Insanity is only a state of mind

A rather odd title I admit but sometimes some of the more insane things to do are the absolute best things to do. This became apparent when I volunteered myself to do a triathlon in August this year. Most of you know that I love cycling and really enjoy running that’s 2 out of 3 items covered, the swimming is not so hot but I do enjoy it but really..all three together in a race?! Insane.

The thing is our youngest son was in hospital from birth until he was almost 3 years old (you can read about it here)and it brings a few things home to you. Firstly, there is ALWAYS someone worse off than you; Second, there are people out there that no matter how bad it gets they just battle on very seldom complaining. We had some great support for individuals as well as bodies that are involved in his particular illness. As a result I decided last year that I would do something to raise money this year for charity. I have now decided that I will be doing two things to raise money for a great charity who need some support; they are called Breathe On UK. They provide support for ventilated children and their families during some of the more stressful times which is when it is needed most. My chosen events are as follows:

1. Cycle ride from Ilkeston to Ilkeston via Skegness
The plan is sometime in June (to be decided) to cycle from Ilkeston across to the East Coast to Skegness, then turn around and come back again in the same day. This works out at around 200 miles which is not an easy thing but not impossible.

2. Beginners triathlon in August
The second event is a beginners Triathlon which has been organised by Erewash Borough Council and takes place in August this year. The event consists of a 400m swim, 10 mile cycle ride and a 3 mile run. Again not a simple feat for someone who is new to the event but again it’s not impossible.

So that’s the line up for this year, once I have all of the sponsor forms etc organised I will be asking for anyone willing to sponsor to contribute as this is a great charity that really needs some support. Thanks in advance for any support, I’m outta here now!

- Rob

Remove XP Anti-Malware

Since I have had to remove this from 2 computers today, which coincidently were both running AVG, I thought I would post up the way to remove it from an ‘infected’ computer.

NOTE: These instructions are intended as a guideline on how to remove this infection. If you are not sure how to do this then please make sure you consult a professional. All such information and related graphics are provided “as is” without warranty of any kind.

The first step is to repair the running of executable files (exe files):

Click on Start, Run and type ‘notepad’ then press enter. Now copy and paste the information below into Notepad.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.exe]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\secfile]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\secfile]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe\shell\open\command]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe]
@="exefile"
"Content Type"="application/x-msdownload"

Now save this file by clicking on File, Save As; select the file type and set it to “All Files” then enter ‘fix.reg’ into the file name box making sure you save the file to the Desktop and click OK.

Now double-click the ‘fix.reg’ file on the desktop and click Yes to confirm.

There is a second method which you may need to use to stop XP Anti-Malware from running, in both cases I have had use both methods so here is the second method.

Click on Start, Run and type ‘Notepad’ then press enter. Copy and paste all of the information below into Notepad.

[Version]
Signature="$Chicago$"
Provider=Myantispyware.com

[DefaultInstall]
DelReg=regsec
AddReg=regsec1

[regsec]
HKCU, Software\Classes\.exe
HKCU, Software\Classes\secfile
HKCR, secfile
HKCR, .exe\shell\open\command

[regsec1]
HKCR, exefile\shell\open\command,,,"""%1"" %*"
HKCR, .exe,,,"exefile"
HKCR, .exe,"Content Type",,"application/x-msdownload"

Now save this file by clicking on File, Save As; select the file type and set it to “All Files” then enter ‘fix.inf’ into the file name box making sure you save the file to the Desktop and click OK.

Now right-click on the “fix.inf” file on the Desktop and select Install. Now reboot the computer into ‘Safe-mode with Network Support’.

Now download MalwareBytes Anti-malware, install and ensure that it fully updates before running. Now run a ‘Quick Scan’, once it has completed it will display the results. Now click on ‘Remove Selected’ and reboot the computer. Details about how to install and run MalwareBytes Anti-malware can be found on other sites but the important part is the Registry file and INF file above.

- Rob

What gets you going?

This is just a quick post that came to me this morning as I was getting up, “What gets you going?”.

I envy people who find it easy to get up early in the morning as this is always something I struggle with, don’t get me wrong I always wake by 7.30am which some would consider early but I want to be getting up at 6am as there are things I like to do. Lots of people I know get up at 6am seemingly without any major hassles or struggles but do they? I do manage, for the most part, to get up at 6am as I love to cycle early in the morning before work and some would look and think that this comes natural and easy for me. Let me tell you now I REALLY struggle.

Human nature is to see the negatives, for example;

• But the bed is nice and warm and it’s cold out there
• Just 5 more minutes..
• It’s raining so I’ll cycle tomorrow
• I didn’t go to bed until late so I’ll get up late

The fact is that getting up early sucks for me but if I want to do the things I want to do I have to find the things that get me going…maybe thats all you need too?

- Rob

Trend Worry-Free Business Security

We have started to roll out as number of Trend Worry-Free Business Security installations in the last week or so and have run in to the same problem each time. Each of the installations have been to Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 servers and what actually happens is that the WFBS management console installs onto Microsoft IIS by default, when you try to access the console you sometimes get a password prompt. After entering the password you are just left with a blank page, other times you don’t get the password prompt at all. If you do get this then follow the steps below as this has fixed out problem each time:

• First open Internet Information Service Manager on the server and check that the website “OfficeScan” exists. Now close the Internet Information Service Manager.
• Now open a command prompt and change to the “Trend Micro\Security Server\PCCSRV” folder
• Now type “svrsvcsetup.exe -uninstall” and wait for this to complete, it could take a number of minutes.
• Now open Internet Information Service Manager on the server and check that the website “OfficeScan” no longer exists. Now close the Internet Information Service Manager.
• Now type the following commands pressing enter after each one:
  • svrsvcsetup -install
  • svrsvcsetup -setvirdir
  • svrsvcsetup -setprivilege
  • svrsvcsetup -enablessl
• Now restart the following services using the Services Applet:
  • Trend Micro Security Server Master Service
  • IIS Admin Service
  • World Wide Web Publishing Service

Now if you try to access the console you should be able to log on to the console successfully.

This worked for us each time, so I hope it’ll work for others too.

- Rob

Little worm on a big hook

The title of this post comes from a line in a classic film, in my opinion, which is The Crow. During the film Skank is asked by Top Dollar ‘Don’t you feel that?’; he response by saying ‘I feel like a little worm on a big f*****’ hook.’, classic line. So what is the relevance? Let me explain.

For those that rotate in the same IT circles as I do then you will have seen much of the buzz at the minute surrounding the CompTIA Reseller Forum this week and the TCA Conference. Both of these events were fantastic but I will not go into how the day panned out as other have done this already, you can read about it here or here. One of the points that was raised in the resellers forum was the relationship with vendors or distributors and the IT Resellers. The fact is that many of the traditional distributors don’t give a lot of attention to small IT resellers, the kind of people that were at the Resellers Forum, as they are moving lots of boxes to the big retailers such as Ebuyer, Dabs etc. The reality is that much of the time it is cheaper for the reseller to buy from the likes of EBuyer and Dabs as they are generally cheaper than buying through the normal distribution channel. The problem for the reseller is the consumer, the very people they are selling to can buy from these guys as well.

One of the suggestions from a friend and fellow member, Richard Tubb from Netlink IT, was to engage with the vendors and distributors on a personal level by asking them ‘How can I help you’. Now this philosophy, in this context, is quite unusual. Don’t get me wrong the concept is not alien to me, as a BNI member I am a big believer of ‘Givers Gain’ which basically says if I help you then someday you will help me too. However, I have never thought of it in this context and it started me thinking about things. After thinking about this a little I realised that this was something that I was already engaged in with a distributor of mine, Security IP. Some of my fellow AMITPRO members will already know Security IP but they are small distributor by comparison to others out there but that does not make them weaker but stronger in my opinion. My account manager there is James Cole who I have known for more years than I care to recall as I knew him at the last company he worked for. We have always had a candid relationship as I explained from the outset that I would likely never bring him any *big* orders but I would do all I could to get him in front of other people like me to that they can get more business, and I did this because I wanted to not because there was anything in it for me. What has happened is that when there are any new products coming out then he calls me and we get to be one of the first to try it, more importantly our feedback is heard and, where appropriate, acted upon. I also get help with marketing

Now as a small IT reseller would I get that type of support from a larger distributer? Almost certainly not, so why would a smaller distributer want to engage me in such a way? Well that I can only speculate from my point of view but firstly we have a relationship; what I call a personal-business relationship where by the personal boundaries blur slightly around that edge of the business relationship. Secondly, from the outset we have both made a concerted effort to help one another to develop our businesses by helping the other. Not in a conscious or premeditated way, if either of who has not been able to reciprocate it would not have made any difference, the relationship was there anyway.

So what is the point of the post? The point is that we live in a time when everything has been commoditised and we go after the cheapest price, much of this has been created by the box shifters like EBuyer, Dabs even Asda and Tesco. In spite of this there are still suppliers, distributors and vendors out there that want to make those personal connections and work with small IT resellers who don’t think that they are ‘big’ enough to be noticed. So speak up because you may just be surprised.

- Rob

Are you getting it yet?

Are you getting what the IT community is about yet? A while back I wrote a post about the power of the IT community and what it can deliver to you, it seems so strange looking back that there was a time when I didn’t ‘get it’.

Right now I am sat in a TravelLodge in Leicester as I am attending the CompTIA resellers forum at 7.30am at the Holiday Express followed by the TCA Conference at 10.45am at the Walkers Stadium. Yesterday evening all of the people attending the Resellers Forum were out for a dinner kindly laid on by Kaseya, and yes it was a room full of geeks but it was a great night out and fantastic opportunity for me to get together again with Chris Timm, Richard Tubb, Andy Parkes, William Linard, Adam Harris and many others some of whom I had not see for some time. These guys are some of the best in our industry and I proud to say my friends. On the face of it some of these guys run IT companies that are doing what I do so why on earth would I want to be socialising with them much less sharing the way we work? Quite simply because through sharing, you get the reassurance that ‘that awkward customer’ is not just unique to you and that others face the same challenges that you do. Also by working together we can all help to raise the standard in the industry and that is what the Resellers Forum is all about. If you run an IT business and are interested in getting involved in the Resellers Forum then you should contact William Linard for more information.

Playing safe

We live in the Internet age. Everyone and anyone is connected to the Internet, some more often than others as it becomes common place for mobile phones connected 24/7. In these changing times it is very easy to forget that, while the Internet is a wondrous place to be, it can also be dangerous…let me explain.

Many years ago while I was working at a local Nottingham ISP I was asked to go on a radio show to discuss the dangers that the Internet presents to the younger generation. Evan all those years ago people were aware of the dangers but they still needed to be reminded of what to watch out for. Now lets roll forward some 8 years to the Facebook, MySpace and MSN generation where you are considered strange if you don’t have a Facebook, MySpace or MSN account and to not be on the Internet makes you a ‘dork’*.

So is the Internet any safer now that it was back then? No.

What we are seeing more of very passive behaviour on the part of parents and the role that they *must* play in order to keep their kids safe on the Internet. Now that may seem like a harsh statement and I would like to think that most parents are sensible but many aren’t. Only today I heard that someone I know has just signed their son up to a free Live email account and then set them up with a Facebook account despite their son being below the age of 13 required by Facebook. Now we all know that there are kids out there below the age and the that is a fact but there are ways that this can be done *safely*, let me give an example.

Firstly if you wish to give your child an email account of any sort then you should setup the computer so that you get a copy of ANY emails that they get. This means that you can ensure that they are not talking to people that they shouldn’t be that could bring them to harm. Second, if you are going to set them up with a service like Facebook ensure that you set it up under an email address that is delivered to YOU not to the child. That way if someone wants to add them as a friend then you will get to know about it so that you can make sure that they do REALLY know them and they are not just added them for the ‘numbers’.  As adults there are a great many people that just anyone as a friend on Facebook as it is a ‘numbers game’ which is ok as we are mature enough to make that decision, but as a child then this *must* be policed by someone who is responsible. This does not even take into account ensuring that ‘safe surfing’ is taking place with kids.

The fact that someone in this day and age has setup an account without putting any measures in to place to ensure the child’s safety is really bewildering and disturbing to say the least. In our house we have an ADSL router which has built in content filtering to ensure that all of the children are able to surf the Internet safely without exposure to ‘unwanted’ content. I have also setup OpenDNS to ensure that whatever the filter in the router does not pickup then OpenDNS will get it. The children’s computers also run Interguard which allows me to monitor things that they do such as MSN, web mail as well as keystroke logging. This means that I can monitor things that they do without them knowing, not so I can play ‘god’ over what they do but so that I can be a responsible parent and ensure that they are safe. The last thing is, when old enough, they can go on Facebook but email notifications are sent to me or Jules so that we can make sure that they are not doing anything daft and the kids respect that.

I like to think that our children are quite ‘savy’ when it comes to computers and the Internet and they are but when they’re chatting on MSN they have no idea that the person they are talking to is really who they claim they are…that’s my job.

At the end of the day this is just my opinion for what it’s worth and as much as I would love it to be, the world is not perfect but you can be damn sure I will do all I can to make my kids worth perfect. As always I welcome you’re thoughts on this as opinions always vary.

- Rob

* not sure if the term dork still exists but it did in my day.

S**t happens!

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas break and Santa brought you lots of lovely things, this post was originally due to be put up last week but unfortunately the time just didn’t appear !

I was speaking with a friend the other day and he was having a bad day. First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.  Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.  He explain how his day had gone and I said to him, “sounds like you’ve had some fun today”. At this he replied “ain’t that the truth, still, s**t happens!”. This got me thinking.

How many times have we all heard that said? I know I have said it a fair share myself over the years but when you say this what are you really saying to yourself and more importantly what are others hearing? Ok we’ll start with what others are hearing as that is sometimes more important in life. At best they find this funny and laugh it off as just something funny, however more often you will be seen as a very negative person, a ‘glass half empty kinda guy’. People inherently do not like to be around negative people, they want to surround themselves with positive, happy people that are going to help them to feel positive and happy themselves. After all when you meet with someone and they ask if you are well, they don’t want to hear that your back aches from driving 4 hours to see them, or that your tired because you had to get up at 3am to get to the appointment with them on time. They want to hear how great you are and how wonderful life is (though not literally).

So what does it say to yourself? If you are not able to find the positives in any situation then you will always see the negative, obviously. However, the impact on your life can be massive as over a period of time (which could be months or years) it can eventually start to make you feel unhappy with your life and every thing will just seem dour and pointless. It may seem a little extreme but I have been there and after a number of tough years in both work and family I found it hard, real hard with daily life but I still carried on. What changed me was two things. First of is someone who I consider to be a very good friend who over a period of time helped me to see there was two ways to look at everything and what you take from it is a choice and you must choose to take the positive or the negative. The second was when I joined a business networking group, the people there were *very* positive people despite being early morning. What I learned there was while you will make some close friends you can really talk to your must put your best business face on and show everyone there that you are having the best day ever because when you do people naturally gravitate to you.

With that in mind lets take another look at my friends day and see what he could have took from this had he looked at things differently:

“First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started” – What can be taken from this? Ok first off the car would not start which is a real pain for anyone who has had it happen. That said a good neighbour came over and helped him get it ‘jump started’ which took a LOT less time than waiting for a break down truck to come. So he has good neighbours to be thankful for.

“….he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.” - So he couldn’t get out of the street straight away because of the snow, after all we did have some last week. However, the positive here is that it turns out that once again one of his neighbours had some grit and went out and spread it the length of the road so all the neighbours could get out.

“Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.” – Here again is another positive. Ok on of the servers is down and clearly he was out of his depth, but what he did was called me and we located the problem, resolve it and had the server up and running in less than an hour.

So next time you’re having a tough day, always, always find the positives in whatever happens because it is always there. It’s all too easy to focus on what it negative in the world but it takes true spirit to find the positives.

I wish you all the greatest success for the New Year, hope you all have a great one!!

- Rob

More than just checklists….

I wrote last week about the importance of checklists for all aspects of your business. Expanding on that I learned a valuable lesson at the weekend in the most unlikely of places, in a hospital.  Our youngest son has had some medical challenges which started before he was born, he was given a 1 in 10 chance of survival when it was first diagnosed. However, he didn’t let it hold him back and battled on growing stronger each day. By the time he was finally discharged from hospital he had been an inpatient for almost 3 years, but he is unique. This means that he has to be managed much differently to any children with ‘similar’ ailments so much so that his consultant has made oxygenation plans, care plans, flow charts for his care etc. Last night we had to take Danny in to children’s A+E as he had a bad chest infection. When we got there we explained the situation to the nurse and then again to the doctor. I explained that his oxygenation plan states that unless he is in 3lts of oxygen he should not be admitted. We also explained that there are certain procedures as to how Daniel is dealt with in most situations and he should consult the PICU unit to get more information.

To cut a long storey short the two key things happened that sealed our fate to 6.5hrs in A+E and a lot of stress and arguments. The first thing was that the doctor did not contact the people we had clearly told him to speak with to get more information. Instead he just rang the on-call person which mean that the wrong information again was fed back. The second was that the carefully written procedures for handling Daniel and the care & oxygenation plans were not made accessible to all people that may be in contact with him. This mean that he was given all of the wrong treatment.

So what has this to do with my IT life? Simple.  The first lesson is when you are dealing with a client, new or existing, the most important thing to do is LISTEN. Let them talk, make notes and ask questions. This simple step alone can save you hours in wasted time and if the client is on a flat-fee contract this means money saved. Second lesson is as you begin to create business processes, checklist and procedures to run your business smoother make sure that everyone that needs to know they are there..know. After all you could have the best product/service on the planet but shouting about it in the middle of a dessert is not gonna do a great deal of good is it.

So to summarise; Stop, Listen then Talk….in that order then you can’t go far wrong.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

- Rob

A checklist for everything

When I first started in I.T I was young and able to absorb everything I read and memorised it all. Then as the years passed by I learned more about processes for performing regular tasks in my work and they became my own. So much so that they were engrained within who I was and I never needed to look this type of information up.

However, as I have gotten more involved in the business of running a business and not just owning a job it has become much more difficult to remember this so fluently as I used to. This gave rise to processes. Many people have come across Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which are common practice in large organisations but not so in small businesses, why? The reason is quite simple; In order for a large business to run fluently and in the way the creator designed it there must be an SOP as he/she will not be there to train every role in the business.

I am currently in the process of creating a whole raft of checklists for tasks which are undertaken at a clients site along with business processes for things that must be completed within our own business. So what needs to be documented? Anything and everything…..this sounds like a mammoth task but it isn’t. The reality is that you need to document anything which needs to be done but should not require you to perform it yourself.  For example my topic this weekend is ‘SBS2oo3 to SBS 2008 migration checklist’. This is simply a checklist to tech’s to following when they are performing this type of migration. It is not a full migration manual for SBS but it is a ‘crib sheet’ to help job the memory of a training technician so that something important is not forgotten.

Does your business need checklists and procedures? Maybe. Would it benefit? Definitely.

- Rob