Here we have the continuation of a series about the good things that have come out of Microsoft recently. We’re talking about the kinds of things that make you go; “Well I’ll be stuffed! I never expected them to get THAT right!” So all this week I’ll post articles on the little features that I have found pleasantly surprising.
So those of you that read title will have read "Microsoft Security Essentials" then thought, "Wait what? Ok Ben’s lost it now... He’s pimping for an app with Microsoft and Security in the title!?
W T F ?"
I know, I know. We all remember Windows Defender, Forefront Client Security or how about Live One Care. Microsoft has been trying to enter the desktop security market for a while. With mixed success. Well I grudgingly confess they’ve finally won me over. The best endorsement I can give is that over the last few months I’ve been progressively uninstalling McAfee Anti-Virus and installing Microsoft Security Essentials for any friends and family that I encounter.
What am I doing that? I’m doing that because it’s Good!
As a small aside I feel I should point out I was doing it before well before the whole DAT 5958 “experience”. Ok I’m not going to say I knew something like THAT would happen. What can I say? I caught a whiff of something rotten coming from the McAfee kitchen and jumped ship to Microsoft Security Essentials.
It’s faster, has a smaller footprint and from what I’ve observed it works just as well as the other big AV products. Also it’s FREE! Free Anti Virus application with free updates. You can’t argue with that price!
I must say we’re still running McAfee at work though, those that have experienced the administrative pleasures of the EPO server will know why. Those that have not must be filled with torment and anguish and are clearly, in some difficult to comprehend way, subhuman.
Unfortunately in terms of useful tips this is it; The next time you’re stuck thinking of an AV solution for Mums PC... Give Security Essentials a shot! I bet it surprises you. Hopefully in a good way.
Check in Tomorrow for the fifth and final post in this series.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
The NEW Windows Backup Tools - More good things from Microsoft
Here we have the continuation of a series about the good things that have come out of Microsoft recently. We’re talking about the kinds of things that make you go; “Hells Yeah! They’re finally getting it! They’re making my life easier!” So all this week I’ll post articles on the little features that I have found pleasantly surprising.
Can you say “Bare Metal Recovery”?
Three words right up there with as many positive connotations as some other well known three word combos such as “I love you”, “just lay there” and even one of the most pleasing phrases in the english language “want another beer?”
The idea of a bare metal recovery is simple. You create a backup on a particular server with a particular hardware configuration. When that server dies, you can restore that backup to a totally different server with a totally different hardware configuration. Are you with me on how cool that is?
I know this concept is old hat to a lot of industry veterans that read this blog, but I think it’s fair to acknowledge that Bare Metal Restore is now supported natively in windows backup in Server 2008 R2. And let me assure you it's pretty dam cool!
That tick box there means you can be sure you can move your server image to new hardware without even having to install Shadow Protect or Livestate. The first time I saw it I felt like someone CARED! Or the sadly, more likely scenario, that someone in marketing wanted me to think they cared.
But that shouldn’t diminish the joy of this feature. Especially when you consider that it will roll down to the workstation OS sooner or later.
I already perform a daily system image backup on my Windows 7 machines. However this won’t offer bare metal recovery... Yet.
I’m just performing my system image backups in anticipation. Not to mention the benefit of creating an archive backup that should protect me from the ever present threat of Stupidity (as mentioned in the previous post.)
The great thing about this hip and trendy use of hard disk “images” is they’re MOUNTABLE! Yup you heard me. You can take the VHD file created by your regular scheduled backup and mount it in Disk Management!
Mount it in Disk Management! Yeah! I know! It's exciting right?
I guess I get excited when something is native to the OS. It comes from being absolutely sure of the tools I’ll have at my fingertips whenever and where-ever things decide turn pear-shaped. This stuff is built into the OS so I don’t have to mess around with restrictive licensing and third party image formats. It’s all there in the OS that currently has 90% market share... Oh and it works at that!
So remember to do you backups kids! It’s now a THOUSAND times easier than it used to be. Check back tomorrow for another Microsoft product that made me grin.
Can you say “Bare Metal Recovery”?
Three words right up there with as many positive connotations as some other well known three word combos such as “I love you”, “just lay there” and even one of the most pleasing phrases in the english language “want another beer?”
The idea of a bare metal recovery is simple. You create a backup on a particular server with a particular hardware configuration. When that server dies, you can restore that backup to a totally different server with a totally different hardware configuration. Are you with me on how cool that is?
I know this concept is old hat to a lot of industry veterans that read this blog, but I think it’s fair to acknowledge that Bare Metal Restore is now supported natively in windows backup in Server 2008 R2. And let me assure you it's pretty dam cool!
That tick box there means you can be sure you can move your server image to new hardware without even having to install Shadow Protect or Livestate. The first time I saw it I felt like someone CARED! Or the sadly, more likely scenario, that someone in marketing wanted me to think they cared.
But that shouldn’t diminish the joy of this feature. Especially when you consider that it will roll down to the workstation OS sooner or later.
I already perform a daily system image backup on my Windows 7 machines. However this won’t offer bare metal recovery... Yet.
I’m just performing my system image backups in anticipation. Not to mention the benefit of creating an archive backup that should protect me from the ever present threat of Stupidity (as mentioned in the previous post.)
The great thing about this hip and trendy use of hard disk “images” is they’re MOUNTABLE! Yup you heard me. You can take the VHD file created by your regular scheduled backup and mount it in Disk Management!
Mount it in Disk Management! Yeah! I know! It's exciting right?
I guess I get excited when something is native to the OS. It comes from being absolutely sure of the tools I’ll have at my fingertips whenever and where-ever things decide turn pear-shaped. This stuff is built into the OS so I don’t have to mess around with restrictive licensing and third party image formats. It’s all there in the OS that currently has 90% market share... Oh and it works at that!
So remember to do you backups kids! It’s now a THOUSAND times easier than it used to be. Check back tomorrow for another Microsoft product that made me grin.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Live Mesh - Something Else Good From Microsoft
Here we have the continuation of a series about the good things that have come out of Microsoft recently. We’re talking about the kinds of things that make me go; “Hells Yeah! They’re finally getting it! They’re making my life easier!” So all this week I’ll post articles on the little features that I have found pleasantly surprising.
I can sleep at night!
I don’t have to worry anymore.
What gives me this assurance? Well my friend all my important data is safe in the cloud! Which isn’t to say the cloud doesn’t have its own set of issues but I keep a copy of my data locally and now I keep one in the cloud and with the flexibility of having my stuff out there I can keep it all in sync between my PCs at work at home and on the road with my laptop!
This is a good thing! After years of burning CDs and DVDs with multiple failures and dubious shelf life then going with homemade removable hard drives, cheap USB devices and even a brief flirtation with Tape drives the dark and twisted nightmare of managing my personal data has now evaporated! The sensation was so overwhelmingly positive it’s difficult to articulate. The thought can best be wrought into language with this phrase;
“I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
The sensation of joy is congruent to the joy of dancing around wildly... Wearing nothing but my undies... On my head.
A major concern of mine is losing my data particularly anything I’ve written. So pushing everything I write up to the cloud every time I click save... Yeah that goes in the Pros column.
My access to this cloud based Nirvana is through LiveMesh. Once it’s installed I recommend syncing “My Documents” to the cloud straight away. I won’t go on about how I configured it because everyone has their own requirements so grab a copy and evaluate it for yourself.
One important thing to point out is that Syncing data to the cloud protects you from all sorts of data loss, fire, flood, Ewok rapage... You're all covered! Everything really except for of the most common causes of data loss... Stupidity.
Yup if you go ahead and save a blank document over the top of Thesis.docx the mesh client will happily sync right up to the cloud and overwrite whatever was there. There's no beating Stupidity so it’s STILL really important to have an archive backup running in case you score some tickets for a trip on the fail train.
If fact tomorrow I’ll go over Windows backup and why I love it now.
I can sleep at night!
I don’t have to worry anymore.
What gives me this assurance? Well my friend all my important data is safe in the cloud! Which isn’t to say the cloud doesn’t have its own set of issues but I keep a copy of my data locally and now I keep one in the cloud and with the flexibility of having my stuff out there I can keep it all in sync between my PCs at work at home and on the road with my laptop!
This is a good thing! After years of burning CDs and DVDs with multiple failures and dubious shelf life then going with homemade removable hard drives, cheap USB devices and even a brief flirtation with Tape drives the dark and twisted nightmare of managing my personal data has now evaporated! The sensation was so overwhelmingly positive it’s difficult to articulate. The thought can best be wrought into language with this phrase;
“I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
The sensation of joy is congruent to the joy of dancing around wildly... Wearing nothing but my undies... On my head.
A major concern of mine is losing my data particularly anything I’ve written. So pushing everything I write up to the cloud every time I click save... Yeah that goes in the Pros column.
My access to this cloud based Nirvana is through LiveMesh. Once it’s installed I recommend syncing “My Documents” to the cloud straight away. I won’t go on about how I configured it because everyone has their own requirements so grab a copy and evaluate it for yourself.
One important thing to point out is that Syncing data to the cloud protects you from all sorts of data loss, fire, flood, Ewok rapage... You're all covered! Everything really except for of the most common causes of data loss... Stupidity.
Yup if you go ahead and save a blank document over the top of Thesis.docx the mesh client will happily sync right up to the cloud and overwrite whatever was there. There's no beating Stupidity so it’s STILL really important to have an archive backup running in case you score some tickets for a trip on the fail train.
If fact tomorrow I’ll go over Windows backup and why I love it now.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
powercfg - A Good Thing Microsoft Did
A lot of people like to bash Microsoft and probably rightly so. But I think with Industry Giants as with anything else really, it’s important to take the good with bad. So I’m writing a series on all the Good things I’ve seen come out of Redmond recently. The kinds of things that make me go “Yeah! They’re finally getting it! They’re more in touch with the poor slobs out in the field who have to work with this stuff!” So over the next week I’ll post articles on the little features that I have found pleasantly surprising.
Check this out! Ever wondered why your PC won’t go to sleep when you want it to? Or ever been surprised by a sleeping PC waking up on its own? Or have you pondered how to expose the finer details of windows power management?
Well the command line tool powercfg is where it’s at! Windows Power Managment tools of the past have been a little hit and miss. But with this new tool it’s much easier to peak behind the curtain and get a handle on what’s really happening power-wise.
For example the following line will list all those devices that can wake your PC from sleep.
powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
Handy yeah? Ok how about this?
powercfg -requests
This one lists all the “objects” that have asked nicely for the computer not go to sleep! Super handy! Well ok handy when you’ve got a PC that won’t sleep anyway.
Here’s another one I’ve been using recently;
powercfg -energy
This creates a report energy_report.html that details any power issues you should be aware of. Go and run it now... I BET you change some power management settings after seeing this report!
There’s lots more to this app, you can manage power profiles from the command line which means you can script power profile changes. So if Group Policy won't give you what you need powercfg just might! Have a look at the documentation and see for yourself.
Don’t forget to check back during the rest of the week for other features that you may find useful one day.
Check this out! Ever wondered why your PC won’t go to sleep when you want it to? Or ever been surprised by a sleeping PC waking up on its own? Or have you pondered how to expose the finer details of windows power management?
Well the command line tool powercfg is where it’s at! Windows Power Managment tools of the past have been a little hit and miss. But with this new tool it’s much easier to peak behind the curtain and get a handle on what’s really happening power-wise.
For example the following line will list all those devices that can wake your PC from sleep.
powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
Handy yeah? Ok how about this?
powercfg -requests
This one lists all the “objects” that have asked nicely for the computer not go to sleep! Super handy! Well ok handy when you’ve got a PC that won’t sleep anyway.
Here’s another one I’ve been using recently;
powercfg -energy
This creates a report energy_report.html that details any power issues you should be aware of. Go and run it now... I BET you change some power management settings after seeing this report!
There’s lots more to this app, you can manage power profiles from the command line which means you can script power profile changes. So if Group Policy won't give you what you need powercfg just might! Have a look at the documentation and see for yourself.
Don’t forget to check back during the rest of the week for other features that you may find useful one day.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
AGAIN!
You may have already heard about this one.
McAfee DAT update 5958 causes a false positive on svchost.exe and under the default configuration DELETES IT!
We got the bulletin this morning and checked our PCs. Looked like we'd dodged a bullet! They were all on 5959 so we'd skipped over the dodgy update. - YES!
Then we got the email from a remote site. 8 PCs wont boot! - NO!
There's a fix but it's very manual as it requires booting each PC and replacing svchost.exe. It could have been so much worse though. Better to repair 8 PCs than hundreds!
Twice in a week we've been owned by our AV product!
McAfee DAT update 5958 causes a false positive on svchost.exe and under the default configuration DELETES IT!
We got the bulletin this morning and checked our PCs. Looked like we'd dodged a bullet! They were all on 5959 so we'd skipped over the dodgy update. - YES!
Then we got the email from a remote site. 8 PCs wont boot! - NO!
There's a fix but it's very manual as it requires booting each PC and replacing svchost.exe. It could have been so much worse though. Better to repair 8 PCs than hundreds!
Twice in a week we've been owned by our AV product!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Finally! Something interesting!
OK here’s a fun one! I just got back from lunch to discover an outage on one of our exchange servers.
To be more specific an outage on a particular mail store. All other stores on that server were fine. The boys had kicked the server over but that didn’t resolve anything. All five databases in the store were dismounted when the server came back online.
Finally! Something interesting!
We got the stores back online by forcing them to ignore missing log files (we could always bring back lost mail from the archiving server, yes we do send every piece of email we receive to an archive server doesn’t everyone?). Then we began collating data on the outage and pretty quickly a picture started forming.
I’ll list these in reverse chronological order so as to build the suspense!
Event ID 104 – 4/19/2010 12:26
MSExchangeIS (3240) Mail P-T: The database engine stopped the instance (3) with error (-1090).
For more information, click ....
Event ID 486 – 4/19/2010 12:26
MSExchangeIS (3240) Mail P-T: An attempt to move the file "C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E02.log" to "C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E020005DC2D.log" failed with system error 2 (0x00000002): "The system cannot find the file specified. ". The move file operation will fail with error -1811 (0xfffff8ed).
For more information, click ....
Event ID 259 – 4/19/2010 12:21
The file C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E02.log contains the Malformed Archive Trojan. No cleaner available, file deleted successfully. Detected using Scan engine version 5400.1158 DAT version 5955.0000.
This looks to me like our Anti Virus product found what it thought was an infected file E02.LOG and deleted it; as a result exchange lost the plot! As would I if someone removed one of my transaction logs midflight.
So yeah new policy, exclude your exchange transaction logs from your Anti Virus scans!
To be more specific an outage on a particular mail store. All other stores on that server were fine. The boys had kicked the server over but that didn’t resolve anything. All five databases in the store were dismounted when the server came back online.
Finally! Something interesting!
We got the stores back online by forcing them to ignore missing log files (we could always bring back lost mail from the archiving server, yes we do send every piece of email we receive to an archive server doesn’t everyone?). Then we began collating data on the outage and pretty quickly a picture started forming.
I’ll list these in reverse chronological order so as to build the suspense!
Event ID 104 – 4/19/2010 12:26
MSExchangeIS (3240) Mail P-T: The database engine stopped the instance (3) with error (-1090).
For more information, click ....
Event ID 486 – 4/19/2010 12:26
MSExchangeIS (3240) Mail P-T: An attempt to move the file "C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E02.log" to "C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E020005DC2D.log" failed with system error 2 (0x00000002): "The system cannot find the file specified. ". The move file operation will fail with error -1811 (0xfffff8ed).
For more information, click ....
Event ID 259 – 4/19/2010 12:21
The file C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E02.log contains the Malformed Archive Trojan. No cleaner available, file deleted successfully. Detected using Scan engine version 5400.1158 DAT version 5955.0000.
This looks to me like our Anti Virus product found what it thought was an infected file E02.LOG and deleted it; as a result exchange lost the plot! As would I if someone removed one of my transaction logs midflight.
So yeah new policy, exclude your exchange transaction logs from your Anti Virus scans!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
I has da powa!
Love it or hate the iPhone is a popular piece of kit. It’s got a lot of great features including a super friendly UI, disturbingly friendly at times. Like going to dinner at an undiscovered serial killers home, everything is shiny on the surface just don’t go down to the basement.
Aside from the suspect practices of its creator one of my big gripes with the hardware itself is battery life. I struggle to get 24 hours use out of a full charge. Of course I could charge it every night but where does that leave me when I forget? Those that know me know that forgetting stuff is one of my more adorable or onerous personality traits depending on how long you’ve known me.
So after a couple of weeks of experimentation I’ve come up with a few battery saving tips that may extend your devices operational hours.
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Turn off Wi-Fi
Obvious enough really these two saved me some power... But hold onto your undies it's going to get more obvious;
• Turn down Backlight Brightness
This change gave me the most visible improvement to battery life. With the backlight on the minimum setting I got 3 days out of a charge! Admittedly I couldn’t use the phone outside during the day... But that was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the sake of science.
I’ve set the backlight brightness to about 10% and that seems to be a happy medium for me.
Aside from the suspect practices of its creator one of my big gripes with the hardware itself is battery life. I struggle to get 24 hours use out of a full charge. Of course I could charge it every night but where does that leave me when I forget? Those that know me know that forgetting stuff is one of my more adorable or onerous personality traits depending on how long you’ve known me.
So after a couple of weeks of experimentation I’ve come up with a few battery saving tips that may extend your devices operational hours.
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Turn off Wi-Fi
Obvious enough really these two saved me some power... But hold onto your undies it's going to get more obvious;
• Turn down Backlight Brightness
This change gave me the most visible improvement to battery life. With the backlight on the minimum setting I got 3 days out of a charge! Admittedly I couldn’t use the phone outside during the day... But that was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the sake of science.
I’ve set the backlight brightness to about 10% and that seems to be a happy medium for me.
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