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 In both cases these machines had an out of date version of Norton Antivirus / Internet Security installed.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.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Ping error 1231 in Vista
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.
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.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Microsoft Office alternatives
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.
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.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Email hijack
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.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
NAS Server shipment (based on FreeNAS)
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.
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.
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