RANTS & RAVES: Latest MacBook Pro (with i7 Core Processor) and Snow Leopard

First, Apple has made yet another decision to make life harder for Sysadmins. In reloading a brand new MacBook Pro with i7 Core processor, I discovered that my Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) images would not work. I further realized that none of my Snow Leopard media (DVDs) worked either. In fact, as of this moment, no retail copy of Snow Leopard sitting on store shelves will work with these newly released MacBook Pros. The only bootable Snow Leopard disk that works right now is the one that came with the machine. As such, I had to build a new image using this media.

Second, I attempted to save some time by partitioning the HD before reloading the OS. I planned to use Bootcamp to install Windows 7 64-bit onto the MacBook Pro. I also found that this step doesn't work. When launching Bootcamp from the application located in Utilities, Bootcamp does not recognize the partition I setup for the Windows partition prior to loading OS X. Luckily, I had already imaged the OS X load and could easily wipe the drive again and just reimage. The raves of this post is, of course, the ability to image without having to start all over. How frustrating would it be have to start over? I don't want to find out.

Hope this helps you save some time.

Happy Computing.

TIPS & TRICKS: Software Licensing Manager

Learned to how to obtain more detailed information about Windows 7 activation. There's a tool built into Windows 7 called Software Licensing Manager. Running it in a Windows 7 command prompt with admin rights will yield information like:

- Activation ID
- Installation ID
- Partial Product Key
- License status
- Remaining Windows rearm count

This last piece of information is important to Windows 7 imaging. I've found that if this rearm count gets to zero (start with 3 on a fresh install), then Windows will no longer boot properly.

The command to use at the command prompt to retrieve this information is slmgr /dlv. There are other parameters that can be applied, but /dlv is the most detailed. After running the command, a Windows Script Host window will be displayed with the information.

Hope this helps you. Happy Computing.

RANT: Got hacked.

Not me, thankfully. But, I did feel the effects of someone else getting hacked. Does the name Fred Cabasa ring a bell for anyone? I have no recollection about how I know this person. I even have this person in my contacts, but it was before I started noting down how I met people. Thus, this person had his information (i.e. email account(s), phone, computer, etc.) compromised in some way and I received some of the consequences.

How do I know that this person was compromised? I've got a fairly good idea of how spammers work and an email that seems like it's coming from someone I know is no real indicator. In this case, however, I received additional information leading me to believe that this person should really be careful about his personal information from here on out. Here's the message:



First, the email message only contained a link and no other text in the body of the message. The sender was Fred Cabasa using an email address I had on file for him, separately. The message also looked like it was sent to a small number of people at the beginning of the alphabet. Finally, the real tell-tale-sign about this message was that it included another email address of mine that I no longer use.

There's one other way that indicated Fred got hacked. I received a junk text message on my cell phone. This was no ordinary text message. This text message contained the same link as in the email I described earlier.

There are a million ways people could have obtained this information: from hacking his computer, to something as simple as finding his old cell phone or other device that contains this information Fred might have disposed of without properly wiping the data.

Moral of the story? Don't give your personal contact information out to anyone, ever. Wait, check that comment. Some times my paranoia gets the best of me. Seriously though, I think the moral of the story here is to make sure you protect your data and your devices. It's too easy to obtain information these days. If we all do our part (even if we don't care about our own information), we'll also protect those people who could be affected by information theft.

Hope this helps you. Happy Computing.

TIPS & TRICKS: Blackberry Enterprise Activation Duplicates

A user with a Blackberry connecting up to our Blackberry Enterprise Server was having trouble with syncing between Exchange and her mobile device. The device was originally configured over the wireless without ever plugging in to a machine and/or any desktop software. Everything had been functioning normally until recently. The Blackberry was not syncing over new appointments or contacts, though email was flowing normally. One other aspect was that there was an assistant to the user who also helped enter in contacts and appointments to the user's Exchange account. The appointments and contacts entered by the assistant were also not syncing onto the Blackberry. However, the information was showing up fine in the Exchange account through both Outlook Web Access and Outlook on a Windows machine.

One possible reason was that Exchange accounts were recently migrated from one store to another. A possible fix for this problem was to rerun an Blackberry Enterprise Activation to see if the Blackberry would reestablish the sync for contacts and calendar items. This did not work. The problem persisted.

The most drastic solution would be to wipe the Blackberry and rerun the Blackberry Enterprise Activation as if the Blackberry just came from the factory. However, I wanted to avoid this as the user had data residing on the Blackberry that was not backed up, especially since we did not create a connection between the Blackberry and any desktop software.

I finally figured out that there were duplicate contact lists and calendar lists. Somehow the Blackberry lost connection to the BES and when it did reestablish itself, it did not recognize that there was an existing list of contact items and calendar items. This is why there were only duplicates on the Blackberry, but not inside of Exchange. After some testing, I figured out which one of the calendar and contact lists were the actively synced lists and which were the ones with the lost connection. I configured the contact and calendar lists that lost the sync connection to no longer display (I may have even found a way to delete those lists after further investigation). This removed the duplicates. it's likely that a wipe and running of Enterprise Activation would have solved this problem. But, since we needed to find a more manual method, configuring the broken lists of contacts and calendars did the trick this time around.

Here's where I got my inspiration this time around:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/bes-admin-corner/122095-duplicate-contacts-after-new-enterprise-activation.html

Hope this helps you. Happy Computing.