Tag: work
DFS related intermittent file share outages on Server 2008
Resolving the mystery of the excessive disk reads.
Can’t log into SQL Server 2012 with domain admin account
I recently migrated a database from SQL Server 2008 to a new server running SQL Server 2012. Everything worked fine, but it was annoying me that I couldn’t log into the database (using SQL Server Management Studio) as a domain administrator – specifically DOMAIN\administrator. Logging in as the SQL user “sa” worked fine, but using Windows Authentication I got the error: Error Number: 18456 Severity: 14 State: 1 Line Number: 65536 Now, I’ve had similar to this before, and the …
How to set up a Linux lab with no Linux machines
So when you’re told that you might have 30-odd students that need access to Linux for some course they’re doing, and you don’t have any spare machines and don’t want to dual boot with Windows on a computer suite and you don’t have time to do that anyway, what do you do? Well, one solution is what we’ve done: A Linux virtual machine running on a Hyper-V server, with “child” virtual machines, each accessible from a Windows machine. Specific for …
Fixing “Not enough free space” error when deploying Windows image
After creating a new install of Windows 7, with all the software on I wanted, I then tried to use our Windows Deployment Services Server to capture the image. However, it failed using both methods we’d used previously. When booting to Windows PE over the network, choosing all our usual capture options, and then triggering the capture, an error message came up – “not enough free space”. This seemed odd, as there was a good 60GB free on the local …
How Movie Maker projects work – with Lego analogy
Struggle to explain to students (or staff!) why their Movie Maker project doesn’t work when they move to another computer without taking the video elements with them? Resolve this with a Lego analogy! I created this for work, but thought it may be of use to others. Maybe. Download file.
Who’s looking at my SQL server?
Putting this here mainly for my own benefit, but it may help others. If you want to find out which NT users are connected to your MS SQL (2005 or 2008) server, and which computer they’re using – simply use this query (which you could run in SQL Server Management Studio): select hostname,nt_username from sys.sysprocesses For added excitement, if you do use Management Studio, you can display the result as text or a grid to take into Excel and filter …
Can’t upgrade Exchange 2010 – “The service cannot be started”
The time had come to install SP3 on Exchange 2010. Things hadn’t worked, with nothing useful in the logs, when I tried to apply all the SP2 update rollups, so I thought I’d skip them and go straight to Service Pack 3. I had a few odd issues to begin with: For some reason it thought I had Windows Update running. I didn’t. Then it got through the “readiness checks” but failed because “beremote” (Symantec Backup Exec was running – …
Injecting Windows Updates into install WIM files via MDT
For a while now we’ve been deploying Windows 7 on the network using the Microsoft Deployment Toolbox, and it generally works well. However, some of the images we deploy are now about a year old, and a year is a long time in the wonderful world of Microsoft Critical And Security Updates, and so having deployed a new PC there’s still a good hour’s worth of install-reboot-install-reboot-install “fun” with the updates. I decided it was time to start rolling the …
I made the news
A few weeks back I did an Interactive Fiction “thing” at work. And for some reason, it was reported in the local press! (I’ve removed the picture because it had kids in it).
Restricting who an Exchange 2010 user gets email from
At work, we have an IT Helpdesk (as part of Spiceworks). Staff can email the helpdesk, and the helpdesk creates a work ticket and the IT staff get notified. It works well. However, the system is locked so that only people on the work domain, with work email addresses (lets say, @work.com) can email it. This was intentional, so it didn’t pick up spam and so staff didn’t email it from their home email accounts and so on. If this …
Interactive Fiction: Two room puzzle
I’m going to be showing some students how to create interactive fiction with Inform 7. The first task for them will be to replicate this two room puzzle:
Managed network install of Google Chrome Frame
If you’re locked into using Internet Explorer on your network, for whatever reason, you’ll probably find that there are some websites that simply don’t work properly, and ask you to install a “modern browser” like Firefox or Chrome. Thing is, allowing other browsers on your network is fraught with technical support issues, especially if you use other systems that insist on only working properly in IE (like some Sharepoint stuff). You can’t rely on users to always use the right …
Songs in the key of SEN software
I just had to test some software we have for SEN kids called InPrint. You type, and pictures appear over words. Like magic. So this happened. Disappointingly, no “trigger” image. Boo! Then, of course, came: