Category: NZTekonverse -> Uncategorised

I see that Longhorn now has a proper name… it is Windows Server 2008. Everyone sort of knew it would be called Server something – the only reason to hold this up must be that they didn’t know which year to release it 🙂 Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing it in action on our…

I had better luck with my second attempt installing Vista Business. For this trial I chose a Pentium III/800, about a 6 year old PC, fitted with 512MB RAM (the minimum needed to run it) and a 20 GB HDD. The install went smoothly but the Intel 815 onboard graphics are not supported meaning I could…

This is a list of updates that we are having difficulties with at the moment. This list will be updated as it changes. Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2: Most scheduled tasks no longer execute (Shadow Copy system generated tasks still work fine). [NOW FIXED – if you install a UPS, be careful because now…

Well, this is a real big one, just about everyone who is running a big network and using WSUS will know about this one. Today I had numerous calls from users about their PCs running slowly. Probably this has just happened since I got time Monday to sit down with WSUS and make sure all…

Last week I obtained an evaluation version of Windows Vista Business Edition (requires activation in 30 days). I try it out first of all in a VPC2007 virtual machine, where it installs successfully, but runs quite slowly. Buoyed by this success, I decide to try it on an actual machine. A one-year-old Intel D915GAG motherboard equipped…

Right now I’m working on my second RIPREP image. Even though we have WDS, we will still be using RIPREP (legacy) images for a while, probably until Vista rolls into town. I have, however, started looking at the transition, installing Business Desktop Deployment 2007 and Windows Automated Installation Kit on my desktop. Since we don’t…

A few weeks ago I wrote about some strange things we had seen occurring with mandatory profiles. We had twice witnessed the scenario of an improperly configured mandatory profile causing user policies to fail or terminate prematurely. Naturally, I concluded this must be a scenario specific to man profiles. Well, I was wrong. Today I…

Many NZ schools get major software through the deals done by the Ministry of Education with suppliers like Microsoft, Apple and Novell. This year, the agreements were up for renewal. MOE has now announced that the packages available to schools have been finalised. The major change in the Microsoft licensing is the introduction of Windows Vista…

One of the great things that RIS does much better than Ghost for image installations is that it allows the computer account to be prestaged in Active Directory. Basically, the PXE specification provides for each computer to have its own unique GUID. This is transmitted in the DHCP Discover packet and is used to identity…

For the first test, I simply used the image that I created, as-is, on another, identical machine. The following issues have occurred: Mini-setup asked me for the name (not the organisation) to register under. Mini-setup asked me for the PID key. The setup formatted the entire HDD for C:, not a 20GB partition as the source computer…