Segate’s MaxBlast

Update:  Turns out MaxBlast only works for Seagate or Maxtor drives.  So if you have one of those then get your free copy of Acronis True Image.

So Seagate offers a drive image tool called MaxBlast 5 for free.  The really great thing is it’s powered by Acronis.  Acronis has some great Drive Imagining software but you have to pay for it.  With MaxBlast I get almost everything I could ever want for individual use and it’s completely free.  I would need something more robust for Enterprise usage.

Get MaxBlast here:  http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Technorati Tags: acronis, backup, drive backup, drive imaging, max blast, seagate

15 Online Tools

Some great stuff here for Techs.  Stuff Like:

• dll-files.com:  a library of dll files
• Router Password:  Default router password database
• IP Tools:  a bunch of network tools

http://www.emergingtechs.com/posts/15-online-tools-you-will-come-love-tech/

Technorati Tags: online tools, Software

Auto Authenticating Firefox with iPrism

The iPrism instructional videos explain how to do this but for a quick reference just follow these instructions:

1. Open Firefox.
2. Type about:config in the URL bar.
3. In the Filter box type:  uris
4. There will be three entries.
5. Double click the first entry.
6. In the pop up box, enter the hostname or IP address of the iPrism.
7. Repeat step 5 & 6 for each of the entries.

Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox settings for iprism, iprism

This is how I dual. (aka. The Way I Dual Booted to XP on a Vista machine)

Ok so I took some short cuts.  I wouldn’t say this is the best way to do this but I was desperate so I didn’t care too much.  Besides it all worked out in the end.

I wanted to dual boot to XP so I could play games.  I get about 10-15 frames per second better on Team Fortress 2 in XP than I do in Vista.  For months I tired and the problem I had was I couldn’t use the Vista disk manager to shrink the Vista partition enough.  As you can see that’s only about 1GB of space which is not enough for XP and games.

I tried a variety of defragmenters to see if that would give me more space.  I also tried deleting all my temp files and the pagefile because supposedly those are what prevent the disk manager from shrinking the partition.  None of that worked so eventually I turned to Gparted.  I was pretty sure this would break my Vista installation and I was right.  I used Gparted to shrink the Vista partition by 15GBs and the next time I booted I went into Vista’s startup recovery.

Here’s the cool thing, Vista’s Startup Recovery searched and repaired errors for about 20 minutes, found all the problems with the installation and set it back straight.  I thought for sure I was up the creek because I didn’t have an install disk.  All I did have was Vista’s repair disk.  However on the next boot it did a disk check, found no errors, rebooted and loaded up Vista minus 15GB of space.

Now I got to work installing XP.  That went just as expected.  I booted to the XP install disk, installed XP in the 15GB of unpartitioned space and it booted right up when I was done.  At this point I realized it would’ve been a good idea to get the XP drivers for my laptop ahead of time.  My network card didn’t even come up.  Luckily I knew where the Vista drivers were stored and that worked for my network card (nothing else).  So I was able to get online at dell.com and download all the other drivers I needed.

So now I have a laptop that boots into XP.  I booted to Vista Repair Disk I had and choose Startup Repair.  That reset it to boot into Vista.  Once I was in Vista again I used EasyBCD to create another boot entry.  When I was in EasyBCD I went to Add/Remove Entries choose the drive letter of the XP install, choose Windows NT/2K/XP/2k3, gave it a name, clicked Add Entry, and then save.

I got luckily that Vista’s Startup Recovery was able to piece the drive back together after using Gparted, but if you don’t have a lot on your Vista machine see if it works for you.  Just make sure you have a recovery disk or a disk image.  It’s a heck of a lot less time consuming than trying to defragment and rearrange your drive so you can use Vista partition shrink tool.  It seems counter intuitive that Microsoft would finally give a built in system for shrinking a drive just to make it hard to shrink a Vista partition because of the placement of important files.  But that’s exactly what happened (I think?).

I know I didn’t got into a lot of detail here.  There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this.  Most recommend using the Vista Disk Manager to shrink the volume.  I’m not going to list the tutorial I followed because it was the worst website I’ve every seen.  Not that it wasn’t pretty but because it took forever to load and crashed Firefox a bunch of times.  If anyone needs help or wants the tutorial I referenced then leave a comment and I’ll hook you up.  With that said use this method at your own risk and I’m not liable for any data loss or damages.  Sincerely, The Nite Tech.

Links:
Gparted:  http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
EasyBCD:  http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Technorati Tags: dual boot vista, dual boot xp, dual boot xp on vista

Cisco Academy - Day 1

So my first night at the Cisco Academy went exactly how a first day of any college class goes.  Basically you don’t do much except go over the syllabus and nothing works right in relation to the computers.  We spent the first 1/2 of the class watching the System Administrator install the Cisco software just to find out when we logged in it wouldn’t work.  No big deal because the whole course is available online.  The weird thing about that is Cisco apparently gets angry when students use their website to access course material.  They will lock out a class if too many users are accessing the course through their website.  I can’t figure out why unless it’s bandwitdh issues but you’d think Cisco could solve that problem.

The first 1/2 of the semester is going to be very similar to CompTia’s Network+.  The course will consist of learning the OSI model and TCP/IP.  I don’t think we’ll get much into actual Cisco specific material until later in the semester and even more in the next semester. 

One really cool piece of software we get is Packet Tracer 5.  Basically its a network simulator.  So you can add Cisco specific routers with a variety of cards in the back.  For instance I put up a Cisco 1800 series with a fiber and Ethernet cards in the back connected to a switch and a couple of computers.  The cool thing about it is when I drilled into a router I could get to the command line interface of the router and make changes there.  The end game is that I could construct an entire network in Packet Tracer and if it worked in the simulator it would work in the real world.  I could even take the router configs out of the simulator and copy them into real routers.  How cool is that?

The class was full and supposedly there was one girl registered for the class.  She wasn’t there that night and I am surprised that only one girl was registered.  We didn’t have too many girls in IT courses back in my college days (1995-2001) either but I expected more would be taking these classes some 10 years later.  Not that I’m looking to meet girls, I just find it interesting that not much has changed with women entering the IT field.  Of course this is strictly anecdotal evidence.  I did hear about a study that suggested women are just as good as men in science and math (if not better) but they tend to choose fields in social sciences.  That says to me that women tend to like dealing with people and men… not so much.  Of course this is all generalizations and that will earn me nothing but trouble.

I’m not really interested in the college credit but for anyone who needs a lot of quick credits this class is one to consider.  The entire course is divided into four classes.  Each class is 1/2 a semester long so when I registered for this semester I registered for class 1 and 2.  Class 1 will end in a couple of months and class 2 picks up immediately after.  Class 2 will be in the same class room with the same instructor etc.  So it seems like just one semester long class.  However each class is worth 5 credit hours.  So at the end of this semester I will have obtained 10 credit hours.  Twelve credits is considered a full course load even though 15 is a true full course load.  So by the end of the two semester I’ll have 20 credit hours and nothing to do with them.  Too bad I can’t sell ‘em.

Well I’ve got some reading to do by the next class.  Guess I better get to it.

Technorati Tags: Cisco Academy, cisco certification

Cisco Academy

Very shortly tonight I’ll be attending my first Cisco Academy class.  I’ll post updates regarding what I learn and how it’s going.  Maybe somebody out there will find this useful information.  Especially if they are considering plunking down so dough for the education.  Of course the end result is hopefully a CCNA cert.

Technorati Tags: CCNA, Cisco Academy, cisco certification

Online Financal Software

Yehaw!  I’ve been using Quicken Online for a few months and it’s a fine service except that I have to pay for it.  Ok $2.99 per month isn’t much but still that’s $36 a year basically and I’m cheap.

I tried and tried other online financial software like Mint.com and Wesabe.com and while they provide some neat services (see previous article) they were missing one thing, adding upcoming transactions manually, and that was a deal breaker.

Well I tried out Buxfer.com again.  Buxfer.com had the ability to add a transaction but it wouldn’t reconcile it with my bank so I’d end up with duplicate transactions.  Now it does the reconciliation.  I’ve tested it on two transactions and they both reconciled perfectly without any adjustment from me.

So buxfer.com will be my new money management software.  I’ll keep Quicken Online for the next couple of weeks but hopefully I’ll be able to save myself $36 a year.  Hmm, I know Wesabe was working on manually added transactions, I wonder if they ever did it.  I’ll get back about that.

Technorati Tags: buxfer.com, mint.com, online financial software, quicken online, wesabe.com

Jott goes Premium

Jott, the words to text generator, has gone premium, and good for them.  I often wonder how these Web2.0 services will ever stick around if they have no business plan, you can’t keep getting venture capital forever.

Anyho, I love the service and I will keep on using it but I’m opting for the free option.  I did a test run today and besides the intro message telling me there are some changes at Jott nothing was different on the phone side.  However with the free option I can no longer read my Jotts in my email.  Instead an email is sent with a link back to jott.com where I could view my Jott.  So I’m speculating that they will soon be showing ads on their site and this will force free users to return to the site to view said ads.  If I want to see your Jotts in email I’ll just have to pay.

Also the free account is limited to only a few Jott links.  Jott links link Jott with other services like Twitter or Remember the Milk.  I use to use Jott with Sandy (iwantsandy.com) so I could send things I wanted Sandy to remind me of latter through my cell phone.  Now I will have to pay to use that feature.  Although the Jott link for Twitter is free.

In the end I don’t find myselft using Jott all that much.  I mostly use it when I’m in the car listening to something I want to remember from the radio and I can’t write anything down.  So maybe 6 times a month.  The free version will work for me.  I just hope they don’t start playing ads when I call in.  I don’t mind seeing ads on their website but I don’t want to listen through an ad just to record a Jott.

Technorati Tags: iwantsandy.com, jott, jott premium service, remember the milk, sandy

Install problems because of pendingfilenameoperation.

Ok I don’t have the specifics because they were  lost, however I had a problem loading ADP’s Payroll application on my XP Pro machine.  It would fail.  I was talking to ADP’s tech help and they remoted in and removed an entry in my registry.

The entry was called pendingfilenameoperation and in the value of the key there were some questions marks.  Something like “\\??\foldername\filename.”  Once that key was deleted the install went just fine.  ADP tech support said he has seen that on multiple machines for multiple applications, most of the enterprise related.

Sorry I don’t have specifics because I can’t recreate the issue.  However just search for pendingfilenameoperation in the registry and delete it if there are ?? in there.  Make a backup of the registry first of course.  I’ve also heard the same issue may apply for a key called pendingfilerenameoperation.

Technorati Tags: adp payroll, installation problems, pendingfilenameoperation, registry

Problems with Windows Updates and XP SP3

I started having problems with Windows Updates after installing XP Service Pack 3.  The install of the updates would fail.  After it failed Windows would ask me to install them during shutdown but that didn’t work either.

I installed SP3 right after it came out.  Soon there after Microsoft pulled it and released it again later.  I think my problems stem from using that earlier release.  That’s what I get for being an early adopter.

Either way registering some dlls solved the problem.  The that solution here:

http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2008/07/microsoft-update-failure.htm

Microsoft’s answer:

http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/showarticle.aspx?articleid=38&ln=en&IsMu=True

Technorati Tags: sp3, updates, windows, xp