b2 consulting blog

If it weren’t for the fact that I could have used this site the first three times I opened up any Office 2007 packaging, I would find this humorous.  The fact that MS had to create such a site, however, makes me laugh.  Thank goodness for Apple packaging.  It Just Works.

This is one of those problems that drove me crazy for a month, and it is only because of Google that I got the answer. Frankly, I’m not sure how any of us could do what we do without Google.

I’ve had two different clients with the same problem. When they go to launch Excel 2003, a window pops up saying “Preparing to Install…” and then the Office 2003 installer launches. However, it doesn’t complete, and even “Detect and Repair” doesn’t fix the problem. Here is the answer:

Create an empty folder named “XLStart” here: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11″.

That is it. So simple, and yet you can pull your hair out (and I can’t afford to lose any more). Never again will I have to download SWI just to find out the $#%!@$ license key.

Well, at least not for that.

Go to this link now.  I will wait.  Go on.

Link

This is both the best and worst item to come along in a while.  While it will be helpful to those of us who wear white hats, imagine the damage you can do with this in the wrong hands.  Brrrrrrrrrr.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen; it is that time again. It is Holy Week; time to pray at the alter of Steve Jobs. That most magical time of the year: MacWorld Expo. And, as is necessary of a blogger of my stature, my audience requires, nay demands, that I give my thoughts on the various aspects of this most splendid of events.

Complaint, the First

What was going on with the spacing? For those of you who are Expo Virgins (which would be most of us; ba-dum ping; thank you ladies and germs. Be sure to tip your waitresses), MacWorld Expo is held at the Moscone Center (no Twinkie jokes, please) in beautiful downtown San Francisco. For years, there were two centers: Moscone Center North (on the North side of Howard Street), and MC South (on the South side of Howard Street, aka across the street), and for most years (except for the lean ones) the convention has been in both centers, with a convenient underground tunnel to get from Point A to Point B. This year, however, the convention was in Moscone Center South and MC West, which is not only down the block, but can only be reached by going outside and having your pale skin torched by that bright, shiny object in the sky. Poor planning, organizers. Did the date sneak up on you this year?

My MWE Plan

I think of MacWorld Expo as a giant grocery store. Not a dingy corner store, but a bright, beautiful, gleaming, yuppie store. And, if there is one thing that has been drilled into my head: when shopping, stick to the outside isles (where the nutritious food like fruits, milk, eggs, vegetables, etc tend to live) and ignore the middle (where cereals, processed foods, evil spirits tend to live). MacWorld Expo is kinda like that. In the middle are all of the big guys: your Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, Epson, Brother, Canon, etc. It is on the outside isles, however, that you find gems like Circus Ponies, CodeWeavers, and the like.

Apple Does it Again

I have to say; the MacBook Air is an amazing looking machine. It isn’t for me, because I require USB and FireWire, an ethernet port, and a larger screen, but there is a crowd out there for it. I’ve already had three people come up and touch my hands as if I had been near La Pieta as it bled. It is more substantial than you would think, and looks like it could take a college student beating (which is the target market, I think). Very cook, Mr. Jobs.

Celebrity Alert

I got to see Andy Ihnatko in person! He is much shorter than I would have imagined. If you are into tech and are not actively reading his blog, then you are missing out. He is a fun read, indeed.

Favorite Quote

Heard as I was coming down the escalator before entering the temple, as spoken by a guy in his early 30′s:

“I didn’t have any girlfriends in high-school”.

Um…duh? Goes for all of us, pal. Brothers in arms, we are.

See you January 5, 2009!

If you have been a constant reader of this blog (and I know you are out there; I can hear you breathing), then you know that I am a big fan of Apple. And, for years, I have been beating against the “Apple is so expensive” tide. However, I had a recent experience that made me rethink my policy.

A client is using an iMac in a Windows world. Yea for her! Since she uses some form software that is only available in Windows format (or using IE; boo for non-compliant webware!), she is using the excellent Parallels Desktop software. However, her iMac came with only 1 GB of RAM, and whenever she was in XP, her computer would sloooooooooow dooooooowwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn (even with only 256 MB of RAM dedicated to XP). So, we decided to upgrade to 2 GB of RAM.

I decided to go to the local Apple Store as it was 1 block closer to the client and I wanted to shave some time. Note to self; never go near an Apple store between Thanksgiving Day and MacWorld Expo. After waiting in line for 30 minutes (cause I can’t just go pick it up), I order from the very nice person behind the counter. 20 minutes later, she comes back and rings me up: $564.97. After I spit out my coffee (which was a trick, as I didn’t have any at the time, so I had to run to the nearest Starbucks, buy one, and come back. I only wish they made Starbucks more convenient), I come to find out that she had brought one 2 GB module rather than two 1 GB modules. So, I ask her to rectify that problem. 15 minutes later she comes back to tell me they are out. <sarcasm>Which, I can understand at the bargain price of $150/GB</sarcasm>.

So, I thanked her and walked down to the soon-to-be defunct CompUSA. Fifteen minutes and $68 later I had what I needed.

Dear Mr. Jobs; please do not make my job any hard than it already is. Thank you.

I have a client who is running ProLaw.  Back in February, we replaced his aging SBS 2000 server with a spanking new SBS 2003 server.  It all worked great, except for one thing.  If Exchange was set to launch the Information Store and System Agent at startup (as is normal), the system would hang FOREVER at “Applying computer settings”.  I’m not talking about 30-40 minutes; I let it run one time, and it took 10 hours.

Numerous searches (thanks Google!) lead down many dark paths, but no answer.  Many pointed to APC or antivirus, but those were dismissed as being N/A, or taken care of already.

At the time, we found a work-around by setting those two services to Manual, and then remembering to start them anytime the server was restarted (or the power went off, or there was a full moon, or the elves went on strike).  While this was less than perfect,  it did save the client some money.

Finally, we got the go-ahead to give MS Support a call.  And, after two hours, the answer was found.

The ProLaw Exchange Agent.

For those who don’t use ProLaw, the Exchange Agent takes events that are entered in ProLaw and pushes them out to the responsible person’s Outlook folder.  It is pretty slick.  The problem is that it is a COM+ application, and the default for the COM+ service is Manual.  So, the Exchange System Agent would try to mount the information store, but it had to wait for the ProLaw agent to start.  The ProLaw agent couldn’t start, since it was set to manual, and the whole system got buggered.  So, a dependency was created in the IS to start the COM+ service, and voila! Success!

I really hope we never bomb Bangladesh.

So, the antispam device I mentioned sometime back has been installed and running.  And it is…interesting.  It is a Deep Six device from Tyrnstone systems, which is a consulting biz somewhere near the Great White North.  But, before you start waving your flags, they are an American company.  With very nice people.

Here is how it works.  You take this thing out of the box that is the size of a 8 port switch, plug it in, connect the handy Serial Cable (more on this later), and do about 5 minutes of configuration.  Boom.  Done.  And, for the most part it works.  It is certainly fast, and gives me hope for that flash-based boot OS some day down the road.  However, there is a bug-a-boo that keeps it from being perfect.

The basic premise is this:  Spammers lie.  So, if an email comes in, it checks the IP address against a blacklist.  Then it does a RDNS lookup to see if the IP address matches the domain name.  It comes up with a score based on this and other information, and if the score exceeds a certain level, the email is rejected.  It doesn’t get to the server, it doesn’t get to the users.  My current one is rejecting 72% of the emails it sees (which tells you the general level of spam).

Here is the problem.  If it rejects a legitimate email, you have to bless the IP address of the originating server for it to get through (or raise the score level that blocked it).  Not a problem for small companies that follow the rules, post SPF records and make it easy to find the IP address of the SMTP server.  But, do you have any idea how many SMTP servers Google has?  Yahoo?  Hotmail?  Network Solutions?  A lot.  And, while you can do a starting IP address and a CIDR value, things like this make my brain hurt.  And, the last thing I want to do is  bless all of Hotmail when all I want is a single address to get through.  But, you cannot add a single address (or a single domain).  Most of the domains that I want to let though are private domains.  But, since the users choose to use non-secure mail services (I’m looking at you, Network Solutions!), they get blocked.  Don’t get me started on Earthlink.

So, final score?  I like it.  But, my life is busy enough without having to track down SMTP server addresses just to let one person email another.

And using serial cables for configuring?  I can understand the security aspect, but geeze-Louise.  Get with the late 90′s and throw a web-based config on there!

One of the joys of being in this grand world we call tech, is the fun stuff you get to do. Like starting working at 4:45 in the morning to be on site early enough to deal with network login issues before the work crush begins. Which I got to do. Why? My good friend SYSVOL. God love her; she is a fickle one.

Here is the deal. If the SYSVOL folder isn’t shared, or isn’t shared properly, or if you have gone through several versions of NT Domains/Active Directory and the information gets corrupted as you update to yet another version of AD, then you are screwed until it is fixed. And, since services like Remote Desktop Connector need to access the AD information in order to log you in, you cannot fix it remotely. Which is why I was on the lovely roads of the SF Bay Area at 5:15 in the morning.

A quick side note; I don’t know how we (IT people) got by without Google. If you need to find out about almost anything (including spectacular ways in which not to do something) you can find it thorough Google. In fact, most times when I need to find out some way to fix a MS product, I do a Google search first; not just because I get more different ideas than the MS party line, but often times the Google search will give me more options than the MS support site will.

So, I fired off Google, and here is how I fixed my specific problem. Note: if you have any important or custom scripts and you can get to them, you will want to copy them out of the SYSVOL folder first:

Rebuild the SYSVOL and its contents
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315457

This fixed the share problem, but then I started getting Userenv errors in the application log because the Group Policy .ini files were not recreated in \\SERVER\SYSVOL\DOMAIN.COM\POLICIES. There are two GUID-named folders that were supposed to be in there. So, I followed this:

Group Policy Error Message When Appropriate Sysvol Contents Are Missing
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253268
(I recreated the GPO folders)

THEN, I had to go into the Group Policy Editor AND the Domain Controller Security Policy editor and make a change (which I then reversed) in order to create the correct gpt.ini file in each of the two GUID-named folders.

Oh; and when I finished, the server firewall kicked in, blocking file and print sharing. Good times indeed!

Today was educational.

I was…um…invited to a product release meeting for a major hardware company today.  And, since I received a stipend, I am not allowed to talk about any specifics.

However, afterward there was a focus group.  And it was this that was was most illuminating.  You see, I thought I knew what a small business was.  However, my idea of a small business is completely different than this company’s idea of what a small business is.  In the focus group there were several other companies repersented.  And the IT budgets for those other companies ranged from $2,000,000-$20,000,000.  Not net profit….IT budget.

And the device itself?  The starting price was almost $8,000 and went up from there.

At that price, how could you not order three?