Category Archives: IT

Contains Everything IT Related

Toolkit: Smart Defrag

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Another near essential member of my IT Toolkit is the excellent free defragmenter tool, Smart Defrag.  Available either separately or as part of the IOBit Advanced SystemCase Suite, this tool has supplanted all of the other defragmenters I have previously used, and not just because of its’ price.  Over the years, I have been frustrated and equally annoyed by various defragmenter applications.  Either they ran slowly, or consumed vast amounts of system resources, either way they never seemed to pass the elementary test of “just work”.

For more details, head over to http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

Vista Update

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A quick update on the Vista front.  I wrote a while back about I succumbed to some of my earlier opinions on Vista and installed it on one of my principal laptops.

Well, since then I have fairly thrashing the computer on which Vista runs.  I have used recently and a whole range of tasks from writing complex ASP.Net websites to building Virtual Machines and it has yet to crash on me.  Thanks to some help found online, I have solved the NVidia graphics card issue – the performance rating was actually slower with the that latest NVidia drivers from Dell.  A quick driver hack later and the graphics are now much better.

The only new annoyance so far is that Vista tends to be more hardware intensive which in turn increases the component temperature which in turn causes the laptop cooling fan to run more.

Crapware and a (potential) helpful little tool: PC DeCrapifier

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Configuring a new PC can always be a headache, especially when it has to be done completely by hand (i.e. no Ghosting or imaging).  As there are often a myriad of little changes that have to be done when configuring a PC manually, I have devised a checklist cum installation form that I follow.  This ensures that not only is the PC delivered up and running, but I also have a record of just what was done.

However, when I originally drew up these checklists I missed out the step labelled <i>Now spend one or more hours removing undesired pre-installed software (aka Crapware)</i>.  The chances are that if you get a new computer, it will come pre-loaded with a number of trial versions of software which you have to remove before you can install anything else.  Common trials are those of Norton Antivirus, McAfee or Microsoft Office 2007.  The latter can take a small ice age to remove.

I am pretty sure that I am not alone in my annoyance for the presumptiveness of the manufactures to install this software on new systems.  When I buy a new PC, especially one that is touted as being for businesses, I expect it to be delivered working (this helps, nothing makes me move suppliers quicker is a PC straight out of a box that doesn’t work), with the operating system pretty much ready to go and that’s it.  No trials, no please wait one hour while the OS installs all the required drivers.  Ready to go.

I had this recently with a new laptop.  It was supplied with Windows Vista, which was promptly downgraded to XP using the supplied media (manufacturers occasionally get something right).  The laptop flawlessly booted after the Windows XP installation and then presented me with a whole suite of crapware to remove.

Needeless to say, this did take some time.  What I could of done with then is a little tool I recently found whilst searching around for something completely different: The PC DeCrapifier.  This handy, free little utility removes all unwanted crapware for you.  Whilst I have not actually tested it yet, I have read a number of positive reports and it is definitely going into my IT Toolbox.  Once I get the opportunity to test it, I will post my comments.

Succumbing to Vista

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A few months ago, I wrote about my opinions of Windows Vista, and stated that I wasn’t planning to use it.  Even now, none of the businesses I work with have running Vista machines – any computer supplied with Vista is quickly downgraded to XP.

Irrespective of my own opinions, Vista exists and simply cannot be ignored by someone whose bread and butter work is IT Support.  Therefore, earlier this month I installed Vista Business on my principal home computer (a Dell Latitude D820).  The completed installation isn’t perfect – I’m still hacking around with video drivers, although this is more a NVidia than Microsoft issue – but I am not as disappointed as I had expected to be.

Now, this isn’t my first experience of Vista.  I participated in the original Beta programme, and back then I wasn’t overly impressed when it completely neutered my test computer.  I have also played around with the original RTM versions of Vista, and I was certainly not thrilled by it.  However, after using it for just over three weeks, I have to admit that I am beginning to warm to it.  I don’t think I have suffered any particular life changing experience, I think Vista has thanks to Service Pack 1.  SP1 seems to have addressed a whole range of annoyances that had served as ammunition to my anti-Vista viewpoints.   Chief among these was its’ woeful performance when copying files to and from network drives and external devices.

Does this mean that I am a now a fully-fledged, paid up member of the I love Vista club? Well no.  I now consider its’ positives outweight the negatives, but it is still not the all conquering product that Microsoft promised.  Will I continue to use it?  Yes, and for the foreseeable future.  Am I giving up on XP?  No, and in fact I am actually typing this post on my antique Thinkpad T30 running XP.

Repairing SBS Backups

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In virtually all Small Business Server instances I have worked with, the chosen method of backup has invariably been that of the included SBS backup functionality. This isn’t a standalone backup system, but rather a control mechanism that utilises NTBackup to create the actual backups.

Invariably, this backup method does start to misbehave after time. Whilst some problems are easy to resolve (insufficient space on the backup media for example), there are some problems that do not appear to be easily resolved. When this happens, I fall back onto a approach where that rebuild the backup configuration from scratch.

The basic are as follows:

  1. Turn off SBS Backup through Server Management
  2. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Small Business Server\Backup and rename the backup script file Small Business Backup Script.bks
  3. Return to Server Management and re-configure the Backup

That’s it. The key part here is the renaming/removal of the Small Business Backup Script.bks file. This contains the configuration data for the SBS backup, and is not removed when the SBS backup is disabled.