Yet Another IT Professional Blog

I recently changed my computer and I am now a full time laptop user. I hardly waited up until now and resisted to keep my desktop but I cannot avoid the fact that a laptop of 500$ is almost more powerful than my 2 year old expensive gaming PC. Why not switch to a laptop now? I've made the move BUT I took these decisions so fast that I completely forgot certain small things, like properly backing up my iTunes library, Google Picasa albums, Microsoft Office program settings... I did not loose any data though. Do not get me wrong here. I have backups of backups because of all the bad experiences I've had in the past with loosing important data. But today, all these programs are working with some type of internal databases. Those databases keeps the metadata attached to your pictures, tracks, movies... When you use your programs internal "backup" functions, like Picasa's "Backup Pictures" option under the "Tools" menu. So, here what I've be

Lately I have been working on a new Remote Desktop (formerly Terminal Services) server and I’ve seen a couple of problems related to the printers. Windows Remote Desktop Services is a great technology and for some organizations out there is the ultimate solution! Especially, with some new features like “RemoteApp” and “App-V”… It’s a great technology for users and from IT when your server is configured properly and it’s a big headache if you don’t know what you are doing. For everyone out there who is looking into “Remote Desktop Services”, I highly recommend to spent a little time on Microsoft forums and read as much as you can because there is a lot to know before you go ahead and install the roles on your server. In this article, I’ll only cover print features in Remote Desktop Services. Let me tell you what the problem was before giving out the solution. We have a plotter printer to print out plans for electricians and engineers. I had no problem installing the printer on the

Another “very hard to find” tip… When writing batch files with some special characters like “é” or “à”, you might have surprise errors. Running batch files, with special characters in the code, can cause some serious interpretation problems and your commands might not work at all. Sometimes, you can’t avoid using these characters, like in my case. Because I live in Montréal, Québec (French part of Canada) and there are serious law issues that we have to respect and I think the most difficult part of my job is this language issue. The trick is hidden in this link from Microsoft; http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chcp.mspx?mfr=true The « chcp » command displays or sets the active code page number is the remedy to your problem. By putting the “chcp 1252” at the beginning of your code, you are changing the “active code” for your cmd environment before even executing your commands in the batch file. The number 1252 is the code

If you have a Terminal Server 2008R2 which is used widely in your company and users need to use printers a lot, than you’ll face this default printer problem later or sooner. You can log on as the user on the terminal server, add the printers you would like and set the default printer like you would do on a normal workstation, but the default printer will change to the local machines default printer automatically. Let’s say you are using “comp1” in order to make a “Remote Desktop” connection to a terminal server which is called “Terminal”. Well, as an example, if you have “XPS Virtual Printer” set as a default printer on “comp1” and you make a remote desktop connection to the “Terminal” server, your default printer will be set to “XPS Virtual Printer” by default in the terminal server session. To avoid that action and keep the same printer as a default printer in terminal server sessions, you will need to follow these instructions; If you want to change the behavior only for one user,

What is sysprep? From Microsoft “ The System Preparation tool (Sysprep) is a technology that you can use with other deployment tools to install Microsoft Windows operating systems with minimal intervention by an administrator or technician.” This tool is included by default with all of the Windows 7 versions. Generally, this tool is used to prepare a “ master ” image of a computer and deploy it to other computers.  Thanks to new “ file based imaging ” system of Windows 7, we can create a “ template ” image of a computer with all the settings and applications and deploy this image to different type (brand and model) of computers. By using sysprep, we can take off the integrated drivers from the OS. So, next time the syspreped image is booted, it is generating new SID (security identifier) and new drivers. This way, your Windows OS is not going to be in conflict with the new hardware that you are copying the image. You can use an imaging tool of your choice right after the sysprep. It

  My brother and I use a lot the BitTorrent application for a lot of reasons and we realized that my brother was downloading something that I already had on my computer. The whole idea was sharing all our stuff internally, being aware of what we are downloading NOW and why spend our entire internet quota for duplications? So I found a very easy solution, I was all around the BitTorrent application’s “preferences” window. In my case the program that I’m using is the BitTorrent 7.2 and I know that these instructions work as well on uTorrent application too.  This solution requires a computer to be “ON” and “online” all the time that you want the resume your downloading stuff. It can be your desktop, laptop or even a virtual machine, in my case; I’m using a dedicated Windows XP VMware virtual machine. The user can connect to the BitTorrent application through almost any browser (tested with Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome 10, and Mozilla FireFox 4) and start downloading any torrent

WinPE is a light version of Windows 7 (command line version). To be able to make a WinPE, you need to install Windows AIK (Automated Installation Kit) from Microsoft. With this professional series of tools, we can create our personalized WinPE 3.0 environment. What can WinPE do for me? WinPE contains very useful tools to… -   Deploy desktop and server operating systems -   Patch the existent OS with the newest updates, hot fix and patch -   Backup your computer! -   Add and Remove hardware drivers Steps to create a WINPE environment 1-       Start the “Deployment Tools Command Prompt” with the “Administrator” rights! 2-       Enter the following command. “copype.cmd (architecture) Destination Path” [Copype.cmd X86 C:\WinPE] or [copype.cmd amd64 C:\WinPE64] 3-       You can add additional customizations by copying your favorite tools into the created C:\WinPE\ISO folder. Like “ImageX + Sysinternal Tools + GImageX + etc.” To do that, simply copy these tools in C:\WinPE\ISO folder that

I recently had a problem with this driver (mv91xx.sys) with a fresh install Windows 7 Ultimate X64. After a quick search I could find out what was causing the blue screen from time to time during the boot of my computer. It was the “Marvell 9123 Disk Controller” driver in conflict with some other drivers. So I had to find the latest drivers for this controller which was not provided from the supplier (Asus) but from a third party! This is really frustrating, because companies who sell worldwide should keep their drivers section always up-to-date!!!  I managed somehow downloading the needed drivers from a third-party driver website ( http://www.station-drivers.com/ ). I’m happy that I found such a good site like this one where we can have the latest versions of drivers. Especially, the ones that we all have problems with… So, I ended up downloading the latest drivers and update the drivers on my computer, I did not see any BSOD (Bluescreen of Death) after this update. And also,

It has been longtime that I did not send any posts. But recently I build a new system for myself and i had a couple of annoying situations. I would like to share my bad experiences with you so you don't have to spend the amount of time that I spent to remedy your problems... After installing Windows 7 Ultimate X64, drivers and all my applications, I tried to lunch my recently purchased game "Sid Meier's Civilization V", and it was crashing while the introduction video at the beginning of the game. I had this application crash window and Windows couldn't find any solution with it's online checkup. So I had to go trough a lot of stuff and I finally found what the real problem was. Because, I kept the necessary game files and user data for my Steam installation (by simply copying the "C:\Program Files\Steam\" folder to a external Hard Disk.), I always think that, the migration was the problem. But... There was an easy solution through Steam. I had to