Andy's Techie Blog

Just learnt something new!

I’d inserted the following symbol into various parts of my document

I wanted to change one of them and for some reason I double clicked it which displayed the symbols dialog

This is much easier than having to delete it and insert a brand new one again

I’m not sure if this is a new Word 2007 feature or if it works in Word 2003 but it’s something I hadn’t come across before!

You know the drill

Happy Christmas!!

Thanks to anyone who has cast their eyes over this blog during 2008

Whatever your doing over the next couple of days have a great time

Does anyone else have problems accessing the MCP site?

Sometimes when I go to the site I just get this page

As you can see by looking from the top right hand corner i’m definitely signed in. If I sign out and back in again doesn’t make any difference

Other times I use the same page and get straight in without any hassle. I’ve always just put it down to something i’m doing but I got in yesterday with no problems and yet can’t get in today. I haven’t used any other passport accounts in between visits so i’m a  little bit stumped

Answers on a postcard?

I recently got around to setting up a hyper-v system at home so I can experiment with SBS 2008 in the comfort of my own home (it never stops !)

This was a great help when swotting up for my recent SBS exam as I break it as much as I wanted to and use snapshots to go back to working system

One of the helpful parts of the streamlined SBS setup process is the answer file (which you HAVE to use if you want to use the migration process)

The official technet documentation says

If you are performing an unattended installation, connect the removable media (such as a floppy disk or a USB flash drive) that contains your answer files. Depending on the contents of your answer files, you may not see some or any of the following installation screens.

If you are using hyper-v you’ll know there is no USB support and I’ll be honest I can’t remember the last time I laid hands on a floppy disk. Also the only floppy drive I have at home is a USB one!

So what did I do?

Well the notes in the technet says removable media so a CD will work perfectly fine

Once you’ve created a CD with the answer file on it, go into the settings of the virtual machine and add a second virtual DVD drive, one for the SBS installation media and one for your answer file

You can use ISOs or DVDs

I actually used an ISO for the answer file and the DVD in the physical DVD drive as I didn’t have the SBS ISO to hand and it was quicker to create the answer file ISO than the either download the SBS ISO or create one from the DVD!

I’ve just got back to the office after taking the new SBS 2008 exam

70-653 – Windows Small Business Server 2008, Configuring

I’m pleased to report I passed!

The exam was a bit different to what I was expecting and there were quite a few questions on SharePoint. I know everyone keeps saying it but you can’t ignore SharePoint anymore!

What I did like is that it felt pretty focussed around actually doing the job as opposed to just asking questions based on a curriculum so if you haven’t actually worked with an SBS network don’t expect to read some books and just pass

I’m pretty pleased with the score I got and I can now add MCTS: Windows Small Business Server 2008, Configuring to my CV

This whole problem still puzzles me but I thought I’d recount it here in case it’s of use to anyone

We got a call from someone who was doing some work at home and wanted to use Remote Web Workplace but was having problems accessing her computer

I went though all the usual checks to make sure the Active-X control was enabled, she’d added the page to her trusted sites, etc but still no joy

The description she gave me was along the lines of this,

“When I put my user name and password in the main part of the goes page white, then when I click on the main menu option it lets me in. Then when I try to control my computer and I click the connect button it just sits there doing nothing”

Very odd

So we got some remote control software loaded on her PC and I logged in to take a look

I logged in and as she said after I’d logged in nothing was displayed. What I did notice though was the status bar at the bottom of IE

“Waiting for http://customersdomain.com/remote/winxp.gif”

IE was trying to download something so i pressed the ESCAPE key to cancel the download and sure enough the menu appeared

I then tried to remote control a PC and the same thing happened. I pressed escape and the Remote Desktop session appeared and I was able to login ok

So I had a workaround to get her onto her computer but I needed to figure out what was going on here

I had a look at the security software on her PC (McAfee) and I couldn’t see anything that would cause any issues. I temporarily disabled the software just so I could try it but still no joy

I tried logging in from various different PC’s at various different locations and they were all fine

So I turned my attentions to the server.

The browser was obviously waiting for something so I grabbed the IIS logs and trawled through them

I made a beeline for the WINXP.GIF file I’d seen earlier

Code 200 indicates a success so nothing strange going on here so I filter out all the 200 codes (and eventually the 300 codes as they are just redirects) and the only codes in the 400 range (client errors!) I got were

This file was directly after winxp.gif

Favicon is used so website can have custom icon when you bookmark their page

Some Favicon examples

I know remote web workplace doesn’t have a favicon so I moved onto the error code

403.6 forbidden: IP address of the client has been rejected

So I went to some our own SBS and checked the IIS logs to see what response we usually get to favico.ico

Everyone who has every used the Internet will have see error 404 before

404 : File or Directory Not Found (funny 404’s here)

I checked on some other servers and they all report 404 for the favico (since there isn’t one) as does the server with the problem. It just seems to be this specific person

So I went back to the PC and checked her favourites. Sure enough she had saved the link for remote web workplace so she didn’t have to type it in every time

I deleted the bookmark, restarted the browser and tried again and I got in first time without any problems

I’m still not entirely sure WHY this happened as plenty of people have that bookmark. I can only speculate that she has software on her PC that is doing something with her favourites

I just wanted to make sure she could get onto the system ok. I haven’t heard of any problems since

What’s even more weird was that I re-added the bookmark after I’d logged in ok and the problem didn’t reappear

Strange, strange, strange

If you have any opinions on why this happened or what caused it please let me know!

I’ve taken to Live Mesh pretty quickly. I love the fact I can just save a file and not worry about getting onto the various computers I use

As well as my regular PC and laptop my mobile is a device I always have with me

If you go to mesh.com and click the "add device" button it’s said "coming soon for mobile" for ages and I’ve been keeping an eye out for any developments on this front

So this morning I wondered what would happen if I pointed my phones browser at the mesh website

I was prompted to sign and was redirected to m.mesh.com

From here I was able to browse my folder list and get access to any files I’d stored in my mesh

Notice at the top right of both of the screen shots there is an “add picture” button which could be handy for storing mobile pics while on the go

This may not exactly be ground breaking news but I was quite pleased I stumbled across it!