deKay's Blog

We’re currently in the process of migrating servers from Server 2003 to Server 2008, which is proving a right old pain for various reasons. This morning’s headache was reinstalling a load of network printers on the new 2008 install that worked perfectly well on the 2003 install.

64-bit 2008, by default, only installs printers with the 64-bit 2008 and (for some printers, it seems, but not others) the 32 and 64-bit Vista/Windows 7 “User Mode” drivers. The old-style 2000/XP/2003 drivers don’t get a look in. There doesn’t seem to be a way to add them on the server either.

Thankfully, someone else has already found a way of sorting it. Basically, you navigate on an XP client to the Printers and Faxes share of the 2008 server, then click File > Server Properties > Drivers > Add, and point it at the XP (and other, if necessary) drivers for the printer.

There are a few issues, particularly if the 2008 and XP drivers have different names, but these can be resolved or worked around.

Here’s the full set of instructions – read the comments there for how to fix the additional problems!

Well, there are probably some missing. And many aren’t games consoles. In fact, some didn’t have all that many games at all, and some are really one-title TV games and not actually video games. But anyway.

The Insane Console History Video 2.0 from Elder-Geek on Vimeo.

I was trying to navigate round the Dell website today to find information on, then spec up, a particular model of PC. At every turn, on every page load, and every time I let go of the mouse for 7 seconds, this appeared:

I kept clicking “No Thanks”, but a page change or reload and it was back. This annoyed me a bit. Well, a lot. So I decided to chat with them.

Here’s the transcript (with the “Dell Expert”‘s name replaced). They were an expert indeed.

I am pleased that the Dell Zino can run imovie, and amazed that different colour computers are, as is the way with cars, different speeds! Amazing.

Oh yes, and the best bit was when, during the chat, this happened:

(Oh, and for those of you feeling sorry for the Dell Expert, I gave him/her a glowing customer satisfaction report.)

If, like us, you have WebMarshal, and it’s tied to an SQL Server Express database, you may find it sometimes just… breaks. You’ll get eventlog messages like “3003:  Failed to write session to database” and “PRIMARY filegroup is full” and “Could not allocate space for object ‘dbo.DomainFileLog’”. Chances are, your database is full.

The Express version of SQL Server 2005 is nice because it’s free, but it does limit database sizes to just 4GB. This may sound huge, but for us, that’s only around 4 months worth of internet logs, and we need to clear some space every so often. I always forget how to do it, so this post is a reminder to me as much as anything.

Before you start, to make things easier, get yourself a copy of Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express. It’s free, and makes managing your SQL databases much easier. Once installed on your SQL Server machine (and connected to it), you can set about fixing WebMarshal.

Firstly, you need to purge a load of old records from the log. Chances are you don’t need to go back more than a few months anyway. If you do, you might want to backup your database, name it as a “snapshot” of today’s date, and then restore it if you need to have a look at old entries. How you purge depends on the version of WebMarshal you have, but for either 3.x or 6.x you start my clicking open the WebMarshal database from the object explorer on the left.

Now, on the pane on the right, you’ll have an empty command window. In here, you need to paste one of the following commands:

For WebMarshal 3.x:

exec dbo.PurgeLogData @NumDays = 'n'

Where n is the number of days to keep. So, if you want to get rid of anything more 60 days old, replace n with 60.

For WebMarshal 6.x:

exec dbo.PurgeLogData @PurgeDate = 'yyyymmdd', @MaxRecords = 0

Where yyyymmdd is the date from which everything older is deleted. So, if you wanted to get rid of everything from before 10th April 2010, enter yyyymmdd as 20100410.

Whichever command you use, after typing it in, click the “! Execute” button to perform the task, which may take some time.

Unfortunately, all this does is remove the data. It doesn’t shrink the data files, so your 4GB database will still be 4GB. Thankfully, there’s an easy way of doing this.

Back on the object explorer pane, right-click the WebMarshal database and choose Tasks > Shrink > Database, then click OK. Again, this may take a while. Once finished, for good measure, choose Tasks > Shrink > Files, then click OK.

Now your database should be much smaller! To check, right-click the database once more and choose Properties. In the General section, there’s an entry for Database Size. If this is way below 4GB, you’re done. If not, you might want to do a bit more purging!

I was sent a Wii SD Card this week (actually, three), and last night got to try one out. So, here is a review. Yes, a review of a piece of plastic and silicon the size of a postage stamp! Amazing.

The first thing you’ll notice is that, unlike most SD cards, the SanDisk for Wii card is white. Like the Wii. Little known fact: the Wii itself, its power supply, the  SD card shaped. Check yours – I’m right!

Other exciting features include a write protect lock switch – ideal if you’re paranoid about Nintendo’s system updates deleting your Wii’s homebrew stash. This sort of thing is pretty standard for SD cards anyway though, and you could just remove the card when you update…

Anyway! In use, it performs about as well as my usual SanDisk Extreme II card. I couldn’t tell any speed differences when transferring channels and saves to and from it compared to the Extreme II. The Extreme III is supposedly quicker, but I suspect a lot of the speed issues are down to the Wii’s transfer methods and not the cards themselves. Apart from that, it’s an SD card and it works. You can even use it in cameras and stuff – it’s not fussy about only being for the Wii. There’s even a sticker on it declaring DSi compatibility. Wow!

You can get these fine items (and other similar things) from MemoryCardZoo. The 2GB SD Card is £5.99.

Competition!

Now, of course, you want to know how to save yourself £5.99 and win one, right? Of course you are! So what do you need to do?

Simply reply in the comments with Things You’d Put An SD Card Slot In And Why. You can email me pictures (the worse the better) to andyk @ lofi-gaming.org.uk if you’d prefer. Closing date, ooooh, close of day Sunday 4th July. One card each to the two suggestions or pictures I deem best. Or worst. Go!

Apparently, there’s some sort of football tournament on at the moment. Quite a big one too. I wouldn’t know.

However, the fact that it’s on, and some of the games are on during the working day, causes a few problems in that staff at work want to watch them. And they don’t have teevees. Me to the rescue then, with this motley crew of software and devices:

• An Elgato EyeTV 410
• A PowerMac G5
• VLC
• The VLC Plugin for EyeTV

Of course, this method should work for pretty much any supported EyeTV product and Mac. You’ll also need to know the IP address of the Mac you’re streaming from.

Firstly, you need to install the plugin. You can find this here. Once done, open EyeTV then open VLC. Make sure you can access EyeTV from VLC by choosing File > Open Capture Device and choose EyeTV from the selector. You may find you have to choose Screen then EyeTV again as it sometimes doesn’t “see” EyeTV right away. Pick a channel from the channel selector (you can change this later) and click OK. Don’t choose anything to do with streaming here.

You should now have an entry like “/eyetv-channel=3″ in your VLC playlists. Play this, and you’ll get your EyeTV channel in VLC!

Next, you need to so the streaming. Click File > Streaming/Exporting Wizard.

Choose Stream to Network, click Next, then choose the /eyetv playlist from the “Existing playlist item” list, and click Next again. For Streaming method choose HTTP, and leave Destination blank, then Next again. Leave all the Transcode options unticked, click Next, and choose “MPEG TS” for the encapsulation format. Click Next once more. In the next window, click Finish. You now have a ready-to-watch stream!

Now, on another machine on the network, open VLC. Choose File (or Media, depending which version you have) and Open Network Stream. For Protocol, choose HTTP, and in the address box type ipofmac:8080 (where “ipofmac” is the IP address of the Mac that’s providing the stream). Now Play!

All things being well, you should now be watching your TV stream across the network. If you need to change channel, you can do that on the “server” by simply flicking channel on the EyeTV controls.

If you too were shocked and horrified at the awful Bingification of Google today, here’s how to fix it. Which you’ll want to do. I mean, just look at it:

First, click “Add your own background image now”, and upload this suitably sized blank image. Set that as your background, Bing and You’re Done(TM).

Phew, eh?

Inspired by the FANTASTIC piggy I drew earlier, I decided to have a look for the previous “pixel art” I’d done about 12 years ago on the Amiga. I shouldn’t have bothered – they were far worse to look at than I remembered.

There was a system on the Amiga for higher quality (than standard) icons for programs, games, files and folders called NewIcons. I’d installed it on my Amiga, but couldn’t find icons for a few things. So I created my own.

NewIcons had two states too – clicked and not-clicked, so each icon needed two images.

Anyway, here they are!

Amazing, I’m sure you’ll agree.