File Extractions

All those setup files built using Inno Setup  can be extracted using InnoUnp

Its a command line interface (CLI) utility, just download it, extract to some folder and run it without any parameter to display self help. No installation required.

Supports Inno Setup versions 2.0.18 through 5.3.5

A very handy utility.. how? ask some sysadmins.

I found it extremely useful while i needed SATA AHCI ICH9M drivers built for one model but needed to install it on another model.

VMware – Invalid Virtual Machine

I received a email from one of my higher authorities to backup one of the ERP servers data, reformat it and keep it ready for re-installation of application.

The server was used for testing purpose, and am well aware of these people’s reaction and baseless pinpoints, oh you didn’t backup this, and that and oh what happened to the file blah blah blah….

How can one (sysadmin’s) defend in such a situation, well here am sharing my experience as well the proactive measures adopted in backing up the system.

It would have been simple, just copy the data (excluding system files) from servers internal drive (all partitions) to external hdd and reformat the server.
But i wanted to adopt a different method of backup, as well the traditional backup.

Hence i backed up the entire physical machine (see the pic at the end for the machine type and model) using VMware Converter (P2V – Physical to Virtual backup) to be imported into VMware Server version 2.0.1 build 156745. The conversion was successful, but when i tried to import the virtual machine i received the following error:

After searching through vmware forum and inspite of adopting the suggestions recommended in fixing the similar error other peers had faced the import failed. Finally i found another suggestion (thanks tech.alexi of petri.co.il) though omgili search.

It was the encoding problem in the .vmx file, i changed it from .encoding = “windows-1252“ to .encoding = “windows-1256“ and lo the machine started without any glitch.

Note: The VMware Server was hosted on Windows 2k3 Server Ent. Edn 32 bit

Physical Host

Vmware Host 

Note: All the critical information revealing the organization data are concealed in the pics due to security measures.

OpenDNS

OpenDNS provider of a safer, faster and smart internet navigation.

OpenDNS has announced today a new family of services OpenDNS Deluxe & OpenDNS Enterprise (available immediately).

OpenDNS Deluxe targets household and Small Businesses whereas OpenDNS Enterprise targets between medium and fortune 500 organizations .

So far OpenDNS has been available free (OpenDNS BASIC) , still available and i have been a user @ my home DSL since i discovered more than 18 months back and the benefit(s) i have gained is worth implementing it.

OpenDNS, try it out..

• if you have DSL at home
• if your kids use internet extensively
• if you have shared your DSL connection with your neighborhoods
• if you need a safer, faster, reliable domains.

and make it permanent, i am confident you wont be disheartened.

if you are a system / network administrator just give a shot, temporarily change from corporate DNS pointing to your ISP’s DNS to OpenDNS and verify yourself if its suitable or not. Alternatively if your corporate DNS is pointing to two of your ISP’s DNS, make OpenDNS IP your secondary DNS server and enjoy the difference.

here are the OpenDNS ip addresses:

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

for more information click on the picture below.

Habits are Good (sometimes..)

People say that habits are good and as well bad.

GOOD if its like you are regular in workout, getting up early in the morning etc..
Bad like back biting, smoking etc..

What are the Good & Bad habits related to computing / IT / Security….etc..?
Well that’s out of scope of this blog to discuss everything the good and bad habits of IT and its related stuff..

Am going to tell you that how GOOD is the practice to take backup and how BAD if you forget it.. and specially how GOOD if its DROPBOX (recently came across, registered and now using it)

Yesterday morning @ my office i downloaded a GOOD WhitePaper (pdf) on Guide to IT Policies and Procedures (i needed them badly to enhance, amend our own) and saved straight away in “My Dropbox” folder (GOOD) and inspite of making a note in my Outlook tasks to print it to take home to have a glance at it, i forgot (BAD) due to hectic schedule (GOD! It happens with sysadmins only).

Back at my home sweet home (where my beautiful wife, two sons naughty & stress buster stays) after dinner before going to bed my usual habit (don’t know whether good or bad) to glance through my corporate mailbox and other things that interest me, a small notification in the system tray grabbed my attention on my incredible personal HP DV6188ea eNotebook.

The notification “Dropbox 0.6.570 All Files up to date”, aahhh… i recalled i had put one pdf file and lo its there is my notebook “My Dropbox” folder though i forgot the hard copy of the file, i managed to glance through the soft copy (something is better than nothing).

My GOOD habit developed recently to save critical, important & always needed files in “My Dropbox” folder helped me forget the concern of forgetting (BAD habit) FILES.

MS Word 2007 acts as stranger to .docx file

Being in IT System Administration for more than a decade sometimes even most stupidest problem are untraceable or sometimes simple problem consumes lots of time in fixing, at times complex problem get resolved in less time.

It happened to me this morning when a user came to me with flash drive containing ms-word file complaining that he is unable to open the file.

There was no need to check the file version and the application version on his PC because we had standardized the default Office version will be 2007 on all PC’s in office.

Well thinking that probably the flash drive filesystem is corrupted or on the verge of failing, i copied the file to my local PC and opened by directly double clicking on it and received the following error

Without wasting time, i tried opening the file in OpenOffice (writer) v3.1.1, and lo without any glitch the file opened. Further i saved the file in word 2003 format and saved it to the flash also mailed the same to the user in case his flash might be corrupted.

How strange / funny is Microsoft Word 2007 was unable to open the file.

OpenOffice hatsoff to you

hey stay back.. there is still…

When the user left happily that his problem has been solved (in fact he had received the file by mail), i was wondering how come the file was opened in OpenOffice and not by ms-word. Upon various trails i found the problem. It was actually MS-Word 2003 file (.doc) and god knows how it got renamed to .docx extension.

The point here is that MS-Word or microsoft software was unable to identify the file format irrespective of its extension, microsoft should improve their software intuitiveness in this area.

Islamic Widget

How a software engineer tried to save his sister and invented a breakthrough medical device

courtesy: click here

It’s also a story of discovering a calling, to help others.

Xen Project Launches New Open Cloud Initiative

The Xen Cloud Platform will address the needs of cloud providers by combining the isolation and multi-tenancy capabilities of the Xen hypervisor with …

click here to read further.

courtesy: xen.org