Microsoft SyncToy v2.0

I needed something simple to backup some files at work to an external drive.  At first, I thought about writing a simple script to do it.  Then I saw a short article about SyncToy from an old issue of Windows IT Pro magazine so I decided to give it a try and I’m glad I did!

SyncToy v2.0 is a free software from Microsoft that lets you “copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly and easily.”  You can also schedule it to run using the Windows Task Scheduler.

I’ve only been using it for a few days and so far it’s working great!

You can download it directly from Microsoft’s website: SyncToy v2.0

FreeNAS

Here’s a pretty cool open source software that you can install on an old machine to use as a network-attached storage (NAS).  It runs on FreeBSD and you can even install it on flash drives (installation including the FreeBSD OS is less than 64MB).

It supports popular services such as CIFS/SMB, FTP, SSH, NFS, iTunes/DAAP, and UPnP.  It even has a BitTorrent client!  All of these can be managed from a web interface.

I haven’t tried all the services but those that I have seem to work pretty well (CIFS, FTP, SSH, UPnP, and BitTorrent).  There is also an option for Active Directory authentication but after I enabled it, it seems to give access to the shares to everyone when using CIFS/SMB, including computers not in the domain I specified (I’m using version 0.69b4).  So I ended up just using Local User Authentication instead.  I created an account with the same username and password as my domain account so I don’t get prompted for credentials when I try to access it.

The UPnP service also worked great with my PS3 and very simple to set up.  Just enable it, add the content you wish to share, select one of the preconfigured profiles or choose custom, enable transcoding and select the temporary directory for transcoded files and that’s pretty much it.

I also really like the BitTorrent client.  Very nice and simple web interface.

I’m running it as a virtual machine on my home network using VMware ESXi.  Installation is pretty straightforward: create a new virtual machine, create a virtual disk for the OS and the FreeNAS software (I allocated 100MB which is more than enough), create an additional virtual disk to store your files, map the FreeNAS ISO image to your virtual CD-ROM drive (connect at power on) and power on the the virtual machine.  Once the ISO image is loaded, choose the option to install FreeNAS to disk.  After that, choose the option to set the LAN IP address and once that’s set just open your browser, point it to that IP address and you can manage everything from here.

Default login is admin/freenas.

Website:  http://www.freenas.org

Dell PowerEdge SC440

I got my Dell PowerEdge SC440 on Tuesday and I’ve been busy all week installing software on it and redoing my entire home network.

The hardware itself looks very well built, it weighs about 40 lbs.  The inside looks very neat.  There are 4 SATA ports but there are only 2 hard drive trays so if you need to use more than 2 hard drives you’ll need to use the CD-ROM trays.  I ordered mine with just 1 hard drive and I bought an additional 1TB SATA drive from newegg.com (around $120).  Installing the hard drive was pretty straightforward, just make sure you get a 36 in. (3 ft.) SATA cable if you want to run the cable the proper way.  This server is also very quiet.

The first thing I did with it was install VMware ESXi (VMware ESX Server 3i, 3.5.0, 110271).  It installed with no problems, it found my onboard NIC and onboard SATA controller.

I’m currently running 4 virtual machines on it (2 Windows 2003 Server, 1 Fedora Core 9, and 1 FreeBSD) and it’s running great with plenty of resources left for more VMs :).

More pics:

Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user…

Error Message:  “\\x.x.x.x is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resource.  Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed.  Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource and try again.”

I get this once in a while when working on files remotely.  To make it go away, do the following:

1. Go to Start->Run, type in cmd and hit Enter.
2. Type net use to view all mapped network shares.
3. Type net use \\network_share /del to disconnect that specific network share or  type net use * /del to disconnect all network shares.

VMware ESXi: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer (Windows XP)

If you get this error when installing Windows XP in VMware ESXi, simply do the following:

1. Download this floppy image which contains the VMware SCSI drivers: vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp.
2. Upload the floppy image to the datastore using the VI Client.
3. Edit the virtual machine settings and select Floppy Drive 1, then choose the option on the right to “Use existing floppy image in datastore:” and select the floppy image.
4. Power on the virtual machine.
5. Press F6 when you see the message “Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver…” at the bottom of the screen.
6. Connect Floppy Drive 1.
7. Press S, then press Enter to select the VMware SCSI Controller driver, then press Enter again to continue with the setup.

That’s it! The Windows XP setup should now be able to detect the hard drives :).

Source: VMware Knowledgebase Document

Citrix XenDesktop User Experience Demo

I’m doing some research on Citrix XenDesktop and I just saw this demo.  I know this is kind of old but I just find it really cool!

Check it out here.

Can’t connect to SQL Server 2005 using PHP

I was updating our web application last Friday and I needed it to connect to an SQL Server 2005 Express Edition database to query some tables but my application couldn’t connect to the MSSQL server.

After a few hours of searching the internet and trying different things I finally got it to work by downloading a newer version of ntwdblib.dll (version 2000.80.194.0) and replacing the one that came with PHP 5.2 (we’re using WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) btw).

In our case, I had to put it in wamp\php, wamp\Apache2\bin, and C:\Wndows\System32.

Also, in your application, don’t forget to add the instance name of the SQL Server in your connection string (eg. server1\instanceName).

Here’s an example connection string for ADOdb (it worked for me without specifying the port number):

‘mssql://admin:password111@webserver01\\SQLEXPRESS/Database1′

I don’t remember the URL where I found this solution, I’ll post it here if I find it again.

Security Warning: “The publisher could not be verified”

Warning Message: “The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?”

I got this warning message last week while testing a group policy object to run a small program from a network drive when users log in to the domain.

After some googling, it turned out that this feature was added in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and it checks whether the program has a digital signature attached.

To prevent this from appearing do the following:

1. Open the Group Policy management console (Start->Run->gpedit.msc)
2. Go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Attachment Manager
3. Enable “Inclusion list for moderate risk file types“
4. Add .exe to the list

Source: http://davestechshop.net/archive/2006/10/30/IE7PublisherCouldNotBeVerified.aspx