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A client had a computer (one system out of several that are exactly the same) that kept throwing errors and failing to start services upon booting up. This caused problems because print sharing didn't work, sound didn't work, etc., but the system still booted up. The services were all set to start automatically. There was also a tendancy for windows update (svchost.exe) to throw an error like this:

The instruction at "0x745f2780" referenced memory at "0x00000070". The memory could not be "read".

Googling resulted in some advice about fixing it by running regsvr32 on some program components and disabling Windows update, but that doesn't fit our security strategy (it also didn't necessarily work).

It was looking kind of hopeless, but...

A client ran into a problem with a RAID5 array losing a disk. There was a hotspare, but apparently some data corruption occurred. This caused problems with the ESE database used by Exchange. Recovery was relatively easy, but very time consuming.

I was able to recover the primary database without a problem, but the public folders were problematic. I kept getting data corruption errors like these when I tried to use the eseutil program to repair the damage:

"Operation terminated with error -1206 (JET_errDatabaseCorrupted, Non database file or corrupted db) after 8.47 seconds"

"Operation terminated with error -1209 (JET_errInvalidDatabaseVersion, Database engine is incompatible with database) after 9.32 seconds."

"Isinteg cannot initiate verification process.
Please review the log file for more information."

So, I had to do a restore from a tape backup and that created new issues...

Ever had problems with downloading the adobe reader 8.0 installer using the adobe downloader? I hate adobe's downloader as it has given me endless grief. I kept getting errors like "You're resuming a download, but the file on the server has changed. Would you like to restart the download process?" No matter whether I clicked [Quit] or [Restart Download], it would crap out anyway. Then I'd get an error "The downloaded file is corrupt. Please try again later."

I've been working with the SugarCRM Virtual Machine Appliance (sugarcrm-os-4.5.0f-x836) for software development and testing. I make changes to the Virtual Machine using a combination of subversion, eclipse, and vmware server. I currently use the free version of vmware, vmware server 1.0.1. Subversion and eclipse are both open source.

I ran into a problem, though, because the virtual machine virtual disk, as created by the SugarCRM developers was not allocated large enough for my use and would run out of disk space with very little usage.

I tried to use the free VMWare Converter 3.0 to convert it and increase the size of the disk, but I kept getting an error that it "cannot configure the source image".

So, my workaround for resizing an uncooperative vmware disk image is to use the vmware-vdiskmanager program that is included in the vmserver installation to increase the disk, then use a gparted live CD to increase the volume size to fit the new virtual disk size.

Here's how...

My client was having problems with Windows Terminal Server 2003 crashing after a week or two. The system had been running fine for 2 years.

The problem turned out to be a program ZSHP1020.EXE that installed as part of the driver package for a remote client's HP 1020 laserjet printer. There were about 77 copies of the program running in the task manager.

I reviewed the errors in the event log and they included:

EventID 333
An I/O operation initiated by the Registry failed unrecoverably. The Registry could not read in, or write out, or flush, one of the files that contain the system's image of the Registry.

EventID 1508
Windows was unable to load the registry. This is often caused by insufficient memory or insufficient security rights.

By default, users running with reduced rights (not Administrators or Power Users) cannot change the power management functions in XP.

For instance, let's say a user has a laptop and logs on with user rights. If they try to right click on the desktop, click Properties, click Screen Saver, then click Power..., they'll see the power settings. However, when they try to change the settings, they'll get an error about not having the right to change these settings.

Here's how you can download and run the memtester memory testing program while in Linux (instead of using a boot cd with it on it)

Often remote users need access to full exchange functionality. This can now be done with Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003 by using RPC over HTTP.

If you run XP like you should and run users with reduced rights, you will eventually get an error in Microsoft Photo Editor that says "No file format information can be found in the Registry". This is a registry permissions issue for MS's shared tools.

I have a project where we are anticipating a large number of files per directory and had concerns about how well ext3 would perform with 50,000 files in one directory. Actually, because of the nature of the project it would be 3 times that as the files get saved in 3 formats.

For some time, ext3 has support built-in for directory indexing. In some samples, this has allowed tests that took 38 minutes without the directory indexing option to be completed in 11 seconds (the example was for adding 100,000 files to a directory).