Don't Back Down

If you've been a subscriber to the Microsoft Action Pack, then you might know of a couple of changes to the plan this year. First up is the requirement that you pass an assessment course. I figured I could do this when I had a chance, and so I pretty well blew off all those notices that they kept sending me and didn't bother to read much on the subject, so I finally got around to checking out the details today. I found out that the subject matter is a little bizarre. Mostly to do with sales, which I absolutely hate, but still, I figured I could stumble may way through.

I eventually settled on Designing, Deploying, and Managing a Network Solution for the Small-and-Midsize Business, which is described as "This course teaches you to design a network solution, install and upgrade to Windows Small Business Server 2003." I figured that wouldn't be too hard, right? So I registered. Of course I was in the middle of about three things, and still wasn't paying attention, and so the first thing I noticed was an assessment of my current skills, to see if I was able to take the test. I found that odd, but oh well. So I answered the 15 questions, and passed with 80%. That's cool. Then I spent a while trying to figure out how to actually get to take the real test, and I couldn't find it.

Read "Microsoft Action Pack Assessment and You" »

I generally like things being made available online. Sure, I have issues with putting data online, because when my connection goes out - and it will go out - I like to be able to get to it. But providing the option to get at things online is a nice feature. Making it so that they have to be retrieved online just blows. It really blows.

One of the hats that I wear in my life as a computer consultant has to do with networks - and when I'm wearing that hat, it means that I have to deal with Microsoft products. This really doesn't mean that I am a Microsoft hater, because a lot of what they do is decent. But some days they do nothing other than make my life miserable. Take eOpen, for example.

Read "Microsoft eOpen Sucks" »

It seems that Microsoft Office Accounting Professional (2007) has a small problem. Actually, I'm not an accountant, so there may be more than one. But in this case, the problem is that once you have moved past the end of a year (here, 2007) and started entering items in a new fiscal year (2008), the accounting package doesn't want to let you enter any complex journal entries any longer. If you want to enter a single line-item transaction, it's fine and you don't even notice it. That's great, and the way that I prefer to go. But unfortunately, every once in a while, I have to enter something a little more complex, perhaps spanning two accounts on one side of the entry and one on the other. You can do that on a simple one-line transaction.

At that point, you have a problem and you get the message that says "A Voucher No. on the lines may only be used once per fiscal year". I had actually seen this message before (and I don't recally what that one was for - it may have been the same thing), but I managed to get around it somehow. At this point, I needed to enter an adjustment for last year, and 2008 is well under way. So I needed to figure a way around it. For those who are asking, Quickbooks isn't a solution at this point. I am getting there, but it won't happen in the next couple of days, when I need to have things turned over to the accountant, and that's when I started digging. The good news is that it's fixable. The bad news it that you have to do a little work.

Read "A Voucher No. on the lines may only be used once per fiscal year" »

Over the last four days, I've spent plenty of time getting up to speed on the latest offering from the boys in Redmond, and so far I'm reasonably pleased with it. It looks plenty pretty. With a few exceptions (the "setting up" dialog as you log in for the first time being one), the interface has a nice makeover from XP. But is it worth upgrading? That I'm not sure about.

The speed is nice, but to be fair, I'm running on a new computer too. So I can't really say if it's better than it was or not. Probably not. There's a lot going on with the new animations and the gadgets in the sidebar (which are neat, but mostly useless), so I suspect that if I tried to install it on an old computer, I would be really dragging. I've also noticed that I tend to lose Internet connectivity with some regularity - my IM client goes in and out every few minutes. Plus, driver support blows. Really blows. This is the one area that I absolutely cannot stand.

Read "My First Days with Windows Vista" »

With the official release of Internet Explorer 7 (and perhaps Firefox 2), you may find yourself wanting to uninstall the IE7 beta, but you get a message that tells you to log in as the same user who installed the product originally in order to uninstall. If you're like me and have a tendency to muck about with users, that might be a lot easier said than done. Luckily, there is an answer.

Read "Removing the IE7 Beta" »

I've used Microsoft Money in one form or another for years. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say since 1997, but I'm just not sure if that's right or not. I want to say that was the year they released it, but I just don't recall for certain.

Over that time, I've manually entered many receipts, and I've tried most features of the program, though I still steadfastly refuse to upload my personal financial data to Microsoft's servers. Sorry, Billy.

But the last months have had me falling further and further behind and I needed to get caught up on some credit card transactions for, oh, five months or so. So I needed to do something. I figured it was time to check out the importing functionality again. Unfortunately the online features require said uploading. But simply importing a QIF file don't. To do that, I can use the Money Import and there they are.

Read "Importing Account Transactions in Money" »

You may see this error message pop up in a dialog box while trying to login, specifically when you try and change the domain. To get the box to go away, press CTRL-ALT-DEL. To remove the problem entirely, make sure that your DNS is configured properly, by pointing the DNS servers to the domain controller for your network.

This error message comes from an incorrect DNS configuration. I think it was because my DNS was pointing to my ISP's DNS server (techncally, to my router, which pointed to my ISP).

By configuring my domain controller (DC) with DNS, which in turn forwarded requests to the ISP, and then pointing all DNS to the DC, it seemed to resolve the issue. To get the DC to rebuild the DNS, run dcdiag /fix from a command prompt and/or restart the netlogon service.

As I play more with Small Business Accounting (SBA), I actually like it more and more. It has a ways to go, but I like it. However, I want to do some testing with the multi-user settings. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the multi-user settings have broken.

While I could have sworn they were working previously, when I had no domain on the installation, now that I have installed SBA on a domain server, every time I try to work with the settings, I get an error.

Read "Multi-user Small Business Accounting" »

While moving a customer's Exchange installation, one of the users told me that she manages another user's mailbox. This means that she needs to open their mailbox from time to time. In actuality, we typically open them through the 'Advanced' tab of the Exchange settings.

But I went to check it out through the Other User's Folder option on the 'File' menu - only to find that it was grayed out! How in the world did that happen - and more importantly, what to do about it?

Read "Open Other User's Folder Grayed Out" »

Today I needed to move some databases. Data files, technically, but it's essentially the same concept. Instead of moving both the data file and the log file to another machine, I just moved the data file to the other drive, as having the data files on one drive and the log files on another speeds the access a bit. Everything else is identical to moving from one machine to another.

Read "Moving Databases with SQL Server" »

I managed to get a document into a "stuck" state. The printer showed the document in the list, and it would show it as paused, as printing, as deleting. But it would never do anything. The solution? Restart the print spooler service. Worked like a champ.

Of course, now I have another document hung up, but I know how to deal with it. And then I can try to figure out the problem with this thing.