SQL Server Browser Service

Doing an upgrade from SQL Express 2005 to SQL Standard 2005 using the SKUUPGRADE=1 option?

Once the process is done and everything appears to be running okay, but isn't, try restarting your SQL Server Browser service. It could save you a day of troubleshooting and planning a server rollback. Or just reboot the box, that would have been helpful.

That is all.

Connecting Drives via SBS RWW 2008 / RWA 2010

This info is _fairly_ easy to find, but I thought I'd post it along anyway to make it a tiny bit easier. If your users need to be able to connect network drives via their Remote Web Workplace or Remote Web Access desktop sessions, check out this document from Microsoft:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=180370

Test Disk = Good

Test Disk, from the guys over at CGSecurity, gets a huge thumbs up from me today. My son had a school project due this week that I helped him with yesterday involving pics from our old digital camera. All the pictures were taken and we get to the part where we need to print them, and the SD card isn't recognized in my laptop. Figuring it was a problem with my laptop, I reboot and try again, still nothing. Placing the card back in the camera results in:

"Hey cool, a new SD card. Want me to format it?"*

*Error message paraphrased.

I'm not about to spend money on this, but I'm definitely hoping to save some time. Lifehacker had done a bit on the "best recovery tools" a while back that I checked out. I tried "Recuva" first, but was disappointed. Turns out, even though Recuva won their little showdown, it's not actually good for any sort of failure situation where the card won't mount or the partition is screwed. It's really just an undelete tool. But next in line was Test Disk. It's cousin is called PhotoRec and that's what I used to recover everything we needed off the SD card, and then some. It also pulled off some old MP3 tracks and some videos that used to live on that card.

So, it worked really well, and I highly recommend it!

Exchange Distribution Groups

When creating Distribution Groups on SBS 2008, there’s (of course) a wizard for it. It steps you through the creation, including adding users, and right near the very end of the wizard there’s an option available, shown here.

Of course, this is usually a no-brainer – we know right away whether the group should be available externally or not. Job done, no hassle.

But…

What if you need to create a distribution group manually for some reason? Or worse yet, on vanilla Exchange 2007 or 2010 servers where we don’t have wizards to baby sit us? If you create a distribution group manually, it MIGHT not accept email from the outside world. Where do you go when you have this problem?

This link has the answer. The checkbox referred to at the article below is the option controlled by the SBS Wizard shown in the above screenshot. http://www.ebsfaq.com/Exchange2007/HubCASMailboxUM/Distributiongroupdoesnotreceiveexternalemail/tabid/2105/Default.aspx

So, watch out for this!

Caffeine, BES, and Everything Else

Link dump day, stuff that's caught my eye:

What caffeine actually does to you - I really liked this article (thanks Jesse). Give it a read. I personally long for the days when caffeine actually worked on me, and I've decided I'd like to get there again. I'm going to slowly cut back over the next few weeks and see what happens.

http://gizmodo.com/5713564/what-caffeine-actually-does-to-your-brain

Clifford Stoll on ... everything - this talk is entertaining on just about every level. He's physically engaging (you'll see what I mean), he's super passionate, looks to be a tiny bit crazy (but in a good way), and brilliantly intelligent. I especially loved his comment on science, engineering, and technology (near the beginning). Do yourself a favor and watch it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html

Lastly, if you are upgrading a BES Express installation, and the installer greets you with something like this (after quite some time as well, as long as 20 minutes):

Database Information

An attempt to upgrade the database was unsuccessful. An error occurred while executing an SQL statement.

If you dig into the installer logs, you'll see something like:

[20000] (01/02 10:51:14.961):{0x2C44} [CBESDBInstaller::executeRetryDDL] Timeout expired 0x80040E31

I did some research on this and found the link below. Basically, before doing any major BES upgrade work, start the process off with a clean boot of your server.

http://www.blackberryforums.com/bes-admin-corner/233903-cant-upgrade-besx-5-0-1-5-0-2-sql-error.html

That's it!

Lifedrive Mutterings

While others have pointed this out, it didn't really occur to me until now that I haven't posted all year. That's a shame, because I ran into some sh*t in the IT realm that could really use some discussing. I'll try and do better with that.

Over the last couple of days, I took advantage of the quiet to spend a little bit of time with my Palm Lifedrive. I bought this thing about 6 or 7 years ago, back when I was using a lot of Palm devices (my favorite was the Palm Tungsten E). The funny thing is, the reason I started toying with it again was all this stuff we're seeing now about these new touchscreen media devices and/or iPad "killers" that are coming out. Especially the ones with the smaller 7" screens made to fit in your jacket pocket. It occurred to me that although dated and a bit clunky looking compared to the new devices coming out, my Lifedrive does nearly everything that these new devices do. It doesn't do any of it particularly well, but it does them.

I can use Wifi, tether with Bluetooth to my phone, and install lots of different apps. If there's a Palm application marketplace though, I definitely don't get it on my Lifedrive. I'm stuck trolling all the old websites that many Palm users are familiar with and I won't really get into here.

Anyway, it was good for a little bit of nostalgia. To me, the Lifedrive is basically an Apple iPod Touch, except bigger and uglier. It always seemed to me that the Lifedrive was a solution looking for a problem, and it never really caught any traction. However, now that everyone in the world is hooked on their Kindles, touchscreen phones, iPads, etc., there is a huge market for these gadgety toys now and Palm was simply too early to the party.

The end result of this tinkering though is that I very likely will dedicate it to eBook reading using Mobipocket, and portable movie watching using an old version of TCPMP (which, at the time, was sorta like VLC for the handheld). As old as my Lifedrive is, it's still VASTLY superior to reading books on my Blackberry Bold 9700 (using Mobipocket, same program).

So, does anyone out there have a Lifedrive? If so, what do YOU use it for?

Windows Anytime Upgrade

Really? Anytime? Yup. And from OEM to Retail too.

My new PC runs Windows 7 Home Premium and I've already installed all of my apps. But I heard somewhere that it was ridiculously easy to upgrade editions under 7.

Problem was, I got a lot of noisy search results trying to bring up some info on how to do this (and lots of hits on cracking and piracy). There's lots of info out there describing the feature and roughly what's involved, but I was missing the critical first step of HOW to do it. Maybe I wasn't reading closely enough...I do that from time to time (my cowboy hat gets in the way so to speak).

I did find an article once from TechRepublic (I think) that described the process as being as simple as punching in your code for Pro (or Ultimate), or whatever. But for the life of me I couldn't find it again (and I couldn't even remember which of my computers I found it on to go digging through the IE history).

So, after looking at this for a few minutes and giving up (and repeating the process a few time), I gave my thinking a reboot this morning and did the following:

1. Clicked the Start button.

2. Typed "windows anytime upgrade" into the search field.

3. Low and behold, a wizard appeared.

4. Typed in my Windows 7 Ultimate key (which was free from a Microsoft Event).

5. Verifying.

6. Click "I Accept".

7. Click "Upgrade". WARNING: Your computer will restart automatically.

8. Done.

Windows XP Mode, here I come. I wonder how long it will take for my WHS to recognize the change (it's busy shuffling disks right now so I can't check).