I love Windows 7. By far, the best Windows O/S ever made.
Except for this problem:
http://cnanney.com/video/win7-jump-bug/
THIS DRIVES ME BONKERS. When it first started happening, I chalked it up to a minor thing that I could ignore, but it’s now put me over the edge, and apparently it’s STILL a problem in the Windows 8 developer preview.
For all the ‘usability’ marketing and PR we see for Windows 7, who invented this ‘feature’? There’s even a comment in the following thread from a Microsoftie that says it is ‘by design’:
Windows Explorer expands folders inappropriately, jumping the folder you expand to the bottom of the navigation pane
Saying it’s ‘by design’ is developer-speak for “we don’t want to fix it.”
This is so annoying, I purchased Xplorer2 – a File Explorer replacement, which is great, except it doesn’t replace everything, and I still want to use the old Explorer for some things (search, for example).
Would someone at Microsoft PLEASE escalate this issue and get it fixed? It is a problem, and makes Windows 7 just a little less usable than it should be.
I bought a Rocket Stick this summer for occasional use when I needed it – meaning I didn’t want a monthly recurring bill.
Seemed like a simple enough plan.
So I bought a Rogers Pay-as-you-go Rocket Stick, and proceeded to spend a few hours trying to activate it online – a completely different story, but suffice it to say, there were some not-very-nice things passing over my lips that day.
When I did finally get the stick activated, I missed the part about automatically billing me monthly – in fact when I initially tried to buy a month’s time, it told me I couldn’t use my credit card because it was due to expire within 3 months. That should have been a red flag.
As it turns out, the 2nd month’s charge failed for some reason and gave me the chance to call Rogers and figure out I had to ‘opt out’ of the recurring charge. So I did (by clicking some tiny link on the ‘my Rogers’ account page).
Today, I wanted to ‘refill’ the stick for a month now that I have swimming and Jiu Jitsu classes to sit through as I wait for my kids. Of course, there’s the Rogers agreement I have to accept to complete the transaction, and sure enough, part of that agreement is recurring monthly billing.
OK, fine, I think … I’ll just cancel the monthly billing once done – argh. 10 minutes later, I find the ‘cancel’ link. Click it and am then presented with 2 links – one a bright shiny button to ‘cancel’ my ‘cancel’ request, and one that is a light blue text hyperlink on a white background confirming ‘opt out’.
This kind of crap should be against the law, and I’m pretty sure it actually is, but rather than complain to the CRTC’s ombudsman (who apparently does nothing anyway), I’m posting this instead.
Cellular carriers in Canada need to be more responsible with their monopolies. The day will come when it will come back to bite them, and this kind of stuff does nothing to improve the perception of their business practices. Shame.
Trend IMSS and MaxHopCount = Headache
Published October 4, 2011 Cloud Leave a CommentTags: Exchange, Trend
I don’t sell or support Trend Micro products any longer (excepting the last few clients still using WFBS until their licenses expire), mostly because Trend has caused me little in the way of a joyful experience supporting their products over the years, and it’s only gotten worse of late.
“Worry-Free Business Security” v7 was a complete disaster for me as client after client experienced issues with computer speed, and my company suffered hours of support time patching and babysitting the stuff. Anything BUT “Worry-Free,” IMO.
Late last week, I helped a new client with their email – their old cloud filters got turned off unexpectedly, and they needed to get their email back and running quickly. I got their MX record changed and pointed to my company’s cloud filters, and did all the other things needed to get their email flowing again, and a couple hours later, they were back and running.
Or so I thought.
Turns out they have an ‘orders’ email that is set to auto-forward to a supplier’s external email address, and once the change was made, these messages started bouncing with a ‘Too Many Hops’ message coming back from the far-end server.
Counting up the hops in the email header, and there were exactly 16 ‘Received’ hops.
Long story short(er), and it turned out the supplier has Trend’s Interscan Messaging Security Suite installed in front of their Exchange 2007, and deep in the bowels of one of the .ini files lies a ‘MaxHopCount’ setting of 16.
Really? 16?
Exchange 5.5 had a default of 18 (circa 1997); Exchange 2000 actually dropped that default to 15; Exchange 2003 bumped it to 30; Exchange 2007 left it at 30; and Exchange 2010 now defaults to 60.
Why the increase? Well, for one, there’s a lot more servers and routers on the Internet, but additionally, mail now is more likely to be filtered in the cloud through several servers before it gets to its destination.
My company’s email service goes through about 7 hops before it gets delivered, running the mail through spam & anti-virus filters as it goes. When mail is redirected, that then doubles the count to 14. Add the initial and final ‘Receive’ hops, and you’re up to 16. The far end actually added an additional hop going from their IMSS server to Exchange, which pushed it over the edge and made it fail.
Thanks to the Userfull Blog and Yanissa for posting the answer to the dilemma.
And a big #FAIL to Trend Micro. Out of curiosity, I searched through the IMSS Admin and Install guides and it mentions the MaxHopCount parameter exactly ZERO times.
Client is happy again, and I learned something new today. I also advised my client’s supplier to consider other solutions to Trend. They’ve not been terribly impressed with them lately either. And that’s too bad … I used to champion Trend products for business, but for me and my clients they lost sight of where their strengths were.
I’ve been a Blackberry user now for about 3 years. Before that I was on Windows Mobile, and before that was using the Kyocera 7035 (Palm).
They all did what I wanted them to – email mostly, and with Canadian carriers having been dragged into the 21st century, it’s actually possible to do more with data plans without needing a bank loan.
So now I UberTwitter (er, UberSocial), a little Facebooking, and Google search from my Blackberry Bold 9780, but I find myself wanting more.
The biggest change going to the Blackberry was the lack of touch screen – a bit of a step backwards from WM and Palm – but the abilities of email and the form-factor outweighed that lack of touch, plus I needed to ‘eat the dog food’ with Blackberry Server and become an expert (which I have) so I can support my clients on Blackberry (which I do).
Obviously, Android has taken the market by storm, and I just realized I haven’t mentioned the iPhone yet (it’s not even a consideration for me – I absolutely must have a hard keyboard).
And I’m a bit of a Microsoft fanboy, I’ll admit.
So I’ve got a hankerin’ to try Windows Phone 7 – or more accurately, the latest release candidate, ‘Mango’, which I believe will be v8, and if the reviews are to be believed, Windows Phone is actually an awesome platform. Even Dilbert’s creator is giving it a whirl.
But what phone to buy? <—link there to something interesting.
I’ve been browsing the showcases at cell shops whenever I happen by one of them, and the Windows Phones are conspicuous in their absence, and the buzz on the Interweb for those who have them all seem to indicate that if you ask one of the cell-shop employees for a Windows Phone, they might look at you like you have a disease, and quickly lead you to the Android phones.
Which seems a little sad. Windows Phone is likely getting a bad rap. Is it a hangover from how long they let Windows Mobile languish? Absolutely. I think it’s also due to a lack of front-line motivation at the cell-shops to promote and sell them, and this is where Microsoft has to do something, I believe.
And I don’t think they’re going to make much headway getting others to sell it for them – cell phone dealers are a funny bunch. They’re in it to make money (funny, huh?). And past experience with Windows Mobile wasn’t great, and with Android, they have something the public has latched onto (read “The Tipping Point”), and it’s an easy sell. It’s the path of least resistance for the sales folks. And I worked retail in the electronics business for many years (in fact my first real sales job was at Krazy Krazy in Winnipeg, after a 6 week stint selling waterbeds). So I know first-hand what that sales job is all about. Food & rent.
Microsoft has an uphill battle to fight, and they’re not going to win it by getting the cellular dealers to be their vanguard.
I think they need a 2-pronged approach:
1. Supply IT service providers with Windows Phone hardware – for FREE. These are the people who are in front of businesses day in and day out, and if they aren’t using Windows Phone, neither will their clients. And it wouldn’t be a hard throw – these clients are already Microsoft fans – they use Windows desktop and server O/S’s and Microsoft Office. If they see their IT people using Windows Phone, and get demoed by them, they’re far more likely to want one themselves. And if the business people like them, they might actually influence consumer choice among their friends.
Suggestion to Microsoft – do this now with your Small Business Specialists (including Canada).
2. Microsoft retail stores. Apple has proven that if you give people a place to go and touch stuff, they’ll buy it. Cell-phone dealer shops don’t count (see above). Microsoft presently has 11 retail stores – all in the U.S. – and they’ve announced an expansion of 75 more stores in the next 2-3 years. Apple now has over 300 stores, and though 75 will certainly help, this strategy alone is not going to be enough to get Windows Phone’s market-share up to where it they want it. Refer to point #1 above.
A 3rd point – keep up the TV ads. They’re actually pretty good (and I don’t see enough of them).
History has taught us that the best technology does not always win (e.g. Betamax vs. VHS), and I’m afraid if Microsoft doesn’t step up to the plate and do something other than tell everyone how great Windows Phone is, it’s going to die on the vine. Stores are great, but if any company understands the power of their partner channel, Microsoft should (again, see point #1 above).
Lastly, as a Canadian, I have to point out that getting unlocked Windows Phone hardware needs to be easier. I want to buy one online from a reputable source, like Dell. In fact, Dell has a really nice phone I’d love to buy (and I’d do it RIGHT NOW – if I could), but it’s only available from Dell in the U.S. <sigh>.
Haven’t posted for a while, and found this worthy…
Google Apps for Business? Not.
Published February 4, 2011 Cloud , Google , Microsoft 1 CommentTags: Cloud Google Microsoft
When it comes to relying on technology for running your business, should you go cheap and sign up with Google?
My friend from Calgary thinks not, and I agree. It will cost you more than you save, and earn you less than you’ll make using Microsoft.
http://stuartcrawford.com/my-experiences-running-a-business-on-google-apps/
I’ve been around computers a long time. Not as long as some like Steve Gibson of GRC, but long enough that my first programming experience was on an IBM punch card machine and programs were written and run in Fortan V on a mainframe in downtown Winnipeg from a remote card-reader at my High School (go Westwood!).
Grade 11 saw the delivery of the famed Trash-80’s (model III’s) mid-year, and grade 12 we got some model IV’s and Apple IIe’s. Mr. Houck was a pretty smart Comp Sci teacher, and he let a few of us play with these machines any time we wanted. One day in grade 12 he showed me my attendance card with a line through it and he’d written across it “independent study.” I took that to heart (somewhat to his chagrin I’m sure), as from that point on, I walked in an out of his class literally any time I wanted (even during lectures to other classes).
In return, I had to keep up my marks (not hard – comp sci in grade 12 in the early 80’s was cake), AND show him how things worked with these new-fangled computers. I think he just liked seeing us kids get a kick out of them.
They were awesome (there was a dedicated @ key – genius). I bought a model IV that very year, and to this day it sits in a box under my basement stairs (and every time my wife sees it I get asked when I’m getting rid of it!). Dual 5-1/4” floppy drives and 64K of RAM (expandable to 128K!). The expansion connector on the bottom allowed the connection of a cassette machine for ‘tape’ backup, and for external hard drives. If I recall, 20MB was a monster drive back then.
Long preamble, but what I learned early on was that data storage mediums were important. Pretty much all my floppies were bought as single-sided, that we converted to double sided by cutting out the write-protect notch on the cover, and using a single-hole punch on the inside part of the cover (hard to describe). PICTURE. For a couple of years in the early 90’s when I went back to university, I actually used it to write essays using Scripsit. It’s been in a box ever since (I wonder if those disks are still readable?).
By the year 2004, I had seen my share of hard drives fail, and I’d never given much thought to it beyond try to fix with ‘chkdsk’, and if that didn’t help, get a new one. It was then than I fell into the IT business after working with computers from an admin perspective off and on for the previous 25-odd years, and thought perhaps there was a better answer.
Along came Podcasts, and I listened to a lot of diverse podcasts, but loved the techie ones of course, including SecurityNow! (still the most popular tech podcast there is), and it was there I learned about Spinrite.
Spinrite has saved me more than once – and I’m writing this on my Dell E6500 laptop that I had installed a new Seagate Momentus XT 500GB drive on only 2 weeks ago, that earlier tonight would not boot. It refused to even get detected. So I popped it out, slaved it to my dedicated test machine and ran it on level 2. 2 hours later, I’m back up and happy.
I don’t know of any other tools that do what Spinrite does. What I do know is that it works. Before I bought it (I have 2 copies, and have had clients buy them for themselves), I did my due diligence and read up on it and decided it looked legit. No kidding. Though some drives are FUBAR, it has been worth way more than I paid for it.
As long as we have spinning drives, Spinrite will have a place in my IT tool chest. If you have a drive that won’t boot, or your system is constantly blue-screening (the infamous ‘blue screen of death’ or BSOD), Spinrite is worth a shot. You do have to pay for it first. If it doesn’t fix your drive, and you want your money back, just ask GRC for a refund.
I’ve never met Steve (or Leo), and my listening of SecurityNow! has been reduced to a handful of episodes a year (loved the ‘dog-killer’), and I get nothing out of promoting Spinrite other than the joy of knowing I’m giving props to a truly great product that does exactly what it says it will do – fix your hard drive if it’s possible to be fixed.
Thanks Steve.
Looks like this just got released in the last day or so. Writing this post with the new/upgraded Live Writer – awesome program.
The new Office Live site is pretty nifty as well – moves all docs to SkyDrive (where I was keeping everything anyway), and now has WebApps integrated.
Microsoft’s done something really good here, so go get it!
Hyper-V VSS Writer Failures in Backups on 2008R2
Published September 22, 2010 Hyper-V , Server2008 Leave a CommentWith patch Tuesday last week, I dutifully updated my company’s servers accordingly, and while I was at it, updated BackupAssist to version 6.
And then backups started to fail on creating shadow copies of the virtual machines.
After some hair pulling over a couple of days, I found some good guidance in troubleshooting the issue here:
Diagnosing Failures in Windows Server Backup – (VSS/SPP Errors)
Turned out Shadow Copies on my SBS 2008 VM weren’t working and they needed to be reset.
Some days you’re the hammer…
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