Free Computers!

Kristi from our front office has a number of computers she wants cleaned out of her garage, and she’s willing to give them to whomever — free!

I’m told that most of the computers have no HDDs or RAM.  But other than that, they are complete and in tact.  Shoot me an e-mail if you’re interested, and I’ll pass it on to Kristi.  Here’s the inventory:

Dell Optiplex GX 240 (P4): 2 available
Dell Optiplex GX150 (P3): 3 available
Dell Optiplex GX150 (P3) (smaller case): 2 available
Dell Optiplex GX270 (P4) (smaller case): 3 available

Implementing NI/AD – 11/18/2008

We covered chapters six and seven today, spanning the topics of AD administration (namely OU design) and an Introduction to Group Policy. 

Homework:

• Chapter Six: Review Questions
• Chapter Seven: Review Questions

Troubleshooting – 11/17/2008

We finished up the book this afternoon by covering chapters 10, 11, and 12.  Which is to say that we looked at TCP/IP and other network protocols (ch 10), Internet Explorer settings (ch 11), and Performance Monitor and other performance monitoring tools that come with Windows (like Task Manager, MSConfig, etc.)

Next week, we won’t have class (yeah Thanksgiving week!), but when we come back the next Monday (12/1), we’ll have our second major test, which will be over Chapters 7-12.  Make sure you really prepare for it, it’s one of the last “real” grades you’ll get in this class.

Instead of classroom instruction, we’ll be actually fixing computers from here on out.  For that reason, this is several people’s favorite class in the program, and hopefully you guys will like it too.  After the exam, we’ll go over some brief housekeeping-type of items dealing with the flow of computers and also have a brief lesson on HijackThis, which is a great malware diagnostic tool.

Homework:

• No chapter work, but STUDY for that test!!!! C’MON!!!!

Network+ – 11/17/2008

Remotely accessing clients and servers was the discussion topic today.  We covered different connection mediums (PSTN, ISDN and T-carrier lines) first, and then looked at some protocols that assist us in the connection to various servers.

Some of the protocols we covered include:

SLIP – Serial Line Internet Protocol – This is a really old protocol designed to allow us to move IP traffic over our serial ports, typically to an external modem.

PPP – Point-to-Point protocol – PPP is newer in that in gives us some options, namely authentication, encryption and compression.

PPTP – Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol – Similar to PPP but creates a “tunnel” between two routers on the Internet.

L2TP – Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol – “Layer 2″ refers to OSI Model Layer 2, and that indicates that very little data processing is being done to the packet as its being sent.  Used with the IPSec encryption scheme, this is a very secure method of VPN communication.

After this discussion, we configured RDP on our own computers, and then to close the class, we watched as I screwed around with a poor, unsuspecting student using a computer in another class via VNC.  (My preferred version is RealVNC.

Homework:

• Chapter 7: Review Questions
  

Telling Windows to Lie

As most of you know, I work one half day a week at my daughters’ elementary school teaching a technology enrichment class to 4th, 5th and 6th graders.  In addition, I supply any IT needs that the teachers may occaisionally need, which has been very little as of late.

Last week, i was asked by the 1st grade teacher to assist getting a game installed on one of her classroom computers.  The computer runs Windows XP with 512 MB of RAM and has not traditionally been a “problem” machine.  When I asked her what the issue was, she told me that every time tried to install the game, an error telling her to upgrade her machine to Windows 95 appeared.

This is a very interesting problem, to say the least.  What happened was this particular program, which was written over a decade ago, was coded to query the operating system for its version.  If the program found that the Windows version was not Windows 95, then to abort the installation and display an error instructing the upgrade.  I guess the programmers of this particular game had no foresight or maybe were just pessimists — who knew someone would still be playing their game 13 years later?

Apparently, this is not an isoloated issue, as Microsoft provides a documented way to work around this problem.  The answer lies in something called Compatibility Mode, and its nothing short of telling Windows to lie.

The way we access this feature is opening the properties of a program’s shortcut.  Once there, we’ll see a Compatibility tab.  After clicking it, we’ll see a number of options we can select to make our new Windows play nice with programs designed for older Windows.  What effectively happens is that whenever a program asks Windows what version it is, Windows reports whatever version we decide to tell it to report.  So, instead of our elementary school teacher’s computer telling the truth and saying, “I’m a Windows XP” machine, it crosses its proverbial fingers and says, “I’m a <ahem> Windows 95 machine”.

I applied this setting to the problematic program for the teacher I was helping.  The program, happy with this answer, worked like a charm from then out.  Problem solved.

Making a computer lie, especially in a Christian school, is just too fun of a solution!

Marketing – 11/12/2008

The structure for today was simple, really: midterm, and then go home.  Next week, we’ll cover Chapter 6.

Homework:

• Nothing!  Unless you want to read Chapter 6 to be ready for our discussion.  That would be cool.

Implementing NI/AD – 11/11/2008

Further exploring AD, we came across the concept of sites today.  Sites exist for the purpose of explaining to Active Directory which DCs are separated by weaker WAN links that may cost our companies money if left to replicate every 15 minutes or so.  AD sees no difference between New York and Los Angeles — it only sees a couple of different IP addresses of different DCs.

After playing with Sites and Services a bit, we moved on to the Global Catalog and FSMO roles.  Remember, if operating in Windows 2000 Native mode or higher, having global catalogs are required for the authentication (logon) process.  Global Catalogs keep authentication information and how to get to remote domains stored on them so that authentication traffic doesn’t have to traverse WAN links.  FSMO roles are the things that domain controllers do.  Each initial DC that is installed is given all 5 roles, but in bigger installations we may want to divy up the jobs to other DCs that might be better equipped to handle the jobs.  We can either transfer roles to other servers, or we can seize roles from servers that already have roles.  The tool we use for this?  NTDSUtil.

Finally, in chapter 5, we practiced with some techniques that allow us to run AD in a day-to-day fashion.  Obviously, seizing the Infrastructure Master role from one server to another is not something we’ll likely do every day.  But adding users is something we might definitely do.  We looked at some alternate ways of adding those users, namely using the DSADD and the NET commands.

Homework:

• Chapter 3: Review Questions
• Chapter 4: Review Questions
• Chapter 5: Review Questions

Computers Plus

Ok, I need to take this opportunity and talk about something that’s been on my mind.

This morning when I got to work, I checked my inventory of RJ-45 connectors and realized that they were much lower than I had anticipated.  I knew I was low, but not *that* low, if you know what I mean.  I had some connectors coming in any day now, but until then I didn’t have enough to do two classes of cable assembly.

So, at a break, I hopped into my car and drove around the corner to the Computers Plus store on Campbell Lane to pick up some connectors there.  My plan was to buy a 100 pack, pay an overpriced 30 bucks or so and just expense it.  No big deal.

I got there, and the manager greeted me and asked me if I needed any help.  I told him what I was looking for and he took me to where the connectors would be.  They were out.  I internally panicked a little bit.  The manager left, saying he was going to check in the back to see if they had any there.  He came out a few minutes later and said that they didn’t have ANY in inventory.

It’s what he did next that totally floored me.

He gave me a taped up bag of RJ-45 connectors, saying that he had cleaned out his technician’s supply of them.  There weren’t quite 100, but there was enough to get me through my day of instruction.  And what’s better is he didn’t charge me a dime for them!

I’ve done business with this store a handful of times, and I’m continuously impressed with how far out of their way they go to take care of customers.  I’d urge any of you to frequent this store and make it your local supplier of choice.

What’s really cool about this is that for the price of a buck or two, Computers Plus pretty much sealed the deal as making me a loyal customer.  What’s better is that I’m telling all of my students about it through this blog, which hopefully will more than make up for the dollar or two “lost” by Computers Plus to give me the RJ-45s.

PS: The connectors are a much more reasonable price of $19.95 per 100.

Troubleshooting – 11/10/2008

Today we covered Chapters 8 and 9, dealing with basic and dynamic drives (chapter eight) and setting up local and network printers (chapter nine).

Review Questions

• Chapter 8: Review Questions
• Chapter 9: Review Questions

Network+ – 11/10/2008

Today in Network+, we took the midterm exam and then covered Chapter 6.  The most important thing to take away from Chapter 6 is the EIA/TIA 568 A/B wiring schematics.  The most important one is 568B, which tends to be used in more organizations.  Here’s the correct way to wire the eight individual tiny wires in the cabling:

1: Orange/White
2: Orange
3: Green/White
4: Blue
5: Blue/White
6: Green
7: Brown/White
8: Brown

(For 568A, simply switch any Orange with Green).

Homework:

• Chapter 6: Review Questions