The thoughts of an IT manager

We had a problem where AutoCAD users in one of our remote offices could not get a network licence even though all appeared well.

The problem turned out to be a little bit too much latency on the connection between our head office (where the licence server is held) and the remote office
Users would get an error

A valid license could not be obtained by the network license manager.

Error [1.5.-15]
Error [1.5.-18]

The following fixed our problem

1. Right-click My Computer. Click Properties.
2. In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
3. On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.
4. In the Environment Variables dialog box, under System Variables, click New.
5. In the New User Variable dialog box, enter FLEXLM_TIMEOUT for the name and 1000000 for the value.
6. Click OK to close each dialog box.
7. Launch the Autodesk application.
The full Autodesk article can be found here

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=7574782&linkID=9240617

Print a directory listing

Occasionally we come across the need to print out the whole list of files and folders within a directory, windows by standard does not do this, however a simple bat file can do this
To add the print directory feature to Windows Explorer, follow these steps:

1. Open Notepad, and then copy and paste the following text into Notepad:
@echo off
dir %1 /-p /o:gn > “%temp%\Listing”
start /w notepad /p “%temp%\Listing”
del “%temp%\Listing”
exit

2. Save the file as Prin.bat in the Windows directory, and then close Notepad.
3. Start Windows Explorer, click Tools, and then click Folder Options.
4. Click the File Types tab, and then click File Folder.
5. Click Edit, and then click New.
6. In the Action box, type Print Directory Listing.
7. In Application used to perform action, click Prin.bat, and then click OK.
8. Click OK, click Apply, and then click OK.
9. Open Windows Explorer, right-click the folder that you would like to print a directory listing of, and then click Print Directory Listing.

The whole article from Microsoft can be found here http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=272623

Doing this however we do get occasions when after completing this when we double click a folder it opens the search box.
This can be fixed by:
After you follow the steps in the previous sections, Search Companion may start when you double-click a folder instead of the folder being opened. Or, if you have associated other actions with file folders, those actions may be performed instead.

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:
EDIT THE REGISTRY AT YOUR OWN RISK
1. Start Registry Editor.
2. Locate the Default value under the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
3. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
4. In the Value data box, type none.
5. Click OK.
6. Exit Registry Editor.

Again the full Microsoft article can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321379
Hope you find this Useful.

I’ve been setting up a Home media center pc using XBMC on windows (The new version is very good).
So that all my music is in one easy to reach place I’ve been ripping some of my old CD’s, however this has the problem that some of the audio levels are very low and you have to turn the volume up. The next track comes along which is of a high volume and now there’s the mad dash to find the volume control.
I have used some normalization packages before such as MPtrim but this can be a bit hit and miss.
I download MP3Gain and it appears to be working very well to normalize all the volume levels. The application is very small and very easy to use. If you’re having problems with low sound levels after ripping music this is the way to go.

Over the next 6 months we will be starting to prepare to move our domain across to 2008 server and exchange 2007.
A Little slack I know but I have just installed 2008 in a test environment and having a play with it. First impressions are good, installation was nice and easy and the new roles fairly straight forward.
Forgot to disable IPv6 so got an error running DC promo as it was set to DHCP (but its fine to continue), this also gave me a slight DNS error when doing a NSLOOKUP. Disabling IPv6 stopped all error as we have no intention of using IPv6 anytime soon.
I’m also a little disappointed that the backup still has no support for DAT tape drives, I’m sure this is for some legal reason, but it would have been very handy not to install any 3rd party backup software as my current backup software does not support 2008 server.
Next up to install exchange 2007 on a separate box…

Like many companies, our email usage has grown massively over the last few years, mailboxes are becoming full and finding archive emails is becoming a nightmare.
While we do have plenty of storage space for large mailboxes we struggled to back them up every night and finding email from users that had left was problematic to say the least.
We recently moved to Mimecast, a SAAS provider that scans all our mail for spam and viruses. They also archive all our mail for 10 years and provide easy online search options for users to find old email.
They even have a outlook plug-in that works very well and allows users to find any emails sent or received (even internal)
To enable Mimecast to archive internal emails we did have to enable journaling on the server, which I know some people are against but our server could handle the increased load.
The support received by the Mimecast team was second to none, and the setup was run through step by step all the way.
No hardware is required to be held at our site and we have found the whole thing to be very reliable and painless – well done Mimecast..

We recently ordered a NetEqualizer box to allow us to effectively share our internet bandwidth with some of our tenants securely and fairly.
It’s been up and running for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that I’ve been impressed. It’s been very stable, and configuration took minutes.
As soon as the kit was connected (Between the main router and network), it started to show traffic flow and start to shape it.
As soon as our bandwidth hits 80% utilization it starts to put a penalty on certain types of traffic i.e. large downloads, which means that web browsing does not become effected by heavy utilization.
The NetEqualizer allows us to rate limit, we can cap certain tenants to set download \ upload speeds e.g. 2mb, this stops one tenant hogging all the bandwidth.
It’s pre-installed with NTOP for bandwidth reporting, which is useful to show peak usage at certain times of the day.
All in all does exactly what it says on the tin, .
My only criticism is that the fans are loud, but not too much of an issue as its held in our server room.
I’ll keep you informed on how we get on with it.