Do you put up with gossip in your workplace?
"For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases." - Proverbs 26:20
For some people it is not that big of a deal. At my company we will (and have) let people go for problems with gossip. We believe that it is a poisonous problem that cannot be tolerated.
LogMeIn Error “failed to start remote control process: 5″
Client called last night with the above error when trying to connect to any of 6 workstations in an office in Virginia from any other machine with any browser. Quick check on google returned no results, so I called LogMeIn support. Apparently, an update released yesterday for AVG misidentifies a component of LogMeIn as Vundo.J and blocks it from accessing the internet. It will also block new installations of LogMeIn, causing the "starting services" step to fail over and over again.
The band-aid is easy, just exclude c:\program files\logmein from your resident shield. The folks at LogMeIn also urged me to contact AVG support about the issue, as they want to get it fixed as quickly as possible and they figure that more voices will make the fix happen more quickly.
Download HKCRScan.exe tool for troubleshooting MS Article ID 823159
Users were getting a "HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable" on both https://<servername>/Exchange , https://<servername>/Public and on https://<servername>/microsoft-server-activesync, they get a login prompt and then a "HTTP 501/HTTP 505"
The below tool should be run from the command prompt. It should identify and remove registry keys over the 259 character limit. It will kick back any errors. If you have null keys (keys that are faulty but unremovable), you can use RootKitRevealer from sysinternals and get rid of them. I understand that regdelnull can do something similar, but in this case, it was a corrupt key, not a key with null characters.
In my case, the affected key was relating to the driver for the Intel storage controller (VEN_8086&DEV_24D3&SUBSYS_458015D9&REV_02). Not cool. I could not delete or rename the key and could not set/view permissions on it. Ran RootKitRevealer, which caused a stop error/reboot (crap) but successfully removed the key. IN OTHER WORDS, DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A TESTED BACKUP.
"To help troubleshoot this issue, run the HKCRScan tool (HKCRScan.exe). The HKCRScan tool enumerates the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry hive to locate subkeys that contain more than 259 characters. Additionally, HKCRScan helps determine if there is an invalid discretionary access control list by returning error code 0x5. This error code means "Access denied" when it enumerates a registry key. The HKCRScan tool is an internal tool developed by Microsoft."
Most useful new content to come from Yahoo(!) in years.
This is a very good overview of the public DNS system. Kinda gives you a feel for the fragile nature of the beast. Also, it gives some great information on the role that crap DNS plays in hidden performance problems.
Of course, I love using OpenDNS for testing, as most ISP's DNS servers just plain suck.
Why is this not being shouted from the roof of the home of every content creator?
To anyone who has ever created anything of value, and had it cheapened by the culture of entitlement so pervasive in the US and the rest of the internet-connected world, Rupert Murdoch has declared that Google is mortal and, together, we can kill it.
Headlines that can be misread…
Texas Honors Student Charged In Plot To Kill Dad
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/72568237.html
I mean, unless the guy was a real jerk or something. ๏̯͡๏﴿
Imagine if someone could compete with Wal-mart on price….
They can't of course. But just imagine that they could.
Because that is exactly what the new wave of web services are doing. See, when you write code, it doesn't normally cost you much to use it the 2nd through 9 billionth time. That first one is expensive. Stores like Amazon.com make money hand over fist because they have innovated on so many levels that they have become almost unstoppable at what they do. But thousands of little sites are popping up everwhere that are undercutting the established market leaders. Mint.com is attacking Quickbooks. MailChimp can beat out ConstantContact for most smaller tasks for free. freepdfconvert.com can handle most of the tasks that people use Acrobat Standard or Pro for.
Most people don't need a Swiss Army knife. They really just want a great knife or can opener when they need it, preferably one that is easy to use and even better, free. By focusing on very simple, individualized tasks, people can pretty easily reduce the cost of that first roll out of the software and then make a small amount on advertising revenue from there out. Expenses are very low (as are expectations), and changes can be made rapidly based on feedback.
In order to take down a skyscraper, you can either try to attack it broadside with a wrecking ball or you can go after the foundation with a super soaker.
Server 2008 R2 Considerations:
As Aaron posted over at BinaryWar.com, Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first release of Windows to be 64bit only. We knew it was coming, with SQL and Exchange having already made the jump. With the majority of us still supporting mostly 32bit clients, there are some special considerations to keep in mind when you are planning a deployment of a 64 bit server for general small office use (as opposed to a higer performance or higher demand machine, traditionally the targets of 64 bit architecture).:
- Applications compatibility - Will your companies applications run ( in a supported fashion) on a 64 bit server? Any modern application should at least have a forthcoming update to support 64bit, but there are plenty of non-modern applications out there that are lagging behind. In the event that it is not supported, your best option may be to either host a VM on your new 64 bit server, or run both of them on a hypervisor. Call your vendor and get their support statement in writing. You do not want to get halfway through a migration and find out that you will have to run beta code to make it work, sort of, in the meantime.
- Backups - Most newer versions of BackupExec support 64 bit, so you should be fine there, if that is what you are running. Obviously if you are using the built in backup, it would be supported as well. Make sure that whatever device (especially tape drives) you are using to back up to is supported.
- Printers - Ah yes, the lowly print server. Plenty of printers have either crap 64bit drivers or nothing at all. Either plan on replacing those printers or using plan b from item 1 above.
- Antivirus - Don't forget this. You need it and the chances that your existing install package will work on 64bit are basically zero
Upgrade path from Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 Trialware to Full Version…
There isn't one. That is all.
Weird Problem of the Day: Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 2003 DC’s Not Replicating
OK, one of our techs was onsite upgrading a basic single server DC/File Server/App Server. He joined the server to the domain, promoted it and ensured that the files in the sysvol share were replicating. Everything looked fine. He transferred the FSMO roles, again without error. When he ran the dcpromo on the old server to demote it, he got an errors saying that
"The directory service was unable to transfer ownership of one or more floating single-master operation roles to other servers"
Weird. So I had him do all the normal steps, moving FSMO back and forth, waiting 15 minutes, restarting netlogon and FRS services. Nothing helped. FRS was running, stuff was replicating, but apparently something was still missing.
Running "repadmin /showreps" yielded a few errors:
"Last attempt @ 2009-11-12 18:45:37 failed, result 1256 (0x4e8): The remote system is not available. For information about network troubleshooting, see Windows Help."
Bottom line, R2 and 2003 servers sometimes have security problems replicating between them. There is a hotfix, probably the worst-titled one in history, to fix it.
Crap huh? No way you would find that if you were searching for a problem with AD replication. There is a tiny note in there that one of the problems you might experience is replication-related. So we requested and ran the hotfix, rebooted and magically dcpromo worked as the maker intended it to. I hope that this makes it into a service pack or critical update at some point soon, because we have a lot of Windows 2003 servers that are eventually going to need to be replaced.