PowerShell

By James | Published: January 11, 2010

Just installed a new WSUS server and obviously got a little heavy handed on the auto-approve settings.

Logged onto one of the student PCs today and found a big PowerShell folder in the start menu.

Mind you, I would be suprised if they actually managed to do anything interesting with it.

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Server 2008 Web Edition & Sharepoint Foundation 2010

By James | Published: December 29, 2009

I presumed it was a given that Sharepoint would be able to run on Server 2008 Web Edition, however I was mistaken, and found out the hard way when the prerequisite installer wouldn’t work on a shiny new VM.

The prerequisite installer was failing immediately when trying to setup the IIS role, giving the message ‘Configuration Error’. Initially I thought this was obviously a bug because it was beta software.

After reading through the system requirements document again carefully, I found that Sharepoint requires the Application Server role, which Web Edition does not have.

Installed Server 2008 R2 Standard and it went on immediately.

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Summer IT Projects

By James | Published: November 12, 2009

Waiheke IslandMy last exam is all done and dusted, marking the completion of my B.Sc in Computer Science! No time to pat myself on the back for that just yet however.

Here is a list of IT projects I’ll be likely working on for the next couple of months. Hopefully I’ll be able to cross most of them off.

  • Refurbish our server room (done)
  • Recable admin block (done)
  • Consolidate / migrate 4 Windows 2003 physical servers to Windows 2008 R2 running in Hyper-V Core (done)
  • Deploy a Cisco UC520 phone system test phase (done)
  • Create a new Windows 7 deployment for 25 new staff computers (done)
  • Switch over to using UC520 in production (final testing stage)
  • Integrate the UC520 with Exchange 2010 (not needed)
  • Get Caller ID integration going with ACT! 6.0 (done)
  • Build a website in Silverstripe (cancelled)
  • Finish the Greymouth Baptist Church website
  • Find a job for 2010, or pursue self employment (done)
  • And if I get time, write my DFSR monitoring tool Windows 2008 (R2?) has a more powerful monitoring tool built in, including propagation testing which is what I was planning on doing.
  • Catch up with friends, family, beach, sun, lake, bike, garden (done)

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Atcom IP0X IP Phone System Mini-review

By James | Published: October 25, 2009
Atcom IP04

Atcom IP04

Back in 2008 I posted an article about Affordable IP Phone Systems. This was all very well but I hadn’t actually ever touched the Atcom IP04 / IP08 phone system.

A couple of months ago I was able to get my hands on a demo unit thanks very much to Hadley at Nicegear. I regret being very busy with Uni at the time meant I wasn’t able to conduct an in-depth or scientific review.

Here are some of the things I can remember about the unit and the process of getting it up and running. Please note I would recommend trying it out first if you are considering going this route before leaping into it.

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Posted in Research, Telephony, Work | Tagged | 4 Comments

Making Age of Mythology work in Parallels

By James | Published: October 23, 2009

Now I’m not a gamer, but I do like to have the occasional multiplayer game of Age of Mythology or Age of Empires. When I purchased the upgrade to Parallels 4 earlier in the year I was disappointed to find Age of Mythology wouldn’t run on it.

You wil get the error message “This graphics card is not supported by Age of Mythology”, etc.

I did some research and found a forum post by awittenauer which pointed me in the right direction. By copying existing GFX files and modifying them so that AoM would recognise the Parallels Video Driver, I was able to get it working easily. I imagine this process should work for other games if you are receiving a similar message.

AOM Parallels Screenshot

  1. First, download my Parallels GFX Config Files
  2. Unzip and copy the contents into the gfxconfig folders of your game. In my case this was C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Mythology\gfxconfig   &   gfxconfig2.
  3. You should now be able to run the game.

If you are still having trouble getting it working, or want to add support for different resolutions, open up the parallels.gfx file in Notepad. Here you can customise resolution options etc.

Please let me know how you get on! Thanks again to awittenauer for the idea..

Posted in Mac | 13 Comments
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