I’ve spent most of the day trying identify a systematic way to work around the campus antivirus solution, which is causing widespread system hangs. Our vendor has tentatively identified a problematic recent update, and is recommending that affected users temporarily disable the Eset Service service until a patch is available. Disabling ESET NOD32 / ekrn [...]
Yesterday, a client called me complaining that, after installing Vista SP2, she couldn’t access a folder on a file share. She could access that same folder from her XP workstation, logged in with the same account. I paid a service call (across the parking lot; any excuse to get up and walk outside ), and [...]
Scott Hanselman is a consistently good source of useful info and commentary. Recently, he needed to change which drive his computer used as its System drive, which is to say the drive containing the boot loader and configuration. ( N.B. For some reason, the “System Drive” contains the boot info, and the “Boot Drive” contains [...]
Spurred by some recent traffic on the Windows-HiEd list, I have looked into the Windows Update process on some of our Server 2008 Core systems. The thread was specifically with regard to KB article 953631, and that some folks have found that it installs repeatedly on Server Core instances and blocks other updates. In examining [...]
I’ve been working on revising and refactoring a Perl application that I wrote about four years ago to handle our domain account provisioning. Originally, it was a monolithic application, running on ActiveState Perl. Now it needs to run on a Windows Server 2008 x64 host. I use a couple of additional modules that are available [...]
I have spent a number of hours troubleshooting the installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on a particular Dell Optiplex 755, but I finally succeeded. Symptoms: The SP1 update was downloaded and queued for installation via the Automatic Updates engine. When initiated, the install would look like it had completed (going to 100% through [...]
I finally got around to using a javascript debugger to find out why the visual editor refused to work for me. I got the following error when there was an attempt to call tinyMCEPreInit.Start():“Object doesn’t support this property or method”. I quick search led me to this forum thread, which references a PHP bug. I [...]
Troubleshooting Vista volume activation via KMS
For my reference, mostly… In Windows XP: In Explore’s Tools → Folder Options → Offline Files, then press CTRL+SHIFT and click the “Delete Files” button. How Macintosh is that? I’ve had to perform that maneuver a few times. With Windows Vista, the reworked Offline Files facility has worked much better. Only once did I need [...]
Geoffrey Duke
Sr. System Administrator,
University of Vermont