2 years on

Today is 2 years since my redundancy at my last job.

I can’t really believe that it has been 2 years as it’s flown by. I have more than settled in to my new/current job and am enjoying it more than I thought possible. Lots of new technology to deal with, much more than I would have ever seen at the old place. I still get to use a lot of my `low level` skills which have come in handy on several of occasions.

Best of all, I get to work with a bunch of guys that are not too dissimilar to the bunch at the old place. We all get on well, we all (well almost all) have the same sort of sense of humour.

But, more surprising than anything is the fact that the boat hasn’t sunk yet – by all accounts its taking in water so I can’t imagine it will be long……

Remote Support – the exact meaning

A rather busy evening of 3 remote support requests tonight and by no means easy!

I had a request to get a printer working with Windows 8, no problem there only the printer was wireless and there were no usb cables anywhere for me to set it up. Given the self-appointed level of IT skills the remotee had it was going to be interesting to say the least.

In all honestly it wasn’t too difficult as I could get access to the wireless router web interface and could do that part of the wireless set up myself. It was just the instructions for setting up the printer that were going to prove interesting.

Maybe because I have been in IT for 20 odd years that I know what to do, maybe I take that for granted too often, after all if someone says that they do not know much about using a computer then I should expect a level of use that is very basic.

It still amazes, and amuses, me just what kinds of things people do when you have a remote session with them.

Closing every window that I open as I open them! You have asked for my help to fix something so please do not close what I open. It took a few gentle comments to get that to stop.

Following the instructions on the screen too literally – when it says select [this] and then press the OK button on the [device], it means do that on the [device] not the computer. No matter how many times you click the OK button on the screen with the mouse it will not do anything and will certainly not replicate that event on the [device]!

As I have a remote session, and as explained, I can see everything that is on your screen. Please, please, please do not feel that you have to read everything out to me, as by the time you have started to read it I have clicked the next button and am way ahead of you.

I’m sure that they will not be the only things that people will do.

.Net 3.5 on Windows Server 2012

Today I set about having a look a look at Server 2012. I wanted to test out a website that I had written in .Net 2.0 and convert it to run on a newer version and generally have a play with its interaction with the OS.

Installing .Net 4 went ok, so I thought I’d add .Net 3.5

I added the feature, and installed only to be greeted with the error ‘The source files could not be found’.
That was quickly fixed by looking at a few forums, so I added it again and pointed to where the ‘sources\sxs’ folders was – on the usb key stick that I used to install Server 2012, and installed.

This time it failed with an error message `a component`s file does not match the verification information present in the component manifest`

Another check around yielded quite a few results, one of the most common ones was to run the following command – `dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth`

So I run that. It took a while to come back with no problems.

I copied the ‘sources\sxs’ folder to the root of the C drive, pointed the feature install files there and tried again. Again it gave me the same error.

This time I mounted up the ISO that I had originally downloaded and copied the ‘sources\sxs’ folder from that to a new usb keystick.

I pointed the feature to that folder and run the install again. This time it finished with no problems!?

So, some sort of corruption had happened from when I transferred the ISO to a keystick to install it.

Can’t think of what the hell could have caused that to happen?