KW Support & Consulting LLCKW Support & Consulting LLC

Extreme IT Makeover

KW — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:18:15 +0000

Oliver Sommer is a fellow SBS MVP’er (Germany), and he was involved with an Extreme IT Makeover in Helsinki last year. A short video of this effort was filmed and posted on HP’s Coffee Coaching website.

Awarded MVP Status for 2012

KW — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:32:41 +0000

I’m honored to announce that Microsoft has renewed my status as a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Small Business Servers for the year 2012. This is the 8th straight year that I have been so recognized.

And just to clarify any misconceptions, I am not employed by or work for Microsoft. Here is what Microsoft says about the MVP award:

We seek to recognize the best and brightest from technology communities around the world with the Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award.

These exceptional community leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds. They are teachers, artists, doctors, engineers, as well as technologists, who actively share their high-quality, real-world technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft.

With the MVP Award, we thank these inspiring individuals for representing the voice of thousands in the community through the powerful and independent feedback they give us, and for helping our customers maximize the potential of their software.

MalwareBytes Crashing

KW — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:07:07 +0000

For those of you who use MalwareBytes, you should be aware they just came out with a new version (1.60.xx) and a new database definition naming convention. I’ve installed it on several systems with no problems.

But tonight I was working on a system, and did the regular in place upgrade of MalwareBytes. However, upon completion of the update process, MalwareByrt crashed on start up. Rebooting the computer did not help. So I uninstalled MalwareBytes, rebooted and then installed it clean. It still crashed on startup.

Fortunately, a quick Internet search identified that several other people had encountered this same issue with the new version of MalwareBytes. Fortunately, someone had a fix to the problem. I was not aware that MalwareBytes had their own standalone uninstall/cleanup utility program. So I downloaded it, ran it, rebooted, reinstalled MalwareBytes and now it starts up fine.

Here’s the link to the cleanup utility, straight from MalwareBytes’ web site:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-clean.exe.

Malwarebytes Database Version Numbering Change

KW — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:23:55 +0000

Today I was updating Malwarebytes on a customer computer, and for a moment I thought I had a rogue version of Malwarebytes. That’s because the version number associated with their database definition file had a completely different naming structure.

But a quick visit to the MalwareByte’s Forum and I discovered that they had indeed changed how they identify and name their database version!

The old format for the database version was a 4 digit number, like: 8229
The new format is an 8 digit number, like: 9111122309

According to the forum post, the version number breaks down as 9yymmddvv, where
9 = indicates this is the new version format
yymmdd = the date of the veersion (111223 represents Year 2011, Month December, Day 23)
vv = the version update for that specific day (09 indicates this is the 9th update for Dec 23, 2011)

Verizon Email Settings

KW — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:04:59 +0000

Verizon has recently made changes to their client email setup to improve security. If you only access your email from a web browser, these changes do not affect you. But, if you use an email client software on your computer (Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, etc.), then changes need to be made.

Verizon has provided the following page that you explains the changes AND provides step by step instructions for making those changes. However, if you are having trouble making these changes, please contact me, and I will set up a time to do it for you.

Review Verizon Instructions – Email Changes

Dell OpenManage Download Tips

KW — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:57:04 +0000

Dell’s OpenManage Systems Management Tools & Documentation (OM-SMTD) is a set of tools on a bootable DVD that is used to prepare and install a Dell server. This past week I needed to download the latest version to use on a Dell T410 that was not shipped with the OpenManage DVD . I used the OM-STD to configure the Raid drives and to install SBS 2011. I hope these notes will help you.

First, because of the size of the OM-SMTD , Dell splits the .iso file into 2 separate files (xxx.001 and xxx.002), which you then have to combine together using a simple DOS command. The reason for this is that there’s a 2GB file limitation when downloading files from a browser, and there have been reports of file corruption when downloading very large files via a nbrowser.

But we won’t be using our browser, because it is far easier to use a FTP client to download these files rather than using a browser interface to the Dell’s Support web page. The reason is two-fold: it’s easier using the FTP client, and more importantly, using a browser to download extremely large files has been known to cause corruption.

So grab your favorite FTP client and point it to ftp.dell.com using anonymous login. Drill down to the secure\sysman sub folder. There you will find the download files for every version of SMTD! I know, control your emotions. I wanted version 6.5.0, so the two files I needed were: OM_6.5.0_SMTD_A01.iso.001 and OM_6.5.0_SMTD_A01.iso.002. Eachof these files are over 1GB in size, so your Internet speed will dictate how long it will take to download the files. I would suggest creating a folder on your hard drive, such as C:\OM and store the two files there.

Once they are downloaded, open up a command prompt (Start >cmd) and enter the following DOS commands, which will combine (concatenate) the two iso files into a single iso file:

cd \OM
copy /b OM* OM650.iso

Finally, use your favorite image burner utility to burn the .iso file to a DVD. I personally use a free product called ImgBurn.

Good luck!

Office 365 Integration Public Beta announced

KW — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:25:13 +0000

The Microsoft SBS team has released the first public beta of the Office 365 Integration Module, which interfaces with SBS 2011 Essentials. More information plus a link to download the beta can be found at the SBS Official Blog site (click here).

SSL Certificates for SBS 2011

KW — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:24:50 +0000

The SBS Internet Management Wizard will offer a choice of several companies to purchase an SSL certificate. Self0signed certificates, which we used often with SBS 2003 installations, is a thing of the past. SSL certificates are fairly inexpensive these days. Check out GoDaddy’s $12.99 certificate .

And be sure to check out Third Tier’s excellent article on Setting up Autodiscover with SBS 2011!

Multipoint Classroom Video

KW — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:43:44 +0000

Here is a very good (under 5 minute) video from a secondary school in the Czech Reoublic discussing the features of Microsoft’s Windows Multipoint Server!

ios5 iTunes Store Temporarily Unavailable

KW — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:50:43 +0000

After upgrading my trusty iPhone4 to the new iOS5 software/firmware, I discovered that I could not access the itunes store from phone to download updates for my apps.

I did a lot of searching, with no real answers until I stumbled on a suggestion to fire up itunes on my computer, click on Store > View My Account, login with your Apple storeid and password, and then select to deauthorize all computers.

Yes — deauthorize all computers. In fact there’s a little button that lets you do it very easily. I did so with fear and trepidation, but the result was that it immediately worked. I was able to access the itunes store from my iphone and download the available updates to my apps.