Hillier Consultants Blog

SEO - Is it worth it?

2011-10-06T11:39:00.004+01:00

I am rapidly becoming disillusioned by all the hype about SEO.
Everyone is offering you Page 1 on Google. Hey guys, unless that page contains millions of entries we can't all be on there. Or maybe we could get on page one with a single very obscure keyword that no one is ever likely to use but if they did you would be there!
On offer are instant results that take a year to be effective. Overnight success stories that take 2 years to come to fruition.
On offer is an SEO expert who wants £ 500 a month to do SEO work for us. In our business that would mean selling an extra 10 units a month just to pay for the SEO advice. I don't think so!
Others offer you placement on 10 Directory listings a month. Oh come on! Some of those will be so obscure that they are not worth it for the traffic they will generate.
We will soon be placing on one of our websites a fuller story.
In the meantime if you would like to have a go at me for writing such scandalous, sacrilegious, scurrilous content then click here Email Me.
Is it worth it? It is probably worth doing something but lets not get over excited by it all.

Spamming attack resolved

2011-07-29T12:50:00.002+01:00

It would appear that recently an email account on our web server had been compromised and was being used to send out spam mail despite the security measures we have in place.
We believe we have now solved the problem and have put further security measures in place to revent this from happening in the future.
We apologise to any user who has received spam email emanating from our server and to those webmasters who may had had an increase in traffic resulting from the use of false email accounts purporting to reside on their servers.

First week without Windows

2011-07-22T23:49:00.005+01:00

It has now been just over a week since I set up my Windowless system.
What are the issues? Well none really.
I have copied over all my data from my old system. A mixture of putting the old Hard Disks (one for Win XP and one for my old Ubuntu setup) and copying the data across. No problem. Other than that I brought across other data on a USB memory stick. Again no problem.
Ok I still have to import my old emails from Outlook. Just a 3.5 GB file to port across first. Evolution seems to do the job OK. I have imported calendar entries that have been sent to me. email set up was easy.
I have used Banshee to import some music. I am not mad with this, I still prefer to play from CD on my separates system but I have brought some files across. Can I sync with my Creative Xen, Well no. It doesn't like ogg files and I haven't found a way of converting them to mp3 to port across. Is it a big issue? Not really for me.
I have tried to connect my Blackberry. At the moment it is not having it. Is that a real problem for me? Well it should be but I have been very lazy about syncing my Windows and my Blackberry so why should it now be a problem. On the other hand maybe I shall see if I can swap the blackberry for an Android phone.
I have put my personal Accountz program on. Only problem were of my own making in making a mess of copying the old data from backup.
What is really good?
I have set up a number of users on this machine. It is nice to be able to log on to one account whilst remaining logged to the first account. For example, I was logged on to my personal account and playing some music through Banshee. I logged on to my work account without logging off the personal account and the music kept on playing. When I logged off the business account I simply logged back on to my personal account and carried on working from where I have left off.
After one week my impression? Great. Should have done it sooner.

I have gone Windows free at home

2011-07-15T09:48:00.002+01:00

Ubuntu wins! Having to rebuild my home computer I have decided to go entirely Windows free.
I have used a Phenom II 555 processor, ASUS motherboard, on board dual head graphics, Genius 5.1 Audio card. I am using a previously used 500GB hard disk.
From start to finish the install took 20-30 minutes, including updates. I am using Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).
Every device was configured to work, including the add on audio card. (I thought I was in trouble with this until I realised that the sound output was being directed to the on board audio device).
I configured Evolution mail client to my mail account - no problem. I set up a couple of extra users so I can keep work separate - no problem. I set two users to be in the same user group so they can share data - no problem. I popped an audio CD in the drive and Banshee picked it up and played it - no problem. Also able to rip this to disk - no problem.
I popped my old XP hard disk in and copied all relevant data from it - no problem. I popped in my old Linux hard disk (from dual boot machine) and copied off all relevant data - no problem.
What issues are there. Well I would like a 64 bit version of Flash player - come on Adobe. I would like to sync my Blackberry with Evolution. I want to see if my Creative Zen can sync.
This tale should convince some of you that you do not need to use Windows operating systems. There is a perfectly good alternative.
To find out more visit Linux Computing UK where we can help you. For the more adventurous who want to go it alone try Ubuntu themselves.

Openfiler upsets me

2011-06-15T01:03:00.002+01:00

Those of you who have followed this blog over time will know I am not averse to being critical. Today it is the turn of the OpenFiler team.
We have recently launched a new site called Linuxcomputinguk.co.uk where we are specifically trying to promote Linux products so I thought I really should try and find a Linux NAS server rather than the FreeNAS base we have used before. I came across OpenFiler.
So today I got an install going.
Using 2.99.1, after doing all the network setup, password etc the system spends 3 minutes (well 2.42 actually) to do the install and then goes away for 10-15 minutes seemingly doing nothing before eventually saying it is ready for a reboot.
After the reboot I get the web GUI and type in root and my password and get presented with a user account quota page.
I tried the UK support desk. They were all out at lunch, oh and by the way they do not take phone calls unless you have paid for a support contract. I spoke with sales who said they would put me in touch with the Partner support team. 6 hours later I am still waiting for a response.
Thinking I had a bum install I reinstalled. No change. I have now tried 4 installs of 2.99.1 and 2 installs of 2.3. And where am I now, nowhere forward from lunchtime. I even put in a call to the States but still have had no response (except to ask for my contact details which had been at the foot of every email I have sent them).
In the end I had a look at the install guide on their webpage. I do not expect that after more Linux installs than I care to remember that I should need to look at the install guide. What is it they say, manuals are for those who just can't hack it themselves. Something like that anyway. But right at the bottom of the guide is the gem. Log on as user openfiler, password password. Boy, why can't that be displayed on one of the install screens?
So I got in to the web gui to set up the system. Can I set up a volume? Can I, hell as like! No volume, no share, no usable system.
For me it is back to FreeNAS.

Hillier Consultants becomes a Mozy reseller

2011-05-25T00:01:00.004+01:00

We have now completed the necessary steps to become a reseller on Mozy Pro and Mozy Home online backup products.
Most businesses appreciate that they need to perform regular backups but just don't get round to it.
This is fine until disaster strikes and then it can be - well disastrous.
Let us help you set up a system that you can then simply rely on to keep your vital business data safe.

Our organisation gains Ubuntu recognition

2011-05-24T23:53:00.003+01:00

One part of our organisation has now received notice from Ubuntu that we are listed on their marketplace pages.
Please visit the Ubuntu site (http://webapps.ubuntu.com/marketplace/) to see our listing under Linux Computing UK.
At the time of posting the marketplace page has not been updated but come back later to find us.

Business Startup Show

2011-05-18T10:38:00.001+01:00

We will be visiting the Business Startup Show at ExCeL later this week. Our roving team will be available to talk to you about our services.

We now become Accountz partners

2011-05-06T14:40:00.003+01:00

Hillier Consutlants has just become a full business partner with Accountz - the 'Accounting for the real world' specialists.
Accountz runs on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms - all from the same disk.
As business partners we are on hand to provide first line support to Accounts users - both Home and Business.
To find out more contact us on 01268 548636

Standard 5.7.17 Error when sending email from SMTP server

2011-03-31T23:45:00.005+01:00

Some months ago we were struggling to get an Exchange Server working. We could send but not receive. In the end we walked away from it.
Today we have been recovering a server from a broadband change, a router reset and re-configuration but without changing anything on the server itself which had previously been running Exchange OK. We could not get mail through.
We did a Google search for 5.7.17 and found some posts which were not very useful but then we happened upon this thread
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Apps/thread?tid=14a3d1192c489e16&hl=en
from M1ke on Google Support Forum
I have followed this thread and can now successfully receive email
I think that I now understand it better than M1ke has described so I will offer some clues.

First, 5.7.17 is NOT an Exchange Server error so if you get it you have not got to the Exchange Server.
Second, the ability to send from servers such as hotmail and gmail are crucial to understanding what is going on.
Third, this content from M1ke is vital

My server and accounts are controlled by Plesk. All domain settings are in 123-Reg but Plesk has its own list of domain settings for each address. I assume it follows the 123-Reg settings because the MX and DNS lookups give those values, and Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo addresses do not encounter the 5.7.17 error. If there are known Plesk issues please can you detail them so that I can investigate?

the important pieces here are 'My server ..... by Plesk' and by the way I do not think this is a Plesk issue.

Fourth, M1ke gives us the solution in his third post --- remove the mail boxes from Plesk and turn off the mail service for the domain in question. Playing with the MX records is a red herring.

Having done this our email gets correctly transported to Exchange without issue.

Now to the better understanding of the issue.
We were trying to send emails to an exchange server that is related to a domain which is hosted on our Plesk server. The public DNS records at the registrar correctly direct traffic to our server for http, ftp, etc and mail to the Exchange server - each server being found on different IP addresses. Thus hotmail and gmail find the public DNS record and the mail gets transported to the Exchange server.
Like M1ke, we were trying to test sending email from OUR server (running Plesk) to the Exchange server but our domain and the recipient domain are both virtual hosts on our Plesk server, hence Plesk tries to resolve the mail addresses itself, and will do one of two things. It will either drop the mail in a mail box which it knows about or give you a 5.7.17 error if it cannot find that mail box. Because Plesk can resolve the mail to a mail server which it knows about and mail never goes outside the local server and is never seen on the Public network and therefore cannot be received by Exchange.
Once you disable the mail server for that domain in Plesk the mail HAS to go to the public network and can be correctly transported to the correct host.
I hope this post will short cut a few problems for other people.
My thanks to M1ke and if anyone knows how to contact him please do so on our behalf.

HTTP error 403 in SharePoint

2011-03-16T10:33:00.003Z

The solution is blindingly obvious once you understand it, but then isn’t it ever thus. Certificate errors, folder permissions, port numbers, SharePoint access levels, intricate IIS problems, public domain dns errors and all those issues you find when you Google “SharePoint Error 403 Windows Server” are largely red herrings. That is NOT to say that you can ignore these but when you know these are OK and you are still getting the error you need to find a different solution.

Starting from Basics

Platform: Windows server 2003 standard (that is NOT SBS); SharePoint V3

Problem: after configuration I could access default site on the server but not from outside – constant 403 errors.

The answer came to me via a visit to a link to Microsoft Technet on about page 4 or 5 of the Google output (it is sometimes worth going in that far!).

Fed up with getting these errors using the FQDN in the address bar [for those unfamiliar with FQDN I was typing hostname.domainname.com (please substitute your own hostname and domainname)] I typed in the IP address and got a connection. That proved that there was a route through to the site and that certificates and folder permission were NOT the issue.

The technet link [ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288173(office.12).aspx ] gives you the basics but it is still a bit cranky. I am not going to repeat the contents of that link so keep it handy.

The Alternate Access Mapping link defaults to 'show all'. When you use the drop down you have to choose the ‘Change Alternate Access Mapping Collection’ link. You will be offered the sites in your collection – in my case ‘Central Administration’ and ‘SharePoint – 80’.

Select the site you want to change (in my case 'SharePoint -80'). You are presented with the URLs that point to this site – initially it will be something like ‘http://yourservername’.

Now this is the bit to get your head around. There needs to be a complete separation in your mind about where you are accessing the site from.

If you are accessing the site from within your network (ie intranet mode) you will need an internal URL such as ‘http://yourservername’ and then for clients working within your own domain they will need to enter this internal URL in the address bar of their browser (I can use both IE and Firefox – after all it is only a website).

If you want to access the site from outside your domain (eg from home, extranet mode) then you need to have a public URL such as ‘http://hostname.domainname.com’ and then clients need to put this URL into their browser when accessing the site from outside the domain.

So now you have 2 URLs to the same site.

Your users will have to get used to the idea of using the internal URL when they are at work and the public URL when they are at home.

I was so pleased that I had cracked this last night once I had changed the Public URL that it came as shock this morning when I could not access the site from the server on which it resides which was resolved once I re-entered the internal URL.

As an administrator you also need to be very sure that you are setting the URL details when the ‘Alternate Access Mapping Collection’ is lodged on to the correct site. Otherwise you could be changing the URLs for a different site.

We are happy to take requests for further information on this. Please visit www.hillierconsultants.com or email stephen@hillierconsultants.com for further help.

Poor programming undoes Microsoft access control mechanisms

2011-03-01T15:56:00.004Z

Why do developers of Windows programs write their programs in such a way that they force users to be local administrator?
Last week we were setting up a new domain server and all went well until we went to run some software. We had what looked like permissions problems and spent a long time checking that the users we were setting up did in fact have access to the data files we had copied to the new server.
Only after half an hour did it transpire that users had to be made local machine administrators in order to make the software run. Some files held locally cannot be accessed otherwise.
The main problem with Windows is that it derives from an OS that gave any user full control over the machines and the system itself.
Microsoft have been trying to do their bit to redress that with making domain members restricted users and with the new UAC controls. We all know why Microsoft has to address this issue. So why do developers then undo all this by writing code that requires ordinary users to have local admin rights. This leaves machines open to attack from malware which is just plain stupid.
Developers cannot absolve themselves by saying it's Microsoft's problem. If we pull together then we might get to a position where Windows no longer needs to have performance dragging anti malware in place.

Adding a new hard disk into an existing ClearOS system

2011-02-20T23:34:00.003Z

We recently configured a new ClearOS server and forgot to add one of the drives. We have now found a fix for this details of which can be found on the ClearOS forum. Use the link below to read the thread.

Click here to read the forum

Hope this is of use to someone.

IE9 fails to publish blog post

2010-12-13T12:18:00.001Z

I mistakenly used IE9 to create the previous post but I could not get it to publish. Thankfully Firefox was up to the job.

HP Business Inkjet 2800 Windows 7 multiple copies

2010-12-13T11:57:00.004Z

A well documented problem. We have a sort of solution.

A client with this printer / OS combination could not get multiple copies to print. Doesn't matter how many copies are selected only 1 copy was printed.

Came across this link which looked hopeful. It provided another link to download some drivers. Just a word of warning - you have to access this second site using IE, other broswers cannot access the page.

I downloaded and tried both the PCL5 and PS drivers but nothing made any difference.

In order to provide for the client I went into printer properties and changed the default page count setting to 2 instead on 1 just to see if that would give us a workaround.

Yipee!! 2 pages printed out. Ok lets see if changing the default 2 to 1 on the normal print window works and Yeeha only one page printed. On a roll now what if I change it to 3 copies. Wow! It worked. I repeated with 6 copies and all seems fine.

This is however bizarre behaviour and with any luck one of the HP printer team will see this post and attempt to correct their code.

Better than that. HP, how about producing the PCL6 drivers for this printer so that we don't need these workarounds.

A related problem which we are also having to sort out is why tray 2 is not recognised. For those interested in that problem click here.

Wake up world! There are alternatives to Windows products.

2010-10-27T00:19:00.002+01:00

We were planning to ship a client a new domain server based on ClearOS.
Good spec machine with 2 x 1 TB hard disk in mirror. We got the operating system installed, the disks mirrored and the configuration started easily within 2 hours.
Our client then bought some software (without our recommendation or involvement) and it only runs on Windows server platforms using Microsoft SQL Server. So our Linux based, easy to configure domain server has now to be installed with the very expensive, very slow, very cumbersome Windows 2008 server software. (I had hoped never to have to install one of these again!).
We placed another disk in for the system to reside on and at our third attempt managed to get the OS loaded. Ok now time to set up the mirror on the 1 TG disk. Remember apart from the extra hard disk this is exactly the same hardware as we used before - not a new machine with different hardware - exactly the same kit.
We created the mirror (using the whole disk) and after 2 hours the format was only 24% complete! Six hours later we return to the machine to find the mirror resynching but only 51% complete!! I thought overnight disk formats went out with Novell Netware V2!!! And what is it resynching, there is no data on the disk!!!! (No, I do not want an answer but I want the boys and girls at Microsoft to ask themselves that question).
Has anyone in Microsoft ever tried to do this operation? I cannot believe that any developer would think this level of performance was acceptable.
So wake up world. There is no need to design and write programs that only run on Windows platforms. There is no need to rely on the inefficient Windows software. Or pay the over inflated prices Microsoft charge. (Hey, did you know that to buy a 3 pack set of Win7 OEM costs more that buying 3 individual packs).
Let's not settle for mediocrity, let's push for systems that allow us to benefit from the high performance hardware we can now get.

Internet Explorer 9 is here!!

2010-09-29T10:40:00.003+01:00

Or at least the beta is.
Should you install it? Well you can if you want but it will remove your previous version of Internet Explorer.
So if the beta fails you will have to roll back to your earlier version.
Why, when it is still a Beta product do Microsoft remove your old working version? This is appalling.
As for the interface - don't get me going. All the old standards that users are used to - GONE.
Menu bar - GONE
Title bar - GONE
I have looked at this for 5 minutes - that was enough.
I sent a feedback form - that wanted to update my computer with something which I didn't let it.
I am beginning to think that Microsoft are beginning to lose grip on reality.
We don't want more fancy stuff - we just want their stuff to work properly.

ClearOS production server

2010-09-15T09:50:00.006+01:00

An alternative to Windows 2003 / 2008 domain server software.
For sometime now we have been searching to find an alternative to the Windows server products. Windows server products developed nicely from Windows NT through to Windows 2003 but in our opinion Windows 2008 was a poor product. Based on the Vista kernel it suffered from all the maladies affecting Vista and achieved none of the benefits.
We have supplied one client with Server 2008 and I hope not to have to repeat this experience.
We know that Linux based domain servers have been around but to our mind most of these have suffered from the command line based disjointed administrator interface.
At a personal level I am aware that whatever I do I cannot put into a client a system that my staff cannot manage in my absence or after the Big Red Bus has pressed my mortal being into the surface of the tarmac. Therefore I have been reluctant to put in place a server that become useless once I am no longer in charge of it.
As a result we have not installed any Linux based servers - but all that is likely to change now.
We have been investigating the ClearOS server software (and the e-box and sme server systems). We have built a number of test installations and have now built a production server.
The server is based on an AMD Athlon 5000+ dual core processor on a Foxconn A74ML-K motherboard and 2GB RAM. This is combined with a 500GB hard disk (not new and removed from an older machine) and an optical drive and very little else.
We have installed the server on the same network as our web server which is remote to our office network.
Our next job is to configure the server into a working server, and enable remote logon to both Windows and Linux clients. We will blog progress as it occurs.
For more information about ClearOS click this link.

Are your backup systems robust enough?

2010-08-12T01:19:00.005+01:00

My previous blog talks about the problems getting Windows 7 workstations to attach to a Windows 2003 domain server. In that blog we talked a problem we had with our domain server. This blog is to add more detail to those comments.
Our server failed unexpectedly. No warning signs, just a shutdown of access for workstations. Believeing this to be one of thos unusual things we reset the server. After 10 minutes we had no service and after attaching a monitor we found that the server had not completed POST and BIOS setup.
Several attempts met with similar failure.
We rebuilt the server but when we attached the disks from the old server to the new one to copy off the data we could not access any data.
The last time we had problems with this disk system we had set it up without the mirrored RAID so one level of protection was missing.
However we do have an external hard disk which was set up to do a complete backup of the data EVERY night. No problem then. Attach the external disk. We see a perfectly good looking .bkf file but when we tried to recover it with the Windows Backup & Recovery tool it told us there was no recoverable data on the disk.
Never mind, we still have our online, in the Cloud, backup system. We have not stored everything but the major items are still up there. We download the backup client software to do a restore. It tells us that we have used 2GB of our 3GB allowance but wait.... When we try to recover the files it says there are no files selected for recovery or that there is no data to collect. The help desk lived up to the antithesis of their name and I still have no satisfactory answer from them.
From this it appears that we have lost all our Client files from the last 6 years, all the accounts data, all the management files (policy documents, logos, letter templates, contract templates etc), all our supplier files, and all the downloaded data (device drivers and software used to build client machines).
We have called in the services of a Disk specialist who has been able to recover most of our data but before you say 'What is all the fuss for' then consider this.
We limped along on Friday. We paid overtime on Saturday to rebuild the server (luckily we did not have to pay the cost of new hardware as we could use some kit that was redundant). We have not been able to work on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
This doesn't affect many of us as there are only 3 of us in the organisation but how would it affect you?
What is the cost to you for paying someone to replace and rebuild your computer system?
What is the cost to have your staff being idle for 3 days?
What is the cost to you not being able to fulfill client orders?
Add to that the cost of calling in a specialist to attempt to recover you data.
This is not cheap, It could easily run into 5 figures. Put into perspective what it would cost to have a completely robust backup and recovery system in place.
This has happened to us. We might have got through it because we had second and third line backup systems in place. Don't let it happen to you. Having gone through all this we are now better placed to help you avoid the pitfalls that we have fallen into.
Call us!

The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship.

2010-08-12T01:03:00.002+01:00

We recently has this error message appear when trying to log on Windows 7 workstations to our Windows 2003 domain server.
"The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship."
We trawled through the Google searches for this message and there are pages of reports of this error.
Let me give you the circumstances.
Our domain server failed. We could not get it to get through POST and BIOS to try to find and operating system. That was the first big 'Ouch'.
So we rebuilt the server on to new hardware and configured it, as we thought, the same. We initially had some issues with DNS and NICs not doing as they should but the upshot was that our 2 Windows 7 workstations could not connect to the domain. Please note this did not affect our remaining XP workstation which logged just fine.
After looking at the Goggle responses we noticed that we had rebuilt the domain but missed off the '.local' on the domain name.
So we rebuilt being more careful next time. Even so we got a capital letter in the wrong place in the domain name. So we rebuilt a third time. This time we are sure we got everything right. It made not a jot of difference.
Other websites had suggested we disconnect from the domain and reconnect to the new domain. Not an iota of difference.
Finally we had to reinstall the operating system on both our Windows 7 machines.
One side effect of this, despite having installed onto completely new hard disks to preserve the data on the old disk, is that on one of the machines we have lost ALL out Outlook pst files. Some emails going back 6 years with important information.
Couple this with the total data loss of all information on the server did not make us very happy.
I will finish with this comment. Why, oh why, Microsoft is it so hard to get your systems to talk to each other. This is hardly a ringing endorsement for the improvements in Windows 7 when XP performs better in what was already a very fraught situation. Please try to do better next time.

Backing up FreeNAS server with Backup Direct

2010-06-21T14:08:00.004+01:00

We are trying to evaluate how to back up a FreeNAS server using Backup Direct. We have limited success so far.
What has shown up is an issue in FreeNAS when using anonymous user authenication for Windows users. Several threads appear in the FreeNAS forum associated with this problem.
We are putting a link to our thread on the FreeNAS forum if you need to look further.

Click http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=7076 for further information.

I have also had input on another forum related to this subject. Click http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1384007 or http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9535918&postcount=6 to look at Samba configuration issues on FreeNAS.

Postscript. We have now found iceBackup which seems less trouble than BackupDirect although it cannot cope with users on FreeNAS with UID 21.

Online Backups - Tenders sought

2010-05-26T09:42:00.003+01:00

We are interested in becoming agents for online backup systems and invite tenders from suppliers in the UK.
We resell online backup. The requirements are this.
Low cost - starting at around £5 per month for up to 5GB
Multiple hosts - many of our clients have more than one computer and don't want to pay a per computer charge
Logging - We monitor backups on behalf of our clients and need to have full logs of all activity sent to us and our client
Scheduled backups - We need to protect data on a daily basis with full or incremental backups
Synchronisation - We do not need active synchronisation - daily backups suffice
Console - We would like to have console access so that we can replace hosts on behalf of our clients as machines get replaced
Multi platform - We need a system that runs on Windows and *ix based systems
Re-branding - We are not concerned about rebadging and are quite content to use proprietory branding
Suppliers of such systems are invited to contact us by email to stephen@hillierconsultants.com using the subject line "Online backup tender bids".

McAfee offers appalling service support

2010-05-12T11:47:00.003+01:00

Those of you who read these blogs might consider me to be a serial whinger but in my own defence I have to say that these days if I have a raw deal from a large organisation such as McAfee then if I do not make my views known how will anthing change.
I have a client machine come in running Vista. It will not boot. I managed to get a start in safe mode and saw that McAfee was installed.
I called McAfee to ask if what I was seeing was related to their recent debacle with a bug in an upgrade. The person on Tech Support obviously was not listening or failed to understand what I was telling them. The person concerned kept on about McAfee not working but was told on several occasions that it was Windows that was not working. I was advised to uninstall and reinstall McAfee but when I asked how I could re-input the client details I had no assistance.
I was transferred to Customer services who simply got hung up on finding out my email. Despite being told that my email address would have no bearing on the case the operative insisted that that was the only way they could help me. In the end I got fed up and hung up the phone.
I then thought I would raise it as a complaint. I spoke to the switchboard in England and asked how I could make a complaint and got transferred to Customer Services in the States. Back on the merry-go-round again.
How can big organisations operate in this fashion?
How do they ever believe this is a service?
I am trying to support one of their customers so why don't they try to support me?

In the end I give up and say "I will put this blog on our website and hope that anyone reading it will take the hint and never buy another product from this unattractive corporation". Let's hope they have so many claims from this latest fiasco that they are not around for very much longer.

McAfee bug problem April 2010

2010-04-27T13:17:00.002+01:00

If you are running McAfee antivirus you may have a problem resulting from a bug in a recent update from McAfee which cripples your XP machine.
We noticed this in a machine that lost all network function, could not copy or paste and had other quirky behaviour.
After scanning it with several antivirus programs we found that the 'svchost' was being deleted. We were able to copy this file onto the relevant folder by putting the disk in another computer.
We could then open the system successfully in safe mode and remove the bad McAfee.
After that we installed a copy of Panda Antivirus which has proved successful for us.

You can find more information by clicking on these two links

http://www.longislandpress.com/2010/04/21/w32wecorl-a-wecorl-a-dcom-server-process-launcher-terminated-what-it-means/

http://vista.blorge.com/2010/04/26/mcafee-to-compensate-home-users-over-xp-update-bug/

If you are having problems with this issue we can help out.

Advice to those tempted to try Office 2010 beta - DON'T

2010-04-13T23:26:00.004+01:00

As you would expect it is right that people like ourselves should keep up with what is new and up and coming.
We therefore felt that we should try out the Office 2010 beta products.
First if you are running a 64 bit machine and have 32 bit versions of Office installed you cannot install the Office 2010 64 bit version.
We installed the 32 bit product. We then tried to read out emails.
Our copy of Outlook 2003 would not run because of a corrupted file.
The beta version of Outlook 2010 initially would not allow us to read any of our existing emails.
Eventually we could read the existing emails but we could not send and receive mail - getting a message that this was not implemented.
We googled for this and found a lot in blogs discussing this problem dating back to November 2009 so why is it that Microsoft have not patched this and released it. One site did have a work round - install the beta, uninstall the beta, re-install the beta and then it might work.
Then it wanted something called Outlook Social Connector to enable interconnection between Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter and a whole host of products that I do not use nor want to use.
What I want is a good solid email client program that collects and send my email - I don't need all the rest, and if I ever do want a Facebook client I will find one.
At this point I informed Microsoft through their feedback mechanism exactly what I thought of this product and that it would be removed from my system.
I then ran a system restore to a point further back than the install. Luckily I have been able to get all my historic emails but all my contacts have been obliterated
So if you are thinking you should try the new Office 2010 beta product our advice is simple. DON'T.
I do not feel we can say it any better than that.
It is time for Microsoft to get back to providing good solid products not a load of fancy cradle to grave software that doesn't do what it is meant to do.

Creating reports based on user input criteria in OpenOffice BASE

2010-04-02T00:52:00.004+01:00

I was searching the Open Office Community forum to solve a problem but did not find a direct answer. However I think I have worked out a method so I thought I would share it.
My development rig is using standard OO DB drivers. My production rig is using MySQL on our domain server to allow shared access.
I am using 3.1.0 on the development rig Windows 7 based. I am hoping my production rig will work from Windows and Linux platforms.
It is only a small database taking over from a spreadsheet which is getting too unwieldy to work.
I have 3 tables:-
Clients: clientno, name, contact, addr1, addr2, postcode
Record types: recordno, typename
Details: recordno, recordid, clientid, username, password, url, extra

Details.clientid = Clients.clientno
Details.recordid = Records types.recordno

I want to be able to generate a report which extracts from the DB all records pertaining to a particular client and allow the user to enter the client name after selecting the report to run. [Ideally I would like to do this selection from a form but I will live with what I have got at the moment]

I have in the past written db programs using basic ISAM files. I have recently been writing web apps using MySQL DBs so I had a good idea of how I wanted my solution to look. I just wasn't getting how to do it in OO and I have never found the patience to work through MS Access.

My solution.

I created a view with all the fields from the Detail record with links to the relevant tables elsewhere and saved this View as 'Details View'.

Next I went to queries and set up a new query. When I got to the Search Conditions I selected View.clientname in the fields box put in " :Enter_Client_Name " in the values box as suggested elsewhere in this forum but without the double quotes [and this point is important].
I then completed the query. When I ran it it gave me an empty list. I went back in to 'edit by SQL' and noted that the SQL had placed my :Enter_Client_Name in single quotes and thus it was not being found. I took off the single quotes [please note the input field turned green at this point]. Running this query allowed me to input the client name successfully.

Then I set up a report using this new query as the basis of the report. Running the report now allows the user to enter the name of a client on which they want to generate a report.

I am not going to say that I may not need refinements on this but I do believe that this gives other newcomers to OO DB a chance to make progress. Given a number of the posts on the forum I feel this is at the base of a lot of the queries.

The original post can be found on the OpenOffice.org Community Forum at this web address http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/

Many thanks to all contributers to that forum.

Another NAS server installed with FreeNAS

2010-02-17T00:34:00.002Z

Following an earlier blog on this subject we have just installed another FreeNAS based server. On this occasion it is not used for archiving but as a large repository in the office which allows remote users to upload file to the office.
The configuration was simple enough once we sorted out the disk mirror issues.
For office solutions where large amounts of data storage are required this is an effective way of providing storage without interfering with other workstations.
Our thanks to the boys at FreeNAS.

AN ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THE DNS NAME OF A DC IN THE DOMAIN BEING JOINED HAS FAILED!

2010-01-11T14:59:00.006Z

We had a problem connecting a newly installed Windows 7 system to a Windows 2008 SBS domain.
We got the message "AN ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THE DNS NAME OF A DC IN THE DOMAIN BEING JOINED HAS FAILED! PLEASE VERIFY THIS CLIENT IS CONFIGURED TO REACH A DNS SERVER THAT CAN RESOLVE DNS NAMES IN THE TARGET DOMAIN."
We checked all the setting and everything was correct.
We checked through Google and we found a lot of posts relating to this problem but not many where the problem was resolved.
We looked on the Microsoft Technet with the same result.
We tried taking a newly installed Windows 7 machine and adding it to our own domain (Windows 2003) and there were no problems. This points to the server being the issue.
We referred to our copy of Stanek Administrator's guide and on Page 218 we found a command line utility called dnscmd.exe. We ran this utility and found that the DNS server was listening on IP address 192.168.0.2. The only local adaptor was on IP address 192.168.0.210 so this was a problem.
We fixed the DNS set up on the server. The following link will tell you how to restrict the DNS listening devices click here so please amend to your needs
Once we had done this the new computer joined the domain without problem
Further information contact us through our website.

New hosting website

2009-12-23T14:37:00.002Z

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

2009-10-15T18:47:00.001+01:00

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

2009-10-13T08:45:00.002+01:00

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?

2009-10-07T09:55:00.003+01:00

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

2009-08-20T17:38:00.005+01:00

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

2009-08-03T12:54:00.004+01:00

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

2009-07-23T23:20:00.003+01:00

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

2009-07-23T23:09:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-24T14:32:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-11T18:23:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-08T23:53:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-26T16:40:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-28T14:38:00.002+01:00

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

2009-04-23T11:06:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-23T10:44:00.004+01:00

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

2009-03-18T10:10:00.002Z

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

2009-03-05T09:29:00.002Z

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

2009-02-14T10:24:00.004Z

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.

2009-01-21T09:30:00.004Z

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

2009-01-19T16:43:00.002Z

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.

Expired Norton stops Internet access

2008-12-10T16:06:00.006Z

Two machines have been brought into us recently with DNS errors on accessing Internet pages. In both cases these machines had an out of date version of Norton Antivirus / Internet Security installed. In both cases once Norton was removed Internet access was restored.
The problem is that you cannot always uninstall Norton after it has expired. This means that you have to use the Norton Removal Tool (or for the brave you can edit the Windows registry directly) but without Internet access you cannot download the Norton Removal Tool.
You can of course download the NRT to another machine, copy the files onto a memory stick or CD and then copy it to the target machine and run it. Remember to reinstall some AntiVirus software once you have deleted Norton. We recommend Panda Internet Security products.
To occupy the high moral ground I have to say that for a company such as Symantec with a product such as Norton AV to exhibit this behaviour simply because the license has expired is really unacceptable.

Ping error 1231 in Vista

2008-11-12T22:13:00.003Z

Have you had an error 1231 when using ping on Vista. We had our second case of this on a laptop today.
The laptop was brought in because it could not connect to the internet. We did all the usual things, turning off firewalls, checking connection settings, we changed between dynamic IP address allocation and fixed IP addresses.
On our network we have a mixture of fixed and dynamic addresses all of which work OK. We use our domain server as the first DNS server in the chain. We have done everything right. Yet, no internet connection.
If we used fixed addresses we could see other systems on our network and ping them but not those outside. With dynamic addresses we got the error 1231 if we tried to ping anything including local addresses.
We spent almost 3 hours today searching a number of support fora (even the Microsoft tech help forum) and have put in place a number of suggested changes. One suggested change which we could not put in play was to change the graphics adapter card so we had to keep the Nvidia card that comes with the machine.
None of the suggested changes made any difference. It became obvious from the posts in forum after forum that there is no single way of removing this error and I even doubt if any one has really found a fix for this.
In the end we had to advise our customer that we needed to do a 'back to factory settings' restore of the machine as the most expedient way to deal with this problem.
My issue is this. Why is it that an organisation such as Microsoft with all the resources it has to offer is unable to come up with a fix for this and get rid of it? Similar problems have existed in every release since Windows 2000 so it has been around for quite a while and should have been fixed by now.
If anyone has this problem Google "ping 1231 vista" and look at any of the sites that are listed.

Microsoft Office alternatives

2008-11-03T13:16:00.004Z

Many businesses out there in the wider world are committed to using Microsoft Office as the primary office suite software. True Word and Excel are good products. Outlook is popular and Powerpoint almost ubiquitous.
It doesn't have to be. Many users do not like the new ribbon interface on Office 2007. Uptake to Office 2007 has been slow and offers very few advantages over Office 2003. We still have a number of clients on Office XP and Office 2000 and who have no intention of upgrading just for the sake of it.
Add to this the new file formats in Office 2007 and the cost of the new products and you can see why users prefer to stay with what they are used to.
But for the more adventurous there is an alternative. It does most of what Office does. It comes with Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Slide Presenter. Best of all it comes for free.
The product is Open Office. It can be downloaded from http://www.openoffice.org .
See our website open source page for details of this and other open source software.

Email hijack

2008-10-02T11:31:00.004+01:00

Hi folks. Someone has hijacked one of our email addresses and may have been sending out unseemly messages using it. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone. That email address has now been taken off line so if you receive a message coming from networks@hillierconsultants.com after 11:30am Thursday 2nd October (BST) it has not come from us.

NAS Server shipment (based on FreeNAS)

2008-09-23T16:32:00.004+01:00

We have just shipped our first own built NAS server.
For those who are not technical NAS stands for Networked Attached Storage which is simply a way of getting large amounts of dedicated storage space in business network environments.
We have used FreeNAS as the operating system and configured the server with 4 x 1000GB hard disks arranged in two RAID mirrored pairs of disks, with 4GB RAM, Athlon 6000+ processor, shipped in a tower case.
This provides just short of 1700GB on line storage for archiving data in a data rich environment. At just under £800 delivered and installed the price compares favourably to the rack mounted NAS servers that are available and still gives room for future expansion if required.
If you have a file server that is getting clogged up with data then this might be an option for you. Moving data to a dedicated storage server could give your domain server a new lease of life.
Our website gives contact details.

Is this new malware or just a bug!!

2008-08-01T01:15:00.003+01:00

I may have identified new malware. I am calling it a thrip but it might just be a bug!!
Things were moving in front of my eyes. Items on my screen were moving around. I had a close look and sure enough this small half cursor sized object was moving around my screen. It looked just like a thrip (also called thunder flies in the UK). I went to brush it away but it just kept on walking.
When I looked closely I saw that this insect was indeed walking around on my screen BETWEEN the layers of the flat panel. We all know how these small insects can find their way behind the glass of pictures but if need be you can unframe your picture of photo, remove the thrips and get on with life.
I know precisely what is going to happen with my pet thrip. It will die and it will do so in the middle of the screen so that every word document I have will have this thrip in the most straegic place. I won't be able to get rid of it. I will not be able to take the layers of my flat panel apart.
It looks like thrippy and I are just going to have to get along for the time being.

Bullguard Internet Security on VIsta

2008-07-25T08:24:00.005+01:00

If you are running Windows Vista and have Bullguard AV installed read on.
We have been wrestling for some time with a computer that intermittently runs slowly, but then recovers. This has now been on the bench for 3 days.
Bullguard has integrated anti-spyware so we turned off Windows Defender - it works better however...
We thought we ought to run a virus scan. Ran the Bullguard scan and after 1.5 hours with only 7% complete we cancelled this. We ran Panda Active Scan which identified in about 1 hour 20 minutes that there were 11 infected files, so back to Bullguard and let it run.
After 2 hours still on 7% complete, 800,000 files out of 1400000 files scanned and the number of files to scan increasing faster than those scanned and 23 hours left to run to completion.
We sent an email to Bullguard and got the following response "Because the system is running Windows Vista, please make sure that the following Windows features are currently Disabled: Windows Defender, Windows Firewall, User Account Control. Know that these modules can lead to conflicts with the BullGuard plug-ins and also slowdown of the computer."
This is not good news, but our main gripe is to underestand why Mesh who supplied this machine shipped it with full featured Vista when the AV product is known to have these issues.
Our policy would be to ship an AV product that does not cause these conflicts or turn off those features that cause the conflict.
Of course many people turn off Vista UAC but is that really the right thing to do?

Antivirus 2009

2008-07-21T13:39:00.002+01:00

Beware spoof anti virus software "Antivirus2009". We have just has our first case of this infection on a Windows Vista Home Premium machine.
This unwanted program comes in via a trojan, which means it gets round the Vista security controls because you have effectively invited the program in.
There are some published removal methods - simply Google for 'Antivirus2009'. We clicked on the 3rd and 4th links to find effective removal methods. The methods listed are really 'techie' methods and are not for the faint hearted.
However we did remove this program from our machine by installing an up to date version of Panda Anti Virus Software.
If you need more help you can always contact us via our main website http://www.hillierconsultants.com.

Basildon Business Awards Winners

2008-07-16T12:35:00.002+01:00

Hillier Consultants are very pleased to number suppliers and clients among the winners at the Basildon Business Awards on 11th July 2008.

Congratulations to Geoff Morris and his team at Uniscan for being a winner in the Manufacturing Category, to Julian Lionel and his team at XPC who won in the Environmental Awareness category.

Another customer of ours was present in support of Janet Hart who won the Business Woman of the Year award.

A full list of winners can be found on http://www.essexbusinessawards.co.uk/basildon_winners.html

Basildon's 16th Awards ceremony was a success overall.

Many thanks to all those who entered the competition and made a contribution to the business opportunities that exist in and around Basildon District.

New web server in action

2008-04-15T23:19:00.003+01:00

We have now installed our new webserver back in the UK to replace the 4 year old rented machine which is in the US.
We feel this will give us a greater measure of control over the service we provide to our clients, particularly as the number of clients keeps on increasing.
The new server has been built on an AMD platform running the Fedora 7 operating system. It runs the Plesk control panel software to maintain the web sites themselves.
We had several attempts at loading the software onto a Ubuntu based server but the final result was not robust enough. We finally chose to run with Fedora 7, Plesk does not run on Fedora 8, and Fedora 6 does not automatically support SATA disk drives.
We have now begun the long process of migrating domains across to the new server so if clients experience a slight hiccup in service over the next fews days, please forgive us and call us for support.

Web Development Tools

2008-03-28T16:18:00.002Z

I don't like to be critical of developers who create programs which they then distribute at no cost but...
In making changes to our website I have been using a number of programs to help me. I have also at the same time been trying to make the website W3C compliant as well as improving our SEO rating.
One program I have been using suddenly without prompting started putting in a whole lot extra tags to do with base_target _top in all the 'td' tags, it has littered the code with empty 'span' '/span' and 'small' '/small' tags whereas other editors use 'strong' tags.
One issue that related to leaving untidy code around is that file sizes increase unnecessarily which impacts directly on download speeds.
Another program I have been using has a good tool to validate the code in the file. It advises about closing tags such as using in preference to and applies this to 'img', 'hr' and 'meta' tags. However it's own HTML editor strips these trailing \> closing references out of the code.
Come on guys - good programs but please test that there is consistency when you have finished.

New malware threat hits unprotected computers

2008-03-27T21:36:00.002Z

Today we have had two incidents of a pernicious malware infection which is identified by the desktop background being altered to a red image with a 'Privacy protection threat' warning. It is accompanied by a number of popups trying to get you to obtain malware removal programs. These popups appear at regular intervals even in idle mode. Both machines also had the Windows Task Manager disabled although regedit and msconfig were available for use.
These two incidents are on unrelated equipment. One machine had a copy of McAfee installed but we cannot vouch for the state of the updates licence. The other machine had lost it's antivirus and was thus totally unprotected. We believe the infection has been brought in by a trojan horse but our invesigations have not identified the causal agent.
The totally unprotected machine allowed us to install and run Panda AntiVirus, which removed some threats but did not entirely clean the machine. We did a system restore to a week ago and then reinstalled Panda. Other machines on this network which were protected seem to be unaffected.
The other machine gave us grief. We could not get Panda installed initially because we could not remove McAfee. We disabled startup options in msconfig and trawled through registry to remove relevant McAfee keys. We have loaded Panda and done a system scan but we are not sure how complete the clean up has been. We may have to use system restore on this one as well.
This malware seems to strike fast. Dont let it cripple your system. keep your anti virus up to date.
Both systems running WIndows XP. One using XP Home, one XP Professional. Both SP2.

Website upgrade

2008-03-27T21:11:00.003Z

A considerable amount of time has been spent recently trying to improve the layout and accessibility of our website.
We have done a check on our site to obtain the Google PR number which we felt was lower than we wanted.
We have made significant changes to improve readability, we have added many more images, we have added more links.
The transition is by no means complete and we have yet to nudge our PR reference to the level we would like.
On the other side we have also taken time to look at other URLs reference numbers. A number of those we would expect to be in the region of the top quartile are achieving a score of 7 out of 10. Many more, and these include sites which are aesthetically pleasing, seem to languish in the lower quartile: 1s, 2s and 3s.
We were very cheeky and did the same test on the Google site itself. Now get this. Google.co.uk only scores 8 out of 10 but surprise, surprise google.com achieves the magic 10 out of 10.
One thing we have learnt is that home pages with Adobe Flash or a single large graphic and a link through do not score very well at all. Our home page which has a high proportion of words and links to other sites seems to score better.
If you want to make use of our experience and serivces to help you with your site then please use our site to make contact.
There is more yet to be done so feel free to comment if you have constructive ideas we can put in place.