Ricoh Aficio PCL Drivers

No significant record of problems with Aficio 1045 or 3045 either PCL or RPCS.

Problems started with using PCL drivers for Aficio MP C5000 colour copier with popup user code customisation by Ricoh NZ. Some users had difficulty printing from Word / Publisher etc but OK when file converted to PDF and printed in Adobe Reader.   

After 64 bit driver was added all Windows 7 users started having problems with all printers.

After popup and standard PCL drivers were updated to latest version 3.2 many users had printing problems.

Currently are working around by deploying RPCS drivers with hardcoded popup codes which is working for Windows 7 users & will be deployed to all users.

FOOTNOTE: We are using Group Policy Preferences to manage all our printers.

Testing DPM 2010 Evaluation

Probable (preferred) backup solution:

Low end dedicated backup server (Intel entry server SC5299, S3210 board, Xeon, max 8 GB RAM, RAID-1 disks, Promise EX8350 8 port SATA disk controller) - $2000 - $2500

Stardom SOHOtank 4 tray removable disk array (eSATA)

Evaluating DPM for 180 days.

Automated agent deployment unsuccessful so far (probably firewall problems). Trying to install agent on WS2008 virtualised DC manually unsuccessful so far. Manual install agent onto a Windows 7 workstation succeeded. Workstation added to protection group and configured.

I think issues are already coming up with DPM’s design. Had hoped to be able to use NAS but DPM doesn’t support it. The big problem will be if using removable disks, will have to test with Sohotank as possibility exists that DPM won’t be able to cope with removal of disks. If so then look at other software.

UPDATE: Firestreamer can be added to DPM to work with removable storage. Will check further.

Agent install success on Hyper-V host server. Attached successfully. Requires KB 948465 (i.e. Service Pack 2) and KB 971394 installed on WS 2008 Hyper-V server. SP2 already installed. 971394 installed. Still getting prereq error mentioning above two updates on attempt to create protection group and add Hyper-V partition.

BackupExec is the alternative solution with various workarounds to keep cost down and simplify. For example taking a virtual server offline then backing up VHDs as alternative to expensive 1-size-fits-all-license for Hyper-V online backup component.

Wiping old laptops’ disks before return / loading RAID drivers on Server 2008

Use DBAN (www.dban.org)

The old version 1.0.x doesn’t always work but there is a newer version 2.2.6 beta available which works well (tried on Toshiba S200 so far).

If installing Server 2008 on a box that needs RAID drivers the process is vastly improved from 2003 which could only access a FDD. 2008/R2/Vista/7 can load drivers from various locations including pen drive. However 2003 drivers will not work, they must be 2008/Vista at minimum.

Group Policy Preferences Deploying Printers Tips

• Using Group Policy Preferences to deploy printers and getting “Access denied”: ensure the printer’s security permissions include Full control for the System user.
• Using Group Policy Preferences to deploy printers to Windows 7 / Vista computers and getting event ID 4098 with message “The RPC server is unavailable”: on the properties of each printer item that you are deploying, click the Common tab and ensure the box “Run in logged on user’s security context” is checked. For security reasons this is preferable to disabling User Account Control or the MSKB 937624 solution bypassing LSA checks.

Blog Angst & Random Notes

What should this blog be about? I’ve decided it will just present technical info / tips / notes in abbreviated format – quicker to write – NO POLITICS OR COMMENTARY ANY MORE – can’t be bothered.

Who needs Facebook etc or iPhones or iPads. Why do we need all this technological development. Where is it taking us. Life is devalued by requiring an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour in undemocratic countries.

Primary school is good to work in because their technological needs in classrooms are not very demanding. Most resources here go into teachers’ needs.

Drivers for Windows Server 2008 unavailable for LSI MegaIDE onboard RAID controller on Intel SE7230NH1 board only 4 1/2 years old = useless technology companies that stop supporting things after about three years. Ditto MS (Windows Server obsolescence).

Need a download manager? Use VisualWGet hooked into Firefox with FlashGot extension. Very reliable and fast now that we download so much large software files like complete OSs. Better than Download Express that I used for years, recent versions are unreliable.

Ideal backup hardware solution: looking more like a NAS/NSS server (Seagate or Western Digital). Testing SCDPM2010 on a test server. Looks very good so far.

Automating Windows 7 Installations [6]

Following our prototype deployment of Windows 7, we now have five laptops in regular use with this OS, along with Office 2010, with few if any significant problems showing up. This includes switching one existing laptop running Vista to Windows 7. Office 2010 has a lot of improvements, especially in Outlook which has adopted the Ribbon for the first time. An example that applies across all the Office applications is the Print section of the Backstage view (File tab of the Ribbon) which has a whole lot of useful options that can be set without opening a separate dialog box. In addition to five laptops now running Office 2010 on top of Windows 7, we have one other running Office 2010 on XP, and there will be more of these as time goes on.

Meanwhile I am continuing MDT development in order to iron out a few issues, mainly in getting applications to deploy unattended successfully. It would be nice if HP could ship packages for their laptops that all install as part of a normal driver installation process (Windows plug and play driver detection) because it would be so simple to deploy these in a one step driver injection process. However that isn’t the case and the result is I have to try and work out how to make the installations work unattended. At the moment I am (hopefully) finishing off the deployment task sequence with testing on a Compaq 8510, but still using the 6730 drivers at the moment. MS today released the Update 1 to MDT 2010 in production form (rather than the Beta I tried earlier). I have installed this onto the VM that was already running the Update 1 Beta. For the moment I am continuing to use the MDT 2010 gold VM for deployment development and the Update 1 VM for capture tasks only.

The latest install was mostly successful except for one minor popup issue that has now been addressed, and a problem with the automated Lightscribe installer which still has to be checked out. This time around all the HP specific apps (except LS) were installed automatically without requiring user intervention. This was done by using unattended install batch files provided by HP in the standard installation files in some cases, in other cases by using extracted SP files rather than the SP executables themselves together with standard Installshield or Windows Installer command line switches. So it looks like this MDT deployment process is a pretty good plan for deploying a new OS with apps. I have also started using ImageX to back up laptops instead of Ghost. I use GImageX to simplify some parts, including mounting an image on my desktop computer to extract stuff from it. So in general it does look like MS’s deployment and imaging tools work well and are a good replacement for third party tools.