I recently had problems synching my new IPOD Touch with Itunes 8. It would just hang on synching and take forever to finally get to the backup. Well I came across this article which tells how to disable the mobile backup process by running a simple command. (NEW – Alsup try this windows APP) The syntax that is used in the article is wrong, so I’ll correct it here:
Windows Users: (updated)
Windows users can use the same approach:
- Quit iTunes.
- Press Win+R (opens the Windows Run dialog)
- Type or copy the following command:
“C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\bin\defaults.exe” write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
- Open iTunes.
- Connect the iPhone/IPOD.
- Sync without backing up.
I came across FuseMail in my search for an outbound SMTP relay solution and really like its many features and small business focus. For home users who need more than just pop mail, this would also be a great solution. Check out their website for more information. For only $2 per mailbox per month, its a great deal and feature rich.
For those of you who read my blog or subscribe to my RSS feed, you should know that I have moved to a new domain. All my old links/posts/pages, etc should all still work, but you may see some strange issues now and then until you update your bookmarks and or RSS feed link. My new domain name is joechurch.com and my blog link is now located at www.joechurch.com/blog
I will be putting up a new site at the root of joechurch.com sometime soon, but for now the only thing that works is my blog link.
It was quite a challenge to move domains with my blog, as I had lots of plugin issues and link problems. I ended up starting from scratch and re-installing wordpress and all my plugins manually. I used a wordpress export to move everything over which worked great except that I lost of blogroll links. I was able to use the wayback machine at www.archive.org to get the links I used to have and the names I gave them. So for now, the blog is fully moved over and working great.
Recently I had a small battle with itunes on my laptop. I have a fairly large music and podcast library and anytime I have trouble with itunes it makes me nervous. Fortunately the issue wasn’t as bad as I thought. It all started when I tried to install itunes 7.7.1.1 through the apple updater software. Half way through the install of the new update, I receive a registry error saying I didn’t have access to the “pcast” key. This key is under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. The problem was that I didn’t have permissions to access they key, and wasn’t the owner. I am ad administrator on my laptop so this was strange and it had always worked ok before. After I received this error itunes rolled back to a semi-working state but none of my podcasts would download updates anymore. This pcast key seems to be the key that controls the podcast client in itunes.
I tried to gain ownership of the key and all subfolders but constantly received errors and was unable to do so using the check box to reset permissions and ownership on all child objects in the registry editor. So I began to poke around in the subfolders, which I didn’t even see at first. I tried to delete the key, got an error and then saw sub folders.
To make this long story short, to fix this I had to do the following. First, I had to try to delete every key and subkey I could find under the pcast folder. Then I went into the permissions for each key and add my own user account not as an owner, but under general permissions. I gave myself full control and did this for every subkey under the pcast folder. After I did that, I was able to drill down to the bottom most key, and start deleting my way up. Once you give yourself permissions on all subkeys you can delete the root pcast key. I re-installed Itunes and its back to working like normal. I guess I will be more cautious with auto udpates from now on. And oh yeah, I made a full backup of my itunes configuration and preferences, as well as my library. Thats important!
Sony has a great 404 error page on their website. Its got to be one of the best I’ve seen. Check it out!
Someone sent me this link last week which takes you to a site named “The Mojave Experiment”. This is Microsoft’s way of showing how there are a lot of mis-conceptions about its Vista Operating System. I am not surprised by the results of this test, and think it was very smart to do this. I personally like Vista, yes I know there are some issues, but overall it works great for me on the 3 machines I use it on daily. I have had no compatibility/stability issues, its fast enough on my hardware and my only complaints are some minor issues with file copying. My point here is that each operating system that has a large fan base (such as Widnows), will have “haters” upon release because people don’t like it when things are dramatically changed around on them. But if you give Vista a try (assuming its on good hardware), play with it, tweak it, customize it to your liking, I think you will find its quite nice. At least that has been my experience. Anyway…check out the link above and see for yourself. Admittedly, this test has some potential issues, but all that aside, the focus here is that when customized to your own liking, vista is a pretty nice OS.
I came across an article by Derryl Steib in the August version of Redmond Magazine. Here is a quote from his article entitled “Listen to the People you hire”.
“The bottom line is that if you don’t trust your network administrators and heed what they’re telling you, need to hire new ones”.
Thats a great quote and something many IT engineers and administrators face on a daily basis. I can’t begin to count the number of times my suggestions have fallen on the deaf ears of upper management in most of my 10 years working in IT. People like me spend a great deal of time working with the systems we are certified in and or have a great deal of experience with. I know the difference between a paper MCSE and “real” MCSE, and honestly there are a good deal of people out there that don’t know much, and admittedly there are things I don’t know that I probably should, but when it comes down to it, the best person to ask about a problem or planning for IT projects are the people that maintain/support/design/build/etc those very systems. Sales people cannot be relied upon for accurate information about products/services, and the only real source of true information about a product or system is from the administrators and engineers who actually work with those systems on a daily basis. So I reitterate what Derryl says, trust the people you have working on these systems, listen to their advice, at the very least, accept the possability that they actually know what they are talking about and know more about the subject matter than you do.
Recently I ran into an issue with Exchange 2003 where a recently installed server was not able to see public folder objects in ESM, and a test mailbox was also unable to view public folders through outlook. I tried everything to get this working correctly; I researched the Microsoft Knowledgebase, posted questions in forums, but finally had to call Microsoft professional support for assistance in getting this issue worked out. None of the troubleshooting steps laid out in the KB articles hit my issue exactly, nor did I find anything else relating to the cause of this issue online.
To make a long story short, a mis-configuration of a recipient policy was causing the public folder store to NOT get stamped with a PRIMARY SMTP address. This broke public folder replication, folder hierarchy view from ESM…etc. Apparently we had a recipient policy which had a lower case (non-primary) SMTP address specified for mail enabled objects. This policy was stamping the store with a proxy address, but not with the mail attribute. Apparently the RUS will only stamp public folders with a Primary SMTP address. This is mis-leading because most or all of the online documentation references the proxy address as the missing attribute, but what was missing is the mail attribute. So when you run BPA the resulting KB article references the proxy address, and when you check in ADSIEdit, you see that the proxy is clearly there. This is what initially threw me off and made troubleshooting the issue more complicated.
To resolve the issue, highlight the non-primary SMTP address in the recipient policy, then click the button “Set as primary” to make the SMTP address a primary address. Save the changes, then wait for replication or force it if you are impatient. Once we did this, the RUS updated the public folder object and stamped a mail attribute and then we could see the public folder tree in ESM, replication began working, and my issue was resolved.
It seems I have a habit of running into issues that have symptoms which are usually associated with something else, so most of the online info I find when researching these problems deal with similar issues, but the causes are normally different than the root cause of my troubles. It seems that it always takes a call to Microsoft support services to identify the issue and resolve it. So the lesson to be learned here, is to always make sure you have a primary SMTP Address in your recipient policy. In this case we had two recipient policies, one was
Up until recently, we’ve been using a 57” Hitachi projection TV, which has worked out of over the past nearly 2 years. Before that we had a 36” Sony WEGA also projection style TV. With the price of projection TVs so low now, I decided to sell my set while I can and upgrade to a plasma. There are several advantages for us with this new configuration. First, we can mount the TV on the wall, preventing the kids from scratching it and causing other type of damage. Secondly, we re-gain valuable living space with the amount of space we gain by removing the big monster and getting a small thin wall mountable TV. We also decided to downgrade a bit, going from a 57” set, to a 50”.
So the old TV was sold over the weekend and now comes the fun part…..picking out the replacement. I searched around online and read many reviews and looked at lots of models and finally narrowed it down to a Pannasonic or a Samsung model. I decided to go with the Samsung because of some reviews I’ve read about color accuracy issues with the Pannasonic models. I ended up getting a Samsung 50A450. I decided on this one partly because of the price which was very good, and I liked the design and features of the set. I don’t subscribe to any digital media services like cable or satellite TV, so I don’t need PIP or some of the other features most more expensive sets have. I just need a connection from my multimedia PC to the TV so that I can play my digital content from the PC. I bought the TV from eBay for a great price, which included free frieght shipping, a wall mount, and I also purchased a 5–year extended warranty for a total of 6 years of warranty protection.
The only negative thing here is that I have to wait until Monday to receive the TV, since it is being shipped from California, and will take a few days to get here. Over the phone I was told it would take 3–5 days, but it turns out it will take about a week counting the weekend. I wanted to have everything all setup before we had company next week, but oh well. At least this way I will have some extra hands available to help get it unpacked and moved into place.
It all makes sense now…as of today. I came to work this morning with a batch of e-mails alerting me to the fact that many of our international users were getting an e-mail from Motorola Good saying they did not have a supported Good Data Plan with their wireless carrier. We checked with the carriers and verified they had the correct Data Plan that does support GMM.
A few calls to support and it is all clear now. Here is what happened. Remember a few months ago U.S. users started getting letters from at&t wireless saying that you are a GMM users and as such will be automatically switched to an Enterprise Data plan for Good? That whole process was very confusing, since we paid for our own server and CALs through Good, but then had to pay for a more expensive Data Plan from at&t just because we use Goodlink? Sounded like double dipping to me and maybe it still is. Here is the breakdown of how this works now…
A. You pay for a server license and CALs through Motorola Good
B. You need a Wireless Data Plan for Good Mobile Messaging (which includes a fee for Direct Secure Transport Service – basically a fee for using the Good NOC).
C. If you have international users on non-authorized Good reseller providers, you can buy a DSTS plan directly from Good.
Its kind of crazy the way this all works, the licensing for Good is confusing and they get you coming and going. You pay for the server and CALS, but then have to buy a more expensive data plan from a wireless provider that wraps in a fee for using the Good NOC. So the wireless carrier probably takes a cut, and then you pay Good again for use of their services. Why not just wrap the NOC fee into the CAL and leave the wireless carriers alone and prevent all this confusion?
In any event, my problem today was that apparently we had purchased STS plans previously that had expired. Good turned off entitlement to these users today without notice. Now we have to go through sales to renew or purchase new STS plans for a bunch of international users who don’t have the ability to get a Good data plan since there are not that many authorized wireless resellers for Good (7 are listed on the Good website).
This goes back to my post about unlimited never truly means unlimited and another post about the letters from at&t. Oh and not quite related, but relevant, don’t forget to check out my post about goodlink and activesync.
