Daily Archives: September 13, 2006

Version of Windows Vista for Software Assurance Clients only

Posted on by

For Sysguy clients that have MIcrosoft Open License and Software Assurance on their Windows Xp systems. There is a version of Windows Vista that will be available exclusively for them.

This version contains all the features of Windows Vista Business in addition to BitLocker Hard Drive encryption, application compatibilty and multiple language support. This version is not available for retail purchase and will only be made available to clients with current Software Assurance on their XP Pro systems.

To find out more about this new version you can go to this blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2006/09/11/749695.aspx

To see the features of Windows Vista visit Microsoft here
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx

To view the editions of Windows Vista visit this site
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx

Or contact Sysguy Consulting to learn about how you can get your machines enrolled in Software Assurance. If you have purchased a PC or Laptop since October of 2005 with Windows XP Pro you can be eligible to add SA to these machines!

Stephen

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005?

Posted on by

You may have seen in the various ads for computers now a days, that a lot of laptops and desktops are advertised as being installed with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. I get a few questions from clients on what Media Center Edition is.

Windows SP Media Center Edition 2005 is a version of Windows XP that Microsoft released in October 2004. Media Center was available previously, but only form Tier 1 system builders (HP, Dell, Compaq). In Oct 2004 the new version was released and it was made available via the standard OEM channels (yes you can get it with new hardware from most software vendors). We built our first MCE test PC within a few days of the release.

So what is Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE)? It is an operating system built on Windows XP Professional , with some features disabled, that is designed to be an all in one entertainment center for your home. Depending on how the system is built it can, record and playback TV shows, be connected to a wide screen or standard tv, playback photos as slide shows, listen to radio, surf the web or watch DVDs and Videos! MCE is the base operating system on the Intel VIIV software platform. The Media Center application looks great on a PC and on a TV and can be operated using a MCE remote control unit.

I built my Media Center PC when the disk showed up in my October 2004 Microsoft Action Pack update. I had a brand new motherboard and processor from Intel (3 GHZ 775 processor and an Intel Micro ATX motherboard) so I used these for the PC. I added some memory (1 GB), a Hard Drive (200 GB SATA), a video card (Powercolor ATI X300 PCI-E with TV Out), and a Microsoft Approved TV Tuner (Avermedia 1500 MCE). I also picked up an OEM MS remote control set.

Putting the PC together and installing the software was the same as building any other PC. There is one extra CD to run (you get prompted) for it. A word of note if you plan on building your own, save the hassle and used MCE approved hardware only.

Once the PC is built I decided that I was going to hook it up to the gaming TV, a 32″ JVC that was moved when we got our Sony Wide Screen HD, to our living room and had the spare Shaw Digital box (DCT) and the three video game systems that we own. I hooked it up to the S-Video connector from the Video card out to the S-video in on the TV, hooked up a crt for set up to the dual display and started up the PC. I configured the video card to display to the TV and went through the MCE application set up. In a nutshell you set up the screen and the speakers you have, run through a set up of your video input source, set up the channel guide based on your source, test the IR blaster, arrange for storage and space and then away you go. The OEM MS remote comes with 2 IP Blaster cables that attach to the devices remoter IR ports and change channels just like the remote control.

I rebooted the PC and went tried to watch a TV program… Error No video, hmmm what did I do wrong? Restart, run set up again, still no video from the TV. Check the net.. Found out that I needed a DVD codec! The Cyberlink player software version that I had installed was not an MCE supported one. I purchased Nvidia’s decoder from their web site, installed the software, re ran the MCE setup, perfect I could watch live TV! I ran through the whole thing and was able to view a slide show of the sample pictures that came with the OS. Next it was testing the FM tuner built into the Capture board.. Yup it worked. Play a CD and a DVD yes!I checked out the TV guide and the recording function next. The guide is powered by Zap2it.com and I find is more accurate than Shaw’s own guide on their DCT boxes. To record a tv program I highlighted a program in the guide, pressed the red record button on the remote and that was it. It recorded the program successfully.

Over the last two years this machine has become the workouse PC in our home… It is on 7/24/365, and has gotten a few upgrades over the year…

Continue reading →

Promising new product! Belkin Flip Wireless Laptop KVM

Posted on by

I am anxiously awaiting the UPS driver to show up today with a new product I am testing. Belkin has just released a new product in their Flip KVM product line. For those who don’t know a KVM is a keyboard, Video and Mouse switch, which allows you to share one keyboard, one Monitor and one Mouse between several systems.

From what I can see the unit comes with the KVM, The cables and there is optional software you can download from Belkin’s website. The receiver sits on your desktop and controls which screen you are controlling with a push of a button. You need a USB keyboard and Mouse combo, a VGA connector (NO DVI) and audio can be switched optionally. The software allows you to flip back and forth from your keyboard.

The unit will retail for about 89.99. I plan on using it with my Monitor (or my secondary monitor) and my laptop.

When it arrives later today I will have a look and hopefully will get to test it. Keep an eye here for more information on this product!

Stephen

SBS Backups Tape VS USB Hard Drives

Posted on by

Currently there is a debate raging on the yahoo small business server mailing list about what is better for servers, backing up to tape or backing up to USB Hard Drives. Like all situations there is positives and negatives to both sides.

Our views
We have been using both types of backups for our clients but lately have been making the move to USB Hard Drive most often. Lower end tape drives (Travan) have not kept up to the ever expanding size of hard drives and I have found can sometimes be unreliable. Higher end tap drives with the proper capacity are expensive and the media is very expensive (Drives cost between 1000 to 5000 dollars CAN, and media is 100.00 – 200.00 CAN per tape). The largest two advantages of a tape system however is that the media is portable and easy to store offsite and you can add additional tapes to archive data over a longer period of time.

USB Hard Drives on the other hand are very inexpensive and often you can get 4 or 5 300 GB drives in enclosures for the cost of 1 lower end tape drive. There are a couple of problems that can occur with USB hard drives. The drives are more fragile than tape media. Dropping the enclosure can result in significant damage that renders the backups on it useless. The drives are bulkier than tape media. As well if a part of a backup set get’s corrupted due to bad media, the whole backup set may be useless, whereas with a tape the corrupted part of the media could still be skipped and the rest of the backup files restored. The biggest advantages are that they are fast (USB 2), they can hold much more data than a tape and they are inexpensive!

What have we been doing for our clients? Currently for Small business we are recommending a minimum of 2 USB Hard Drives in a rotation at minimum. Ideally 3 or 4 would be better. 1 Drive backs up 1 week and is rotated out and stored off site, and then the other drive is substitued. With a 3 or 4 drive system one drive could be used for archiving monthly backups. In addition with the cost of external hard drives dropping on a regular basis a new drive could be added every 5 to 6 months to store and archive backups.

Off site storage and archiving is very important. Many things can happen to a physical location (Fires, Theft, Flooding) and if there is no backup taken off site, important company data could be lost. For companies that are publicly traded and operating in the US, Sarbannes Oxley regulations force them to maintain archives of 7 years of all their data and email. Think to yourself. What would happen to my business if all of our data was wiped out today? A well planned, maintained and tested disaster recovery plan is well worth any cost in implementing!

We would be happy to discuss backup solutions with any of our exisiting clients or new clients. Soon we will be contacting everyone for a review of their existing disaster recover plans and where shortfalls may lie.

To the same affect most home users should also implement some sort of backup system. Often we work on PCs where there is a failure of either physical components or software issues where we attempt (and are usually successful) at recovering data, however this can become very expensive and time consuming.

There is an old IT expression that states “you are only as good as your last backup!” So true!

Stephen

SBS Grey Screen of Death

Posted on by

A big whoops over to the people at CA (Computer Associates). In late August they released a virus signature package to their E Trust products that mistakenly flags the required LSASS.exe system file as a trojan horse/ Virus and the real time scanner would delete the file. Upon reboot the server would freeze at a grey screen. This was discovered fairly early but in some cases the damage was already done. You can read more about this error at this blog

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2006/09/01/453504.aspx

I have checked the servers of Sysguy clients that have CA ETrust 8 AV on them and all appeared to have notbeen affected by this signature update problem. However I would ask that all Sysguy Clients running this software please contact us before rebooting their servers so that we can be on standby to fix any problems.

Stephen

Internet Explorer 7 RC 1 Error

Posted on by

I have the latest RC of Internet Explorer 7 loaded on my laptop… With Beta 3 ( I skipped 2 because I was having problems), everything worked fine. After I installed RC1, I started gettting errors everytime I closed the browser, and if there are multiple tabs open I would get the error after every tab closed. Digging a little into it I discovered the problem is related to the Stumbleupon toolbar (mentioned in another post of mine). Turning off the toolbar makes the problem go away. I hope the folks at stumbleupon.com know of the issue as I enjoy “stumbling” once in a while!

I like the new release of IE, especially the tabbed browsing and the RSS feeds. Altough I use a dedicated RSS reader I may one day switch to this as well. You can download and try it out here.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx

One thing that I have heard is that IE7 when it is released will be installed automatically as a critical update to your Operating system. Microsoft has made a blocking tool available for system administrators to stop the automatic upgrade until the browser is fully tested.

Stephen

Windows Vista RC1 released to CPP

Posted on by

Got my email this weekend that Windows Vista RC1 has been released to the Consumer Preview Program. If you registered for the program you should be able to download and install the latest release. From what I understand this code is very close to what will be the Gold Released to Manufacturing Version. I haven’t had a chance to install the RC yet but will probably get to it in the next little while.

Stephen

New Moon Photos Posted

Posted on by

I have just posted three shots I took of the moon. All three were taken Sept 8th between 12 and 1:30 AM through my Celestron C6SGT and with my Canon Digital Rebel XT. I am pretty proud of these as this was the first time I used the Rebel XT on that scope. Two are taken just directly through the scope, (the top half and the bottom half images) and the other was taken using an Antares 6.3 Focal Reducer (Full moon shot). Have a look. They can be seen in my gallery at the following location.

http://www.chinookcity.com/gallery2