Last week, I was trying to solve a few technical problems on the job. One was an issue with a Watchguard firewall device. I won’t bore you with the details. My other problem was figuring out a great way to do time tracking on a smartphone that easily integrates with Quickbooks.

On Twitter last week, I posted a few questions regarding my Quickbooks problem, seeking advice or input from my followers on any suggestions they may have. I even did an @Quickbooks comment so that Intuit would respond. Their response was lackluster, but in the posting the questions, I received a recommendation on Tsheets.com. Within a day I also had a response from Jen Harris, from Tsheets.com and also received a phone call from her. We talked about their service, but also spent about 10 minutes talking about the power of social media for brand development engaging your target consumer.

On my Watchguard problem, I wasn’t necessarily searching for an answer on Twitter. I posted a rhetorical question, perhaps seeking sympathy from a fellow IT person, or a suggestion on how to find an answer. What happened next was interesting. Later that evening, I received an e-mail from Tracy Hillstrom, a product manager for Watchguard. Someone who knew tracy saw my pondering question on Twitter, and forwarded it.

The lesson to be learned here is this:

1.) The outsourced India-based call centers are dead.

2.) Companies are watching their brand image on social media.

3.) Because most social media is public, companies are much more responsive to questions, complaints, and customer service inquiries to keep the public opinion of the brand experience positive.

If you have a customer service issue with a company or product, try using a social media platform like Twitter to get some help. Even if the appropriate people are not following you, companies can monitor their brands through advanced search tools, because of the public nature of Twitter.

But there are some protocols that should be applied.

1.) Be honest, but be tactful. If you are frustrated, be frustrated, but don’t flame the brand, unless there’s no hope to correct the issue. A backlash can occur if you are too negative on these types of services.

2.) Be timely. Things happen quickly on social media, so if you post a question or inquiry, check back often for responses. If a customer service person or fellow “Tweep” (Twitter Peep, or friend) tries to help, but your trail goes cold for a few days, the desire to assist will fade quickly.

2.) Praise the action. If a business or a person comes through for you, be sure to give them their props. Online brand management is all about managing the image, so if you get good service, let everyone know.

Here is a list of companies and brands that are known to be on Twitter. Next time you have a customer service issue with any of these companies on Twitter, give them chance online to resolve your issue.

With all the news about banking and automotive bailouts in the fall, it got me to thinking about following question:

“What if the tech industry needed a bailout?”

What if we were to wake up one Monday morning to the announcement that Microsoft had run out of cash? Would the Federal Government just let the Microsoft monopoly collapse? What if the government bailed out the software and giant, and we suddenly were found ourselves in a situation where the government had a significant ownership stake in the operating system of 88% of the computers in production in homes and business throughout this country and worldwide?

Would you be ok with it? Or would you switch operating systems? In your home, that might not be such a daunting task. But try taking a business with 20 Windows workstations and a Small Business Server, with employees who have built work skills and processes around Windows over the years, to Linux and Mac.

Do you believe the U.S. government would abuse the power that it had over your computing environment? Do you believe that the government would eventually divest at a profit and go away, as we’ve been led to believe will happen with the banks? Or do you believe that the government would want to maintain nationalized control of the tech sector, just as many speculate that it wants a permanent nationalized stake in the U.S. banking industry?

What if Google was also out of cash and needed a bailout to stay afloat? How would you feel about a government bailout for Google, resulting in the government having ownership and access to all the data and information that Google has collected over the past ten years?

For IT professionals such as myself, who are tasked with thinking through “What if “ scenarios to build sound disaster recovery and continuity plans for businesses, the “What if the operating systems and productivity tools themselves went away, or needed to be eliminated from the equation?” is one that is quite perplexing.

Send me your thoughts.

Saturday night I ran the Microsoft Small Business Server Transition Pack for a client. This transition pack is not a widely used tool, as most people who have outgrown an SBS are usually in the market for a new server as well. This particular client had an SBS server installed just about a year ago, so the hardware reinvestment was not a good approach.

There are several blog posts and articles on preparation for the TP, and how Windows looks different after the transition, as well as what to do if the transition pack fails. However, the documentation seemed to be a big black hole in terms of the step-by-step process itself. With the documented known issues with running the TP being essentially disaster situations and non-functioning servers, needless to say it made the process quite unsettling going in.

Although I’m lacking in screenshots, here was my step-by-step experience with the transition.

1. Shutdown Backup Exec Services
2. Shutdown Symantec Antivirus Services
3. Shutdown VMware Services
4. Change 3rd party applications to manual startup
5. Export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Small Business key from registry
6. Delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Small Business key from registry

(Documentation suggests that you uninstall Internet Explorer 7 as well, but 6 was still installed on this system.)

7. Remove Ethernet cable
8. Launch TP from disc
9. Enter TP key
10. Enter administrator password
11. Reboot #1 (all reboots are automated)
12. Reboot #2
13. Reboot #3
14. Windows Setup Screen
15. Reboot #4
16. Windows Setup Screen
17. A prompt for the install.exe file on the SBS 2003 R2 Technologies disc. HUH??
18. Found SBS discs and the R2 Tech disc, there is no “install.exe” on the CD!!
19. PANIC!!
20. Found blog post saying you can ignore or cancel. Whew!
21. Finish automated setup
22. Reboot #5
23. Windows 2003 Standard Edition bootup screen
24. Activate Windows dialog
25. Plug in Ethernet adapter
26. Activate YES / Register NO – activate -> Success!
27. Reboot #6
28. TP Finish screen
29. Import HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Small Business key to registry
30. Start Backup Exec Services change to automatic startup
31. Start Symantec Antivirus Services change to automatic startup
32. Start VMware Services change to automatic startup
33. Add TP CALs

TOTAL TIME: 1 hour 54 minutes.

From here you are recommended to reinstall your service packs. So there is another reboot or two and another hour or two of work.

After running the Transition Pack, I seem to be questioning the option as a true value add. I am still unclear if the cost and time justifies the value gained in contrast to upgrading. Upgrading is often a harder sell of course, as some business owners are just reluctant to jump on the latest Windows release (I have a client that finally upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 in October of this year!). But if you must use the TP, hopefully this post will help.

Special thanks to all the people who failed their way through the TP process in the past. You helped to add to the documentation of known issues of the mysterious Transition Pack, so your plight was not in vain!

On Thursday this week I assisted a client in moving their three production servers from a downstairs open office to an upstairs semi-closed environment, which had been converted from a storage closet. The room had been properly prepped with a thorough cleaning and its own climate controls and HVAC system [The client is an HVAC company in town]. They were also installing a new security system in the same room. The primary reason for making this move was for disaster purposes. The building, while not necessarily in a flood plain, had seen some disturbingly close water in the spring flood of Bloomington and southern Indiana. So they made a decision to move all of their security, I.T., and other electronic systems upstairs.

The old location of the servers was just inside the office door from the machine shop, where they draft custom duct for HVAC installations. There is a lot of dust and debris that carries over into the office. In addition, the office is frequented by their field technicians, who tend to get dirty on the job as they work in construction sites and outside in the dirt and mud. They frequently carry that dirt into the office on their clothes. Needless to say, the air in the office was anything but clean, despite a good air system in the office area.

During the move on Thursday, we popped open the cases of each server and sprayed dust-off inside the servers for the first time in probably a year. The amount of dust and dirt that came out of those servers was simply shocking. Shortly upon spraying one down, an employee walked in the office and his first comment was, “Why is it cloudy in here?”

We completed the dusting of Pigpen and his two siblings, and then I proceeded to have a 10 minute sneeze attack. I probably lost a couple months of life expectancy based on the amount of dirt I inhaled.

According to ComputerDust.com, integrated circuits (ICs) can suffer from overheating as a result of the insulating affect of dust as well as suffer from electrical shorts caused by dust across their contacts. Tests show that the internal temperature of a CPU can go up as much as 30 degrees due to a buildup of dust. While we cannot predict the lifespan reduction of operating a PC in an environment that has a higher concentration of dust than what would be considered normal conditions, it can be reasonably concluded that reducing dust in the operating environment and in the CPU case will reduce the risk of failure.

There are a few mitigating approaches to reducing dust:

1. Use Dust-off regularly. You should use dust-off around the open areas of your PC, such as the case vents, the power supply fan, and any other venting fans, on a monthly basis. PCs should opened up 3-4 times per year for inside cleaning.

2. Use a dust cover. They are relatively inexpensive and will sufficiently keep dust out of your computer.

3. Invest in a PC Air Filter. Also relatively inexpensive, operates just like your air filter in your home’s heating/cooling system.

utilizing these options will reduce risk of failure and provide some piece of mind. Just to be clear, ForthPhaze Technology will do no other chores beyond dusting – no window cleaning or lawn maintenance! (Unless the rate is good…)

Also, beware of the dangers of Dust-off. Don’t try these tricks at home!

I just received the following email below regarding a problem with a VIPRE update.

Last week there was an isolated incident that may compromise an operating system component. It was corrected with the next definition release, however some agents had the definitions long enough to still be affected. The affected computers will not reboot without a system restore. If you experience this in your environment, DO NOT reboot any additional computers until the following utility has been applied.

We have created steps to remedy this problem. You should follow these steps if you have version 3.1 of any CounterSpy or VIPRE agents installed on computers prior to October 20, 2008.

The instructions below will use the CSE/VIPRE console deployment to push out a utility. This utility was created specifically to remedy this problem. After this utility is run on the agent, it will be safe to reboot the machines. This utility takes 15 seconds to run (per agent) and will not require a reboot or otherwise change the installed agent or disturb the end user.

The goal of this utility is to delete these files:

C:\Windows\System32\sbfc.dat
C:\Program Files\Sunbelt Software\SBEAgent\definitions\sbts.dat

1. Stop the Counterspy/Vipre Enterprise Service.
2. Close the Counterspy/Vipre Console.
3. Navigate to the Counterspy/Vipre install directory.
4. Rename the Packages folder to Packages-Clean.
5. Save http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/support/vipre/stopbootquar/packages.zip to the CSE/VIPRE install directory.
6. Extract the new Packages folder.
7. Start the Counterspy/Vipre Enterprise service.
8. Log onto the Counterspy/Vipre console.
9. Change the Deployment Timeout to 15 seconds. (System->Configuration->Advanced Settings)
10. Add “SBEAgentDeployW.exe” and “STOPBO~1.EXE” to the Admin-defined good for all policies. (Make sure to click the Good tab to prevent accidentally adding these to the Known bad).
11. Wait for the deferred work to be processed for all Installed agents.
WARNING: All agents with a status of “installed” must process their deferred work before proceeding. Failure to do so will result in this patch NOT being applied.
12. Deploy to a test agent using the Push method from the console.
13. Reboot the test agent to verify that the patch was correctly applied.
14. Apply the patch to each policy by selecting all the agents and then Deploying via the automated push method.
15. Test at least one machine from each policy before allowing all the agents to reboot. If the patch did not take, double check the exclusions and push it out again.

Once all machines have the patch applied, you can then replace the install package with the original.
1. Stop the Counterspy/Vipre Enterprise Service.
2. Close the Counterspy/Vipre Console.
3. Navigate to the Counterspy/Vipre install directory.
4. Delete the Packages folder.
5. Rename the Packages-Clean folder to Packages.
6. Start the Counterspy/Vipre Enterprise service.
7. Log onto the Counterspy/Vipre console.
8. Change the Deployment Timeout back to 120 seconds. (System->Configuration->Advanced Settings)

You can contact our support department if you have any questions on this or run into any issues. Support can be reached at support@sunbeltsoftware.com or by calling (877) 673-1153 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Thank you,
Sunbelt Software