Relics of the IT underworld

Well time for another exciting tech tip as we stumble along the shadow of the valley of dead computers. I know that most people will say OS/2 what is that, but this week is detailing the OS/2 trick to revival. I recently encountered this beast while working on a voicemail system that was about 16 years old. It was a good voicemail system and didn't need anything fancy so OS/2 fit the bill at the time. The first word of advice I would have is to make sure you have plenty of medicine by your working space of choice as OS/2 is not around for obvious reasons which you will later discover and need this for. The biggest problem I found with the operating system was it is not very "user frinedly ". I say this because a couple of things I did while restoring expected you to just except the factor that it happened just like magic. I like the simplistic "I completed" message and see why it helps to enforce our users into thinking everythings okay. Try not getting one wit...

Have you ever found yourself with needing to make a copy of a CD for backup? I have this happen all the time especially since I hate to have a big book of software taking up space with everything else I have to worry about. Never fear DD is here! This handy utility has been around for a while but there is one caveat you need to watch out for in Windows 7. Below you will see the problem Now everybody looking is probably scratching there heads saying hey doesn't look like an error because it says completed successfully. Well my Friends unfortunately it does far from complete when you go to look for the file. The good news is there is an easy solution. Close all of your file manager and my computer locations that have either a drive or network location open. Magically once this is done you now have the ability to make the ISO you were trying to make. I would like to see them make a more detailed error for this.

Had an interesting question run across my mind today. How do you know that Microsoft really acknowledges a company as a certified partner? After all it's great that you use the logo on your page but the logo is just like most photos of the Loch N ess monster, Easy to fake. I could put the logo on my blog if i wanted to simply by right clicking and saving a copy and then uploading it. How scary was that ? So to find out the answer to the question everyone wants to know I simply called on the resources of Microsoft themselves. Everybody tends to think that Microsoft is a big giant whale that you never want to talk to. This couldn't be farther from the truth! Every time I have had a question I have gotten professional and courteous representatives to help me through my issues. This experience was no different and I was able to find my answer quickly. Not only was the answer easy to find but it gave me a new tool to look at if a partner is really a partner. That way if I am lo...

For all of you out there that are young pups who have to listen to people like me say I remember the day and trust me there are older days actually, Punch cards for example,vaacum tubes, if we really want to go for the gusto lets talk about an abacus. Now that's out of the wayonto the real matter at hand. After an enjoyable weekend enter the dreaded Monday. Set the scene with an entrance into another dimension where everybody in the meeting is talking about how well the production line is running. Lulled into this false sense of security I come out of the meeting to discover that yes indeed there must be some sort of strange vacuum in the conference room which allows for an alternate set of reality to play out. With the alternate reality bubble burst you are immediately accosted by a technology that was developed when I was growing up and what fun would it be without having to remember how to actually use it. Now if anybody does a little Google sea...

This one rank s up there with the very annoying for my end users. I know that they frequently find themselves trying to do something and it fails miserably and then this little gem pops up. Scouring the interent though finds a nice and quick fix detailed below. First go to control panel and click on the internet options. This will bring up the familiar settings dialog box that you use within Interent Explorer. On the new window click on the advanced tab. Under the browsing section you will want to click two items, both of which start with the same phrase Disable Script Debugging. 1. Disable Script Debugging(Internet Explorer) 2. Disable Script Debugging(Other) That done you will shortly find yourself gaining much needed sanity.

Okay time to reach deep down and pull out a miracle. Have you ever wanted to format some text in an excel document? Well with that said anybody who has tried knows that it isn't an easy task. That is unless you happen to do a little VBA code in the background. The problem with Excel, and it's not so much a problem as it is designed that way, is that it doesn't offer much when you need to modify something with a letter or non numeric value in it. This requires you to write some code to perform some good old fashioned string parsing. For those of you who have never worked with VBA don't worry it doesn't bite, it is actually very simple. All of the functions to read, write, and look through your string are built into VBA. With that said let's fire up excel and head into town. The example I am going to demonstrate here is based off of a simple string needing to be turned into a MAC address like format. In this case I like the CISCO xxxx.xxxx.xxxx format since that...

As I work from day to day in my shiny Windows 7 operating system I simply think to myself "Self...How did I ever get along without some of these features for so long". However, looking around you will find people buying laptops and having them reloaded with Windows XP. Participating in this ritual of reloading is like taking part in a badly written movie. You know the one where it starts out with unbelievably bad opening credits to the muscular dude hitting on the chick....only goes downhill from there. Each laptop I get is like receiving a basket labeled Humpty Dumpty. Some of these machines take hours to piece together all of the drivers the computer manufactures swear won't work with XP. Trust me don't try calling either because they have the line down to a science about we don't support that operating system and if you would like to install the original one they would be more than happy to help you or worse yet that unit is out of warranty. I had the pleasure ...