Nick Whittome - The Naked MVP

Microsoft MVP and general ranter...

News

SBS Related Links

Others

SBS Blogs

Flight Simulator Random

Former ACES Team

Flight Simulator MVP's

Ex FS Team Members

ACES Team (Train Simulator)

Netstreams

Archives

Intel 4965AGN Blue Screen Crash on Windows 7 X64 under Heavy Load

This is one I have been fighting with for a while.   In my case, we have a Dell XPS1530 Laptop in the office that when under heavy load is causing BSOD’s on the Intel Driver.   I had found lots of threads on forums, but none pointing to the link with heavy load.    Until Now…..

http://communities.intel.com/thread/6030?tstart=0

If you are having this problem, I encourage you to open a ticket with Intel on this issue as there is still no fix at the time I type this.   There is certainly a major problem with this card, under heavy transfer load, on Windows 7 X64.

Here is a Dump file output you might see for comparison:


Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 X86
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


Loading Dump File [C:\Windows\Minidump\020510-12916-01.dmp]
Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available

Symbol search path is: SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is:
Windows 7 Kernel Version 7600 MP (2 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS
Built by: 7600.16385.amd64fre.win7_rtm.090713-1255
Machine Name:
Kernel base = 0xfffff800`02a14000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`02c51e50
Debug session time: Fri Feb  5 07:16:33.693 2010 (GMT+0)
System Uptime: 0 days 10:41:40.659
Loading Kernel Symbols
...............................................................
................................................................
..............................................
Loading User Symbols
Loading unloaded module list
.......................
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck D1, {8, 2, 0, fffff8800aaba6d8}

Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\netw5v64.sys, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for netw5v64.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for netw5v64.sys
Probably caused by : netw5v64.sys ( netw5v64+b6d8 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

0: kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                                                                                       *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                                                                      *
*                                                                                                                                       *
*******************************************************************************

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (d1)
An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an
interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high.  This is usually
caused by drivers using improper addresses.
If kernel debugger is available get stack backtrace.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000008, memory referenced
Arg2: 0000000000000002, IRQL
Arg3: 0000000000000000, value 0 = read operation, 1 = write operation
Arg4: fffff8800aaba6d8, address which referenced memory

Debugging Details:
------------------

READ_ADDRESS: GetPointerFromAddress: unable to read from fffff80002cbc0e0
0000000000000008

CURRENT_IRQL:  2

FAULTING_IP:
netw5v64+b6d8
fffff880`0aaba6d8 488b4808        mov     rcx,qword ptr [rax+8]

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT:  1

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT

BUGCHECK_STR:  0xD1

PROCESS_NAME:  System

TRAP_FRAME:  fffff80000b9bdc0 -- (.trap 0xfffff80000b9bdc0)
NOTE: The trap frame does not contain all registers.
Some register values may be zeroed or incorrect.
rax=0000000000000000 rbx=0000000000000000 rcx=fffffa80073917c0
rdx=0000000000000002 rsi=0000000000000000 rdi=0000000000000000
rip=fffff8800aaba6d8 rsp=fffff80000b9bf50 rbp=fffffa8004cbd720
 r8=fffffa80070c0c00  r9=0000000000000000 r10=fffff80002bff760
r11=0000000000000002 r12=0000000000000000 r13=0000000000000000
r14=0000000000000000 r15=0000000000000000
iopl=0         nv up ei ng nz na po nc
netw5v64+0xb6d8:
fffff880`0aaba6d8 488b4808        mov     rcx,qword ptr [rax+8] ds:003a:00000000`00000008=????????????????
Resetting default scope

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from fffff80002a85469 to fffff80002a85f00

STACK_TEXT: 
fffff800`00b9bc78 fffff800`02a85469 : 00000000`0000000a 00000000`00000008 00000000`00000002 00000000`00000000 : nt!KeBugCheckEx
fffff800`00b9bc80 fffff800`02a840e0 : 00000000`00000000 fffffa80`08531280 fffffa80`08531201 fffffa80`071e3902 : nt!KiBugCheckDispatch+0x69
fffff800`00b9bdc0 fffff880`0aaba6d8 : fffffa80`08531280 fffff880`0aab1ace 00000000`00000002 00000000`000000ff : nt!KiPageFault+0x260
fffff800`00b9bf50 fffffa80`08531280 : fffff880`0aab1ace 00000000`00000002 00000000`000000ff 00000000`0000069e : netw5v64+0xb6d8
fffff800`00b9bf58 fffff880`0aab1ace : 00000000`00000002 00000000`000000ff 00000000`0000069e fffff800`00b9c0d0 : 0xfffffa80`08531280
fffff800`00b9bf60 00000000`00000002 : 00000000`000000ff 00000000`0000069e fffff800`00b9c0d0 fffffa80`08531170 : netw5v64+0x2ace
fffff800`00b9bf68 00000000`000000ff : 00000000`0000069e fffff800`00b9c0d0 fffffa80`08531170 fffff880`0ac601ec : 0x2
fffff800`00b9bf70 00000000`0000069e : fffff800`00b9c0d0 fffffa80`08531170 fffff880`0ac601ec fffffa80`041c71a0 : 0xff
fffff800`00b9bf78 fffff800`00b9c0d0 : fffffa80`08531170 fffff880`0ac601ec fffffa80`041c71a0 00000000`00000048 : 0x69e
fffff800`00b9bf80 fffffa80`08531170 : fffff880`0ac601ec fffffa80`041c71a0 00000000`00000048 fffffa80`084e3b40 : 0xfffff800`00b9c0d0
fffff800`00b9bf88 fffff880`0ac601ec : fffffa80`041c71a0 00000000`00000048 fffffa80`084e3b40 00000000`00002000 : 0xfffffa80`08531170
fffff800`00b9bf90 fffffa80`041c71a0 : 00000000`00000048 fffffa80`084e3b40 00000000`00002000 00000000`00000000 : netw5v64+0x1b11ec
fffff800`00b9bf98 00000000`00000048 : fffffa80`084e3b40 00000000`00002000 00000000`00000000 fffff800`00b9c0d0 : 0xfffffa80`041c71a0
fffff800`00b9bfa0 fffffa80`084e3b40 : 00000000`00002000 00000000`00000000 fffff800`00b9c0d0 00000000`00000048 : 0x48
fffff800`00b9bfa8 00000000`00002000 : 00000000`00000000 fffff800`00b9c0d0 00000000`00000048 fffffa80`05400310 : 0xfffffa80`084e3b40
fffff800`00b9bfb0 00000000`00000000 : fffff800`00b9c0d0 00000000`00000048 fffffa80`05400310 fffffa80`04cbd720 : 0x2000


STACK_COMMAND:  kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
netw5v64+b6d8
fffff880`0aaba6d8 488b4808        mov     rcx,qword ptr [rax+8]

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  3

SYMBOL_NAME:  netw5v64+b6d8

FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: netw5v64

IMAGE_NAME:  netw5v64.sys

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  4aafec38

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  X64_0xD1_netw5v64+b6d8

BUCKET_ID:  X64_0xD1_netw5v64+b6d8

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

Posted: Sat, Feb 6 2010 22:05 by NickWhittome | with 1 comment(s)
Filed under:
msmvps.com - tuning......

OK, its time.....     that time where once every 6 months or so I look at the performance of Yoda, the server behind msmvps.com

I am hoping that somehow, some way, I can put on a bandaid while we work on much bigger changes for everyones blog in the long term.

Microsoft IE Out of Band Patch - Install it now!

I was trying to explain just HOW important this patch was to someone today….   and finally I found a great explaination from Mark Minasi in his newsletter today.    Suffice to say, deploy the patch NOW!

http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws1001b.htm

From that newsletter:

“Install Today's IE Patch.  Really. Do it.  Now.

Here's a very, very important item.  The short version is that today, 22 January 2010 Microsoft released a patch (MS10-002, KB 978207) for a very dangerous hole in IE, and my advice is to install it today.  (Go to Windows Update, it's there now.)

Here's why I counsel the urgency.

You may know that on the 12th of January, Google reported that someone had launched a large-scale attack on their and other people's servers in an attempt to gather information about Chinese dissidents.  Google's specific example was that the attacker tried to access the dissidents' Gmail accounts, but the buzz on the Web has been that whoever launched the attack was pretty successful at gathering a whole boatload of intellectual property.  But how did the Chinese government attackers unknown hackers do it?  The answer arrived a couple of days later in a blog post by McAfee's CTO George Kurtz:  a zero-day IE exploit.

Apparently the problem involves an invalid pointer inside IE.  What that means in English is that this bug, similar to the "buffer overflow" type bugs we saw in Code Red and SQL Slammer, allows a bad guy to reach into your computer and instruct IE to do, well, anything to your computer:  shut it down, delete files, upload some data from your computer to the bad guy, and the like.

Here's a simple example of how this would work.  Let's suppose that Bad Guy wants to keep you from running Solitaire because Bad Guy once lost $10,000 in Vegas on Blackjack and he figures that computer card games like Solitaire are the "gateway drug" that eventually leads to real cards and real bets.  (Okay, it's a silly example.)  Bad Guy does this by creating a Web page with useful information on it like, say, a complete listing of all of the upcoming shows in Vegas.  (See the clever social engineering?  This guy is an evil genius.)  The web page has text explaining the shows; it's got pictures and videos to keep your attention... and a quiet little browser-side script.  Unless you've got your IE security settings positioned at "I trust no one at all"  -- which sounds great until you actually try to access 99% of the perfectly innocent Web pages out there -- then the script is silently downloaded and executed.  (I am simplifying, but this is basically how it happens.)  The script then uses this invalid pointer to hand IE a bunch of code, and tells IE to execute that code. 

Now, in the case of my silly example, the code would say, "ask the system if a process named 'Solitaire' is running and, if so, tell the system to kill that process," but, as I said earlier, this could be any piece of code at all -- delete files, slow down your system, email your mother all of the JPEGs on your hard drive, you name it.  The only restrictions on the code would be that it runs as you, and so it can't do anything that you can't do.  But even the most limited-power user could shut down apps that she was running look in most folders, or access any credit card information she keeps on her computer.  The generic phrase for this kind of attack is called a "run code of attacker's choice," and anything with that ability is very dangerous.

So why's this different from other "run code of attacker's choice" patches?  I mean, we see about a half-dozen RCOACs out of Microsoft a year, right?  The difference is that this is one of those cases where the attackers knew of the IE bug before Microsoft did, and instead of telling Microsoft about the bug, they wrote their own evil, cowardly program to exploit that bug.  It might have gone like this:

  1. Write an exploit that says to IE, "hey, if you happen to be on a network that's connected to Google servers and you happen to be an admin on those servers, go grab any Gmail accounts from the following names and post all of their messages to the following server."
  2. Package that exploit into a nice little script.
  3. Put that script onto a Web page that a Google employee would be likely to visit.  Or, better yet, put it on lots and lots of Web sites to increase the chances of that ideal victim -- a Google admin with access to Chinese Gmail accounts -- visiting the site.  (Of course, I have no idea what people in China would have the power to direct the folks running well-trafficked Chinese Web sites insert this script.  No idea at all.)
  4. And... wait.  In time, something good will appear on the "harvesting server."

The good news is that there is a patch, as I've already said. The bad news is that what I know, the bad guys know, and so at this point there are many, many sites all around the world that have been infected that have nothing to do with the original Google attack, and so viewing those sites with a vulnerable copy of IE would do... well, I have no idea what it'll do, and that's the point.  If you are using IE to view Web pages and your IE is not patched, then you could be letting yourself in for anything, and that's not just a hypothetical case because, again, the exploit code is already on the Web.  A bad guy with half a brain can get it running, and lots of half-brained guys want your credit card number.  What's the probability that one of your employees will visit one of those sites?  I have no idea, but it does occur to me that with every second that goes by, that probability increases.  Tick, tick, tick...

Finally, you will read a lot that this only affects IE6, not IE7 or IE8.  That's not entirely true, as researchers have reported that while IE7 and IE8 still have the invalid pointer bug, the result of viewing infected Web pages is more often an IE lockup or nothing at all... but on some systems, exploit code has been made to work on IE7 and IE8.”

Clouds in Avatar related to Flight Simulator.... at least in some way....

Check out Niniane’s blog on this….   very cool!

“When I worked for Microsoft in the early 2000's, one of the main features I developed was a cloud rendering system for Flight Simulator. I published a couple articles about it afterwards.

In 2007, I got an email from someone working on special effects for a movie. We have a friend in common, so we had exchanged emails previously about computer graphics. Now his team was reviewing previous work in cloud rendering, and my system came up on the list. He alerted me to a broken link on
my cloud page.

I thanked him. He didn't end up using my real-time cloud techniques, but we kept in touch over email now and then.

This week he emailed me saying (paraphrased), "You may not remember me asking about your cloud paper a long time ago, but the movie finally came out. If you see it, check out the clouds."

I thought to myself, "Oh, what is this movie?"

The movie is Avatar!!!”

Oh, and Niniane….  go and see it…   its amazing!

 

Remember IFSD? Remember that Shannon Scenery? Well, some good news.....

Over the past few weeks Graham and I have been working with Terry on the following announcement....

Long live Flight Simulator!

http://www.eiresimforum.info/index.php?topic=84.0

"Eiresim proudly announce the forthcoming release of Shannon Airport, 'Gateway to the West'. Shannon Airport (EINN) is a significant international airport with both modern and historical importance to transatlantic flight and air traffic control. It serves over three million passengers annually. This title is premium grade scenery showcasing the latest animation and optimisation features for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

The airport covers 2000 acres on the rugged west coast of Ireland on the Shannon Estuary, beside Foynes where flying boats once commenced their voyages. The main runway is 3200 metres and there are 30 stands.

As part of this release, Eiresim like to announce a merger with Irish Flight Sim Design who have co-developed this release (Nick Whittome & Graham Smith). IFSD have extensive experience in scenery products for Microsoft Flight Simulator dating back to 2002 and IFSD will now exist under the Eiresim brand."

http://www.eiresim.com/

 

Interesting information from Tim Gregson

“Today, Lockheed Martin announced it has licensed Microsoft's ESP platform to build new simulation solutions.  This is part of what I’ve been doing the last 9 months since the ACES studio shut down, working with the team that handled the licensing deal.”

Full post here:

http://beatlesblog.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!B48B0194C5456F5!323.entry

My comment: One can only hope this is good news for the underlying architechture of Flight Simulator ongoing.    I sure hope so because I really did “***” and Steve Ballmer at the MVP summit about dropping the entire product.

gPoly from Arno...... looks interesting

Hey all,

It has been a while since I posted anything about Flight Simulator.   Various reasons for that including my complete lack of interest in the product since Microsoft sacked (almost) everyone, and the fact my time has been massively limited by various business projects.

Of course, there are loads of blogs now about Flight Simulator and I am not one of the few any more…..    including Arno’s.     I noticed a couple of interesting posts on gPoly, a new tool he is making that, to quote directly:

“The current plan is that the tool can both be used to create ground sceneries from scratch or to tweak objects made with GMax without needing to have the FS2002 gamepack. With ground sceneries I mean elements like ground polygons, extruded lines and other ground features like dirt, skit marks, etc.”

It certainly looks interesting, and has made me think once again about looking at some scenery design :)

Keep up the good work Arno!

http://msmvps.com/blogs/arnogerretsen/archive/2009/12/05/gpoly-status-update-1.aspx

http://msmvps.com/blogs/arnogerretsen/archive/2009/12/06/gpoly-status-update-2.aspx

INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS (Insufficient Access Rights) SBS2008 Mailbox Quota Change

As per the title, if you are seeing this error (in the logs) when you try to change a users mailbox quota via the SBS2008 Console then I have a fix for you….

You may also see this in the console.log file:

An exception of type 'Type: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingTaskException, MessagingManagement, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' has occurred.
Timestamp: 12/02/2009 10:40:45
Message: Active Directory operation failed on yourserver.yourdomain.local. This error is not retriable. Additional information: Insufficient access rights to perform the operation.
Active directory response: 00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150E8A, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0

Stack:    at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute(String cmdlet, Dictionary`2 parameters)
    at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MailboxConfiguration.Update(String SamAccountName, ConfigurationData newConfig)
    at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Tasks.TaskSetMailboxLimit.Run(ITaskDataLink dataLink)

[7256] 091202.104045.2458: AdminTME: [Committer] Task failed = TaskCommitUserChanges, RootParentTaskId = TaskCommitUserChanges
[7256] 091202.104156.0060: AdminTME: Committer: Committer Completed.

You will also not be able to edit mailboxes directly via the Exchange 2007 Admin console, and get a myriad of other permissions type errors.

Amazingly, the issue is simply a cached password to your server.  

Click on Start, Run, and type:

“control keymgr.dll”, then press return.

In the list, clear any entries.

Fixed.

tadaaa!

 

Windows Update Error 80072EE2 - Hyper-V Guest issues....

Over this weekend I have had to quickly build a Virtual SBS2008 server for one of my clients.   I came across an interesting issue which took me a while to figure out, so I am plonking it up here on the blog so that others that may come across the problem will find it quicker.

A quick description of the setup.

Dell Poweredge Server, Onboard Broadcom Netxtreme II network card, Addon gigabit NIC from SMC networks (Realtek chipset).   Windows 2008 R2 is on the HyperV Host.  SBS2008 is installed as the only Guest on the HyperV setup.   This is all behind a Sonicwall NSA240 on a dedicated LAN network.

The SBS2008 Virtual machine would not update from Windows Update and the log file (c:\windows\windowsupdate.log) was showing a lot of errors with the code 80072EE2.   When you search for this on the internet it makes mention of reinstalling the various DLL’s involved with Windows Update, and also ensuring that your network settings are not blocking connections to the Windows Update servers.   None of these suggestions helped me.

So, I decided to do some packet captures on the network whilst Windows Update was running.   It turned out that every time Windows Update ran on the SBS Virtual Machine, it could no longer ping the default gateway (yet the host machine could).   This pointed me back to the network cards….

What I found odd about this is that I had already installed the latest drivers for the Broadcom and the Realtek chipsets.  I had also disabled the various offloading options on the physical network cards to see if that would help, but no change.

However, after a coffee, I realised that I was missing one step…    the step that fixed this problem was:


I disabled the Offload options on the Microsoft Virtual Network card on the SBS Host, and as soon as I did that, Windows update started to work.

Offload

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully this may help some one save a few hours

 

A correction to my last post.....

First, a big shout out to Eddy from Amulet Devices (check out those cool remotes) who nicely sent me a mail pointing out that Windows 7 and Xbox 360 now “play nice” with various different formats and that Transcoding should not be needed.

This made me look again.

Sure enough, there is an option, which was on by default in the build of MediaBrowser that I downloaded.   It is this:

Disabletranscode

Silly me.    I had not even seen the advanced tab!   Turn that off and all the movies that I have are playing without issue.    Including Fast Forward and rewinding now working….   No need to Transcode360 at all.

Life is good.

 

Playing with Windows Media Player, XBox 360 and MediaBrowser

Recently a few friends of mine have got their hands on Windows 7, and are loving it.   One of the common things I am seeing these guys do is to setup Windows 7 PC's in their living room, next to the PC, to play their movies and record live TV.    Nothing new, and something I have avoided until now.

The reason I am now looking at this is because my friend and neighbor (hi Vic) decided to shove down my throat that he had something setup before me.    Rightly so, I am meant to be "Mr. I.T" around these parts and he was showing me the new improved Windows 7 Media Center and a cool plugin called Media Browser before I had even heard of it.    My dear wife can blame Vic for the entire evening last night, and day today, spent trying to get this thing up and running.....

Right there....   that is my first comment about this whole Media Center lark.    Its meant to be easy, and at one level it is....    setting up an Xbox 360 to connect to your PC to play movies is just fine, setting up Photos and Music is also pretty easy, but that is where the 'easy' ends, and the 'pain' starts.    A few times today, I shouted quite loudly at my computer.


Not all files are the same…. 

After you get Media Center talking to your Xbox, you would expect the Xbox to play everything the PC can right?    Wrong.    AVI files are not the same, there are various encoders and types of AVI files.   Such a pain in the hole, I cannot tell you!    The fact that Microsoft do not update the Xbox quickly to support new formats is beyond me, they really should!  That said, the fact that there are so many formats is also beyond me. (Just look at this one example of how to get MKV files playing to get the idea of the hellishness that it is!)

Obviously, I am not going to re-encode all my movies to a lesser format just so they can play on it, and I am not (right now) going to put a PC in the living room, though this is the real solution….    

So, the answer, even though it sucks, is to install an outdated piece of software on your Media Center PC.    If you follow this guide on
installing Transcode360 on Windows 7, it will work (it did for me anyway).    Transcode360 “streams” the file from your PC, converting it on the fly.   It works, but its a hack!   Lets hope MS improve this on the Xbox 360, and soon.    Not being able to fast forward and rewind is a massive pain on the extender.  I can see reference to that issue in google going back to 2004!

Have a read of this new post regarding the deletion of above


Mediabrowser, the new cool…..

Mediabrowser is a plugin for Windows Media Center that takes away the dull(ish) look and gives you backdrops, cover-art, Meta-data for your movies and TV series.   Here are some images from the add-in just to give you an idea of its coolness….

Mediabrowser1

Mediabrowser2

Mediabrowser3

Mediabrowser4

Bottom line, its cool…. but I think I mentioned that.

DisableEHSIt is not without problems (remembering of course that it is free!).  Notably on the PC it runs really quickly.   On the Xbox as an extender, or the Linksys extender its a lot slower, though still usable.   I had to disable the opening enhanced screen in the settings because this hung the extender.  I am hoping that the team writing this will improve the speeds on extenders!

Also, on the extenders I got an error every time I tried to load the Mediabrowser plugin.  (I cannot remember the exact error), but to get it working I had to give full user permissions to the folder C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser on my Media Center PC to fix this issue.


How about the MetaData………?

Well, this is the easy part (relatively)!   Another bunch of talented coders have written a tool called MediaBrowser

This tool allows you, on the Media Center PC, to download current Metadata for your movies and TV Series so that Mediabrowser can display it all.

Simply point it to your video share and it will help you get all the metadata, images, actor information and more into your system quickly and easily.

Again, there are a few bugs, but we can only hope the development team continue on fixing them! 

Metabrowser

 

But Nick, you have a Hauppauge HDPVR and DigiLinX.   How did you tie that in and get live TV working and controlled?

That’ll be the next post ;)

 

 

Sage Line 50 2010 - "The Data Area Passed to a system call" part 2 - Amyuni Driver Update

Remember this post?

Well, after working hard with the development team over at Sage, it seems that the issue is with the version of the Amyuni PDF driver that ships with Sage Line 50 2010.

It does not like Windows 7 at all.

The good news is that Sage now know about the problem, and the fix is to upgrade to the latest Amyuni 4.0.9 driver.   But there is a problem……    

The installer that Sage uses has a special “Sage only” key.    That means that unless you are willing to go out and buy the Amyuni driver yourself, you are going to have to wait for Sage to release a PDF driver update patch for Sage 2010.    They wont do that unless their support team gets calls about this issue, which of course will not happen until the release of Windows 7 tomorrow!

Keep the pressure on, this is one patch that will be needed!   Sooner rather than later.

If you are REALLY stuck, post here, and I may be able to help.

 

Posted: Tue, Oct 20 2009 13:19 by NickWhittome | with 3 comment(s)
Filed under: ,
Thank you Jackson Technical........ Offline Files Recovery

Oh Man!

Today I disabled offline files by mistake on a laptop that was no longer the member of the network it was syncing with…    major mistake as this, of course, kills the offline files on the PC.

Thanks to finding this article, I downloaded the CSCCMD app and recovered the offline files!

Phew!

Posted: Wed, Oct 7 2009 16:22 by NickWhittome | with no comments
Filed under:
Yes, there is going to be another version of SBS

Since the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, there have been a lot of questions surrounding SBS "Next" and if there will be another version.

The good news is YES....



From - http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/10/01/remote-access-smbs-will-continue-to-get-enterprise-caliber-capabilities-with-sbs-and-ebs.aspx


"In fact, we are currently hard at work building the next versions of Windows SBS and Windows EBS. We'll have more on that at a later date."

iLinX "View" - A demo of iLinX

Further to my last post, showing iLinX in use, I have just found out that the guys over at www.ilinx.info have released “iLinX View”.   Here is an explanation of it…

“A number of dealers and end users have asked us for a demo version of iLinX so that they can try it out before shelling out $150. The problem has been that the Apple App Store explicitly bans demo versions of applications, so we've had a three month wrangle figuring out how to work round these restrictions while still publishing something useful. Now, we've finally got there!

So, please welcome iLinX View, a free version of iLinX. In terms of control it only allows you to select sources and change the volume and it also shows "VIEW" faintly over everything to highlight the fact you're using iLinX View and not the real thing. Other than that, it does everything that the real iLinX does, so you can check out all the services, browse the media libraries and generally get a feel for the capabilities of iLinX.

Here is a direct link to the Appstore


The only other thing to note is that the App Store lists the version as 1.1. This is because that was the version of iLinX at the time when we originally submitted iLinX View and there is no way to change the version number during the approval process. iLinX View is in fact version 1.3 and is compatible with iLinX 1.3. As of the next release of the two apps the version numbers should get back in step.”

Logmein Sneaky Moves (again)

Well, I just blew a fuse.    It seems to me that there is no route back with logmein, and they have no interest in listening to their users.   The only answer I can see is to cancel any paid for services with them.

My post may be deleted on their forum, so here is what I wrote:

“I just lost it with my account manager.    So much so that I started shouting.  Unbelievable. 

This company simply does not give a monkey about its clients, and looks to me like they are not going to change a thing. 

I have asked for a credit on my LogMeIn ignition for PC and iPhone as it is now usless without the central product, and I am cancelling my logmein rescue accounts. 

I am expecting a call back from a "boss" of somekind, but I suspect nothing will change. 

A company like logmein are allowed to make mistakes, but what makes a good company is when the realise they have made a mistake and rectify it. 

I would have paid 300 or even 500 a year for the old interface, with groups, secondary users.   The crap logmein have offloaded here is just absolutely unbelievable.”

 

Posted: Thu, Sep 24 2009 14:51 by NickWhittome | with no comments
Filed under:
iLinX controlling DigiLinX

For the people that follow me for the Netstreams DigiLinX updates, here is a YouTube video I have “thrown” together of the iLinX Application.   It’s seriously impressive!  I only touch on the features, there are more in there!

 

Sage Line 50 2010 - Out of Memory - "The Data Area Passed to a system call is too small"

OK, here is one for you…..

If you have recently upgraded to Sage Line 50 Version 2010, and you are getting the two errors:

"The Data Area Passed to a system call is too small" and “Out of Memory”

….when printing invoices or reports to email.    The issue, for me anyway, was that the remnants of the older PDF driver from Amyuni that Sage use were left on the system.

To fix, close sage, then go into the C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64 (on Windows 7 x64) and delete the Amyuni driver files for the older 2.5.x version.   In my case those files were:

acpdf251.dll
acpdf251.drv
pdfui251.dll

but there may be more!   You may also want to delete the newer Version 4 drivers as well, they will reinstall when you print later.

Then reload Sage 50, and all should be good!    Fingers crossed!

 

Posted: Wed, Sep 23 2009 11:00 by NickWhittome | with 2 comment(s)
Filed under:
Logmein.com are just about to lose a load of customers

and I am probably going to be one of them….   they are scamming users, even the ones like me who pay!

http://community.logmein.com/logmein/board/message?board.id=29&thread.id=555

http://community.logmein.com/logmein/board/message?board.id=29&thread.id=411

Personally, am livid…    cheeky bastards.

I am looking at teamviewer right now, whom will now most likely get my companies money!

Windows SBS 2008 Active Directory Group Converter

Ooooh, I wish I had this tool a few months ago, I had been doing it manually.

An essential for any SBS installer out there!

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2009/09/02/why-are-some-of-my-groups-not-displaying-in-the-sbs-console-post-has-been-updated.aspx

 

More Posts Next page »