bar… wonder how many of millions of people never figure that out. Wheres Jukebox mode? Still looking…. 11 Looks nice but what is it other than a DRM and skin upgrade? Not much except it breaks video sites and still has the most annoying problem that has plagued Windows Media Player since it first starting streaming radio stations – why o why is this not fixed yet?

Windows Media player when streaming radio forces you to load the providers Web Page within the player. These web pages are amongst the most obnoxious useless web pages ever developed – they don’t fit the view port, they run multiple animations, banners ads and keep multiple streams open to your machine other than the audio.
Worst of all many of the sites (all?) on any media player version on any computer I’ve owned (lets not discuss how many…) generate the comical Internet Explorer Script Error messages. These messages pop up over and over. Over and over and over. What a pain, and how embarrassing for Microsoft. I want to listen to audio not click Yes or No 50 times in an hour. Note to Microsoft iTunes does not stuff error messages down your throat (yet).

Windows Media Player
- Internet Explorer Script Error
- “An error has occurred in the script on the page”
- error: undetermined string constant
- URL: some useless advertising page

http://humor.beecy.net/geeks/web-design/web-design.gif

Your computer is what’s often (derogatorily) referred to as a "WinTel" machine on which the software is dominated by Microsoft Windows and the hardware is dominated by Intel. Intel was founded by three unhappy Fairchild Semiconductor employee’s. Microsoft was founded in 1975 by some serious computer geeks… see pic below.

The Microsoft Windows operating system is a GUI (Graphic User Interface) based operating system. The GUI was invented in the early 70’s at the Xerox Parc research facility, later to be snagged by SteveJobs for the Apple Macintosh system in 1984. Microsoft and Bill Gates borrowed heavily from the Macintosh to introduce it’s first GUI OS (Operating System) in 1990, Windows 3.0. Macintosh would later sue Microsoft for "stealing" their "look and feel", which of course they had stolen from Xerox. The Windows operating systems has grown and matured thru Windows 3.1 (1992), Windows NT 3.5 (1994), Windows 95 (1995), Windows NT 4.0 (1996), Windows CE (1996), Windows 98 (1998), Windows 2000 (2000), and Windows XP (2001)

I switched from Thunderbird to Oulook 2003 today.

Why o why do I always start these projects… What a PITA. oh yeah I’m a geek who loves to playandI get bored with apps and want to try new ones. …and I wanted Calendar and Windows Desktop search to be able to search my email and I wanted pretty blue Prozac colors (right…). Oh and I might be stupid too.
I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird a year and a half ago for it’s superior IMAP support which I no longer use cause my host Site5 doesn’t support IMAP folders.

Notes:

Method used: http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/th2outlook.php
This requires each and every folder using a tool, then copying to Outlook Express and then importing to Outlook. All went well except emails that were perfectly fine in OE cametooutlook with the exact date and time of the import, several hundred.

When finished in Outlook: “14657 of 14657 messages imported.”

Tried: Barca mail which imports Mozilla mail directly, but the client is so so, doesn’t appear to handle multiple accounts as well as t-Bird and it costs $60.

Multiple Accounts
Thunderbird handles multiple accounts way better allowing for each account to have it’s own top level folder and sub folder hierarchy, no filters necessary. Outlook requires filters diercted to manually created subfolders, there is zero recognition of individual accounts in the folder views. Lame, but heys it’s built for exchange not some dork with 12 internet POP mail accounts.

Lets see how long I can survive with Outlook

Have you ever received a “Winmail.dat” attachment?
I have clients who send files like Word or Visio via email but all I get is a “Winmail.dat” file. Argh! This issue is only like ten years old… Thanks Microsoft!@

When you receive a Winmail.dat file in place of an attachment it means the sender is using Microsoft Proprietary email formatting in their Outlook or Outlook Express email client or their outgoing Exchange email server is set to do so. Usualy the culprit is the senders MS email client is set to send email in RTF “Rich text” format.

You can either tell the sender to resolve this issue on their end (RTF is silly, they should be using Plain Text or HTML anyhow)

– http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q138053/

– http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196784

Or…

You can do the work Microsoft has placed at your feet and run one of these app / solutions:

– http://www.fentun.com/ (Windows)

– http://www.biblet.freeserve.co.uk/ (Windows)

– http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/index.html (Mac)

– http://tnef.sourceforge.net/

Online service to decode Winmail.dat

– http://tud.at/php/tnef/

I made this in Windows NT when I was learning all about the reg and suffer Windows NT.

I made my first remote connection in 1992, using a Macintosh “cube”. BBS’es and file transfers were the purpose. Soon I was online with both Windows and Macs using programs such as Crosstalk.

While intriguing, it wasn’t until I logged onto the Internet in 1994 that I was hooked. Using a 386 PC with a 9,600 baud modem I hooked up to the Internet via Chicago service provider AIS. Their package came on one floppy and included the entire Netmanage Chameleon set of tools.

I’ve never really used the internet for entertainment, though I did check “The Spot” and such in the early days (they had an image map for entry!). My use was much more the gathering of information and files related to my job as a multimedia technician with CMI Business Communications.

My purest internet experience was “watching” the 1995 Tour De France live on the Internet. Coming into work each day I would log on and hit “refresh” every ten minutes or so for four+ hours, “seeing” stages of the Tour live, something that was impossible in any media form in the United States at that time. Didn’t hurt that when I emailed the crew covering the race that my college friend and racer James Startt emailed back “I’m in the back of a van going up hill with a laptop….”