Cannot Activate Windows After a Recover Install

Problem: You run the recovery install on Windows, it reboots and forces you to re-activate windows before entering Windows. The problem is, that it never lets you see the activation screen.

1. Turn On your PC

2. Press F8 repeatedly and go to Safe Mode

3. Logon as normal
(note: Administrator password is usually blank, but hopefully you know your password)

4. Allow the Desktop to fully load (answering "Yes" to continue into Safe Mode)
(note: This is just a long way of saying go to Safe Mode)

5. You can simply get into safe mode and if you have an installer for IE8 you can omit the activation reset as this will fix oobe. If not:
Click on Start - Run

6. Type in exactly: rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk (and click OK)
(note: one space, after "rundll32.exe " also the Oo are two letter o's in "oobe"; capitals and comma are important)

7. Wait a couple of seconds (although you will Not see any change)

8. Restart your PC normally (Start - Shutdown - Restart - Ok)

9. You are now able to go to Normal Mode again (For another 30 days)

10. Install IE8 and that should solve not being able to run windows update and not being able to activate.

"There Is No Script Engine For FIle Extension" .VBS Problems

I was having an issue running .vbs files on a few computers. I Googled for a solution but no answer. Registering vbscript.dll did not help. It seems a program installed , "BlueFish HTML editor", had broken the .vbs file associations with Windows Script Host. The only way to fix the vbs script error was delete the .vbs script file type from windows and recreate it. That did the trick!

Future Proof Your Home's Wiring

One important consideration to make is to “future proof " your home. Future proofing covers a wide spectrum, we will focus on “future proof " your home’s wiring from a technology point of view. Everything is going or has gone digital and you do not know exactly what is around the corner a few years down the road. Preparing for the future can save you money and help your home’s market value.

You’re probably already indulged in (or aware of) Home Networking, High Definition Television (HDTV), or any of a number of other digital products and services out today. A term that has trickled from the “computer world” is structured wiring. Your entire home’s wiring is considered to be one unit and wires are in a "home run" (star) configuration back to a central location in your home. The wires should incorporate the following: Data, Video, Telephone, Audio, Fiber Optics, Infrared Control, Alarm (including surveillance video), VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Fiber optics is considered the “big daddy” of data transport, at the speed of light. It may be a little out your price range now, and a little too extreme. Installing it now will save you money later.

1. Troubleshooting - Each of the cables can be individually isolated from the rest of them and tested easily.
2. Manageability - With all of the cables running back to the Central Wiring Panel you can easily change how and what these individual cables are connected to and what they are used for.
3. Eliminate Splices - Splices are bad and create unnecessary problems. They are prone to failure and can pickup noise and interference.
4. Better signal quality - With all cables running back to the Central Wiring Panel they can all be connecter to the same source and get the same signal level.
5. Planning for the future can save you time and money and eliminate you destroying your home to run or upgrade wiring in your home.

ESXI 4.1 - HP Flash Drives and N68-S ASRock Motherboard A "No Go"

Could not get ESXi 4.1 to boot on a HP flash drive or SanDisk on a ASRock N68-S system. It would only boot maybe 1 out of 8 times. Definitely not production ready with this setup. Moving back to hard drives in RAID 1.

Dell PERC 5i SAS RAID Controllers

The Dell PERC 5i RAID controller cards are perfect for IT departments on a budget. These cards provide the popular RAID levels 0, 1 , 5, and (my favorite) 10. These cards are compatible with just about any installation including VMWare servers. You don't need a server motherboard with these cards as they fit in a standard PCI-Express slot. These cards do require extra cooling and a mounting bracket. Watch out because the non-RAID versions of these cards are on eBay and are described as having RAID, but you will sadly find that they do not. Just Google the part numbers to verify what you are buying.

Going Virtual with VMWare ESXi

I have a bunch of low end servers running many different things. I never like to keep all my eggs in one basket, so I spread services and apps over a lot of servers. I need a better disaster recover plan so I have decided to virtualize as many servers that I can. I do not have any money to spend, expect maybe for hardware. I think I am going with the free version of VMware ESXi. It's free with lots of community support. I already have one server running Ubuntu with 3 servers running on Virtualbox. It has a quad core Phenom 9600 with 4 GB of ram. I have a SMTP, ASSP spam filter and Blackberry server running on it. It runs really smooth and has never crashed. I really like Virtualbox, easy as pie to setup and runs like butter. It just doesn't have a lot of admin type tools and "live" backup or migration tools. I may still keep the Virtualbox server up for a while to see which I like better.

Xerox Copier "Printer Status is not available at this time."

I updated the printer drivers on the print server for my company's Xerox WorkCentre 5638 and now everyone gets a Printers Status error in a "pop up" window for every print job. This is real annoying and I finally figured out why it's happening. The printer is on a separate network than the network my users are on. They only access the printer through the print server, which is connected to 2 networks. The new drivers need direct network access from the person's PC to the printer itself. I tested this by adding a test PC on the user's network to the printer's network. Voila! No more printer status error messages!. Now I need to implement my fix. I will change the printer's IP to be on the users network.

Just Kicking This Thing Off

Will be adding content soon!