New hosting website

We have just updated our hosting website http://www.hchosting.org.uk
We have enhanced the services on offer and have tried to make the site more presentable and easier to use.
Please pay a visit and give us your feedback.
Seasons greetings to all our clients and visitors

thefeedyard.com malware removed with stubware

A big thanks to the folk at Stubware.
I have visited a customer complaining of web pages being misdirected.
To say this was a surprise is an understatement. We only rebuilt the machine from new last week end. We installed Panda AV at build time and we copied users' data from the old disk (probably the source of the infection).
We ran Malwarebytes Antimalware which we have found to be pretty good at removing most things not found in normal AV programs. 17 infected items found but problem not solved.
After further inspection of the problem we found that all links in webpages were being hijacked by something called thefeedyard.com. A quick Google of this gave hints to use Malwarebytes so we ran it again and found a few infections ( probably reinfected since the last scan ).
We also found this reference to Stubware. With some concern that this might be software the likes of many registry cleaners we gave it a go. Downloaded, installed and ran it.
True it listed many items which are captured most of which are legitimate, however a click of a button showed only those that were suspect. 4 items in total. Deleted these and rebooted. Problem cleaned up.
So once again many thanks

Many thanks Nerdy Dork, we recovered MySQL files OK

That title will mean little to most of you but let me explain.
Earlier this year we built a web based program for a customer. We installed it on one of their Windows machines and they are into the swing of using it. Then disaster! The machine fails. Luckily for us the disk was intact and no data was lost which means that the MqSQL database we set up in our program should be intact. The only problem in being how do I get it across onto the rebuilt machine intact.
A quick search on google revealed this link http://www.nerdydork.com/restoring-mysql-innodb-files-on-windows.html which gave us the advice we needed.
Just to short cut we copied the data folder with the .frm files. We also then copied the complete configuration file - we did not worry about editing parts of it.
Database restored. Day saved. Heart rhythm can return to normal. Stress ball out of the window.
Once again a big thanks to Nerdy Dork and all those out there that give freely of their advice.

Where were Microsoft's Quality Assurance Team?

Where were QA when they allowed Vista to exist? Why am I stroppy about this?
Dead simple. I run Vista Business workstation on a 2003 domain. I have IE7 installed.
Today I want to access a site to check for client that their site is accessible remotely. Following what the supplier told us to do yesterday to allow Active X controls to install I got nowhere. Whatever I tried, whatever settings in IE I used, I could not get the Active X to install despite being offered the UAC control to specify the administrator and password credentials. This surely should be enough.
However I thought maybe I should log on as the administrator. So I logged off. 20 minutes later I am still waiting for the machine to offer me the log on screen. This includes having done a cold restart. 30 minutes later and after my second cold restart I have got my system back.
Surely logging off as one user and logging on as another is not difficult. Surely it should not require a reboot of the system? Surely we deserve better from the world's leading software developer.
Let hope QA have been awake during the long overdue release of Win7.

Adobe Photoshop Starter Edition Unlock Codes

My turn to attack Adobe. I hope our company never gets so big that we forget that the customer is important.
A client has some photos in Photoshop Starter Edition V3.2 and they cannot get to them. The program asks for a registration detail which the user has filled in and submitted several times to Adobe without getting and response. The program needs an unlock code to continue.
We spent some time on the phone waiting for it to be answered - something regular readers of this blog might recognise gets my goat quicker than anything.
A customer support agent eventually was able to give us a code - it did not work.
Later we tried again to get a code - half an hour without response except from the automated phone system rubbish. In this time we googled the issue. A complete forum seems to be devoted to helping people who cannot get an unlock code from Adobe.
Adobe has now ceased support for this product. One forum indicated that support ceased on 30th June and no more registrations were going to be accepted after 31st July. That is appalling.
A product that is only 6 years old may well go out of development but there will be a very large installed base which needs support. A company with a product which gives rise to so much aggravation with registration and unlock problems needs extra support not reduced support.
This sort of issue makes sure that I do not recommend products from this source.
I appreciate that software developers need to protect their investment. I appreciate that this means they might engage in the sort of authentication / registration regimes we see all too frequently but it does not mean that developers should ignore their customer base.
It gives the developer a bad name. It gives the industry a bad name. It is just poor customer relations. It is just bad. All too often it come when companies get too big and remote from their customer base that they cease caring.
As a footnote I would like to say this. If a support organisation cannot field phone calls within a reasonable amount of time - say 30 - 60 seconds - then this smacks of two things. One: they need to take on more staff to make sure customers are not left sitting in automated phone queues. Two: they should improve their products so that they need less support.

Norton removal tools expires

Why do Symantec create a Norton removal tool to remove their incredibly poor software from your machine and then have so that is expires before you can use it.
We have previously added blogs to this page castigating Norton for poor product quality. The last time was to complain that a product that you might use to prevent problems such as Denial of Service (DOS) attacks behaves to deny you your service when the product expires.
So we had a machine in recently that had an old version of Norton on it. We could not remove this using Add/remove programs.
So went to download the removal tool. We had a copy on our server but this failed to run because it reported it had expired. So now the Norton website lists a number of removal tools depending on what was initially installed. Now I don't know what was installed because I cannot run it to find out. Second I am not interested in finding out what was installed I simply want to get rid of it.
I downloaded what looked like the most suitable version but when I ran it it reported that it had expired. I am not going to download the other 9 or 10 variants on NRT just in the off chance one might work.
This is the only product I know where the developer has had to write a special removal tool and even that does not work.
In the end I went through Registry Editor to remove keys that related to Symanec and Norton (well not all because you do have to be a bit careful), then I deleted all the files of the relavant "c:\program files" and "c:\program files\common files" to get rid of the product.
This too is an exercise in how not to do something. The dirt that is left in registry everytime Norton does a live update beggars belief.
What has happened to the company who once had what was arguably the best AV product who now produces what is arguably one of the worst?

Web server based on OpenPanel

We have been experimenting with control panels for web hosting servers.
Commercially we have been running Plesk on our production servers but we needed to make ourselves a server for test purposes.
After a lot of searching we have come across the Openpanel project. We were looking for an open source freeware control panel able to run on Linux (LAMP) servers. From the screen shots this seemed to offer one of the cleanest interfaces around.
We built the server on an old Intel machine. We installed Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS using this simply to build the LAMP server.
We then downloaded and ran the Openpanel install process which ran a smoothly as any we have known. We then configured a domain using Openpanel and were able to FTP a website and view it without problem. The whole process from start to finish = 3 hours tops.
Our gratitude to the Openpanel project team.
We will offer our help to the project should it be needed.

Web server change

For all those who might have been affected; we recently had been experiencing some difficulties with our web server stalling for a few minutes at a time.
There was no obvious reason for this but we need to provide a reliable service to our hosted web users.
We have therefore replaced our old server with a better model (still based on AMD, Fedora and Plesk) and transferred all the data to the new server. For the most part the transfer went well.
We had a few problems with the emails.
The new server no longer accepts short email names so if you have your username entered as say 'fred' you now need to change your settings to 'fred@mydomain.co.uk'.
The new server also need smtp authentication so you need to change the outgoing mail server settings to read 'mail server requires authentication' and then set this to be 'same as pop3 server'.
Any difficulties then phone our support team in the normal way.
We apologise to users that experienced problems but we hope the new server gives a better and more reliable service to all our users.

New Digital Printing from MPL Print

The image just above this box is the cover of a new colour brochure produced by MPL Print on their new Xerox X700 digital printer.
The cover is printed on 300gsm gloss art board, the first insert is on 170gsm gloss art paper, the second insert is on 112gsm simulator (transparent paper) and the final insert is on 160gsm white pulpboard.
There is good colour saturation especially on the rough finished pulpboard.
We have recently had 400 DL size flyers produced on this machine. Litho quality printing without the need for long print runs.
If you are interested in producing short run professional presentation packs the contact MPL on 01708 757999, ask for Steve or Sarah.

DON'T BUY DELL - THEIR SERVICE STINKS

It is appalling! One hour on the phone to ask a question which they won't answer.
I have a customer laptop which has come in. Initially it looked like virus issues but after checking with two AV systems it isn't.
The symptoms are that sometimes on boot there is no mouse cursor. Sometimes the keyboard does not work. Sometimes it is OK.
So I phoned Dell to ask whether the machine was in warranty and if they could help identify the best way to fix it.
The first call lasted 6:30 minutes, after which time I closed the call. If I want to listen to music I will buy a CD of music more to my liking .
The second call lasted 10:30 minutes which got transferred between a number of departments before it finally failed when I asked to speak to someone who could speak and understand plain English.
On the third phone call which lasted 6:15 minutes, I asked for the postal address to find out where to send my invoice for wasted time only to be put back into a queue with some awful music again.
The fourth call lasted 31 minutes. I got the postal address so now I know where the invoice is going but back on the support desk I gave the service tag and was asked where the machine had been bought. I don't have that information - it is not mine - it belongs to a customer. After a stand up row I eventually got to speak to a supervisor.
I had another battle. Where was the machine bought? I don't know. We cannot progress your enquiry without validating this information. This is an enquiry to determine if the machine is in warranty. Once the service tag is given it is surely a simple matter of saying Yes or No. But no, "we have so many calls, we cannot give out that information without validation".
I was eventually directed to a web site where I can put in the service tag and it tells me. Only 9 days left by the way. Maybe they were hoping those extra 9 days would expire before they acknowledged the complaint and thus could charge extra because the warranty had expired.
I now have a good mind to put some random numbers into this just to check the warranty status of someone else's machine - all without the need to specify where the machine was bought. How ridiculous.
If I treated my customers like this I would soon have no business.
How do Dell survive? They sell crappy equipment at ridiculously low prices and then they have a captive audience - you have to use them to get anything done.
In a Customer focussed, service led industry Dell do not deserve to survive. I hope they don't.

A word to the wise. If you too have wasted YOUR time in this process send them the invoice - they might soon get the message.

Affiliate membership for Kashflow Accounting Software

We have now signed up with Kashflow online accounting software as an affiliate member. To access and sign up for Kashflow please navigate to our 'Partners' page and click on the Kashflow link.

Windows 7 RC1 under test at Hillier Consultants

Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 is now being run on one of our computers as a production machine.
Our set up is that all workstations connect to our domain server and all data is stored on that server so there is no locally stored data. Thus we can test Windows 7 in a real working environment without the risk of losing any data if things go seriously wrong.
The first viewing of Windows 7 beta left us unimpressed, however this release does seem a litle better.
It installed fine. Just a little annoyance when first installing there is a long delay without any progress bar while the disk is being formatted. Beyond that the install was trouble free. Most drivers were installed without the need for manufacturers disks but when we did the Vista drivers seemed to work OK.
We connected it to the domain without problem and at first glance it appeared to access the local network with better response times than Vista.
Internet access also seems to be improved.
The comparison with Vista is acute because we have set both machines to use a single keyboard, mouse and monitor via a KVM switch. Transferring from Vista to Win7 goes a dream, however there is a delay before mouse and keyboard respond when going from Win7 to Vista.
We are not installing MS Office on this machine yet but we have installed Open Office, Firefox & Thunderbird, Opera, Safari and FileZilla all of which loaded fine and seem to work without issues.
We installed Free AVG antivirus (Vista version) pro temp and this seems to be fine.
We are only at the end of our first 24 hours of testing so it is early days.
We will keep you posted of significant issues as we find them.

Microsoft piracy campaign scalps 12 more resellers

We have always been committed to making sure that we issue properly licenced software even if that means that we seem more expensive than other suppliers. That is not to say that we believe that software is fairly priced.
Software such as MS Office that can ship into almost every business always seems to pricey, sometimes costing almost as much as the machine it runs on.
That being said we want to be in business this year, next year and the year after that so we don't mess with shipping unlicensed software.

We came across this article by Alex Scroxton today, 28th April 2009. I think it explains why we take the attitude we do.

QUOTE
Microsoft’s voracious anti-piracy campaign has netted 12 more traders caught selling illegal software, with the bulk of the incidents in the North-West of England and Berkshire.

The resellers involved were all found to have been either selling software illegally or hard-disk loading.

Microsoft UK general manager of SMEs and partners, Scott Dodds, said that attitudes to piracy needed to change during the downturn.
“Historically, many in the channel have seen piracy as a relatively low priority, [but] at a time when the FSB claims 120 businesses a day are going bust, unfair competition puts pressure on resellers’ margins and threatens to drive them out of business,” he said.

Microsoft anti-piracy attorney Graham Arthur reiterated the vendor’s commitment to maintaining a level playing field, adding: “We will be more successful with a channel that’s 100% committed to do the same. If partners see suspicious buying patterns or too good to be true prices they should tell us.”
UNQUOTE

With the quality of open source GNU products offering alternatives to Microsoft there is never any reason to ship illegal software.

Microsoft user survey

Microsoft made a mistake the other day. They conducted a user survey online and sent one to me!!
There were several things they asked about and I responded as I felt fit but in the free form box at the end I decided to put in some of my pet gripes. Such as:-
Has anyone used a network diagnostic that returned anything other than 'Contact your network administrator'?
Has anyone ever used the update driver option in device manager when a driver is obviously having problems and received anything other that 'Windows could not find a more up to date version'?
Has anyone when installing new hardware used the 'look on the internet for latest software' and had Windows find anything?
I am sure there are other examples but they escape me at present.
If you wish to respond to this blog then please email me on stephen@hillierconsultants.com.

Microsoft networking seems to get worse

Is it just me or has Microsoft networking got worse over recent weeks.
On my home machine which never gets switched off, I used to be able to use networking functions at any time. In the last couple of months, Outlook refuses to collect mail unless I a) log of and log back on or b) hit the repair function on the network connection.
In the last couple of weeks at home and at work I have had timeouts on displaying web pages which then correctly display when I hit the refresh button.
To explain why I am writing this blog today I will offer an example. At work I have two computers on my desk, one running Vista Business, one running Ubuntu Hardy.
I was trying to access some pages on the Dell website (I won't bore you with why I would do such a foolhardy thing). My Vista machine was up and running. Go to IE (7) and type in www.dell.com. Wait for the first page to display, link to the next page and ...... Nothing. Windows connection display flashing back and forth.
After waiting for a while I decide to take action.
I boot up my Linux machine. I log on. I load Firefox. I type www.dell.com in the address bar. I get the first page displayed. I link to the next page and lo.... It displays BEFORE the Vista machine does. Albeit by only a few seconds but look at what it has done to get there.
Let's just consider the following.
Two machines of similar hardware spec. Both log on the the same domain server. Both use that domain server as the primary DNS server. Both access the internet through the same broadband link. Both accessed the same website pages. What is different. The operating system.
I have not in the past been one of those who knocks Microsoft, my posts on the Ubuntu forum bears witness to that, but why, oh why, with all the resources Microsoft can throw at a problem does the system perform slower and slower. None of the upgrades seem to improve performance. It seems that where we once thought we were wading in the thin sugary syrup, we now seem to be struggling through thick black treacle.
Come on Microsoft get it fixed.

Business Accounts - cross platform

We are getting excited by accounts systems!! Sad, but true. We have not been so keen on this subject since the mid 1980s.
Back in the early days of personal computers, businesses saw the benefits of having a computerised accounts system on their office computer. The benefits of inputting the data as you get it. being able to get regular Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports.
Back in those heady days the main contender in the PC market was Pegasus, a very professional but quite expensive package; and then came Sage.
Over the years Sage have become the de facto industry leader in the UK, but they do have an issue. Their product only works on Windows machines. Their support costs are high for many small businesses. Their latest offering has problems on domain based networks due to folder access rights.
So what might the alternative be? We think we might have found a good alternative to Sage. Accountz offers an easy to use suite of business products, Basic, Professional, Enterprise. These products run cross platform, which means you can access and update the data from any computer that runs either Windows, Linux, MAC.
We installed the product on a Ubuntu Linux computer, transferred the data files to our Windows 2003 domain server, accessed and updated the data from a Windows Vista workstation. We could then operate the system from either our Vista workstation of the Linux one depending on our whim.
Why does this get us excited?
It means at last that we can offer lower cost solutions to small businesses. Linux comes free of charge. Ubuntu Linux runs straight out of the box.
If any of this is of interest to you then call us (UK only) on 01268 548636 to discuss your needs.

Spoof and Spam emails from hillierconsultants.com

We have a number of email addresses that are used to receive mail only - they do not send mail.
If you have received mail from any of the following email accounts, upgrades, repairs, sales, print, systems and office followed by @hillierconsultants.com please delete them. They did not originate from our servers or anyone in our organisation.
Apologies for any inconvenience it may have caused.
We do not understand the mentality of people who misuse the internet in this way.

Accounts systems

Are you an accounts user? Are you locked into Sage? Are you paying high levels of support? Are you looking for accounts packages on non-windows platforms?
We have recently been investigating alternatives to the Sage Accounts programs. Not the we have anything against Sage as such. As a business system it does the business. The support desk in UK based and they have a lot going for them.
But what alternatives are there? Well, there is TAS books but that is now part of the Sage empire and we suspect product convergence over time. There is quick books but we know of no business using that system.
We have however recently investigated two particular alternatives.
The first, Accountz, is based on an installed program which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac systems. We have tested this out in the single user version. We tried to test to destruction. We created the data on an Ubuntu Linux system. We then copied the files across the network onto a Windows 2003 server mapped drive. We then installed to product onto a Vista computer and were able to access the data on either the Vista or Ubuntu system. It worked! This makes it very interesting from a Linux point of view - a topic we will return to in another blog.
The second, Kashflow, is a web based accounts system. There are no programs to use, simply use your favourite web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera) and you are away. The data is stored on the companies London based web server and mirrored to a backup server. Because of this the program is available on both Windows and Linux platforms, which makes it equally interesting to us as Linux users.
Both systems have a respectable UK installed user base.
For further details of this visit our website www.hillierconsultants.com or phone (UK only) 01268 548636 or email sales at our office.

SMEs that continue to invest likely to last.

We found this report by Simon Quicke in the 'Microscope' trade magazine, 8th December 2008.
It might seem like an odd source of research into the small business market but headset specialist Plantronics has reported that a Super SME is set to emerge to beat the downturn.
The emergence of those small companies that have invested in infrastructure, staff training and marketing are best placed to survive the recession.
Most of the SMEs that were surveyed revealed that they had been feeling the downturn for quite a while but only 22% said that the impact have been significant.
“During times of economic uncertainty SMEs tend to view investment in IT, staff training and marketing as luxuries instead of necessities,” Says Paul Clark, General Manager, Plantronics.
“This research shows Super SMEs bucking convention and investing wisely in some or all of these areas are the most confident about the future and better placed to operate in the changing marketplace,” he added. Last week the Chartered Institute of Marketing revealed that a portion of its members were worried about what next year holds and whether or not they would be able to hold onto their jobs.

Another Norton DOS attack

Another machine brought in with out of date Norton 360 security resulting in no access to the internet via Internet Exporer.
Norton and other Anti malware programs should be preventing Denial of Service (DOS) attacks not causing them.
Hopefully someone in Symantec might read this Blog and decide they need to do something about this problem.
See my earlier Blog for more details.