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Darik's Boot And Nuke
by lunarg on December 16th 2010, at 15:57

For an easy to use disk erasing tool: http://www.dban.org/.

It's pretty important when you retire your old computer that you securely delete the contents of your hard disk. Even with a regular format, it is still possible to retrieve a lot of data from the disk. DBAN can help you with that.

 
No Access ODBC on 64-bit Windows
by lunarg on December 16th 2010, at 15:55

By default, there's no ODBC driver available on 64-bit Windows systems for Access and Foxpro. This is because they only are native 32-bit at the moment. There are a few workarounds present, but the easiest would be to stick with 32-bit if you need this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957570

 
Installing Android on iPhone 3G
by lunarg on November 19th 2010, at 09:08

Lifehacker published a really interesting howto, explaining how to install Android on your iPhone in six easy steps:

http://lifehacker.com/5693309/how-to-install-android-on-an-iphone-in-six-easy-steps

 
Juniper Networks acquired Trapeze Networks
by lunarg on November 18th 2010, at 16:36
 
Invoking the Apple Hardware Test
by lunarg on October 21st 2010, at 12:19
If you're having trouble with your Mac and think the cause could be hardware-related, you can run the Apple Hardware Test. It's a set of tools by Apple which perform basic and extensive tests on your hardware to see whether they are still okay. These tools are available for anyone with a Mac, and are either preinstalled on your system, or available through your OS'es installation discs.

Applies usually to older models of Mac.

You can download the AHT disc images for a number of older Mac models through here: http://www.info.apple.com/support/aht.html.

Insert the Apple Hardware Test disc into the CD drive.

Upon starting/restarting your Mac, immediately press and hold C on your keyboard. K  ...
 
Implement charts in your website
by lunarg on October 20th 2010, at 12:09

Those looking for an easy way to implement dynamic charts in your websites, should check out Open Flash Chart.

It accepts data in JSON format, allowing an easy and uniform way to create all kinds of charts. Check out its website for more information on its features.

 
Debian: turn off incremental (pdiff) package updates
by lunarg on October 20th 2010, at 11:57
Debian has introduced incremental updating of package lists. While in theory, this is a great feature, it is not always practical.

Incremental updates enable to download less data by fetching only the differences between the previous versions of the list. This results in significant savings concerning the amount of downloaded data.
The unfortunate downside is that a whole lot more fetches need to be done as each incremental update requires a server request. This becomes apparent when you don't often download package list updates, and there are suddenly a whole number of files waiting to be downloaded. The overhead of requesting each incremental slice separately causes the update to take mor  ...
 
(a list of) IEC power cable connectors
by lunarg on October 19th 2010, at 16:36

A list of IEC power cable connectors, useful as a resource for ordering spare parts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_connector

 
Search at Belgacom
by lunarg on October 15th 2010, at 12:02

More information about the search at Belgacom: it took place last wednesday (Oct 14), after a complaint of Mobistar and KPN at the Raad voor Mededinging (a counsil which keeps an eye on companies keeping to Belgian competition laws).

The investigation is about the wholesale services of DSL where Belgacom alledgedly would have invoked obstruction measurements.

The search is only a step in the whole investigation, without actual accusations. The entire procedure could take several years before completion.

 
Windows 2008 R2 console freezes in vSphere console
by lunarg on October 15th 2010, at 11:54
At work, I'm currently deploying a Windows 2008 R2 on a VMware ESXi 4.0, and noticed an odd behaviour. At irregular intervals, the console of the guest OS simply locks up and doesn't do anything anymore. Networking and remote access seem to work fine, it's just the console that is freezed. Restarting the vSphere client doesn't help, and the only way to get rid of the problem is by hard-resetting the VM. The issue only occurs on Windows 2008 R2, the other VMs run fine.

The problem is caused by the VMware SVGA II driver, and has two underlying issues: the driver itself, and an apparent lack of video RAM (due to the new HW-accelerated GDI of 2008R2/Win7).

The most quickest way is to get rid o  ...
 
Relocation to Datadock
by lunarg on October 14th 2010, at 13:44

A lot of the server infrastructures currently located in Frankfurt will relocate to the new state-of-the-art Datadock data center in Strassbourg. This includes this website's hosting (Server4you) as well. The exact time of relocation is currently unknown, but estimates by the end of 2010.

The official site: http://www.datadock.eu/en/index.php.

 
General routing problems at Belgacom
by lunarg on October 14th 2010, at 12:04

(10:00): There are currently some general routing problems, affecting the majority of the customers at Belgacom. The problems started around 7am this morning. I've contacted Belgacom, and they said the problem would be resolved by 11am.
Unofficially, rumor has it that the police has raided Belgacom because of suspected fraud. Whether this has got something to do with the routing problems is unknown. More details and corrections will follow.

Update (12:00): after careful testing and a bit of a hick-up (routing between Telenet and Belgacom still gave troubles), everything seems to be in order again. Additional news about the alledged raid will follow as soon as I have more info.

 
Internet speed tests
by lunarg on October 13th 2010, at 11:42

A list of internet speed tests:

 
Problems with Firefox plugin of Foxit Reader 4.2
by lunarg on October 11th 2010, at 15:53

At work, several computers were in the process of being reinstalled. All those computers suffered from a problem where Foxit Reader plugin would not correctly work in Firefox.
While we haven't managed to really fix the issue, we resolved it by uninstalling the latest version 4.2, and installed version 4.1.1 instead. Once installed, we then upgraded to the latest version using the update functionality inside Foxit.

 
Unable to disable Java Update
by lunarg on October 8th 2010, at 11:16
There is a problem with disabling Java Update when you're running Vista/2008/7 with UAC enabled. Trying to disable automatic updates through the control panel does not work as the setting will not "stick"

The problem is caused by an oversight of Sun. Running the configuration applet from Control Panel means it gets started as a unprivileged user, and the automatic update setting cannot be changed by such a user.

Rather than simply kick out jusched.exe from the registry (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Run, there's another way. Open an Explorer and manually find the control panel file (called javacpl.exe); default is this: C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\javacpl.exe. Right-c  ...
 
Office 2010 installation files
by lunarg on October 5th 2010, at 14:19

End-users are no longer required to buy Office 2010 media. If you have an product key card, you can download Office 2010 from the website, free of charge:

http://www.office.com/productkeycard

For OEM manufacturers, direct link to the Office 2010 pre-installation kit. Unlike 2007, this release is also available for download free of charge:

http://oem.microsoft.com/script/contentpage.aspx?PageID=566219

 
Many Eyes...
by lunarg on October 1st 2010, at 14:21

For easy (and shared) visualisation, IBM has this available online: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/.
It is a complete online tool for graphing an arbitrary set of data.

 
Configure Automatic Updates in a Non–Active Directory Environment
by lunarg on September 24th 2010, at 13:12

Some information about configuring WSUS without AD (and thus, without group policies):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708449%28WS.10%29.aspx

 
Do you want to know more about Belgium?
by lunarg on September 24th 2010, at 11:44

 
Slow XP boot after installation of .NET v4
by lunarg on September 21st 2010, at 15:35
With the push of .NET Framework v4 through Windows Update, I've noticed a problem with Windows XP clients. They all suddenly started to boot up slowly, i.e. it takes an abnormal long time before the network stack is started.

Logical deduction and analysis of the problem lead me to check which services were taking a long time to start, as this could be an indication of cause. After rebooting, then immediately digging into Services (services.msc) shows a service trying to start, called Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_X86.
As the users of the affected computers are not using any .NET 4 applications, and having no clue what the service does, I tried disabling it. To my honest surprise,  ...
 
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