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Oct 3 |
HP Colour LaserJet M476dw Firmware Bug – DHCP Assigns Self IP for Gateway
Posted by Philip Elder on 03 October 2014 05:10 PM
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Original Posted Here: HP Colour LaserJet M476dw Firmware Bug – DHCP Assigns Self IP for Gateway After beating our collective heads against the wall wondering why our newly deployed HP Colour LaserJet M476dw refused to make SMTP connections for Scan to E-mail we found our source in the _very_ last place we expected.
Note that the gateway address currently points to _itself_ instead of the router that is assigning the IPs. This is the IPConfig /ALL output for one of the systems on the network:
Note the Gateway address is correctly pointing to the router. What this means is that for now we are setting the IPv4 configuration to Manual and putting in the correct IP address for the Gateway: What a pain that has been. Sure enough: The above status came out really quick and so did the test e-mail:
So, after all of the time we spent getting frustrated with the ISP, thinking they had blocked SMTP outbound, and everything else in between the least expected source for the problem has turned out to be the one. NOTE: Printer firmware was updated to the most current version as of this writing. NOTE TO SELF: Check the hanger bearing before replacing that rear-end! Philip Elder Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project Read more » | |
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May 20 |
Some Mandatory Reading for Sys Admins
Posted by Philip Elder on 20 May 2014 02:41 PM
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Original Blog Post Here: MPECS Inc. Blog: Some Mandatory Reading for Sys Admins There have been some critical human attributable error related news stories that we have seen lately. Many of us, if not all of us, have had situations that have had negative impacts on our client’s networks or our own networks due to something we did or did not do. The following four links come via the Patch Management list serve (Ben S.):
As with anything out there on the Interwebs take a PDF of the four parts to keep them safe. There are many pearls of wisdom contained in the above pages as well as some humorous stories that we _all_ can relate to.
When we make a mistake that directly impacts our clients we make sure to apologize and make some sort of restitution offer to them. Contrary to some folks that claim that admitting mistakes can kill a business we have found over the years that being honest with our clients actually builds up their trust in us. Philip Elder Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project Read more » | |
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Apr 21 |
A Microsoft Cluster Troubleshooting Guide
Posted by Philip Elder on 21 April 2014 01:02 PM
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Original Post Here: MPECS Inc. Blog: A Microsoft Cluster Troubleshooting Guide Here are some of the tools we can use when troubleshooting a cluster, Scale-Out File Server, Hyper-V, and other cluster issues: Failover Cluster ManagerThe FCM gives us the ability to dig into the various Windows Logs and delimit them by time, node, and log type.
We set up a few different queries out of the box. One with everything Cluster, Failover Clustering, and Hyper-V related. We then create a subset of queries. The various queries get saved to a local folder on the management DC/RSAT system. Get-ClusterLogThe Get-ClusterLog PowerShell commandlet allows us to pull the full log set from one or all nodes. Note that the default output folder is NODEC$WindowsClusterCluster.LOG (C:WindowsClusterCluster.LOG) unless specified in the command. This log can be very busy and a bit of a challenge to work through. If one has a good idea of what to look for then the log can be quite informative.
EDIT: The Default cluster log location is C:WindowsClusterReportsCluster.log Microsoft Message AnalyzerThis is an in-depth tool. There is no way around it. Thus, a learning curve is required. However, there is an amazing amount of information that we can then have at our fingertips and not only that colour coded!
One can use a series of filters under the log file settings to delimit by time period among others.
We can set up our columns:
Once we have our Cluster column, for example when looking for a problematic cluster component, we can set up a filter:
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. One will need to spend some time with this tool to really get into its abilities such as colour coding source node, information levels, and so much more! Please check the Message Analyzer Blog for more information. Note that an absence of System Centre and its components is deliberate. We find, at least at this time, that Failover Cluster Manager provides a far superior cluster management experience. Philip Elder Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project Read more » | |
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Apr 15 |
Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Update 1 Caveats
Posted by Philip Elder on 15 April 2014 09:56 AM
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Original Post Here: MPECS Inc. Blog: Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Update 1 Caveats Whenever we hear about updates for any device firmware, application software, or operating system software it is _always_ a good idea to read the Release Notes (we probably all know the acronym that comes to mind here Unfortunately, this major update for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 has its issues some of which are full-stop problems. The first place to start for this update is here: There is a lot of information there.
This last one is a deal breaker for many enterprises, medium enterprises, and especially in our own SMB/SME environments where WSUS is virtually everywhere for patch management. We just stood up a new cluster on 2012 R2. After our Cluster-Aware Update run:
Our cluster nodes now have the update. Since this cluster setup is Greenfield with WSUS ultimately ending up _on_ the cluster the nodes were updated via Microsoft Update. The workaround for this situation is to enable TLS 1.2 as instructed in the above blog post. Since we are deploying Windows Server 2012 R2 into client sites we will have no choice but to make this change. Then, when Microsoft releases an update to the update to hopefully fix the problem we will need to test that update extensively _especially_ in a cluster setting! Yo Microsoft! There is a huge pool of folks willing to test and break this stuff for you! Please get us involved in the early bits for operating systems, applications, and updates again. This ongoing situation of releasing patches and updates to the public without testing them on disparate systems is a _bad_ thing. Philip Elder Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen ASP Project Read more » | |
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Feb 25 |
Adobe Reader and Acrobat – Content Preparation Progress: Please wait while the document is being prepared for…
Posted by Philip Elder on 25 February 2014 09:56 PM
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We have a client that is being bugged by this prompt when opening certain PDF files.
Adobe has a KB article on this: The solution is to do the following:
The dialogue has to do with accessibility. Philip Elder Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen Read more » | |
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Feb 5 |
CaseWare Working Papers Error: Printer not activated, error code -30
Posted by Philip Elder on 05 February 2014 12:27 PM
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We are seeing CaseWare Working Papers choke on a PDF Batch run with the following error:
CaseWare has a KB on the issue: Printer issues with Windows 8.1. Though in our case the OS is Windows 7 Enterprise x64 with the indicated update (2014.00.072) having already been applied to all systems. As per the KB article we took a look into the registry with the key mentioned missing completely:
The affected systems have the printer though:
Our steps to get things going:
We will now see a successful run of the batch:
Once that process has completed have a look at the registry key we created:
We are not 100% convinced that this is a “fix” or a workaround as things have been operating normally until just the other day. Philip Elder Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen Read more » | |
), README.TXT, _and_ do a search for the update to see if anyone is complaining about it.
