Work Journal

For Week of June 28, 1999

Page last Updated Wednesday, December 22, 1999 09:59 PM

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

Monday

Last night: When I got back from taking care of some other business I found my server and production workstation were not running. By looking at the VCR I see the power has been off. I do not have UPSs setup yet so power failures are a problem. Both of these computers I built myself and they do not have a true power ON/OFF switch like older PCs do. The power button merely tells the mother board to power up or down. Thus if the power goes off the PC is shut off till the operator turns it on again.

Once I got things powered up, one of the shared volumes on the server could not be accessed. I traced the problem to two share names having gotten reversed some how. I renamed the shares and things where back to normal. This may also partially explain why I have been having problems accessing the shared CD ROM on the server. I have been having problems accessing it and after fixing the share naming problem, an initial test worked.

I have an emergency project to do this week. I have to recover data on my mothers laptop ( NEC Versa 2000D ) and get it operational again for her. My mother has been having problems with her laptop and when I was visiting her I took a look at it. It was running quite slow so I started out by running scandisk which did not turn up any problems. I then started Defrag and since I had other things to do I left it to run on its own. Problem is that the last technician to work on the laptop set the power management to full when the laptop is connected to an AC adapter. So while defrag was running the power management shut everything down which killed the file allocation table. I managed to find a boot disk with some utilities on it. The hard drive was a mess and scandisk did not do a very good job of fixing the Fat table. I was able to find some documents Mom needed ASAP and put them on a floppy for my sister to print, but there is some other data she desperately wants recovered.

My plan is to use an old printer port network connector and a boot disk to get the laptop connected to my Novell server. I will then copy all the data onto the server, search for data files,. and test to make sure they are still accessible. Then I will fdisk the hard drive on the laptop, install Windows 98 and all the necessary software. I will also carefully make sure all power management features are properly configured.

One other problem is that the laptop does not recognize all its RAM anymore, and the case is starting to crack in a few places. So I have warned my mother that her laptop is now on a slippery slope and we should investigate getting her a new replacement laptop.

Morning: My Novell server never got setup after moving my computer lab, so that was the first order of the day. I then configured my Windows 2000 Professional Beta3 test machine to connect to the Novell server. Windows 2000 does one strange thing which maybe limited to the beta in that after the Client Service for Netware is installed you cannot access the service properties. After installing the service, Windows 2000 did not reboot or ask to be rebooted. I rebooted anyway hoping that this would make the Netware service properties accessable, but this did not happen. Though Windows 2000 does give you the ability to change the Netware Client properties at login time if the settings are incorrect and therefore it was unable to connect to the server.

I haven't had to use DOS to connect to a server for a while, so it took a little bit of work to get the appropriate boot disk and client files together. I now have the files on the laptop copying to the Novell server. There is about 1 Gigabyte of data to transfer which since I am using a parallel port adapter this could take a while.

Copying stalled about 3/4 of the way through apparently because of a long file path which xcopy did not like. I had to finish things off by doing the last dozen or so directories individually.

Since I do not have a CD drive for the laptop I decided to use the CD drive in the Novell server to access the cab files to install Windows 98. I put the Windows 98 upgrade CD in the server, and mounted the CD as a drive volume. Then at the laptop I mapped a drive letter to the volume name Novell gave the CD. Then I copied the cab files onto the hard drive in the laptop.

The upgrade version of Windows 98 needs to see an upgradeable product before it will install. So again I used the CD drive in the server. I put the CD for Windows 95 in the drive and mapped a drive letter to it. Then when the install program asked to see an upgradeable version of Windows I just point it to the Windows 95 files on the CD in the server.

I then started the install process for Windows 98. The install failed a few times because of problems with the hard drive which were found by scandisk which runs as a part of the install process. Scandisk kept finding problems. But after scandisk was run several times the problems were fixed and the install was successful, though at times painfully slow compared to the Pentium machines I normally work with.

After all the reboots were done the first thing I did was to check out the power management settings in the control panel. After setting things to what I thought was reasonable I left the laptop alone to see what would happen. Well the display soon turned off despite setting it to 2 hours. Then I checked the NEC web site to find out how to get into the BIOS to change things there.

It took about an hour of searching through the NEC web site to get the information I wanted on the BIOS for the Versa 2000D laptop. Then when I went to change the BIOS settings I found that if you don't push the F1 key at just the right moment you don't get into the BIOS but Windows will load. Because my mother almost never runs her laptop on the battery I have turned the power management completely off. The Versa 2000D has two switches for power management just above the function keys. I think my mothers lack of comprehension of what they do has possibly caused  some of her problems. I don't think the last technician that worked on her laptop knew any more than she does. Anyway after turning off the power management in the BIOS the switches no longer have any function.

Tuesday

I copied the install files for the software my mother uses onto the server. Then using a boot disk I connected the laptop to the server and copied the software installation files onto the laptop. After rebooting the laptop without the boot disk so that Windows 98 would start I installed the software using the install files on the hard drive.

While copying more software files I needed to delete some of the software install files I had already used. Well in the process the fat table seems to have gone away again. After trying to use a variety of utilities to fix it I ended up using fdisk to wipe out the existing partition and create a new partition and start over again. At this point I realized I should have used the MBR utility to see if only the master boot record was corrupt.

After fdisking the drive and formatting the hard drive using a Window 98 boot disk the laptop boots properly again.

I copied all the necessary operating system and software files to the Novell server again so to only have to do one big transfer of files to the laptop. There are 1.15 GB of files I have to transfer. With a 2 GB hard drive in the laptop there should be no problems copying the files then doing installs as long as after each install I delete the source install files.

Copying files took about 2 hours and the Windows 98 installation appears to be going faster than the previous installation. I got all the software installed and the laptop appears to be stable so far. Time for some testing and to get the data transferred.

I drag out the old Zip drive and copied all the data I need from the server onto a Zip disk. I then got the latest drivers off the Iomega web site and installed the Zip drive onto the laptop. The installation was painless and within minute I had data copying off the Zip disk and onto the laptops hard drive.

Wednesday

Working on a new home page which is in a very rough stage of design.

The new home page design is up and my computer lab is officially named the Silicon Patch. I at first thought it would be nice to have some graphics depicting computer chips and motherboards on the home page. I am not a graphic artist so I looked on the web for suitable clip art and found some samples. I found though that once I put them on the home page I was not very happy with them. I then thought to just do a fancy title. I found lots of interesting fonts. I downloaded about 10 fonts I thought had potential and installed them on my PC. This is quite simple to do. The font file is in ZIP format which I used WinZip to expand. I then copy the ttf file to the font directory under Winnt. I then used the fonts in a word document to make up sample titles with different colours and sizes. Once I found what I liked I cut and pasted it into Paint. Then in Paint I outlined the image being careful to crop very close to the edge of the image. I copied the cropped image and pasted it into FrontPage. FrontPage then automatically saved the image in the temp directory in GIF format. I copied the GIF into the images directory of the local copy for the web site. All that was left was to edit the properties of the image to point to the file in the images directory and adjust size of the image to be a bit larger. The end result is what now appears as my home page.

Finished off work on NEC laptop. Changed default data file locations so that applications point to a data directory for each application. Installed MS Office sp2 to fix known bugs in Office 97.

I have added a few date and time stamps to the site as an experiment. Mainly want to see how they behave. I have done a bit of experimenting and each time I publish a page with changes which has a date and time stamp, the stamp is updated on the copy of the page on the web server. The local page only updates the next time you open the page locally to edit the page.

I have been working with Microsoft Office 2000 beta 2 for sometime. The price of even the upgrade version is quite steep. Last night I received an email from KT Services http://ebiz1.net/kts/ offering very good prices on a variety of software. The full version on Office 2000 professional even with the exchange rate is much better than what I can buy anywhere I have seen in Canada. So I have ordered copies for myself and a friend. Delivery is supposed to be within 10 days.

I have been wanting a copy of Outlook 98 for sometime but the retail price is too high. I have been watching www.ebay.com and copies of Outlook 98 have been offered in several auctions. So I have put in a bid to see if I can get myself a copy of Outlook 98. I bought a copy of Office 97 by auction a while back and was quite happy with the whole experience. Time will tell if this will be a good experience as well.

I reserved the internet domain name siliconpatch.com with Network Solutions www.networksolutions.com . The reservation is good for two years. Network Solutions web page had problems when I tried to make a reservation, but after many tries it finally worked. I tried to use www.getdomain.com but was given a message that the domain siliconpatch.com was available until I tried to register it, then it would tell me that the domain name was not available. I tried getdomain.com again after finishing with Network Solutions and then I had no problems and could register the domain name. The one thing that is not clear is that when I go to use my domain name are there any additional changes when a reserved domain name is put into use. I looked for information regarding this but was not successful in finding an answer.

Thursday

Last night while doing some web surfing for fun I ran across a problem with Internet Explorer 5, which I had run into before. When browsing a threaded discussion group after a while IE will forget where you are and not let you go back more than one or two pages. Then the only option is to close IE and start over again. If you don't close IE and start over again the problem will just come back to haunt you. No one I have talked to has run into this problem. I am not sure if it is a problem with IE or NT 4. I do know that NT with service pack 4 has a memory leakage problem. So what I did was to install service pack 5 which is supposed to fix the memory problem and see if I can recreate the problem in IE5.

I was able to recreate the IE5 problem is mentioned above after installing sp5.

I shipped my mothers laptop computer back to her today.

I have been reading Tom Syroid's insights page http://members.home.net/the.syroids/ for about a week now and am enjoying it very much. His insights page is similar to this one. He writes computer books and works/plays with computers, and writes about his daily work on his insights page. I recommend visiting Tom's site if this type of material is of any interest to you. There is always something computer wise to be learned from Tom's insights.

Started to work on my exchange server again. I started out by installing/upgrading NT4 over top of the existing copy mostly to see if it has any effect. After the install the ports still do not show when I try to install a modem. Time to blow everything away and start from scratch.

Used partition magic to remove all partitions from the hard drive on the exchange server. Next changed date in CMOS to Jan 1, 2010 so my 120 day evaluation version of NT server will not blow up in my face in 120 days. Put NT startup disk 1 in the floppy dive, the server CD in the CD drive and got the ball rolling.

The fresh install was definitely the way to go. The serial ports were picked up and I was able to install an external modem. Installed sp5 in preparation for installing Exchange 5.5. Started to install Exchange 5.5 when I remembered I need a service account for the install to work properly. I did a quick check and the account I setup for my previous Exchange server was still accessible on my PDC. I continued the install using the existing account.

Exchange is now up and running. To verify that it is running properly I have created a new user and mailbox using Microsoft Exchange Administrator. Then I logged onto my Windows 2000 test machine as administrator and installed Outlook 2000. I then logged on as the new user and the Windows installer opened up Outlook 2000 Startup to walk me through the setup for Outlook 2000 which I configured for Corporate or Workgroup so it will work with the Exchange server. Outlook fails to connect to the Exchange server. I then reboot the Exchange server as an expedient way to ensure all relevant services are started for Exchange. I opened Exchange Administrator and am given a message telling me that Exchange will only work until 5/2/10. I then changed the date in Windows to todays date and rebooted the server to check the CMOS date which shows todays date. Open Exchange Administrator and still get message that Exchange will expire on 5/2/10. I logout then back in again as the new user and try Outlook 2000 again with no success. I check the network setup on the Exchange server and in my haste I have not set the addresses for DNS, DHCP and Wins. I set them and go through the compulsory reboot.

The problem was that I got the names of the severs confused with the naming convention I used the last time I setup an Exchange server. So Outlook could not find the server cause the server I was telling it to find doesn't exist. With things sorted out the new user can send and receive mail. Second new user setup this time using server manager for domains and the exchange plugin. Login using second new user account and start Outlook. The setup goes smoothly with the proper server name and the mail the first new user sent is waiting in the inbox.

Friday

I was reading insights from months past on Tom Syroid's site and came across a link to an interesting site. http://www.acronymfinder.com/ is a site where you can find the meaning of an acronym. For example type BTW in the find field and 7 definitions for BTW are listed.

I have placed a link to this site under Free Resources on my Favorite Places page.

Ran a simple test of the modem on the Exchange server. I got the number of one of the modem pools of a local ISP. Then using HyperTerminal I dialed the ISP to make sure that the modem would dial and connect properly. All went fine as the modem was successful at dialing and getting a login prompt from the ISP.

To get the exchange server to dial out to get/send mail etc., RAS ( Remote Access Service ) is required. I open Network in Control Panel and select the Services tab and select Remote Access Service. The install program finds the external modem I already have installed and then presents the RAS Server TCP/IP Configuration dialog box. I cancel this because I do not want to allow remote clients to be able to dial in. That completes the first stage of configuration and starts the obligatory reboot.

After the reboot RAS needs further configuration. I set it to only dial out and to use TCP/IP. When I close Network I decline to reboot and instead open Microsoft Exchange Administrator. The Internet Mail Service needs to be setup which is found under File - New Other. The wizard informed me that I do not have a DNS domain stated in the IP settings for the Exchange server. I corrected this but the Internet Mail Service can't continue do to an error so I rebooted the server.

It seems the Mail Service does not like it when I choose the selection to allow internet mail through a dial-up connection. When I don't choose this option the install goes normally. Now I need to get a dial-up account setup so I can complete the configuration and test it.

The dial-up account I want cannot be ordered online and with the Calgary Stampede parade on today the office is closed for the morning.

I downloaded Diskeeper Lite to try on my production PC. The primary 2 Gig NTFS partition was badly fragmented and took Diskeeper about an hour to defragment. I have been experiencing some minor system slow downs lately. Time will tell  if defragmenting the drive will fix the slowdowns.

I have a horrible time remembering time zones and who is ahead or behind my local time. I found a web site http://www.globalmetric.com/time/ which you can customize to view the countries and cities you wish to see the time for. Each location you select shows the local time, day of the week, time zone and if they are on day light saving time.

***

Made a trip downtown to visit the ISP office and setup a dial-up account. Account should be active tonight.

Keep getting an error 1066 when starting RAS. The Microsoft site has not given me any useful information in this regard. Having time on my hands I have removed RAS and start a fresh install of RAS. When the reinstall gets to the modem selection I choose to install the modem and to my surprise NT doesn't detect the modem. I know the modem works I tested it earlier. So I did a manual modem install and moved on. After NT rebooted I opened HyperTerminal and tested the modem again and it works. Try and start RAS and get error 1066 again. Check Microsft Technet CD online and find the error code definition: Warning. Line %d: The option '%ls' is obsolete and has no effect. Which at the moment does not mean a thing to me.

***

Saturday

Looks like my RAS problems on the Exchange server where hardware based. That the problem was hardware was nagging me in the back of my mind so this morning I decided to look into it. I rebooted the server and went into the CMOS. I set the Integrated Peripherals section to default settings. Then NT loaded all the services with no errors. I

In Remote Access Admin under Select Domain, when I click on the Domain the Exchange server was listed. This had never happened before. I selected the Exchange server and RAS is started.

After doing some fine tuning of the RAS configuration I had to reboot and now RAS will not start again. Gone back to undo the changes and set Configure Port Usage back to Dial out and Receive calls from Dial out only. Shut server right sown and startup again and then was able to start RAS manually. Set RAS to start automatically, shut server right down and restart server. I checked the event viewer first and no errors listed there. Next checked Services under the Control Panel. RAS shows as started so possibly for some odd reason I need to do a cold boot to get RAS to start. I don't think this is normal but will live with it for now.

For RAS to dial there has to be a configuration available in Dialup Networking for it to use. I setup the phone number for my new dialup account and saved it. Then in Microsoft Exchange Administrator I double click on Internet Mail Service under Connections. Now the configuration for Dialup Networking shows on the Dial-up Connections tab. I click on the check box by the available connection. I fill in the appropriate information under Logon Information. I leave the Mail Retrieval information alone cause I am unsure what is required. In this part of the project is all very new to me and the few books I have give little applicable RAS information for this project. I apply the changes and NT tells me that the Internet Mail Service must be restarted for changes to take effect. I close everything that is currently open then open control Panel and click on Services. I locate the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service and stop it by clicking on the Stop button. Once the service is stopped I click on the Start button to restart the service and after a few seconds the service status shows as started and the modem dials out. I did not expect that. It must be a test of some type. No, it goes again dialing and negotiating a connection. I check the Logon Information and the User name is spelled wrong. The ID drops characters off my last name and habitually I typed in the full name. I fix it restart the mail service.

The modem dialing is cause by the default setting to dial every 4 minutes. I changed it to when mail is queued, but at most every 30 minutes. I checked the other settings and made a few changes then stopped and restart the service again.

On my Windows 2000 test bed I login with a new account just for testing RAS. I configure Outlook to use Exchange, composed a short test to my other account and send it. The modem dials and connects but no mail is sent.

I try dialing out using dial-up Networking and a connection is made. Internet Explorer cannot connect to any sites. I cannot ping anything by name. There maybe something configured wrong wrong which is causing a DNS problem. Time to do some more research into RAS and dialing out to get mail.

Restart the server to get RAS going and verify that all the services I need are running. Tried my best to change the Internet Mail Service back to default settings.

Internet Mail Service still will not start so I removed and the reinstalled the service. Now when I send mail message out of Outlook on my Windows 2000 machine the message lands in the queue awaiting delivery. This is what happened when I first started at this earlier in the day. I changed the dial out parameters to make testing easier.

Sunday

Reading Microsoft TechNet to find information on RAS. Finding that the information comes in little bites here and there and you have to collect them and put them together like a puzzle afterwards.

My mother received her laptop by courier on Friday. Today she unpacked it and the hard drive is not found on the first boot. I had her reseat the hard drive and reboot and then every thing was fine. I asked her if she had turned the laptop off before handling the hard drive out of curiosity. Well she didn't, makes me wonder what other things she does with her laptop which have potential to make it stop functioning. I must remember to give her more explicit instructions in the future to help avoid these problems.

My production NT 4 Workstation gave me grief for the first time to day. I could not open Outlook 2000 so I closed all applications and then look at Task Manager. CPU and memory were maxed out with no applications running. I shut down the PC and got a message the iexplorer.exe is still running. I found this strange cause IE was working fine before I exited the program and it did not show up as a running application in Task Manager. Needless to say I killed iexplorer.exe and rebooted. All seems fine now.