ccrampton1

While I'm a big fan of systems like Solarwinds and other network/server/device monitoring solutions for larger corporate environments, there are many cases where one simply wants to monitor a few critical servers.  As if anyone needed another reason to buy a smartphone, take a look at MobilePCMonitor .  The beauty of this solution is it's hybrid approach, with an agent residing on the server or PC you wish to monitor, reporting to a hosted service at MPcM's datacenter.  So, while you have an... Read Full Story

If you haven't tried it yet, let me highly recommend Clonezilla for simple disk imaging. An indispensable tool for us techies who want to save an existing disk state before effing up someone's server or PC, the fact that you can create a usb bootable version and carry it around with you is priceless.  I can't tell you how many times I've used this utility and the countless number of times it has saved my arse by being able to restore a disk (or just a single partition) to it's previous state... Read Full Story

Ok, this will be a very short post.  VHD virtual disk files can be mounted from within Windows 7 and used as a disk drive.  While I won't dwell on the many potential uses of this, here's a short overview of a recent desktop PC conversion experience.  Setting: old pentium PC with 40GB internal disk drive, and an external 40Gb USB drive that is slam full of pics and videos, with only a few hundred megabytes free. First, you can get Disk2VHD from the Microsoft SysInternals website... Read Full Story

Most if not all of my posts are borne from the technology equivalent of a bare knuckles cage match in which I am paired with a technology foe heavier, taller and with longer arms... but luckily over the course of my years I've come out bruised and battered but triumphant a greater percentage of the time.  A recent challenge involved telnet sessions from a PC running Vista Business (don't laugh, there are some out there) continuously dropping their connections to a remote AIX host.  So, that's... Read Full Story

Microsoft's SyncToy tool is great, but often overlooked or unheard-of little piece of software. Intended to be used for synchronizing directories, this utility can be a great way to initiate backups of laptops, move and sync data to cloud storage, or simply keeping your files sync'd to a USB key for mobility. You can download the SyncToy tool from the Microsoft webiste here . This link also contains a detailed description of the SyncToy tool and features. SyncToy requires the .NET Framework 2... Read Full Story

Ok, so it's been a while since I've posted any really cool hacks, tools or creative ways to use a flame thrower (I've always wanted to finish that post). I spent the better part of a year working with an IT company as a sales guy with not much hands-on time at customer sites - hated it on many different levels; buy me a beer and I'll fill you in the the sad, gritty details. So, after a hiatus now I'm back to doing many of the things I like to do best, and spending more hands-on time with cool... Read Full Story

How to compact an Oracle Virtualbox VDI file As most of these posts do, this one originated in a problem that required me to stop everything and find a solution. I've been a long time Virtualbox user for running virtual machines on my laptop system for testing and demonstrations as well as application isolation. Well, a few days ago one of my Windows XP virtual machines was refusing to update an installed application; it would just fail. I checked the disk space inside the VM and it showed... Read Full Story

Virtual CD Driver for mounting ISOs in Windows 7 Microsoft was gracious enough to give us a Virtual CD tool for Windows XP Pro but not so in Windows 7. So how do we access that library of ISO files we've accumulated? Daemon Tools to the rescue. With Daemon Tools Lite v4.35.5 we once again have the ability to mount ISO images and address them as virtual CD ROM Drives. With over 5 million downloads and counting, it seems that Daemon Tools has become the "go to" solution for those in need of a... Read Full Story

nLite's WinOS Boot CD customizer Here's another "note from the field", a post about a tool tested and proven in a customer environment. Ok, so here's the technical backgrounder: Customer orders a Lenovo tower PC and of course it comes pre-loaded with Vista, but with XP downgrade rights. We're wanting to use this as a staging server for document images to be burned to Blu-Ray disks (hey, they hold 25GB of data) using CyberLink's InstantBurn application. We've also ordered a SATA Raid... Read Full Story

nLite's WinOS Boot CD customizer Here's another "note from the field", a post about a tool tested and proven in a customer environment. Ok, so here's the technical backgrounder: Customer orders a Lenovo tower PC and of course it comes pre-loaded with Vista, but with XP downgrade rights. We're wanting to use this as a staging server for document images to be burned to Blu-Ray disks (hey, they hold 25GB of data) using CyberLink's InstantBurn application. We've also ordered a SATA Raid... Read Full Story