Burchwords

From my last post you all know that AVG 8 is not what it used to be. After uninstalling AVG 8 it left the firefox plugins behind. This wouldn’t let me install or uninstall any other add-ons. I started firefox in safe-mode. You can do this by going to start then to mozilla firefox and clicking on safe mode. I then chose to disable all add-ons before launching firefox 3. I got to the add-ons screen and unistall and disabled the AVG add-ons. Then I restarted firefox and all my plugins started to install correctly. Just a heads up.

Buddy of mine cracked open a desktop that was having BSOD issues, this is what he found…

I’ve been saying this for a while, if a antivirus company starts to become successful its only a matter of time before it’s effectiveness is depleted or functionality is lost.

In the last week, I’ve either had to use different antivirus programs due to fact that certain aspects of the new AVG 8.0 will not work.

First Computer:
AVG 8.0 will not work if you have an out dated version of Roxio on your computer. I’ve tried to uninstall Roxio and clean up the registry, but the AVG installer reports that Roxio is still installed on the computer. Since I knew Roxio was gone, I installed AVG. After I rebooted the update service that keeps AVG running would not work, and you did not have the ability to do a full system scan. I had to take it off and I put Bitdefender on the system.

Second Computer:

After removing Roxio from another computer and AVG actually acknowledged that it was uninstalled, so I went ahead with the installation. Everything went great till i rebooted and went to do the updates. Now, pay attention to this: AVG installs some type of network service that hosed up the internet connection and there was not way for me to get around it. I justed uninstalled AVG again and put AntiVir on the system.

It’s like I said as soon as a software company starts with the glossy button and the fancy user interface all hope is lost. AVG use to be as simple as install and walk away, but now I fear that Grisoft has fallen in the path that Norton and McAfee chose to take.

Acronis has done it again. I’ve wrote about their past achievement with Universal Restore, now they have a software that will simplify backing up your Exchange server. It’s still in Beta phase, but looks very promising. If anyone is a beta tester for this product, I would love to know how it performs.

Here is their description of the product:

Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange includes features that make it easy for anyone to create and implement a Disaster Recovery plan for their email, including:

Easy-to-use, centralized Management Console auto-discovers all Exchange Servers on your network, providing status and other information on disaster recovery progress from one central location.

Automatically create Disaster Recovery Plans that analyze your backup needs and present intuitive information to assist even non-administrators determine the best disaster recovery strategy.

Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange includes features that give you the flexibility in implementing your Disaster Recovery plan, including:

Flexible backup options enable you to choose whether you want to backup the entire database, specific users’ mailboxes, or mailboxes based on criteria you provide. For example, you can choose to create a “brick-level” mailbox backup for the company executives.

A full range of recovery options enable you to recover data from the last known archive, a particular point-in-time, or from the Exchange server’s point-of-failure.

Granular recovery helps you restore specific emails or mailboxes, regardless of whether you have backed up the entire Exchange database, or only created “brick-level” backups of specific information.

Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange includes features that give you unparalleled reliability in implementing your Disaster Recovery plan, including:

Exchange Dial-Tone support, giving you even more flexibility and reliability in backing up and restoring your Exchange database.

Flexible storage options let you choose where your archives are automatically copied, be it on a local hard drive, network share, FTP server, or other external device.

AES industry standard encryption protects your company’s most valuable data ensuring that your organization’s private information is safe and secure.

Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange will be available in April 2008, and will support Microsoft Exchange Server 2000, or later, running on Windows 2000 Server, or later.

I’ve never seen Godaddy.com go down as long as they did last night, but my server is back up this morning. I have no idea what they were doing. But in my attempt to investigate the problem. I navigated my Firefox 3 beta 5 to the Godaddy site, and as soon as I Iogged in Firefox would crash. I’m not sure what is causing it, but it sure is annoying.

BTW: Godaddy did post a notice that they were having technical difficulties last night.

This was brought in today…Check out this keyboard! I have no idea how long the cigarette was left on this keyboard.

I went out and cleaned a working computer that is over 10 years old and has never been clean out. Here’s the video.

I had a client today who’s computer would not boot into Windows. They had a Dell OptiPlex when they started up the computer they would receive this error:

“Previous attempts at booting this system have failed at
checkpoint [USBd].”

Facts:

During troubleshooting I turned the printer off before and during startup and both option allowed to me to boot into Windows, with no problems. This is what lead me to believe the computer was looking at the memory card reader on the printer for a boot option.

Solution:

I asked if they had any new hardware. They said they had recently installed a printer. I took a look at the printer and it had the memory card reader built in. The BIOS had a setting called “USB emulation” and it was set to enable. I disabled the USB emulation and set the boot sequence to the local hard drive. The computer no longer looked at the printer for a boot option and booted correctly.

I download a lot of software. If I’m on the road working on a customer’s pc or on a server that needs something I usually get it from the net. I only use a flash drive when I don’t have internet access.

Anyways I use to use Cnet’s download.com to get my files, but the download speed is horrible. So, I started using filehippo.com

It’s has awesome download speeds and everything is clean and laid out so you can find what you are looking for faster.

My real reason for writing this is that they have a new product over at filehippo.com (update checker) that will scan your computer and tell you what needs to be updated. Its hard for me to like a new program if it slows down my computer or has poorly written code it will not last long on my pc. So, when I downloaded this program it was quick and very responsive. It told me what I needed to know and that was it. I think versiontracker.com has this same type of program, but you have to pay for it. Boooooo

here is the link: http://filehippo.com/updatechecker/

I’ve been using Echo Workstation for about 2 weeks now. I just wanted to write about the pros and cons I’ve ran into. First, it doesn’t work well with vista. I don’t know if it just home versions of Vista or what. But it does work extremely well with windows 2000 and XP. I’ve had absolutely no problems out of these operating systems. Second, It seemed a little slow, but there is a fix for that.

I was using the build version 8017. After downloading it I went and registered the key and there was an update ready for me. After installing the update (build 8076) the backups were faster by a half an hour. It really improved performance. Acronis is staying on top of their game.

Universal Restore Option: I’ve got to admit this is the money maker. I can restore to a virtual machine or to a completely different machine with totally different hardware. Now, for XP you will have 3 days to re-register your activation key for windows. It sees all that new hardware and knows something is up.

I’ve restored 4 machines in my testing phase. Two XPs and Two 2ks machines. No problems so far. Just doesn’t work with Vista. If you need a backup solution I highly recommend you get Acronis Echo Workstation with the optional Universal Restore Software.  If you’re a IT guy like me being able to restore to different hardware or to a virtual machine is such a Blessing.

I give this a 4 out of 5 stars, just for not being about to backup my vista laptop. It could have had something to do with just my laptop, and not Acronis itself. Either way I still love this software.