Ramblings o' Techie

Install Windows XP in a VMWare ESXi environment, no hard disks found error

2009-11-20T16:03:00.003-06:00

If you attempt to install Windows XP in an VMWare ESXi environment (at least v3.0-3.5), don't be surprised if you get an error about no hard disks available. This is because you need to manually install SCSI drivers for the VMWare disks. Luckily VMWare provides a floppy image for this purpose and it's free to download. Simply mount the image as a virtual floppy, then press F6 when the Windows

Scripting a file transfer to an FTP server using a non-standard port (not 21)

2009-11-16T10:56:00.001-06:00

I ran into an issue last week while trying to automated a file upload to an FTP site using a port other than the default of 21. For some reason I couldn't get it to work. It would continually get stuck at "150 Opening ASCII mode data connection". Checking the logs I was finding a 425 10060 error, which meant that the connection was being dropped. There were ghost files of 0KB being created on the

Windows command line FTP client that support PASV (passive mode)

2009-11-16T10:34:00.000-06:00

If you're trying to write an FTP transfer into a script and require a command line client that support passive mode transfers, you'll need a third-party solution. This is because ftp.exe that is built into Windows does not support passive mode. Luckily, there is a free third-party solution that works pretty well and I'm now using it for some of my scripts. It is NcFTP, and is a Windows adaptation

Restart Windows XP Print Spooler service

2009-11-06T16:40:00.002-06:00

Sometimes you may find it helpful or necessary to restart the print spooler on your Windows XP computer. This can happen if you're having issues with a printer, or if a job gets stuck in the queue and you can't delete it. To restart the print spooler:1. Right-click the My Computer icon and select to Manage2. Go to Services and Applications->Services3. Within Services, scroll down until you get to

Networked HP 1022n printer not printing

2009-11-06T16:32:00.004-06:00

I have a user with an older HP 1022n laserjet printer at her desk, and all of a sudden today it stopped working. I found the jobs stuck in the printer queue on our Windows Server 2003 print server, but couldn't get rid of them. Restarting the spooler didn't seem to help either. However, I found an article on experts-exchange.com (membership required) with a solution, and it apparently works for

McAfee ePO 4.0 won't update repository or allow manual package check-in

2009-10-29T11:28:00.004-05:00

I was running into an issue with our ePO 4.0 server, where it wasn't updating the master repository like it should, and if I tried to manually check-in a package I would get an error that said "Unknown failure processing package". Trying to manually pull updates would also give a -1 error and say nothing was found. This turned out to be caused by the SQL Server install and the ePO server instance

Shared folders on iSCSI drive disappear after restart

2009-10-29T08:09:00.003-05:00

I was finally given approval to purchase an iSCSI SAN a few months ago and have been enjoying the benefits of having a large amount of storage space with a RAID6 disk array. However, one problem I had with the iSCSI disk is that if I shared a folder in Windows Server 2003 from any of the logical iSCSI drives on the computer, after a restart the share would disappear and I would have to recreate

Group policy assigned software not being installed

2009-10-23T13:10:00.005-05:00

I wanted to setup Office 2007 to be deployed through group policy. However, I could get it to work on the machine I was using to test the policy on, even though the rest of the GPO settings set on that OU were being applied correctly. Well, it turned out that it was the gigabit NIC installed in the laptop (IBM Thinkpad T42). Apparently there are some known issues (that I didn't know about) that

OS X 10.5 Leopard includes better VPN support

2009-10-19T15:57:00.005-05:00

We have a simple PPTP VPN setup using a Fortigate firewall, but the Mac OS X 10.4 users had a hard time with it. The problem was that there was no way to set the DNS servers for the PPTP connection within OS X 10.4, so everything had to use IP addresses. It appears that they've fixed this in OS X 10.5 Leopard, and I'm going to guess it is also fixed in Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). You also do not

Take screenshot of iPhone screen

2009-10-17T13:18:00.005-05:00

Sometimes it would be nice to take a quick screenshot of my iPhone screen to be able to use to show someone something. Little did I know that Apple thought of that and it's really easy to do. All you have to do is press the home and power buttons quickly at the same time. The screen should flash as if you had just taken a picture, and then you can find the screenshot within your pictures on the

Restore iPhone with error 13 or 1611 in iTunes

2009-09-29T10:35:00.004-05:00

I had a user who accidentally unplugged their iPhone 3G while it was in the middle of updating. It appeared to render the phone useless, and trying to restore it didn't work. I even tried using recovery mode but that didn't help either. iTunes would get to a point where it would say "Preparing iPhone for Restore", then fail with error 13 or error 1611. Needless to say I called Apple iPhone

Weird iPhone issue when trying to sync with Exchange

2009-09-24T12:08:00.002-05:00

Ok, so first off I solved the issue I was seeing, but I have to post it anyway because I spent much too long figuring it out. Secondly, if you're having an error about encryption and you recently upgraded to the iPhone 3.1 OS, this isn't that problem. However, you can find the Apple discussion about that issue at:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151382&tstart=0The problem I had

Select preferred DNS or WINS network interface in Windows Server

2009-09-22T09:25:00.004-05:00

I recently installed a second NIC card in one of the Windows 2003 servers that I manage. After installation everything appeared to be working correctly, but I noticed that the server was registering the new NIC's IP address in the DNS and WINS consoles. DNS selects to use all available interfaces by default, which I was aware of, so I right-clicked on the server within the DNS console, went to

DVD player software for FREE on your Windows machine

2009-09-15T11:06:00.005-05:00

Firstly, this post is meant for Windows users, however the software mentioned is open-source and runs on OS X and Linux as well. One thing I run into occassionally is someone wondering why they can't watch DVDs on their laptop. I know Windows machines come with Windows Media Player, but that never really has seemed to do a very good job of working with DVDs or movie files. I've used Powerlink's

Using Spell Check in Microsoft Word or Outlook 2007

2009-09-10T09:25:00.005-05:00

This may be old news to a lot of people, but I was asked by a user today where she could find the spell check in Word and Outlook 2007. She was just recently upgraded, and with the GUI change didn't know where it had went. If anyone else is looking for the spell checking service in Word or Outlook 2007, here's where you can find it. The screenshots look small in the blog, but you can click on

"Cannot read from the source file or disk" error when deleting

2009-09-03T16:58:00.004-05:00

I've run into the "Cannot read from the source file or disk" problem more than once, and every time it had has to do with trying to delete a file originally created by a Mac from a Windows-based file server. I used to just leave the file in place, but I finally couldn't take it anymore and found a solution: http://blog.dotsmart.net/2008/06/12/solved-cannot-read-from-the-source-file-or-disk/. It

Fix SYSVOL replication problems

2009-08-20T13:01:00.006-05:00

I have four domain controllers, three of which were working fine. The fourth, which happened to be the master of practically everything active directory, wouldn't replicate correctly to the other DCs. The main error I found in the event log was a JRNL_WRAP_ERROR, with some information regarding changing a registry key and performing a non-authoratative restore in order to get replication going

Using Ctrl Alt Del in a Remote Desktop session

2009-08-14T11:12:00.003-05:00

I'm sure anyone who has used Microsoft's remote desktop at one time or another wishes they could use the Ctrl+Alt+Del command on the remote computer. Well, what most might not know is that you can. Ctrl+Alt+Del will always affect the local Windows machine. However, Ctrl+Alt+End will provide the same functionality within a remote desktop sessions, allowing you to bring up the task manager or

Remove or find iPhone backup information

2009-08-10T12:20:00.005-05:00

If you want to get rid of the backup information for an iPhone it's pretty simple. Open iTunes, then go to Edit->Preferences..., then click on the Devices tab. There you should see all devices you have synchronized with iTunes, along with the date of the most recent backup. To remove a backed up device, simply click on it to select it and then click on the Delete Backup button.If you're curious

Reset iPhone using Recovery Mode

2009-08-07T10:45:00.004-05:00

If you run into problems with your iPhone not working with iTunes, you still may be able to reset your phone and get it working again. First off, this was written for Windows users. Recovery mode should work on Macs as well, but some of the other information listed will not be relevant. This process will only work if your computer still recognizes the phone when you plug it in. If not, then your

2GB worth of online backup space for FREE!

2009-08-05T11:25:00.005-05:00

Dropbox is a relatively new application that you can get from https://www.getdropbox.com/. It is free to download and use for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but you may want to make sure your flavor of Linux is supported before assuming it is. The software itself provides automatic synchronization of a folder on your computer with the online server. You can install Dropbox on multiple computers, which

Automate and schedule Microsoft Access macros

2009-07-22T12:32:00.005-05:00

If you are running various Microsoft Access databases (haven't quite gotten to SQL yet...) which need to be updated, it's usually nice to be able to automate the updates. While there is no built-in scheduler within Access, you can call macros from the command line, which then means you can script macros through the use of a batch file. 1. Create a new text file with an extension of .bat. You can

lpadmin error when trying to print in OS X 10.5

2009-07-13T11:36:00.005-05:00

This is a known issue in OS X 10.5.7, and Apple has a support article with the supposed workaround. Trying to login as the lpadmin fails, and I'm sure if you found this article you're frustrated with trying to figure out which password you should be using. The trick is to upgrade the lpadmin group to support GUID membership. To do that, you can use a terminal command while logged in as a local

Check which process is using which port in Windows

2009-07-09T15:36:00.005-05:00

Ports are used all the time. Some are standardized (25 for SMTP), and others are dynamic. I ran into an issue setting up a TFTP server yesterday where it said it couldn't start because another process was already using the port, even though I couldn't think of any programs I had running that would have had it in use. I had to investigate, and being that it is simple, I thought I'd share the

Enable LACP on an HP Procurve switch

2009-07-07T08:07:00.004-05:00

First off, make sure your switch supports LACP. Not all of them do. If yours doesn't, or at least doesn't out of the box, check to see if there are any firmware updates on HP's site that enable LACP support, which you can find at http://www.hp.com/rnd/software/switches.htm. You also want to make sure that the device you're connecting to the switch supports LACP too, but hopefully you've already