Sorry…

I havent written for over eight months.

just shows how interesting my life is at the moment.

well, it has been, what with a relationship breakup, new duties at work, and a whole host of stuff happening in the cadet world.

Will try to update more often, promise.

Welcome to 2008

So, we are 13 days into the new year, and the shine can be said to be wearing off.

Interestingly, it is said (and reported) that the 10th is the day that most people run out of money, due to the early Christmas payday.  anyone out there run out?

Hopefully have something interesting to write soon

Windows Deployment Services 2

Had a breakthrough with WDS today.

 I was trying to take a machine pre-installed with Vista and image it to XP.

However, everytime I tried the capture, the XP installation had moved to the D drive.

Little hint – if you want to roll a machine back to XP and then image it, you need to delete the Vista recovery partitions or it ain’t going to work.  I will try to post some more info later

Work-Life Balance

I look at the stats for this blog, and I see what people have typed into search engines to find me.

Now, all of my posts so far have been in relation to problems I have encountered on Vista (apart from two), but I saw an interesting search term today – Christmas and work life.

Now, I am assuming that that person was referring to Work-Life Balance, so I thought why not make a post on it (hey, it may generate more hits!)

I feel that Work life balance is important, but sometimes difficult.  I however, try to live by the adage “You work to live, not live to work”.

In my last job, I was often working over 60 hours per week.  I would be in work for 8/8:30 and leave at 5/5:30.

Once home, I would sign in and do some work from home while trying to interact with my son.  once he had gone to bed, I would be back on the laptop until normally around 3am.  Conversation with my partner was stifled and things were not all that good.

I made a choice when I started a new role, my home life would come first.  I make more time for my son, I make more time for my partner, and (at the moment) don’t work from home.  I arrive at work at 8:30/9 and leave at 5:30 like everyone else.   Things seem much happier at home.

I would like to say to those out there that may be struggling to find the balance, Home is more important.  let that reflect in the hours of work and the hours of not at work.

Christmas Party (Work)

So, last night (as in Thursday Night) was the works Christmas do.  (are you supposed to spell do with one o or two o’s in that context?)

(and why a bloomin Thursday, you can’t have THAT much fun, cause you have to be in work the next day (maybe its SO you don’t have that much fun… who knows.)

Anyway, work paid for all of us to go to the NEC for Jasper Carrott’s “Rock With Laughter”, and it was the “VIP” package don’tcher know!!

 Free parking (for those that drove), VIP Entrance, Buffett, Bubbly, Wine, and even chocolates on the tables!  skip the queue’s and walk into the auditorium from backstage and take our seats on the front row.

I had some REALLY miserable bint next to me who had won her tickets from the local papers “competition”.

Good line up, but with dissapointments.

Jasper was full of energy, but had very little new material which was a shame

Nicki was there, fresh from being kicked off X Factor, and my god, she has got a FANTASTIC voice.

Ray Quinn (again X Factor, but from last year) did an Amy Winehouse!  he could barely sing, and looked like he was either stoned or p*ssed (or both).  not all that impressive, also, trying to do “Sexy” moves when you like like a Secondary School First Year is NOT a good thing (Quoted from Jasper: “I’ve never had to introduce a foetus before!”)

Jo Brand: Never really been a fan of Jo’s, but she had me in stitches all the way through her set

Jack Dee: Unimpressive, not as good as I was expecting

Dame Edna: Still going strong

Jamelia: Again, WOW, what a voice!  also, you would never guess she was a mother.  in fact I could see a fair few envious looks shooting her way.

 The Manfreds: Fantastic

The Tapdogs (or Lapdogs as JC called them): Erm, its a group of guys stamping their feet.  what more can be said?  oh, oh, one can stamp his feet while bouncing a basketball!

Shakin Stevens: Lived up to his name

Chris De Burgh: A-Bloody-Mazing (but isn’t he short… he always sounds much taller (if that is possible))

A bloody good night all round though.

Now, getting ready for my ACF XMas do.  Saturday Night, formal affair, should be great fun!

 G’Night

Christmas Shoot

The Army Cadet Force.

A wonderful organisation that lets kids engage in both military based and adventurous activities.  it helps take them off the streets for a couple of nights per week, and engages them in activities OTHER than “happy slapping” and vandalising bus stops.  Well, every year at around about this time, my ACF company has its “Christmas Shoot”.  we take the kids down onto a range and let them shoot at targets up to 300/400 metres away. 

Great Fun

Retro Web Development: Windows Vista and Outlook 2003 – mapi32.dll Error Fix

Well this link stopped the REST of my hair from going gray.

Shame I didn;t find it about an hour ago!

If you downgrade from office 2007 to office 2003 then you NEED to read this!

Retro Web Development: Windows Vista and Outlook 2003 – mapi32.dll Error Fix

Network Speed on Vista

So many people online are moaning about the fact that Vista is dog slow to access files across a network. and I fully agree. it is.

however, by using just two little commands, this can be turned around and you would think that you are back on XP because the network access will just rocket along.

So, what is the secret to this new found vista bliss?

Start an elevated command prompt

type netsh

the screen prompt will change to show netsh>

netsh>interface
netsh interface>tcp
netsh interface tcp>set global RSS = disabled
the system should respond with

OK

netsh interface tcp>

then you will need to type

netsh interface tcp>set global autotuninglevel = disabled

Again, the system will respond

OK

netsh interface tcp>

Type Quit, exit the command prompt and restart vista. hey presto, this should speed up your network file requests like you wouldn’t believe.

I have used this on several systems and it has left me with a smile on my face each time.

an explanation of WHY this happens is Here

Vista and Sophos

Sophos, a wonderful tool. however, if you have used EMConsole, you will realise how useful a tool that is. you will also realise how annoyingly vague some of the errors are.

If (like me) you have been trying to push out Sophos to a vista client, and keep getting error messages along the lines of “Install on this computer, what computer? where?”

I would like to draw your attention to This Link

In brief, you need to open up parts of the firewall (or, in my case as I am behind a couple of the things, turn it off completely), start the remote registry service, and fiddle with a setting of UAC in the local security policy (I really do not like UAC!)

This will then make all your sophos worries float away

Windows Deployment Services

Hmmm, well, if (like me) you have Server 2003 with SP2, then you will have noticed that the sometimes diva like RIS has been removed.

In its place is another application called “Windows Deployment Services”.

This is the “All Singing All Dancing”(tm) deployment system (snigger)

Documentation is not especially useful, but This Guy seems to know his way around quite a bit, and his posts on the subject certainly helped me out. Cheers Rob!