When working with WSUS, I kept getting an error every time I tried to do anything with WSUS (uninstall, reinstall, start the service, start the program, etc.). The error reported that the mscoree.dll file was missing or not installed correctly and reinstalling the program may fix this error. This dll file is related with the .NET framework. Reinstalling .NET 2.0 framework fixed the problem without having to reinstall WSUS.
The SQL 2005 installer expects the installation media to be in a specific layout. If the directory structure is incorrect the error message you receive during setup is: "There was an unexpected failure during the setup wizard. You may review the setup logs and/or click the help button for more information."
The behavior I saw was that the SQL server itself would install, but the Management Studio installation failed.
From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916760:
This problem is most likely to occur if you start the SQL Server 2005 installation from a folder on a network share or on a hard disk when the folder was copied from the SQL Server 2005 installation CDs.
WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, set the folders in the correct layout for the SQL Server 2005 installation. [more]
The SQL Server 2005 installation uses the following two folders:
These two folders must be under the same level of a folder or the root folder of a drive. The names of these folders must be exactly Servers and Tools. The Servers folder contains all the files that are required to install major SQL Server 2005 components, such as database engine. The Tools folder contains tools components and Books Online for SQL Server 2005.
ZoomIT, is a presentation product that allows you to zoom in on a particular part of the screen during presentations… OR, to enlarge a part of the screen for readability. This was written by the same people who wrote the sysinternals products and is available on the Microsoft download site. I saw it used extensively by many of the Microsoft presenters at TechED 2008. [more]
You can also annotate the screen during presentations by drawing graphics with the mouse or writing text to the screen.
Click here to visit the download page.
Recently a customer was having an issue with a computer shutting off unexpectedly. When I looked at it I could not find anything wrong initially. I decided to switch out the surge protector and see if it continued.
30 minutes later the called and it had happened again. I talked to a couple of folks in the office and found that the lights, in the office, had flickered right before the PC shut off. I suggested they call the power company and see if there was a known issue. Which we found out they were switching out transformers in the area.
The head scratcher was that this was the only computer in the building shutting off during the power blips. Other PCs connected to the same circuit had no problems. I decided to switch out the power supply with one from a spare parts system they have. After that there was another power blip and the system stayed on. [more]
What I determined was the power supply had faulty capacitors that prevented them from storing enough power to keep the system on during the power blips.
We could not get any of the HP 4345’s to update their firmware. The first time that we would update the firmware on one of the printers it would look like it worked but the firmware revision number did not increment. All sequential attempts in updating the firmware would result in errors within the printer’s event log.
Solution: After trying many different things with many different HP technicians even replacing the formatter boards on the printers all together we found a solution. [more]We had to remove the third party BAR DIMM card that was installed on the printer before updating the firmware. My best guess is that it was actually trying to push the updated firmware file onto the BAR DIMM instead of the HD on the printer and thus was not able to read it.
I recently found myself in a situation where some pictures, that to me were priceless, had been deleted from my camera memory card. Unfortunately those pictures had not been moved or copied to any other media. Like most of us I wanted a free method of recovering them. I found a software called Recuva, which is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses! [more]
I download the program and installed it to my USB thumb drive. It installs as a simple .exe, which when ran opens a simple little GUI that allows you to scan any drive, filtering by pictures, music, documents, video or show all files found. After it finds the files you select them from the list and recover them to the location of your choice. I was actually able to find pictures deleted off the memory card over a year ago.
If interested you can download and read more about it hear. http://www.recuva.com/A new Bill, H.R. 6312: Credit Union, Bank, and Thrift Regulatory Relief Act of 2008, was introduced June 19, 2008, and passed by the House on June 24, 2008. The bill has now been sent to the Senate and awaits a vote. [more]
The Short titles of the new Legislation include:
Title I – Credit Unions
Sec. 101. Investments in securities by Federal credit unions.
Sec. 102. Increase in investment limit in credit union service organizations.
Sec. 103. Member business loan exclusion for loans to nonprofit religious organizations.
Sec. 104. Authority of NCUA to establish longer maturities for certain credit union loans.
Sec. 105. Providing the National Credit Union Administration with greater flexibility in responding to market conditions.
Sec. 106. Conversions of certain credit unions to a community charter.
Sec. 107. Credit union participation in the SBA section 504 program.
Sec. 108. Amendments relating to credit union service to underserved areas.
Sec. 109. Short-term payday loan alternatives within field of membership.
Sec. 110. Credit union governance.
Sec. 111. Encouraging small business development in underserved urban and rural communities.
Title II – Savings Association Provisions
Sec. 201. Restatement of authority for Federal savings associations to invest in small business investment companies.
Sec. 202. Removal of limitation on investments in auto loans.
Sec. 203. Repeal of qualified thrift lender requirement with respect to out-of-state branches.
Sec. 204. Small business and other commercial loans.
Sec. 205. Increase in limits on commercial real estate loans.
Sec. 206. Savings association credit card banks.
Title III – Notice Provisions
Sec. 301. Exception to annual privacy notice requirement under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Title IV – Business Checking
Sec. 401. Short title.
Sec. 402. Interest-bearing transaction accounts authorized for all businesses.
Sec. 403. Interest-bearing transaction accounts authorized.
Sec. 404. Rules of construction.
Sec. 405. Consumer banking costs assessment.
Windows Steady State has been around for some time. It used to be called Shared Computer Toolkit for XP. It saves changes to the system disk in a cached area and then when a user logs off, the system is right back like it was before they logged in. Microsoft calls this Windows Disk Protection. An admin can log in and make changes that are retained. User documents can be redirected to another drive letter and those changes will be retained. This software will work on XP, Vista, standalone, workgroup, domains – with group policies. Windows Steady State could be very helpful with computers that are shared by multiple people such as those in a training classroom setting.
I visited with a HP storage engineer at a conference and he told me that the I/O module on a 1510i does NOT have the disk configuration information in it’s memory, but that the disk configuration is written on each disk drive. Therefore, if the I/O module fails, you can replace it with another module and the drive configuration (RAID, LUN’s, etc) will not be effected. He also suggested that if the I/O module fails, then you should move the cache memory from the old to the new I/O controller prior to bringing up the system so that the cache will be flushed to the disks. I definitely recommend contacting HP support if your I/O controller goes out to verify this, but it made me feel better about the recoverability of our SAN. If you have a spare I/O module on hand, recovering from an I/O module failure should be easy (in theory).
For you command line guys who think the Google interface is too glitzy, try Goosh. It puts a Unix-style interface in front of Google. It's not an official product of google, but it returns google search results. Enjoy!