RTFM…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I haven’t really come across Fujitsu PCs and servers since I left ICL in 2000; but now I’m back on board at Fujitsu Services (same company – different name), not surprisingly, my new work laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S7010D. It seems like a really good notebook PC (although I find the absence of quick launch function keys in order to make room for a PIN-entry security pad a little strange – I would have preferred an integrated fingerprint reader like those offered on selected IBM ThinkPads).

When I brought the laptop home and the onboard wireless LAN card didn’t detect any of the four wireless networks within range of my home office, I naturally assumed it was broken (based on previous experience with a Dell Latitude D600); but then I had a similar problem with Bluetooth communications so I did the unthinkable (for any self-respecting IT infrastructure consultant) – I called the IT helpdesk.

In what must have qualified for my most embarrassing helpdesk call ever, I found out that there is a switch on the front of the PC to enable/disable the wireless LAN and Bluetooth module. Once enabled, everything sprung into life. Doh!

Maybe next time I’ll RTFM.

Practical advice for webmasters

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last year I blogged some advice on spam-proofing a website from Thomas Brunt’s Outfront site. Although Outfront is billed as a “FrontPage learning community” (urgh!), it also includes some practical advice for web authoring techniques such as looking at writing pages which are compliant with web standards, advanced use of mailto links and preparing photos for publication on a website, as well as some topics I have covered in this blog like custom error pages and the use of .htaccess files.

The site also features a good description of RSS (although most people familiar with blogs will also know RSS!) and design tips for producing a good website.

Using e-mail properly

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Craig Murphy has a whole load of interesting advice filed under project management, and one which caught my eye tonight was his post on using e-mail properly. Speaking as someone who spent two hours yesterday filing the last month’s worth of business e-mail (after spending too much of his holiday time generally getting his files which were spread across several PCs and external hard disks into some kind of order), I think I might try to take some of this on board in my new job…

Getting around Windows file protection/system file checker

Posted on By Mark Wilson

For anyone who’s ever struggled to get rid of a Windows component without Windows file protection/system file checker kicking in, I recommend Wes Miller’s post on how to banish Movie Maker from your system. This doesn’t just apply to Movie Maker – you can use the same method to remove any non-critical (or critical for that matter!) component from Windows.

Microsoft RAW image thumbnailer and viewer for Windows XP

Posted on By Mark Wilson

When I’m not “messing around with technology” my main hobby is photography and last September I bought a Nikon D70 digital SLR camera. Since then, I’ve taken almost 3000 digital images, all as 6 megapixel JPEG images, but for those images which are a bit more than just family snaps I’d really like to make use of raw mode (without needing to buy Nikon Capture software). Tonight, I found the Microsoft raw image thumbnailer and viewer for Windows XP.

Although this won’t allow me to edit raw images, according to Microsoft, it does provide “the ability to view, organize, and print photos captured in raw image formats from supported Canon and Nikon digital cameras”. There’s also a white paper on viewing and organising raw images in Windows XP.

In fact, there’s a whole load of digital photography resources on Microsoft’s professional photography and digital photography microsites (I picked that tip up via RoudyBob.NET), including a link to Microsoft’s press release on raw support in Windows.

More Windows XP eye-candy

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last year, I posted a blog entry about installing the “Energy Blue” theme on a computer running Windows XP Professional.

Now there’s another option for those who are bored with the standard Windows XP wallpaper, but want something that still looks like part of Windows XP – the “New Bliss” wallpaper from the “Royale” theme, which, like Energy Blue, was originally designed for Windows XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE) 2005 but later ported to Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (and is now available for all Windows XP users). This, and some other interesting wallpapers (Kiwi Bliss, Boulders, etc.) are available from Microsoft in New Zealand (I’m not convinced about the Queen’s birthday version though).

(For those who have access, I quite like the Longhorn.jpg wallpaper from Windows Vista Beta 1 too).

New job at Fujitsu Services – no longer blogging at Conchango

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Over the last few years, I’ve been a consultant for a major IT Services company; worked for a UK-based support services company (and hated most of my time there); contracted for Australia’s largest independent magazine distributor; worked in-house designing and project managing a Europe-wide infrastructure refresh for a major fashion design, marketing and retail organisation; and then I joined Conchango, a mid-sized consultancy which specialises in delivering technology-driven business solutions that incorporate the latest methodologies and technologies.

I’ve worked with Conchango, first as a client and then as a consultant, for about 3 and a half years in total but the time has come for me to move on. For anybody who lives within commuting distance of London or Surrey, enjoys the variety of work which consultancy offers, and who knows a significant amount about enterprise intelligence, interactive media, agile development and program management, or mobility, Conchango is a fantastic place to work. It feels a bit strange to be leaving a company that I still enjoy and which is packed with talented people but as Conchango’s focus shifts away from infrastructure services, I’ve decided to rejoin Fujitsu Services (it was ICL when I was there just over 5 years ago) to embrace a new role as a Senior Customer Solutions Architect, taking technical responsibility for IT infrastructure projects within their Architecture and Design Group.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most at Conchango (apart from being lucky enough to feature in the IT press) is that they encourage blogging (there’s a whole load of Conchango bloggers now) although my blog output has prompted some to comment on its volume and to say they almost expect to see what I had for breakfast appear next! One of my clients says he can find out what he’s been up to by reading these pages! I just hope that what I write is useful and that people enjoy reading it. Since last November, most of my posts here have been mirrored on my Conchango blog – from today, that will no longer be the case, and as far as I know, Fujitsu doesn’t have company-sponsored blogs, so this site is once again the single focus of my technology-related blogging (although I still hope to have the occasional article published on the Microsoft TechNet Industry Insiders blog).

I’ve got loads of stuff waiting for me to write about (but not much time to write it) – in the meantime, watch this space…

Bad timing…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

For the last couple of days, the Microsoft File Transfer Manager has been running on one of my PCs, downloading 5.33Gb of Windows code name “Longhorn” and IE7 beta software from Microsoft Connect (averaging out at about 65kbps). Sometime last night, it all finally completed but then a few minutes ago, DHL delivered a package from Microsoft in Redmond containing… you guessed it… bootable DVDs of Windows Vista Professional Beta 1 and Windows Code Name “Longhorn” Beta 1. Arghhhhh!!!

“Incessant infrastructure and tech gossip”

Posted on By Mark Wilson

For a while now I’ve wanted a catchy subtitle for my blog (something descriptive, maybe with a touch of humour, and perhaps also a little bit thought provoking – like, for example, a “grey matter honeypot, distracting the mind with information overload“) but I’m just not witty enough to come up with one myself.

Well, now it looks like fellow Conchango blogger, Jamie Thomson, has come up with the goods for me in his latest post, where he describes my musings as “incessant infrastructure and tech gossip”. Well, it’s certainly descriptive!

More on integrating device drivers into an unattended Windows build

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Earlier in the year I blogged about discovering unknown devices in Windows for integration into an unattended build. What I didn’t detail at the time was how to work out which device driver files are needed for a particular device.

Some device driver packages are pretty simple, but others are several megabytes in size. Rarely is the whole driver package required and it is usually sufficient to just copy a few files to the (RIS) installation source – generally:

  • An .INF (setup information) file with an associated .CAT (security catalog) file.
  • One or more .SYS (system) files.
  • Possibly some .EXE (application) and .DLL (application extension) files.

I usually start off by reading the setup information file which relates to the Windows XP version of a driver. It’s straightforward enough to identify the catalog file (used to confirm the digital signature for the other files) from the CatalogFile= line in the [Version] section and for many simple .INFs, it is easy to identify the device driver files from the [SourceDiskFiles] section, but sometimes the setup information file supports a variety of devices and not all of the files are required. For complex driver configurations (e.g. an ATI video driver), I usually copy the .INF and .CAT files to the installation source and then attempt to install the driver from a reference workstation. As Windows XP throws an error each time it is unable to locate a file, I add the requisite file to the installation source, retry and repeat until all the necessary files are present (which normally only takes a few minutes).

Some device drivers include a subfolder within the [SourceDiskNames] section. In this case you have a choice – either edit the .INF (not recommended as it will break the digital signature), or place the appropriate files (geneally all except the .INF and the .CAT into an appropriately named subfolder and extend the OemPnPDriversPath in the [Unattended] section of the unattended setup file.

One final note. In my unattended build, I have support for a variety of PC models, some of which use different drivers for what would seem to be identical hardware. For example, both the IBM ThinkPad T40 and the Compaq Evo N620c have an Agere Systems AC’97 Modem, but the driver version I downloaded from IBM and integrated into the build for the T40 was not recognised by the N620c (due to different PCI device instance IDs – the T40 implementation is PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24C6&SUBSYS_05241014&REV_01\3&61AAA01&0&FE whilst the N620c is PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24C6&SUBSYS_00580E11&REV_03\3&61AAA01&0&FE). I didn’t have access to a spare T40 in order to regression test a version of the driver with support for both device instances (assuming there is one), so I downloaded a version of the driver from HP, which does work with the N620c. Although the .INF and .CAT files are different, both the IBM and HP drivers have a number of files in common (AGRSM.SYS, AGRSMMSG.EXE and AGRSMDEL.EXE – albeit with different date and time stamps), so I left the newest versions of the common files in place (which happen to be the IBM versions). As I haven’t changed the files for the IBM driver, the T40 build should be fine, but the N620c build fails a check on the digital signature due to a mismatch between the file versions. There are two ways around this: either place the two driver versions into different folders and extend the OemPnPDriversPath in the [Unattended] section of the unattended setup file; or disable the check for signed drivers as detailed in Microsoft knowledge base article 314479.