Talked to Hong and Ismael regarding their new computers. They will make room in their lab for their new computers. They will use the new computers side by side with their old computers.
Worked with Al on a new computer that was not booting from the DVD-ROM drive. Turned out it was missing a SATA cable.
Yesterday was my last day to report to work at AMETEK, formerly Xantrex, formerly Elgar. I got my last paycheck covering the last two weeks including for Monday the 12th. I also got a check for unused vacation hours. I deposited the checks at the closest WF bank. I turned in my key and keyfob to Milton and my badge to Kim in HR. I left the building around noon.
I am currently working on a Sony VAIO PCB-V505BCP. This unit has been set aside, possibly scrapped, but is still in working condition. Right now, I am finding out if its battery will charge to full capacity. I am also cleaning it of unnecessary and obsolete programs. I have already uninstalled Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 and plan to install version 8 later. It currently has MSOffice 2000 and Outlook 2003. I am debating whether I should install Office 2007 or Office 2003. If I choose to install Office 2007, I might have to join the laptop to the domain. Trying to bypass joing to the domain might be a good project to try.
I tried to look for a newer version of ZipCentral. I first went to the website zipcentral.iscool.net listed on the About box from the software but it gives me a page not found error. I searched for ZipCentral on Google and found out we may have the latest version (4.01). It seems like development has stopped for this program. Too bad, because its a very good free alternative to WinZip. I did notice on several occassions, it had a hard time handling very large zip files. That was the very reason I was looking for an updated version hoping that this bug is fixed.
However, I discovered two possible things that maybe useful later. One is Izarc, touted to be another alternative to WinZip. The other is the website freewarewiki.com.
First day of work for me. Wasn’t really planning to work until Monday the 7th but the IT dept needs my help with a lot of projects going on.
First task: Backups. My account is being used by Arcserve to authenticate to two servers. I had to change my password last week so now the backups failed on those two servers becasue the stored passwords were not updated with my new one. I changed it and did a preflight check. The preflight check did not report any errors on the two servers above, but reported errors on the other servers. However, I tried drilling down the file structure on those servrs and iwas able to get in, so authentication is not the issue. I will let it run tonight and see if I get any errors. I assume it is just a timeout issue. I will also need to change the authentication so it does not use my account, but rather a service account that is not forced to change passwords every so often as per the current group policy.
Vinnie Vuong called about his version of PADS software not being able to open files created by Engineering. I think he has an older version of the software. The Engineering people has a newer version and I do not know where the installation files are. Joe Cortez used to install it among his group, but not to the people in the manufacturing area. I will have to talk to the people involved to straighten this out.
JB, supervisor in shipping called and told me his assistant, WP, had trouble resetting his password which has expired. He said Warren even tried using a combination of uppercase and lower case letters and numbers to conform to the new password standard but he was not able to successfully change his password. I came by his desk, reset his password and walked him through changing it. He was able to change his password successfully.
Al asked me about the files that Tom Erickson saved for the new HR administrator. I told him Tom has created a folder called ‘for Deborah’ in his network folder and put all the files their last week. Milton came by and also talke to me about it, and sensing the urgency of thae matter, I decided to transfer the files myself. I looked for Deborah’s folder on the Windows file server but it wasn’t there. I looked at her user information and found her home directory was not defined. I proceeded to define her home directory using the %user% variable and somehow the Windows server did not take it. I had to use her full name. When her home directory appeared, I copied the folder from Tom’s network drive to her Windows home directory. I also had to add her to the Migrated group in the Novell server so her F: drive maps to her Windows home directory.
John P. informed me that the movers from Diversified did not show up this morning as expected. They were supposed to be in the building first thing in the morning put back the two multifunction printers they disassembled last Friday. John told me the printers are still sitting outside unable to be used by the Document Control department. I called Diversified and talked to Bob who was in charge of the work order. Bob thought the work was done last Friday. I told him the situation so he said he was going to make some phone calls and will call me back. I gave him my cell number.
Milton asked me to help Karen Lindahl. Milton’s email said she ‘had problems scanning’. When I came over to her desk, I found out she could not access the share where the scanned documents are stored. As she hovered her mouse on the shortcut on her desktop, I immediately found out what the problem was. The tool tip display showed the shortcut still used the old NETBIOS name for the printer. We recently updated the NETBIOS names of our Toshiba printers. I made the necessary change to the shortcut.
Amber recently replaced the hard drive of one PC on the assembly floor. She was able to restore all the programs except for a label printing program written in Access. Milton tried to get it to work but can’t get it to print. We thought it was because we did not install the printer drivers for the label printers. I started installing the drivers in the XSD-PS1 server and created shared printers for each of the Zebra printers. I had to download the HP printer install wizard from the HP website as well as the Zebra drivers from the Bartender website. The HP wizard allowed me to discover the JetDirects’ IP addresses. That did not solve the issue. I then installed the drivers through the Novell legacy print queues, the same way the drivers were installed on a machine where the program was working. That did not help either. So I asked Milton if I could look at the source code of the Access program. I thought I had to login as a specific user with admin rights to see the source code. I found out all I had to do was press the shift key while opening the program so it bypasses the autoexec macro that hides the full menus and the programming interface. When I looke at the source code, I noticed it was referencing a Bartender executable. That was when Jack Willingham mentioned that the program does use a command line program from Bartender to print labels. I found the Bartender CD from the locked cabinet in the server room and installed the program on the PC. The Access program worked after that.
Completed setup of Dell 620 for Gary Stapp. Created image and delivered to his office.
Checked up John Fogle to see if he’s doing OK on his new computer that I delivered last night.
Sent log files of Exchange Document Level backup requested by CA support.
Called Quantum regarding the faulty tape drive. Their database was down. When their database goes back up, they will verify our warranty contract and will either ship a drive with or without a technician to swap it for us.
Sent reply to Art of CA with screen shot of Busy Threads screen in Novell Console Monitor
Imaged new computer for Hong Tran.
Faxed request for replacement tape drive to Quantum.
I replaced Vanessa Jay’s computer recently. She used to have a Dell Optiplex 400 runnning Win2000. Now she has a Dell GX280 running WinXP SP2. On her old computer she had Adobe Acrobat 5.0 which she uses to print PDF. I did not install that software because it was an older version.
I download PrimoPDF and installed that instead. PrimoPDF is not as robust as Acrobat, but it does what she needs to do. And best of all, it’s free.
Mary Sullivan asked my opinion regarding her emails to Citibank returning as undeliverable. The NDR message says that the reason for rejection was that the email appears to be spam. She has asked Citibank to notify their IT department since she believes it’s something to do with their servers. Citibank wants her to notify ours as well thinking that the problem could be very well on our end.
I told her I agree with her opinion. To test, I told her to email Citibank and copy other external email accounts sucn as yahoo, hotmail, etc. She did that and sure enough the email to Citibank returned undeliverable while all the other emails went through just fine. She was going to report her findings to Citibank.
Anisa sent me a scanned copy of a printout of PDF documents off her printer. The printout had unreadable and garbled text all over the page. She said she can print the same documents to another printer and it will print out just fine. I figured it must be a printer driver problem.
I checked the printer driver. She was using the Optra 1855 driver. I switched it to the Optra T616 driver, the same driver for the printer that works fine. She did not have time to do a test. I told her to notify me what she finds out when she finds the time to do the test.