Aug21

How to: Be a freeware champion

by Dexter on August 21, 2012 at 13:26
Posted In: IT

Windows in general can a be a pain in the ass.  There’s tonnes of software on the market that’s pricey depending on what you want get done.  Sometimes you need an enterprise class solution for your vexing problem and it can only be achieved by dropping a few thousand dollars.

 

And sometimes, just sometimes you can peruse the freeware section of a website and be astounded by what is lying in wait that can be your perfect solution.  The problem therein is which website offers the safest surfing experience?  Can you trust a websites freeware?  Is it really malware just waiting for you to execute?  There’s never an easy answer.  So here’s a sure fire list of websites that offer freeware that I know and use on a regular basis:

 

Gizmo’s freeware
http://www.techsupportalert.com/
A real nugget of free applications that do everything.  All content is nicely organized in categories that make sense.  Most freeware is crapware free and each software has independent reviews based on a 5-star rating system.  All pro’s and con’s for each software is listed, and offers up screenshots for any software you’re wary of installing.

 

NirSoft
http://www.nirsoft.net
For all the IT Administrator essentials, most are packed away in this must-have website.  Utilities range from wireless sniffers, DNS checkers, password recovery options to system tweaking tools.  Everything is laid out right on the main page heading style.  This website scores extra points as all software is developed by the same programmer Nir Sofer, and most are stand alone executable files that do not require installation!

 

Major Geeks
http://majorgeeks.com/
One mother of a download site, Major Geeks has been a staple of the internet and continues on with it’s tradition of offering all it’s freeware hosted locally on it’s internal servers. Just about anything can be found right here.

 

So go on, give it a shot and see what you can download.

 

-Dexter

└ Tags: , , , , ,
1 Comment
Aug01

How to: Save your contacts in Outlook

by Dexter on August 1, 2012 at 15:17
Posted In: IT
Here’s a protip: Save your contacts!  Should your computer need to be reformatted or upgraded, you run the risk of losing the contacts you email on a frequent basis.
Why is this?
When you start typing a name in your address field and Outlook offers completion suggestions, that’s called auto-complete – and that does NOT get backed up anywhere.
Solution?
Copy that person into your address book.  When you get a new person’s email, right click on their name in your outlook, and choose “Add to Outlook Contacts”
It’s really that simple: plus it takes away [some] the woes of your IT Administrator.
-Dexter
└ Tags: , , , , ,
  Comment
Jul28

How to: locate product numbers and serial numbers on HP and Dell computers

by Dexter on July 28, 2012 at 20:01
Posted In: IT

You have to know the serial numbers of HP computers and servers in order to get warranty.

If you run Dell machines, you need the Dell asset tags in order to get warranty.
As it turns out, many times you’ll be no where near your computers but have remote access (hopefully).  So how can you get either the HP Serial Number or the Dell Asset tag remotely?  Read on.
For both cases you need to open a command prompt: many of you should be familiar with this, if not, goto the Start menu and type in ‘CMD’ to bring up the familiar black DOS prompt.
See the below table to obtain the corresponding information on the right:
command information
wmic bios get serialnumber HP: shows Serial Number, Dell: shows Dell Asset tag
wmic csproduct get name HP: shows model name: Dell: shows base model
wmic /namespace:\\root\wmi path MS_SystemInformation HP: shows product number, Dell – nothing man, just nothing
This handy spot of information might come in handy for you one day if your ILO or Dell Open Manage software isn’t installed.
-Dexter
└ Tags: , , , , , , , ,
  Comment
Jul26

How to: Check your .Net Framework version on Windows 7

by Dexter on July 26, 2012 at 17:57
Posted In: IT

.Net Framework was easy to spot in the older versions of Windows XP, if you went and checked your ‘Add or Remove Programs’ section of control panel you’d see it plain as day:

As Windows matured, the .NET Framework became intertwined with the operating system.  So it became tougher to figure out if you actually had it installed.  A hint for anyone using Windows 7 right now: if you’ve installed Service Pack 1, you will undoubtedly have it installed: it’s required to run most, if not all of the fancy graphics engine behind aeroglass and most of the search functions.
If you’re ever inquisitive enough to wonder which version you have installed, you’ll notice your listing of installed programs and windows updates will usually not have it listed – again, this is because it’s such a core component of it’s Common Runtime Language, it’s become a given.
Websites offer up ways to see what version you have by way of checking directories and registry items.
I however, prefer a more direct approach instead of copying and pasting version numbers into Microsoft’s website – a little tool that’s downloaded doesn’t require any other run time to show you exactly what version you have installed: Asoft version detector.
Just Download and run right from the desktop, and it gives you all the juicy details you need.
So why would you need to know the version?  In my case it was work related as a program needed a particular framework to run a monitoring tool.  I can’t even speak as to why you would need it.  But it’s just a damn handy, if not very cool way of knowing what you got installed.
-Dexter
└ Tags: , , ,
  Comment
Jul25

My love letter to Drobo

by Dexter on July 25, 2012 at 19:12
Posted In: IT

Drobo is a US based firm that makes storage devices for home and small business. The amount of bays available range from 2 to 10 and you can purchase disks of any size, and all the units offer protection using their home-grown BeyondRAID.

I personally don’t own a drobo, I have to use one at one of my jobs and it’s quite painful, the list below will explain why:

  1. You have to use the Drobo Dashboard for everything.  The Drobo Dashboard is a windows based platform, and installs a Drobo service into your windows registry. It only takes up 20 MB of space, but you have to use it to configure shares, administrator passwords, IP addresses, and most of the other tools including copy jobs and so forth. The dashboard is java based so it seems to take a long time between clicks to get somewhere useful. Waiting to get to the admin panel takes 4 clicks, and clocked in about a minute. That might not seem like a long time, but when you’re pressed for time waiting for some animation to finish, it gets very tiring, very quickly. I’d prefer to see a web browser interface. My home NAS has it, and it can be accessed anywhere as long as I can forward the right port.
  2. It’s slow.  Copying to and from this thing caps out at 20MBps. That’s on a good day. It’s surprising since I’m running full GB nics forced with 9000MTU’s on each Drobo. This is using a Cisco catalyst 2960 with full Gig duplexing turned on. I can copy files from PC to PC at close to 80MBps – why does this drobo with 10TB of storage only recieve a quarter of that speed? I thought “maybe it’s just the computer I’m using”. So after installing SSH with many reboots (see below) I logged in and did a “rm-r” command from putty. The command seemed to take up to 5 minutes to work on one 4GB file.
  3. The apps don’t always work.  The Drobo website says it’s a simple: from the GUI (that has to be loaded from Windows), enable the droboapps check-mark (in a place that doesn’t really make sense). Then the unit restarts (why, I don’t know). When it restarts, it produces a new share called droboapps. Put whatever droboapps you can find from the Drobo website into this folder and restart [again] so the folders expand and install. However, the apps don’t always work properly – I tried to get ssh working and after restarting how many times it still didn’t show port 22 as being open. The same thing happened with Rsync: after finally getting ssh to work after about 5 reboots I tried Rsync from the command line, only to be shown ‘Rsync is a not a recognized command’. Lovely.
  4. You can’t view the log files.  The log files on the Drobo are all encrypted when you generate them. Why would a company encrypt their log files in the first place? Some of the most useful features of any NAS or storage unit is the ability to view history in the log. Useful information such as boot times, RAID configuration, share points, local users, groups, even being able to see a TIME stamp would be helpful, instead all I have is the GUI, that can only be loaded from a local computer, and only has basic options.
  5. You don’t know what kind of RAID configuration you’re getting.  When you first set up the RAID array, it doesn’t specify what type you want, it just seems to create it’s own RAID structure (see BeyondRAID). The only option you’re presented with is “protect my data”. I don’t even know what that button really means, it just does SOMETHING and the amount of free space I have somehow changes.
  6. Copy jobs aren’t saved on the the unit.  There’s a Drobo copy feature you can access that allows you to copy information from a PC to the Drobo.  I found this useful as I could copy another network share onto the Drobo.  However, that option disappears when you change computers or open the Drobo GUI on another computer – the job should stay with the drobo device. Just annoying
  7. Barely any features.  No USB connections, no eSATA connections, no print service ability, droboapps are sparse if not dismal.

Perhaps I’m a little critical on the Drobo offering, as I had tested all performance with one unit. When another showed up on my desk I had to configure a replicated backup solution I was a little perplexed why both had terrible transfer performance. Drobo insists that the ISCSI transfers are fantastic, but I don’t plan on putting any virtual media onto this yet as I’m not certain it will break past the 20MBps threshold I consistently achieve. The original intent for this was to be used as a file server, given the poor performance I can’t in good conscience recommend it. The other painful point is the lack of Active Directory integration, the linux file permissions just don’t work for a business with a Windows Domain Controller.

I’m hardly the first person to complain about Drobo units, and by the looks of things I certainly won’t be the last.

Drobo seems to reply back to every piece of negative media, which makes me wonder if the company is attempting more damage control and not enough development.  I’m certainly not fishing for anything here, with my experience with this device there’s certainly no way one would find it’s way in my home.

Specs:
Model: Drobo Pro FS - (2 of the same model )
Disk config: 8 x 2TB WD Green 5300 RPM drives for both
Role of Drobo Pro FS (1): backup to disk location
Role of Drobo Pro FS (2): replication of backup to disk

 

-Dexter

└ Tags: , , , , , , ,
3 Comments
Skip to toolbar