Error disabling AEM

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:35:56 +0100

On one customer site we have been testing AEM and have decided for the moment to disable it. But when tring to disable via Administration > Device Management > Management Servers – right click the Management Server that was used for AEM and chose “Disable Client Monitoring”, I kept getting the following error message: Message: [...]

ACS Collector (AdtServer) fails to start

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:30:02 +0100

This came up on the technet forums a couple of days ago. I’ll give the answer first and then the full error message – I hadn’t personally seen this problem before and it doesn’t look like a permissions problem from the error but the resolution was to Check that the ACS database had been created [...]

Monitors – overview

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:28:57 +0100

Steve Rachui has a great run through of monitors here: Part I – Unit Monitors Part II – Aggregate Monitors Part III – Dependency Monitors

Follow ComputerSpot on Twitter

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:36:00 +0100

Now you can follow ComputerSpot on Twitter We have recently added a Twitter account for ComputerSpot, so now you can follow ComputerSpot on Twitter and stay up to date with the latest ComputerSpot posts.

Looking for a Fast Internet Connection?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:43:43 +0100

Do you want a fast Internet connection? How Fast is a Fast Internet Connection? Part of the BT 21st Century Network (21CN) roll-out is a service known as Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC). Delivered across BT’s Next Generation Network this service provides a really Fast Internet Connection of up to 40Mbit/s download speed and a choice [...]

Intel buy McAfee for $7.68 Billion

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:12:36 +0100

Why did Intel buy McAfee for $7.68 Billion? Intel have announced today that they are buying McAfee, the Anti Virus software company. The full details and Press Release are available on the Press section of the Intel Website. Why did Intel buy McAfee? Why would Intel, the company who produce the processor chips inside most PCs, [...]

What should I look for in a Remote Support Service Provider?

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:06:48 +0100

How to Select a Remote Support Service Provider? When you are looking for a company to support your computer systems how do you select the best one for your business? What are the keys things that you should look for? Most Remote Support Service Providers provide very similar core services, so you need to look [...]

Find out about Microsoft Hosted Services

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:16:30 +0100

Microsoft Hosted Services There is now a cost effective range of Microsoft Hosted Services, for both the business and home user. Some of the services are completely free and the others are available as a monthly subscription service. Free – Microsoft Hosted Services Currently the Free Microsoft Hosted Services include:- Microsoft SkyDrive Windows Live Office [...]

Are you looking for Computer Support Surrey?

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:41:23 +0100

Computer Support Surrey If you have an office in Surrey and are searching Google for Computer Support companies, the chances are that you will seach for ‘Computer Support Surrey’. If you have employees, or offices, in Surrey, Hampshire and Edinburgh do you need to engage a local IT support in each location to manage your computers, [...]

Where has my disk space gone?

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:29:01 +0100

Where has my disk space gone? At some point or another all of us have asked this question, or a variant of it. We all buy computers with lots of disk space, but the files seem to expand to occupy the available space. It doesnt seem to matter how large the disk is when you [...]

Dealing with Malware

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:06:37 +0100

What is Malware? The term Malware is generally accepted to be a short form of the words Malicious software. This typically encompasses multiple categories of software such as viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, etc. The goal of malware is to install software that can destroy your data, effect your computer’s performance, cause a crash or allow [...]

Windows Live Office

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:57:32 +0100

Windows Live Office If you have a Windows Live Skydrive account then you now also get access to the applications included in Windows Live – Office, or Office Web. Windows Live Office allows you to create and update Microsoft Office documents on the web, without you having to have a copy of Microsoft Office installed [...]

Email Signature – UK Legal Requirements

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:25:13 +0100

Email Signature Information In the UK, if your business is a private limited company (Ltd) or public limited company (PLC)  or a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), the Companies Act 1985 requires that your letterhead, order forms and all business emails include the following details in legible characters: Your company name Your company registration number Your [...]

Business Continuity for Small Businesses

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:10:36 +0100

Business Continuity,Is your business disaster proof? Do we really need Business Continuity for Small Businesses? The snow and general bad weather, at the beginning of the year in the UK, meant that many people were unable to get into work for a while. Did you loose business as a result of the weather because you [...]

Conference Calls for Business

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:55:34 +0100

Do you still Make Conference Calls? Most business still have a requirement to have occasional conference calls, where you need to bring 2 or more people together in the same phone call. If you suddenly find you need to hold a conferencecall you can do so at a moment with Powwownow. Even if you hold [...]

Free Online Storage

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:33:50 +0100

Free Online Storage Its not often that you are offered something for nothing, but that is what Microsoft have done with their Windows Live SkyDrive. They are giving you 25GB of free disk space to store files, pictures etc. You can keep files private or share them. You can get your own SkyDrive by going [...]

Windows 2003 Stand alone Certificate Server

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:18:17 +0100

I found the information that Layne posted here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/operationsmanagerdeployment/thread/7e8dde55-6e55-4109-8da5-85a93fa64ea0 extremely useful when I was onsite the other day. The customer had a windows 2003 stand-alone certificate server and the servers to be monitored had no connectivity to the certificate server. I found that the standard template that is documented for use with certreq didn’t work. [...]

Should you ban access to facebook and other social networks?

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:06:42 +0100

Does your Business Ban Access to Facebook & other Social Networks?  Do you let your business users have unrestricted access to the Internet and social networks during the working day? Do you know if they are spending their time surfing the ‘net or on Facebook, or any of the other social networking sites, when they [...]

Where can I find Specialist Computer Books?

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:11:38 +0100

Looking for Specialist Computer Books? If you are looking for Specialist Computer Books, or Training Manuals and courses then most people will tend to start with Amazon. For books this is a good place to start, but they won’t necessarily have the specific book or be able to offer the online course you are looking [...]

How can I send large files, without clogging up my email system?

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:49:59 +0100

Send Large Files to Customers Just imagine the situation, you have just finished preparing a PowerPoint presentation and you want to send a copy to one of your clients. So you zip the presentation up and email to your customer, along with a message telling them that they need to unzip it. A couple of [...]

Xobni ~ How to find anything in Microsoft Outlook

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:59:34 +0100

Xobni Xobni is a free tool for indexing and searching the contents of a Microsoft Outlook mailbox. It doesn’t matter if you are using a standalone copy of Outlook or if you are part of an Exchange system Xobni will help you find email, attachments and contacts more quickly than you have ever done before.  Where [...]

Free Website Tools from Google

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:50:26 +0100

Website Analytics Google offer Free website tools which help you find out how to optimise your website to improve visitor traffic. If you have a website you should be measuring the number of visitors that your site receives, how they found your website and also how long visitors stay on your site. Knowing something about your [...]

Do you Want a Free Website Monitor?

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:36:48 +0100

Get A Free Website Monitor Right Now? Most companies spend a lot of time, money and effort making sure that their website content is correct. That the site is attractive and will engage visitors. They might even have spent money on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to make sure that their site comes out near the top [...]

Why you should run disk defrag

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:24:33 +0100

Why you should run disk defrag When you first buy a PC it seems nice and fast, everything happens so quickly. Then over a period of time it seems to start to get slower and slower. Why is that? Disk Fragmentation Part of the answer is disk fragmentation. When you first get your PC the [...]

Service Manager – Requirements Overview and Base Install

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:52:39 +0100

I was onsite last week deploying Service Manager 2010 and after much grumbling and moaning about it during the release candidate and beta releases, I’m actually starting to like it. Yes, it is still a little rough around the edges but what I do like is that rather than throw in lots of functionality that [...]

Operations Manager 2007 Versions numbers

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:47:50 +0100

SCOM 2007 RTM: 6.0.5000 SCOM 2007 SP1: 6.0.6278 SCOM 2007 R2 RTM: 6.1.7221

The monitoring of SNMP devices may stop intermittently in System Center Operations Manager or in System Center Essentials

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:54:36 +0100

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982501

Configuring SNMP monitoring with OpsMgr 2007

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:47:58 +0100

This comes up on the forums quite often so here are a summary of some of the best articles I’ve found on the net: Configuring using the GUI: The System Center Central team have a great series – Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV David Allen has a good walkthrough here about [...]

Watch your Service Manager service account password

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:03:56 +0100

When installing Service Manager 2010 RTM, I kept getting an error at the end of the install – “Finalize: An error occurred while executing a custom action:RollbackCleanup”. This seems to be a password issue if the Service Manager service account password contains a | symbol. We removed the | symbol and the install completed fine. [...]

Some extra reports for OpsMgr 2007 R2

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:49:05 +0100

I’m a bit late catching up on these but there were some “new” reports posted on the MOM Team blog which may be of interest. They do require that the OpsMgr Data Warehouse is running on SQL 2008 as they don’t work on SQL 2005. http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2010/04/29/reporting-scenarios-more-samples.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2010/05/10/reporting-scenarios-more-samples-updated-attachment.aspx