Author Archives: Brad

AVG – My Current Anti-Virus of Choice

Posted by Brad

Now in my 9th year in the consulting business, I find that my choice of software (and software recommendations) changes, but in a good way. At one time, I used Easy CD Creator for CD/DVD burning because it’s what I had experience with and had always used. A few years ago I started using Nero and have never looked back. But the software I use weekly to clean up PCs is anti-virus and anti-spyware software. And in this category, I’ve been using and recommending AVG.

This choice of AVG started because I would often encounter users with no or expired anti-virus software. Thus, they would have viruses and spyware slowing down their PCs. Since AVG has a free edition that can be easily downloaded, it was a good way to clean up these PCs without having to contact the users and see about obtaining AV software.

In using AVG, I found it also worked very well. Before I would use Windows Defender and Spybot Search and Destroy (which I still use along with AVG) because they were free and could remove a lot of malware. But Windows Defender only works on newer versions of Windows with the latest Windows Installer application installed. Spybot is limited on how much it can remove since it targets mainly spyware. So AVG provided a third crucial method of scanning PCs and removing malware.

My old choice for AV was Norton products before all their activation and registration junk (which is why I never used to recommend McAfee, since you couldn’t get updates until you created a login for a McAfee account). Also, I now believe the talk that Norton has become bloated and slows systems down. My recent experiences with Norton first include a user who had a perfectly good working copy of Norton 360 1.0, but who made the mistake of upgrading to 2.0. Nothing I tried could get 2.0 installed on his PC, even 1.0 could not be reinstalled. So instead of reloading his PC just to get Norton installed, I set him up with AVG, which installed with no hassles. Even Norton’s small business products have become needlessly complex to setup; they also take up gigabytes of space for storage.

With that in mind, I have now started installing AVG File Server edition for small business servers. It’s not too expensive (cost is based on the number of clients connecting to the server) and you can purchase a 2 year license and save some money. The only hiccup I recently encountered was a client who was running Windows 2000 Server with SP3. Once I updated his servers to SP4 and other updates, AVG installed easily.

Someone who just bought a new PC and had their brother I think setting it up said the brother didn’t like AVG but used something else (unfortunately I don’t know what), but I haven’t found a reason yet not to use it or recommend it. If you need a change or just don’t feel like paying to protect your home PC every year with bloated products, check out AVG Free Edition and Grisoft’s other products at www.grisoft.com.

System Restore Size in Windows Vista

Posted by Brad

First let me say that I think System Restore is pretty worthless. In the numerous instances I have tried this tool, only once did it ever do anything to help me. Most of the time it does nothing, and occasionally it makes things worse. It is also a haven for viruses and malware, and I typically temporarily shutdown System Restore in Windows XP when I am cleaning up a PC.

Ever since I started using Vista, it has bugged me that not only could I not disable System Restore on my system, but also there were no options to control the amount of hard drive space it is using. By luck, I happened upon the answers to these annoyances. I was reading an email from Microsoft, part of which was pushing Vista, giving reasons why it’s better than XP or tips to make it run better. On the 3rd or 4th article I checked out, 12 Windows Vista Tweaks To Boost Your PC’s Performance from InformationWeek.com, there was a tweak “Tune System Restore.” In the tweak description there was information about changing the size of the System Restore repository. Of course this had to be done from the command line (in typical Microsoft fashion of continuing the dummying down of Windows for the masses – let’s hide stuff we don’t want people to change in command line commands), so I fired up my command prompt and went to work.

As I read abut the command to run, the article mentioned that the Shadow Copy storage space (where System Restore now stores its data) on a volume uses 15% of the volume’s free space by default. In this new era of hundreds of gigabyte and terabyte drives, this is ridiculous. In my case, 15% of my 500GB drive is about 75GB. So for kicks I checked my free space before shrinking the Shadow Copy storage space: 365GB.

Before we get to the stunning finale, let me show you the command you need to use to change your Shadow Copy storage space. The article actually has it wrong. When I ran their command, I was given an error and an example of the correct command usage. Here the example: vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=D: /MaxSize=900MB and here’s the command I used on my drive: vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10GB The article forgot the /On option and I missed the colon after the drive letter (I originally put C instead of C:).

Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for: my drive space went from 365GB free to 414GB free, a net gain of 49GB! I was relieved to get the space back but majorly ticked off that it was being used in the first place. So if you want to get some quick free space back, try the command mentioned above – you may be as surprised as I was.

ReactOS

Posted by Brad

I recently read a blurp by Dvorak in PC Magazine mentioning an open source version of Windows XP called ReactOS. According to the website (www.reactos.org), “ReactOS® is an advanced free open source operating system providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.”

The website provides much more information including screen shots of React running Windows apps and games and downloadable copies of the OS. The current version of the OS as of this writing is 0.3.4 and is still in alpha. There was an iso image of an install CD for the OS as well as a VMware virtual machine. I downloaded both, but fired up the virtual machine for a quick look at React. The VM only allocates 128MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive, but the OS booted up very quickly. It is not feature complete, although it had a Start button, system tray with clock, basic Control Panel, and My Computer, etc icons on the desktop. This is definitely alpha as there were very few programs with the OS, the explorer app would leave grey shadows of closed windows behind and acted quirky. But I do see great potential for this project and hope the developers can reach there goal of a fully-functional OS. React is definitely worth checking out.

Iomega Rev Drives – Latest news

Posted by Brad

I’ve been using and recommending Iomega Rev drives as a backup solution for small businesses for almost as long as they have been available. I’ve found them very easy to use, with a good transfer rate and nice, rugged disks. I’ve deployed mainly the 35GB drive, although I recently installed my first 70GB drive.

The only major problem I’ve seen with the Revs is that the disks may need to be formatted after a while or they won’t let you write to them. I’ve found a firmware update (23B, available at Iomega’s support site) which hopefully corrects the problem – I’ve updated one customer’s drive that was having disk problems so I’ll see if this fixes it.

The one Rev 70 drive I installed was a little different. The drive itself and the disks were similar to the Rev 35, but the drive didn’t come with Iomega’s Backup software I had always used with the Rev 35 drives. I loaded the software myself, but it would not recognize the Rev 70 drive. I have since found out that Iomega quit developing its backup software and instead recommends Retrospect. Thus, I used the included Arcserve OEM software to setup the Rev 70 drive backup scheme. I had not used Arcserve before, but a company where I worked in the past had used the NetWare version until we switched to a Windows version of Backup Exec. Arcserve seems very capable, but a bit overkill for the Rev drive, which I have always thought of as the perfect solution for small businesses. It would certainly be fine for the Rev Autoloader, but that was not what I was installing. After slogging my way through the software and help files, I finally figured out how to setup a backup schedule. Unfortunately, Arcserve compresses and backs up your files into one large file. I have never like this because it is much easier to backup the files in the original directory structure to the disk so that a restore is only a copy from the Rev disk to a hard drive affair. But currently this is where I am with the Rev 70.

Rev 120 drives are now out. They can only read Rev 70 disks from the description, so this baby’s for capacity not backward compatibility. The funny thing is the prices on Iomega’s site show the 120 costing not much more than the 70GB drives. Maybe that’s why the 120 Rev USB versions are currently out of stock.

As a final issue to this subject, I have just recently discovered that Iomega Backup may not be a good solution after all. I had one installation in which I couldn’t open the program even after upgrading it; also, it didn’t appear to be copying all of the files it was supposed to backup. Thus, I have tried my first deployment of Robocopy to do backups with the Rev drive. A dental equipment company’s technician had setup this program at a dental office I do work at, so I looked into it. It seems to be a souped up version of xcopy, and I will go into more detail on Robocopy later. But my first test run with it seemed to backup at a good speed, giving me an uncompressed backup of the directory structure, which I prefer. If this works out, I will start using this for all Rev deployments and may go back and switch my other clients to this method.

Baldur’s Gate 1

Posted by Brad

I just finished playing this stellar game from the late 90’s (I didn’t realize it was 10 years old, but it was still a great game) and except for the ending, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Sure it maxes out at only 640 x 480 resolution, but everything is sure big enough on a large monitor. The spell effects were still good, though. The story was outstanding, however. This was also a very long game.

I played through about 3 quarters of it before loading the expansion. Loading the expansion before finishing the game is a good move since otherwise you get to replay the final battle with Sarevok. This also lets your characters XP go up to 161,000 instead of 89,000 in the original game. Capping XPs still stinks as I believe I had 30,000 more than the 161,000 by the end of the game.

The story moves along fairly well, although around the 25% to 50% point you end up clearing many outdoor areas for XPs. Sometimes there are just monsters but there can also be little side quests as well. The game had some nice tough battles throughout (a couple I escaped by the skin of my pants after several reloads) but that’s makes it very exciting. The expansion was particularly tough in most areas, and a little annoying in Durlag’s Tower with all of the traps and such (which I felt like the developers put in just to make the game feel longer), but some of the final battles were the only bad part of the game for me.

I felt like the end of Durlag’s Tower would be very difficult, but it proved to be easier than the end fight on the first level of the Tower. Then, the end fight of the expansion where you go up against some demon is very frustrating as the demon has some death ray gaze (including a hold sometimes) which gives you 20 seconds to deal with or your character dies. After several reloads, I decided to pass the battle by making all my characters saving throws automatic (through a character editor called gatekeeper) which still made the battle hard, but manageable. The end battle of the game (which was made harder if you play the expansion) was ridiculous in my opinion. Sarevok cannot be harmed by magic, his buddies are casting spells at you or shooting flaming arrows, and you can’t go toe to toe with Sarevok or you die since he attacks with super speed or something. Again, after several frustrating attempts, I had to not only make my saving throws automatic, but also give my two fighters 5 attacks per round, and I was still able to only barely survive with only my main character. Make it possible to win already!

I already loaded Baldur’s Gate 2 and imported my main character (the only one you can take), but I was disappointed to learn I had lost all of my equipment from the first game. The importing part was actually a challenge because it couldn’t find my final save game. After poking around, I saw that there was no save folder under Baldur’s Gate 2 so I created one, then I copied my final save into that folder, then I could import.

Anyway, I think this is still a great game to play, even 10 years later. It has a good story, a lot of diverse missions and opportunity to improve your characters, with little slow or boring parts in the game. I particularly liked meeting different potential party members which I could use or not. The second game already looks like it improves a lot on the first by adding better graphics, more spells and weapons, and even difficulty levels (for people like me who hate to struggle with a particularly difficult part of a game). This is a great series and I’m looking forward to enjoying Baldur’s Gate 2 and its expansion.

VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

Posted by Brad

I just received an email tonight anoouncing VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 public availability! I have been using VMware Fusion since it was in beta before the 1.0 release and I have loved it. I like it more than VMware Workstation because I get to run Mac OS X plus whatever flavors of Windows, Linux, etc. that I want. Hopefully 2.0 will add support for multiple snapshots.

Another cool thing is Vmware says 1.x customers will receive a free upgrade to 2.0 when it is released! Fusion 2.0 also allows you to import Parallels and Virtual PC for Mac VMs or Boot Camp partitions straight into Fusion. Forget Parallels! I know a lot of people use it because they never heard of VMware and Parallels had a Mac version first, but VMware Fusion is the superior product – here’s why you should switch.

I have used VMware products since Workstation 3.0 (a nod again to my buddy Chris for showing me the light) and I have found VMware’s products to be a great way to try new OS’s or run apps under one OS while having a different host OS. If you have a Mac and need to run Windows (or another OS, even server OS’s like Windows Server or NetWare) check out the Fusion 2.0 beta.

D-Link DFL-210 Router

Posted by Brad

I recently finished setting up remote access for a client who did not previously have broadband Internet. He wanted connectivity between his two offices on demand. I had used the D-Link DFL-700 router in three of my offices for the past few years as well as setting up these routers at three other offices. They have been very reliable and the VPN access has worked with little hassle after the initial setup. Unfortunately, these routers are no longer available, so I was back to finding a good VPN router. After checking D-Link’s current products, I stumbled upon the DFL-210. I had read some reviews which spoke highly of it, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The DFL-210 is a lot more complicated than the DFL-700 was to setup. It does have a nice wizard when you first access it to setup a router password and Internet connection. On the first router, I messed up the Internet connection setup, and I couldn’t figure it out manually so I ended up resetting the router so I could run the wizard again since I saw no other way to access the wizard. On try two, I got it right, so the second router’s Internet setup went much more smoothly.

The second part of the setup was to get the VPN server working and be able to connect to remote PCs. I found some nice How-To documents on the router CD, including one to setup a VPN server. I followed the thorough instructions and after was able to connect to the router. Unfortunately, I was not able to access the network or any PCs. I first looked for help on the Internet and found a page at My Digital Life which had users asking for help and others giving some advice. The first suggestion that proved relevant was adding the WAN IP address and WAN Gateway address to the router. By default, these addresses show up as 0.0.0.0 in the web interface. The second suggestion was to add a rule to allow outbound PPTP client connectivity to a remote PPTP server. Finally, I had to call D-Link support for the final piece of the puzzle. I called during the day, got through fairly quickly, got a tech who I explained the problem to, was put on hold for a few minutes, then he had me check a setting which was not on which pertained to routing. With the setting checked, everything was working.

To make it easy for others to setup the PPTP server and allow VPN client passthrough, let me give you the steps you need (my configuration was with a DSL conenction with Static IP addresses):

1) On the router CD, print the scenario: How to configure L2TP and PPTP servers for remote users when firewall is using PPOE.

2) Assuming your Internet connection is working, make the following changes to the instructions: In step 1, your lan_ip and lannet should already be set, but set your WAN IP and WAN Gateway IP. In the second part of step 1, in the IPPools Address Folder you just added, you will add a new IP Address (there’s no selection for a new IP4 Host/Network on the DFL-210).

3) Skip step 2. In step 3, under Server IP, I selected wan_ip since I skipped step 2. Also in step 3, when you go to the Add Route tab, you also need to check Always select All Interfaces, including new ones.

4) Step 4 remains the same. In step 5, under Terminator IP, I used wan_ip again instead of ip_PPOEClient (which was not a choice). I did not do the Per-user IP Configuration.

5) I skipped step 6 because I used the IP address of the router to connect and didn’t require Dynamic DNS.

6) I followed step 7, but when you are in the Rules section, add a new rule in the LANToWan folder called PPTP_Pass_Through. For Action choose NAT, for Service choose PPTP-SUITE. On Address Filter, source interface is LAN, destination interface is WAN, source network is LANNET, destination network is ALLNETS.

I hope these instructions help anyone who is trying to setup a PPTP server on the DFL-210. It seems to be a great router, if a tad complex to configure for novice firewall admins.

Windows XP Hard Drive Transplant

Posted by Brad

After being pestered for months by my son to get his Call of Duty 4 game working, I was finally able to do that by moving him to another PC, but it was not a simple procedure. I started trying to get the game working by getting the latest game patches, then the latest video and sound drivers, ghosting his hard drive to a new, larger one, even removing his SB Live card and putting him on built-in sound, but to no avail. The only other option left was to move his hard drive to another, better computer. I didn’t want to have to reload everything because he has quite a few games and such on there. I figured I’d try to transplant his hard drive, video card, and sound card to a new PC.

Not a brand new PC, but as I said, one better than he had and one that I thought could run COD4. The PC is an HP with 512MB RAM and an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor. I downloaded the drivers I needed for the HP system and copied them to his current hard drive. I then uninstalled as much major hardware as I could from device manager like video, sound, network, etc. I then moved his video card, 1 GB of RAM (PC2700, the same as the RAM in the HP), hard drive, and sound card to the HP system. I powered on and everything looked good, but instead of booting, the system rebooted, and rebooted, and rebooted. Thus, the troubleshooting began.

I did basic things like remove a memory stick, remove extra cards, but it didn’t help. The weird thing was that, before rebooting, a message came up saying Windows had not previously started successfully, even on the first boot in the HP. I kept trying to start in normal mode, but obviously it wasn’t working. So I tried starting in Safe Mode and kept noticing the boot would stop with the file mup.sys. A little Internet research indicated I wasn’t alone with this problem. I tried some suggested fixes, all involving Recovery Mode. There was a chkdsk command, which seemed to do nothing, and a command to disable muy.sys from starting. That worked, but then the boot stuck on the AGP driver. I disabled that; finally the boot stuck on the NTFS driver. I decided this tactic wasn’t working, so I tried something I never tried before and didn’t like – Windows repair install. Basically, Windows will install over the existing Windows load, keeping all programs (and reg settings I assume) intact. I have always been a firm believer in wiping the slate clean when reinstalling, but I figured this was my son’s computer, it was used primarily for gaming and my only other alternative was a clean reload, so what could it hurt.

Luckily, things went smoothly. The reload went through without any hiccups. I logged on to the PC and then loaded the missing drivers. Everything looked good. Then came the last test, the whole reason for this little adventure – a successful start of COD4. I fired the game up, and everything ran perfectly. I started the first mission, and it went fine. I then breathed a sigh of relief.

It’s been about a month, and everything is still working just fine. My son has not complained at all about games not working. Now if I could get the stinking XBox 360 to quit overheating so he could play Guitar Hero III and I could get all his Oblivion mods working, all would be right with the world…

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 File Formats

Posted by Brad

Let me start this off by saying I have used Office 2007 for Windows very little since it came out. The little I have used it has been a complete turn off. Leave it to Microsoft again to ruin what works. Office’s look and file formats have changed very little in the past 10 years, but it’s that time again, time to force everyone to upgrade. I don’t want this to turn into an Office 2007 hate rant, but the new interface stinks and forcing people to upgrade by changing the file format is wrong (yes, I know the new XML based format is supposed to add features, but seems like the old stuff worked well enough).

Anyway, I had the fun experience of troubleshooting a problem with a customer’s Outlook Express recently. For some reason, his spell check either did French or quit working altogether. After spending some time Googling the problem and trying different solutions which didn’t fix the problem, I came across a little gem about how Office 2007 breaks Outlook Express’ spell check, since OE relies on another application to provide its spell check capabilities. The solution was to reinstall the old spell check tool from a previous version of Office (Office 2003 in this case). That did the trick.

I asked my customer why he upgraded to begin with, and it was because a client was using Office 2007 and he could not read files that his client was sending him (you can, of course save files in Office 2007 in the previous formats, but of course this is not the default). Not long after, I came across the subject of this little blurb: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. According to the download page, by “installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.” My take is enough people complained about this that Microsoft had to let people read and write the new format using older versions of Office. Therefore, unless you like the new look and feel of Office 2007, check out the Compatibility Pack instead.