Mount your ISOs without rebooting using Magic Disc

I hate carrying around CDs at dealerships I support.  Its cumbersome and I always end up leaving CDs in the drives, never to be found again.  Its also a pain when the CD you didnt think you needed, but now do is in another binder.  As a solution I first tried copying the contents of CDs to network shares, but later found some discs that work better as CDs.  So my next solution would be making an image and mounting it to a virtual CD drive.

Now just about every system admin has mounted at least 1 ISO to in their lifetime, be it Windows, Office or the latest pirated game they just downloaded.  There are many available software packages out there that do a great job of mounting ISOs from built in shell extensions to full out burning suites which include an ISO mounting add-in.  So what makes Magic Disc so special?  The ability to install and mount an ISO without having to reboot.  This was the decision making factor  for my choice in mounting software.  As an added bonus the install is pretty minimal, so I just leave it on the root of the ISO network share that is in each branch.

So throw your old scrateched up CDs back in their binder and give Magic Disc a try.  Oh and did I mention its FREEWARE ?

http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm

Outlook Organization Tip

Ever set a reminder flag on your outlook and then through the flood of e-mails, have that flag slowly make its way down to the bottom of the inbox, never to be remembered again? This has been an issue with me for a while. So when I got another repeat e-mail requesting some function access to our server, I sat down and really started looking at my Inbox. To my surprise, there is quite the easy solution to this problem

Order by Flag

This is more stupidity on my part, but I figured I’d post this in case anyone else out there may have overlooked this Outlook must! And dont worry about not keeping up on your latest e-mails, it still orders the incoming e-mails by date, but just below your flagged e-mails, which really should be on top anyways

Ricky Recommends Logitech’s Illuminated Keyboard

So my good ol buddy Hoolio needed a bit of spice added to his blog, so he thinks the ever so famous “Ricky Recommends” should make an appearance. I dont really remember how i started Ricky Recommends but i would imagine i was drinking at the time, but basically i recommend a bunch of stuff ranging from products and much much more. So here it goes.

So for my first Ricky Recommends on Hools’ blog i have to Recommend Logitech’s Illuminated Keyboard. The keyword in all of that is Illuminated and it all started back when we bought the new Dell E6400 Series laptops at work. These laptops came with a backlit keyboard. Now a feature such as lit up keys can sound kinda neat but its not until you really start to use it and then go back to a different PC and not have it that you really appreciate it. I mean being able to easily type in the dark is great and if type anything like i do you will find it a great benefit and timesaver. Hoolio knows what im talking about. So when I seen Logitech was releasing a desktop keyboard that had illuminating features i was all over it. I was eyeballing it for about 6 months before i got it and i have to say since i have gotten it i like it.

Like any keyboard that you first start using you will need to get use to it. and once you do you will definitely appreciate the ability to type in the dark especially if your a user that doesn’t use much light. They Keyboard is self is about the same size as the average keyboard lengthwise but it less than a CM thick. Its a very neatly laid out and nice clean package to have on your desk and it looks very nice. It comes with all the function and media keys for Media and different operations in Windows that a keyboard should and with the use of Logitech’s SetPoint software the media buttons are completely customizable. Standard USB connection will ensure compatibility with any kind of PC out there and Logitech famous Warranty will keep your mind at ease for 3 years. The downer i have experienced with this keyboard to date is that the keys are smoother then an average keyboard and i believe this has to do with the Illumination features as the E6400 is the same way. These smoother keys take some getting use to but over time it shouldn’t be a problem. The keyboard is priced around 80 – 130 dollars which seems costly for a wired keyboard but it really all comes down to the old saying you get what you pay for, and having Illuminated keys is definitely a feature i don’t mind paying for. So to conclude the first ever Ricky Recommends on The Anigan blog, Ricky Recommends Logitech’s Illuminated Keyboard.

Cisco Console Madness!

Recently I did some hardware upgrades to our backbone, replacing aged 2600 routers with 2800 series.  Durring this process, I re-arranged our VLANS a bit and concequently had to move our Cisco WAPs to the new VLAN.  Now with 8 APs spread across a building and some high enough to need a SkyJack to access the console this could have beena  time consuming process.  Luckly I had an ace up my sleve.  Durring the initial install of the APs, I had our wireing company run 2 drops per device, one for Ethernet, the other for the console.

Long story short, I was standing next to the patch pannel programming each AP and thinking this would be a great standard practice for all of our CISCO devices.  Food for thought~

Automated inventory care of SIW

Due to a recent change in software, I needed to upgrade RAM in all of the older machines in the organization.  To aid me in upgrading 300+ PCs I thought it prudent to make a list of what hardware each PC had.  I have used many inventory tools in the past (the most prominent being SpiceWorks) but by far the best inventory tool I have used is SIW.  This software comes in both free and paid versions, the paid having more features.  The feature that caught my eye for the paid version was the ability to use command line to control SIW.  After reading through the documentation, I made this small script that will e-mail the results of the scan to a inventory e-mail address.

@ECHO OFF
set INPUT=
set /P INPUT=The owner of this PC is: %=%
CLS
echo Creating and sending %INPUT%’s System Report.  Please Waitsiw /log=”%INPUT%” /email=INVENTORY EMAIL ADDRESS/subject=”%INPUT%’s report” /smtp=EMAIL SERVER /silent /nologo
CLS
CLS
ECHO %INPUT%’s Report is sent
Pause

This script allows the user to input their name, which in turn becomes the name of HTML file containing system specs along with the subject of the e-mail.  This batch file also requires the SIW.exe and SIW.lic file along with it to work.  So I threw it all togeather using freeextractor and created an install file.  Keep an eye out on making install files with freeextractor soon!

References:

http://www.gtopala.com/ – SIW
http://freeextractor.sourceforge.net/FreeExtractor/ – FreeExtractor

Clearing out corrupt print jobs REDUX

Quick update to clearing out print jobs.  Got a call this morning from a user who repeatedly gets jobs stuck in their print queue.  To help reduce his calls, I wrote this quick batch and put it on his desktop.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Repairing Printer… Please wait….
Net stop spooler
del /Q c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\*.*
net start spooler
cls
ECHO Please powercycle your printer
ECHO …
ECHO Printer is repaired
pause

Try it out!

Chris Control

Chris Control was the answer to my Prayers when I had a PC that would not connect through RDP.  ChrisControl is an all in one client that uses both RDP and VNC.  The neat thing about ChrisControl is if you know the admin account, it can remotely connect to the PC, install a VNC server and connct to it… No configuration Required!  And to complete the puzzle it also removes VNC from the remote PC when you close the session, making your PC secure once again.  This works great in our environment where not every PC is on the AD, and has the advantage both the tech and user to access the same screen at the same time.

Oh, and did I mention it also does WOL for those PCs who are powered down?

Heres the download link! http://www.chall.plus.com/winpe/

Gotta small HDD? Running out of space? Spacemonger to the Rescue!

Ever have a clien that complains about running out of space on their Hard drive?  Instead of spending all that time going through directories and finding out where the junk is, check out Spacemonger.  This tool will scan hard drives on your PC and display it in a nice graphical fashion.  As you can see in the screenshot, I took a quick scan of the recovery drive on my laptop.

Spacemonger comes in 2 versions, the Paid and free version.  Personally I like the free version better.  Its small and does everything I need it to.  As an added bonus, it dosnt require an install, so I can take it along with me on a USB key or leave it up on the tools shared drive at the dealership.

Heres the Product link http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/v1x.php

You may have to do some digging around for the download link.  Its on the download page, under free software at the bottom of the list.

I’m Back!

After a hectic few months, Im back to the blog!  I have kinda letit slide a bit, but im hopeing to do at least a post every couple of days.

Look no further than FreeNas

So, my desktop PC at home died recently. The motherboard blew up leaving me with 4 drives that I couldn’t access data from without pluggin in my trusty IDE/SATA to USB converter. Now this can be a pain when your tunes are spread across multiple drives or I am accessing my PC remotely and happen to need data from the drive that isn’t plugged into the adapter.

With funds being tight, I decided to look to my old friend FreeNas to take care of my data sharing needs. FreeNas is a NAS operating system made strictly for creating a network storage device. It can be run on older hardware, so I dug around and found a old 800mhz PC with 512mb of ram and the gigabit NIC from my recently dead PC. With the addition of a SATA to IDE converter (I had a SATA drive) and an IDE expansion card, I popped in the FreeNas CD and started installing. I decided to install the OS on an old 3 gig hard drive I had lying around. Installation is as easy as answering a few questions and your up and running. Once installed I was able to log into the remote console (via the web interface) and mount each of my NTFS formatted drives with ease. Another added bonus is FreeNas, among its many features, has a built in FTP server. Now all my data is available remotely through FTP. Thanks FreeNas for solving my Data Whoes!

(FreeNas can be found at http://www.freenas.org)