Thursday, March 31, 2011

Dell IT Assistant Java Change

To allow Dell's Open Manage IT Assistant to run on your machine, you have to have java.  You also have to have this entry in your "Runtime Parameters"
-Xmx1024M -Djava.net.preferIPv6Addresses=true

Disable Hibernation

Issue: Some Windows 2008 Servers have Hibernation turned on, which creates a rather large hiberfil.sys file at the root.
Solution: From an elevated command prompt run
"powercfg.exe /hibernate off"

Thursday, March 3, 2011

SQL Server 2005 - Database won't backup translog

Issue: Everytime we try to backup the translog of one database it fails.

Solution: First we changed it from Simple to Full Recovery Model, Secondly we looked in the SQL Server's Log folder for a log from the backup attempt.  It contained this error "BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup".  Come to find out, you have to perform a full backup, before it will let you back up the transaction log.

Google Docs - new file with no sides

Issue: We don't like the new format Google docs is using and don't like having to squint and have all that wasted space on the sides of the page either.

Solution: https://docs.google.com/?action=newdoc - found this in a forum.  This link opens a new doc in the old wide format

UPDATE: This URL no longer works to create a new document without side margins.  Let me know if you have a solution to this.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Screen Shots through RDP Remote Desktop

Issue: The customer needed to make a screen shot of a window opened inside of an RDP window on their computer.

Solution: Ctrl-Alt-- | Press Ctrl, (while holding that down press) Alt and then the minus key on your numeric key pad.  When you do this you get only the small active window opened inside the active RDP window.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Optitek PDS version 9 hangs at exit

Issue: When our customers would close their application PDS 9 it would hang, then EKRN.exe (their anti-virus product) would spike the CPU to 100%.

Solution: Using ProcMon.exe we were able to identify a conversation between ekrn.exe and c:\windows\pds9.ini.  We simply created an exclusion for c:\windows\pds9.ini and that fixed it.

Notes: ESET was really pretty smart about it.  We added an exclusion for c:\* (single star not *.*).  That fixed it. We removed it then filtered down for "C:\Documents and settings\*", "C:\Program Files\*" then finally "C:\windows\*".  Then we fired up Procmon.exe, set a filter of ( Path | contains | "c:\windows" ) then closed PDS9.exe.  We instantly saw the conversation between ekrn and pds9.ini and knew what was wrong.