dae's weblog

Last night as I was trying to upgrade the BIOS of my Samsung X360 laptop, I got a “Loading driver failed. Restart system” error. I searched the entire internet and found a fix that suggested I should install Samsung Update Plus, which didn’t work. I was trying to flash from Windows 7 (32 bit) and I had a feeling that this tiny program wasn’t made to run under this OS.

Ultimately I decided to run the BIOS update program in Compatibility Mode. I right clicked it and Windows proposed to run the BIOS update in Windows XP SP2 Compatibility Mode. Yikes! It sounds scary and it ran way slower than I expected, but it worked and I got my update.

Yesterday, I was at the golf course, doing a Google Apps migration. A young boy sat down next to me during a coffee break at the club house.

I asked: “So… Do you have a handicap?”
He replied (without blinking his eyes): “Yes, sir. 11″
I: “And how old are you?”
He: “12, sir”
I wanted to tease him a bit and said: “Well, ok. It’s good you’re still young, so you have lots of time to work on a decent handicap”

He said nothing, just nodded his head.
I finished my café au lait.

Well, there you have it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m off to bed, now. Have to get up early tomorrow. I imagine waking up tomorrow and… the world will be out of IPv4 addresses. That feels weird! Good night.

Hurricane Electric IPv4 Exhaustion Counters

Did you know you can use your Mac to connect to any Windows PC? Microsoft has a client, which even allows you to relay audio. It’s pretty cool!

Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2

Or click here for a nice chart of possibilities

Today I had an interesting challenge. I was working on an english retail Windows Server 2008 x64, that was configured as a Domain Controller, running DNS and DHCP.

It was still running SP1 and I wanted to upgrade it to SP2, which did not work using the separate download, but it worked using Microsoft Update!

SP2 installed successfully and it took a while for me to figure out that some services were not running afterwards. Those services included DNS, DHCP and… Windows Event Log. I tried to start the Windows Event Log service, but it would fail with a strange error about the service account not being the same as it used to be or so. Uninstalling SP2 didn’t solve the problem, nor did Google have a solution for me.

I checked the Services and saw the following line:

C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k LocalServiceNetworkRestricted

The options on the Log On tab were all disabled (grayed out), but the radio button was set to Local System account, which was interesting, because the Path to executable referred to the LocalServiceNetworkRestricted account.

I decided to try my luck and I started REGEDIT on the server, looked up the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog

There was an ObjectName which held a REG_SZ value of LocalSystem and I decided to change it to NT AUTHORITY\LocalService

It worked! The Windows Event Log service started without any complaints and so did the DNS and DHCP. My server was safe and I was happy!

Are you using Outlook 2010, just like me and do you have a LinkedIn profile?
Give LinkedIn for Outlook a try!
If you’re still on Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, don’t forget to get the Outlook Social Connector (which is included in Outlook 2010)

Sophos announces investment company Apax is about to acquire a majority interest in the IT security company.

Apax Partners to acquire majority interest in Sophos Plc.

I’ve been using ÜberTwitter for some time now and in fact it’s the only serious BlackBerry application for Twitter.

Unfortunately the started using ads a little while ago, which really bugged me, although I understand the wish of the developers to make a living out of it.

I happened to see the possibility to pay $5 and get rid of the ads (the ad supported version remains free of charge), which makes it the perfect app for me. It’s well worth the money! Do you have a BlackBerry? Take yours to the address below and pay those lousy $5. Happy tweeting!

Get ÜberTwitter – The only Twitter Client for your BlackBerry!