Dst Issue Time Zone changes - Part II As promised (if a day late) I've taken the registry keys that Microsoft list and created an for them. This package should ONLY be used on Windows 2000 as Windows XP and 2003
Technical NTP & Time Zones With the upcoming time zone changes, it's worth remembering how NTP works and why it doesn't matter what timezone you have devices in. NTP and UTC both work in the same way, time
Security Patch Tuesday nightmare due For anyone who hasn't read the you might want to sit down, have a STRONG coffee with some brandy and then click on the link. Microsoft patch tuesday pre-release notification
War Stories The strange case of the disappearing server Sometimes you have one of those REALLY odd requests... Today I was asked to fix a problem with a web link. A quick look showed that the DNS entry had been removed but
Security Truly secure internal servers The problem with security lies in striking a balance between being secure and enabling people to do their jobs. The above phrase is pretty much my security mantra although I'm wondering if I
Personal Photography Photography is a hobby that I have had for some years now and is mostly thanks to a former work colleague who left IT to pursue a career as a photographer in journalism.
Security Cisco IOS is Affected by Multiple Vulnerabilities Most people have probably already seen the if you have not then you might want to have a read of the link because if you use Ciscocert advisory over security vulnerabilities found in
Security Password Mangement Software Passwords are a real (but necessary) pain in the neck. These day's it seems that every site requires registration and if you are being good by being secure with different passwords at each
Hosting Hosting Companies Several people have asked me to recommend hosting companies and over the past few years I've used three. This blog is hosted by but I've also used , and Rackspace is much more of
Administrivia Change of Domain Name Just a quick update to let you know that this blog's URL is changing to . If you access it via then be aware that this page will be changed from being a redirector
Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 Last week I was asked to install Sharepoint portal server 2007 onto a windows 2003 server. I've used sharepoint many years ago and figured that the installation would not be too difficult so
Security Predicition - Vista uptake to be slow in 2007 Several people have asked me why I don't think Vista will make many inroads into the O/S market in 2007. My reason for this is quite simple, Whilst Vista will be forced
Administrivia 2007 2007 promises to be another packed year in the IT industry with a raft of new releases coming out of Microsoft. Personally, I can't see Vista making much of a dent in Operating
Tips Working with TCP/IP Networks In my previous blog article I gave a couple of troubleshooting tips on DHCP. I also mentioned that I would show a trick for working out TCP/IP subnets. There are MANY subnet
Technical Troubleshooting DHCP I had an interesting time quite recently troubleshooting a DHCP problem. The server wasn't giving out IP addresses when connected to the network or when connected to a hub. The reason turned out
Administrivia Blog updates I've been trying to do a minimum of two blogs a week but I fully admit that blog updates on here have been a bit lax recently. This is not because of a
Commentary Task Switching Joel Spolsky writes a great blog over at . He has an insight into programming and development that a lot of companies sorely need. Recently he wrote a blog on why task switching was
Technical Unattended Vista Build - Failed first attempt Unattended installations really do remove the pain from installing an operating system simply because they will answer all the routine questions of user names, serial numbers, country codes and can configure a fair
Technical On a quest for the perfect knowledge base I've been on a quest for some time now. I'm seeking the perfect notepad type application to act as a PORTABLE knowledge base - All too often i'll see a link or find
Technical Tape Backups and why they may run slow Due to an interesting event earlier this week I thought it might be worthwhile doing a quick blog entry on how tape drives work and why some restores of small files can take
Home Network Re-Org I've had recent set of fun and games on my home network. Because of some work I had happening at home I had to unplug all the kit and move the racking out
Battle of the browsers - Round 2 Firefox 2.0 has been released hot on the heels of Microsoft's internet explorer 7. It will be interesting to see how big the take up of both browsers will be. Whatever happens,
Serious Network Outage on Orange Broadband My broadband provider is Orange, Formally known as Wanadoo and before that Freeserve. For the most part they are ok. The service is an 8MB download, 256K upload. There are sometimes dropouts if
Security Patch Tuesday's missing patch Last week Microsoft released 10 patches despite the advance notification saying there would be 11. Quality control issues are rumored to be at the forefront of Microsoft's decision to not deploy all eleven