Charles Pluta – IT Service Integration

Windows 7 was released yesterday to TechNet and MSDN subscribers.. I began my download last night before heading to bed, its still downloading. I have an extra box I believe I will put it on and maybe try to use 25% of the time remotely from my normal machine.
I have also been using Office 2010 for a full day now and have to say its very fast. I didn’t have a problem upgrading from 2007 to 2010, all my outlook information upgraded without a hiccup. It has a slightly different look to it but is the same idea of 2007 as far as the ribbon up top and different menu items. One new standout feature is when you hit the Office circle, instead of a drop-down menu, a full-window appears with different options layed out. It will take awhile to figure out exactly where everything is compared to 2003/2007.

I came across an interesting problem yesterday and used something I had never used before – “net file” – to fix it. A shared document off a server was telling any user that opened it, that it was open by “another user”. The office manager had already went around to all the machines personally to make sure that the file was not opened. She closed all instances of MS Word on the network but still had the popup when she tried to open the file. I was able to remote into the server and use “net file” in the command line, and it displayed a list of open shared file connections with a connection ID. I then used “net file /close ID” to terminate that connection and free up the file. Once I did that she was able to open the file on her machine. Wonderful command line tool to help any sysadmin in the daily jobs.

Had an odd issue this week that I wasn’t quite sure was handled properly to begin with. There is a machine that the user complains in the mornings only that it won’t turn on. Before I touched the machine the measure taken was to replace the motherboard since it was under warrenty. Two days later the user called again with the same issue. This is when I took the call, and quizzed the user and had her walk me through the steps. Turns out that in order for it to turn on, she has to reset the UPS. So I swap out the UPS and turn it on without issue. Today, she calls again saying she can’t turn it on. I’m really not sure if its even a power supply issue, as thats the only thing left, than it might be a user error. Is she just having trouble turning on the machine? I really don’t know….

In other news, Microsoft today made the Windows 7 XP Mode Release Candidate available for download on their website. Since Windows 7 is built on the same core kernal that Windows Vista is, this is a major feature that needs to work in order for businesses to actually want to migrate to Windows 7. Without this feature. XP could actually stay in network for a lot longer than Win98 or Win2000 machines did and still do today.

I hope to have some virtualization stuff up in the coming weeks, as I will be working on a project setting up a terminal server and about a dozen thin clients.