Ben There, Done That

I saw this feature pop up on twitter a couple days ago and I had to check it out.  If you want to see (and access) all the Windows 7 settings you have to check this out.

Here is a blog post showing how to Enable/Access GodMode in Windows 7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2010/01/03/enable-godmode-on-windows-7.aspx

There was another post highlighting the other GUIDs you can use for other various “GodMode” type folders here – http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-379690.html

Enjoy!

Ben Misc GodMode, Windows 7, Windows Settings

That’s right, it is time for me to move on to a new job.  Today was my last day with EPC Group.  It has been a wonderful year and a half with them, consulting with companies I never imagined I would be working with.  I have learned and grown a lot in my SharePoint knowledge while working with them as well as made some great friends that hopefully I will continue to stay in touch with.

About 7 weeks ago I was contacted by a friend of our Pastor about a job, working locally to Jacksonville, FL performing SharePoint Design and Administration for Baptist Health.  After a couple of interviews, a job offer, and discussing it with my wife, we decided the best option for me and our family going forward was to accept the position with Baptist Health.  So, it is with excitement, that I will be starting in my new position with them on Monday.

I hope to continue this blog and updating it regularly with my experiences, tricks and tips about SharePoint.  We’ll have to see which direction this blog takes.  But with my new position being in the health care field, hopefully I can write some post about SharePoint and how it relates to and can be utilized within the Health Care Industry.

Tags: SharePoint, Health Care, Jobs, EPC Group, Baptist Health

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Ben Misc, SharePoint

I was setting up NLB on Windows Server 2008 today and encountered this error: “Attempt to install Network Load Balancing failed with error code 0×80070643. Fatal Error during installation”  Upon Googling the error (no, I’m haven’t been converted to Bing quite yet), I didn’t come up with any direct hits, although I did find this blog post on installing MSMQ with the same error code.

The long and short of it is that to install some features on Windows Server, it looks like you need to disable the User Access Control (UAC) first.  The steps to disable it are (as given in the aforementioned link):

1.       Go to Control panel and click User Accounts

2.       Select User Accounts and click Turn User Account Control on/ Off

3.       Un-check the check box beside User Account Control

4.       Close the User Account Window, reboot the computer  and try to install your feature again

These steps worked beautifully for me and allowed me to proceed with installing and configuring NLB for my servers.  As was mentioned in the blog as well, once you have installed your features, it is safe to re-enable UAC on your servers if you would like.

The moral of the story, if something isn’t working quite right in Windows Server 2008, try disabling UAC before you try anything else.

Ben Misc NLB, Windows Server

I’ve found myself in an interesting spot lately, I think due to a few things.  The primary point this post will revolve around is my blog.  Lately I’ve found myself posting fewer blog entries and I’ve been speculating on the reason for this.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is two point mainly.  Those two being twitter and the state of SharePoint.  I’ll go into a little more detail below.

1. Twitter – I’ve found myself getting wrapped up in the twitterverse.  Tonight I’ve been speculating on the user of twitter.  It definitely has it’s place, and there are lots of good things about it.  I started tweeting as lots of the SharePoint blog writers I follower were jumping on the twitter bandwagon.  This user base continues to grow, however, tweets become more and more frequent, with the SharePoint tweets growing farther apart in some cases.  I’ve been guilty of this as well.  It is easy to start tweeting about SharePoint, but as you use it more and more, other topics jump in, and before you know it you are tweeting about everything.  I find the new tweets I follow growing more and more cluttered and harder and harder to keep up with and sort the quality content out of.

So…with that speculation, I find myself tweeting instead of blogging more and more, but is my content getting lost within twitter and the massive amount of tweets?  Are people missing valuable content due to just not seeing it in twitter?  Am I “slacking off” in my blogging because of twitter and not delivering to my readers the content they want to see?

2. SharePoint – I think in addition to the growth of twitter, the state of SharePoint has caused few blog posts.  Not just by me, but by the SharePoint world in general.  SharePoint has reached that point where 2007 has been out for a while and 2010 is right around the corner.  There is so much information on SharePoint 2007, that there isn’t as much new and exciting content to post on, or new discovers and methodology that needs documenting.

With SharePoint 2010 right around the corner people are just waiting to get there hands on SharePoint 2010, but because it hasn’t been publicly released yet, there isn’t anything to blog about that isn’t shared thousands of times between twitter and blogs, just because of the lack of available content available for SharePoint 2010.

So, those are my thoughts about why I have found myself blogging less, the rise in twitter and the “wait” for SharePoint 2010 and lack of topics for SharePoint 2007 to blog about.  What does every one else thing?  I would love to hear your comments.

With that said, I hope to not abandoned my blog readers and only post content on twitter.  Hopefully I can pick it up a little bit more again with my blogging and continue to share valuable SharePoint information through it.

Ben Misc, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, Twitter Blog, MOSS, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, Twitter, WSS

I had a client email me with an interesting dilemma a couple days ago.  He was working with a document library and uploading .docx files.  He was creating a group of Office 2007 files and Office 2003 files and uploading multiple files at once.  He emailed me saying that all the files were uploading but .docx files.  Sure enough, they weren’t uploading and no errors were being generated.

He emailed me a screenshot of the upload, and I noticed something strange.  The size of the Word document was 0 K.  I created my own blank Word document, saved it and uploaded it and it was 10 K.  Curious about the difference, I thought he had a corrupted or “bad” Word file.  Nope, it open just fine in Word, but was still 0 K.

Come to find out, he was right clicking on his desktop and selecting “New Microsoft Word Document”  I was going into Word and saving the open file.  The file created by right clicking on the desktop, is a valid Word file, but is missing some key info that was causing the upload to fail.

If you open a .docx file in WinRAR or WinZip, you’ll notice it is actually a collection of folders and XML files.  When saving a blank Word file from within Office, there are some default XML files that are created and added, however, when you create the file by right clicking your desktop, none of those XML files are created.  If you try to open such a file in WinRAR you get an invalid archive error as opposed to the folder and file structure you usually see within a .docx file.

The lesson, if you’re going to do testing with a blank Word document, create it from within Word and not by right clicking on your desktop.

Ben Misc, SharePoint Errors, MOSS, SharePoint, Word, WSS

I’m currently running Windows 7 build 7057 on my MBP.  I recently update from build 7048.  However, I had the same problem in both build, my Broadcom wireless on my MacBook Pro would sporadically stop working.  Sometimes it would take a few minutes to fail, sometimes it would take hours.  Once it even kept working all night.  I was beginning to think I might have to roll back to build 7000.  I was wondering about updated driver, but was having problems find them.

Finally I found my answer, why scouring the forums, someone mentioned they used the latest Broadcom Drivers from the HP Site.  So, I gave it a shot and download this driver.  So far its been working great and I haven’t had an problems with my wireless.  Here is a screen shot of the latest drivers and version number.  I’ll update this post if I discover any problems.

On another note, it would be great if Apple would keep up with these Windows drivers as well.  I know…the MBP is supposed to be fore Mac OS, but there are more and more people running Windows on their Mac’s and boot camp just isn’t being updated regularly enough to have the most recent Windows drivers.  Either boot camp needs more regular updates or Apple should provide Windows driver downloads on their site.

Ben Misc Apple, Broadcom, MacBook Pro, MBP, Windows 7, Wireless Drivers

Internet Explorer 8 has been released. I’m running Windows 7 right now and haven’t tried installing the Vista download on Windows 7, but you can get the download of it here. IT News also gives a brief review of IE 8 here if you want to read that before rushing out to download and install the latest.

Ben Misc

I just saw this article today about the planned use of the latest 787 billion dollar stimulas package. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2008857919_microsoftbridge14.html.  I’m not sure what my opinion of it is.  Being a SharePoint consultant, Microsoft doing well is important, building this bridge will provide (or maintain) jobs for construction works…but is this the best way to help our economy with the stimulus package?  I’m not sure, what do you think?

admin Misc

Ok…this blog posting is way off topic, but I have a friend, Bryan, that I talk to and discuss things with regularly…this posting is for him and the random things we have been talking about lately.  Specifically random thoughts that could actually make sense as well as some gripes we have with some online services.

1.  I installed Windows 7 on my desktop the other day after such great success with it on my MacBook Pro.  Well, the result, catastrophe, it’s been nothing but a headache and I’m about ready to go back to Vista on my desktop (look for an upcoming blog post on this).  Bryan’s theory…Microsoft is using MacBooks as their development platform for Windows 7…based on my experience, it’s almost plausible and believable.  It goes right along with how many people inside Microsoft use Google for Search.

2.  Gmail labels and the lack of organization available.  Those guys are all engineers, we’re anal, we like stuff organized.  Have you every tried to have a highly organized gmail inbox?  You can’t do it.  Our primary example, Bryan and I both do 99%, if not all of our billing online.  So you have all your emails relating to bills.  In those bills you have Comcast, AT&T, Electric, Water, Rent, etc.  Sure you can label a “bill” email Bills and Comcast, but what if you want to pull up only your Comcast bills?  Go ahead, give it a try…let us know how it goes.  Yeah, that’s what I thought, you can’t do it.  Following that same logic, if you want highly organized/categorized emails, you have a REALLY long list of labels.  Our solution, how about some “sub-labels” Google or the ability to filter on more than one label at a time would be a good start?  We’re all engineers who like our organization, help us organize.

3. Microsoft new security approach – a top secret division to create viruses for the Mac.  This one we haven’t seen any evidence of, and nothing to back it up.  But after reading this article we wondered why not.  If they are offering rewards to catch hackers rather than fixing security holes that have been found.  Microsoft and Mac have always had arguments going on about the most secure OS.  Microsoft obvious sells a lot more and has a lot broader user base, and therefore many more viruses and security holes discovered.  So, why not create a Top Secret division of Microsoft to create viruses and exploit the security holes in Apple’s OS to make the two OS’s seem even in terms of security

Ok, so that’s all for now, just the fun things we talk about and come up with in our spare time…feel free to post any other random gripes and conspiracy theories about technology that you may have

Ben Misc Apple, Conspiracy Theories, gmail, Google, Mac, Microsoft, Security, Windows 7

You may have recently read Microsoft plan to open retail stores, I’m assuming in an attempt to mimic Apple and the success of the Apple stores.  I know, I’m a SharePoint consultant and my life is spent promoting Microsoft SharePoint, I run Windows 7 and Windows Ultimate on 2 different machines, and they have done a lot of positive and really good things for the personal computing industry.  With all that said however, they obviously have the issues as well.  I came across this article today and it was just to funny not to link to.

So, go check out 10 Ways Microsoft’s Retail Stores Will Differ From Apple Stores.  It’s hilarious (or at least I thought so).

admin Misc