Author: Gary Rice

Windows 8 Phone

Today I replaced my trusted Blackberry with a Nokia Windows 8 Phone.
It was a choice between a Windows 8 Phone and an iPhone, but as my network provider does not sell iPhones I opted for the Windows 8 Phone. I got a good deal getting pretty much unlimited Texts, Calls and Data for a few pence more than I was paying for my limited Blackberry tariff.

Form what I have seen around on different network providers I’m paying around half of what it would of cost to get an iPhone!

It’s a great phone with a nice big 4.7 inch screen and it feels nice and solid.

I set up the essential applications, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram but had some very concerning issues with them, mainly that they didn’t update themselves when I got new messages, updates and notifications etc.
I was tearing my hair out, I removed and reinstalled the apps, checked for updates but it stayed the same. It would mean that I would need to manually check the apps for messages etc. every few minutes to make sure that I didn’t miss anything, I’d have to check while walking to work, while at work, while eating lunch, while drinking coffee, while going to the toilet, while fixing computers – but how would I check when I’m driving? I can’t miss any updates while I’m driving??!! What am I going to do?!?!

Oh, but hang on, I’m 42 years old, not 12, and really don’t give a shit if I don’t get any up to the second message notifications. The world won’t end if I don’t respond to some shit app request (all thought it might for the requester).
I have a life and a job and I’m sure I’ll get round to reading notifications when I get a few minutes free…..

Apple Mac`s again, no permanent routes

Yet more dealing with Mac`s again today and again another disappointment! So glad I binned my iPad for my Surface RT Tablet.

The set up that had been running fine for a few years had to be changed due to a `security update` that was introduced as a result of the work a few days ago.

Due to expert advice we changed the way that we do things which meant that I had to add some routes to the Mac clients to route network traffic to a different subnet.

All this messing about with adding routes to get traffic to flow where it needs to go reminds me of all the agro I had at my old job. I say agro, it was more me being excluded from being able to access things to change them and make them work. This time the A Team refused to add routes for the 3 additional subnets, mainly because they didn`t know what a subnet was and why they were needed! The subnets were in use by the engineers, Directors and the VOIP phone system. Needless to say I got the grief because the Directors couldn`t get emails and no one got the telephone stats!
Boy do I not miss that shit!

So I had to add a script!? so that the routes were added back in when the machine booted back up. Seriously not sure why that was and I really cannot be bothered to find out the reason, but thankfully the need was short lived as things were changed again so that we no longer needed to add a permanent route.

Fed up of computers?!

Blaaaaaggggghhhhh! Some days I get really fed up of computers, today, and a few days before, are one of those times.

I don’t know what it is or why it happens but it only lasts a few days.

Maybe it was triggered by me having to send an email to someone with some instructions that took me 8 times as long to write as it should of and the fact that it was full of spelling mistakes that I then had to go and spend 4 minutes correcting.
To takes too long to dumb down something technical so that a dumb person can do it, when in fact a dumb person shouldn’t be doing something technical in the first place.
It also doesn’t help that I rushed it so that I could go and watch my favourite Essex hottie on the tv.

Time to snap out of it me thinks.

Can you help – a challenge?

One of the things I say to people is that ‘I like to fix the things that people say can’t be fixed’.
I also like to say ‘why are you two idiots reinstalling that computer from scratch to fix a small problem like that’ sadly I found myself saying that a few times back in the days of BOR!

Anyway, so when I get asked by a friend if I can have a look at their daughters laptop as she has forgotten her password and can’t get in,  I of course say ‘Yes’.
Even more so when I’m told a large PC Retailer has said ‘it can be done but she will lose everything on the hard drive’ and one of their friends has spent several hours trying to do it!

Obviously it didn’t take very long to fix the problem and return it to the owner – it just makes me wonder if people either don’t know what they are doing, taking the easy way out or trying to do a fast one ?!?!?!

Apple Mac`s, are they really as good as I am being told?

My first dealings with fixing some Mac issues today and to be honest a very disappointing one.

I`m always getting told by people that Mac`s are far more superior to PC`s and how much easier they are to look after! Really? Well today I leant that to fix a relatively simple problem of newly created users not being able to login, the whole Mac OSX Server needed to be reinstalled!

Seriously, I don`t think that in all the years that I have been fixing PC`s that I have had to reinstall to fix a software problem, with the exception of machines that have suffered hard disk failures that have corrupted windows way beyond fixing.

To me it seemed to be such a minor issue to fix yet it needed a complete reinstall.

It turns out that after a rebuild the same issue presented its self again which again needed a rebuild of the server.

Amazingly, again the same issue then reappeared yet again after everything had been set up, but this time it was fixed by rebuilding the OD database.

I wonder if that fix could have been done to start with. Hmmmm

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?