30
Aug
Upgrading Windows Home Server
Its been a week since I have finished placement and I decided as well as preparing for univeristy which if I am honest has gone as far as checking if I have any days off, thought I would take on a not so small project. Upgrading my Windows Home Server! Its getting on for 3 years old and the hardware is much older and well due for an upgrade.
Its not cost very much so far as upgrading my main desktop a couple of months back. I have a spare motherboard and memory as well as a power supply. The only missing pieces are a CPU and case. I am using my desktop CPU and have a new faster one on order for my main PC. The case, well I have purchased a new one as well as a new hardware as I’d prefer not to use my old drives that are probably starting to degrade.
The case I have got for it is a Fractal Design Define R2. I had seen it a while ago and was impressed with its 7 internal drive bays and sound proofing features. First impressions I see these are actually working and its current near silient sitting on my worktop while its copying data across from the old home server.
28
Jun
PC Upgrade
I’ve been without a desktop machine for about a week because I had the brilliant idea of upgrading my PC. It was a simple cheapish idea at first. I thought I’d get a new motherboard as the one in my PC is quite limited. My current desktop set-up was a free computer from University its been a good little machine I only added a beefy graphics card to suit my gaming needs but that clock has been ticking away in my mind saying “Upgrade time!”. I’ve not built myself a new computer for quite sometime now due to having this free machine. It was well spec’d out but now I’ve decided to upgrade.
I didn’t feel the new to buy top of the range parts so I thought I’d get a new motherboard which is more compatible with better RAM and CPU for when I found a second hand deal I just had to grab. Although I’d been thinking about this for a while a motherboard appeared on the OCUK forsale forums which seemed to fit the bill. A Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3p arrived in the post pretty soon after I handed over some funds. I thought Great! but I soon hit some unplanned fails.
First fail was just after I took apart my PC I realised that the new motherboard would not fit in the case which wasn’t so bad because I also wanted to add another harddrive and the case only accommodated for 2 hard drives so I got a new case. A pretty cheap one I don’t really see the need in expensive cases so I purchased, from OCUK, an Xigmatek Asgard for £25. Next fail was while I was waiting for the new case to arrive was that I found the CPU cooler would not fit on the new motherboard due to it having 2 large cooling pipes extend outwards and conflict with the 3 heatsinks on the motherboard surrounding the CPU socket.
At this point its not so bad a quick £65 upgrade has turned in to a not so quick £100 upgrade however..
The case came and I grabbed a new cooler from Maplins in the city. I built the new machine and as I was connecting the power supply I thought oh wait. My power supply wasn’t of ATX 2.2 specification and didn’t have the extra 8 pin motherboard connection. I thought it would work anyway so I connected the 4 pin connector to the 1st half of the 8pin socket and booted up..
Beep Beep beeeep!.. Is what I half expected and I was right, quick look at the trouble shooting page in the manual and it appears short beeps related to a power failure. I put two and two together and order a new power supply. To be fair it was probably for the best, its not wise to run a demanding graphics card of a cheap and nasty power supply.
Well it came today and I slot it in and ruin my nice cable job in the new case, boot up and I soon find I have the same problem a power error. Hmm as I start losing the will to live and wish I’d never got in to computers the techy in me started checking all connectors and I start to do minimal configuration.. I get to the RAM and take out one of the two sticks… Still no post, just beeps. I switch the sticks and hit the power button once more.. Success!! the monitor flashes with crazy BIOS image and I am greeted my the Windows 7 Setup Wizard..
Which brings me to now after a rather quick installation. As it appears one of my memory sticks is faulty I’m looking at a new set but I think I’ll hold off until a bargain comes around else this upgrade is going to hit the £200 mark..
The lesson learnt here is that nothing is simple and you’d ought to plan upgrades carefully or they’ll kick your bank balance in the nads.
10
May
Error On Migrating A Mailbox To Exchange 2010
After installing Microsoft Exchange 2010 I wanted to move my mailbox from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. Using the wizard in Exchange Console I got this error
Error:
Active Directory operation failed on *DomainController*. This error is not retriable. Additional information: Insufficient access rights to perform the operation.
Active directory response: 00002098: SecErr: DSID-03150E8A, problem 4003 (INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS), data 0The user has insufficient access rights.
Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
’*OUStructure*’ | New-MoveRequest -TargetDatabase ‘Mailbox Database nnnnnnnnnn′ -BadItemLimit ‘0′
- I found that this error can be fixed by editing the Advanced Security Settings for the user on the AD.
- Open “Active Directory Users and Computers”
- Click “View > Advanced Features”
- Select the users mailbox properties
- Navigate to “Security Tab > Adanced”
- Select the checkbox “Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent”
- Apply changes
Afterwards the move should go swimmingly, however you may need to remove your move request a try again.
1
May
MythTV and XBMC
I said a couple of weeks back that I have been playing around with MythTV. At first I installed Mythbuntu, messed around a little then restored the computer back to XP using Windows Home Server but then I decided i wanted to have a play with Mythtv on Gentoo I tried but my CD drive couldn’t burn the Gentoo disc so I got annoyed and reinstalled mythbuntu.
I’ve now been recording various TV shows with easy and no real issues for the last couple of weeks. Although I have to say I have not really hit the limts and don’t really watch that much TV. I got a second TV card so that I could watch and and record a different channel but I have to get the proper cables to split the ariel feed.
It was nice to wake up at a normal time and watch the Chinese Grand Prix before the replay on BBC One in the afternoon. The web interface it pretty simple to use and I’ve set it all up so that if at work I remember I want to watch something I can login and set it to record. Bet Sky+ doesn’t let you do that now does it! I have a suspicion that it doesn’t properly flag up commercials but I’ve only watched recorded shows from the BBC channels so not sure yet.
The whole system though is pretty much complete now I got a MCE remote control off ebay which gives its the proper feeling of a TV rather than controlling it from a keyboard. I’ve had to wait a while though I think it got held up at the airport what with the UK airspace being shutdown, it was a seller in Hong Kong.
I was surprised at how easy the remote was to set-up, I just had to select the MCE remote from the Myth Control panel and reboot. I expected an evening of a mixture of googling and pulling my hair out…
I’ve been pretty much mainly using XBMC as a frontend as XBMC can access Myth’s recorded files which is pretty neat! Next step though is to hook it up to my 5.1 speakers, the Logitech 5500′s and get a HD tuner, oh and a bigger TV and a new laptop!
6
Apr
MythTV – First Encounter
Over the bank holiday weekend I’ve set myself up with MythTV. A Mythbuntu install to be precise. I’ve been quite impressed with it although its taken a little trial and error effort over the weekend but though no fault of Myth.
Firstly I had it setup on my laptop that is slowly dying. Using the laptop I wasn’t really impressed with the DVB-T adapter. I was using a AVerTV DVB-T Volar. That Wiki link helped a bit by suggesting to upgrade the firmware but I was only getting one channel. I was using the aerial on the roof in which I have a handy socket to connect to in my room (Although that’s what I thought!). I was only getting BBC parliament which was no good at all considering the amount of other channels I should be receiving.
I’ve now set it up on Tucker, a computer I use for random things. Tucker has an AMD AM2 X2 5000+ and 4GB which is a bit OTT for Myth but its what I have. I had popped in to town on Saturday and decided to spend an Argos gift voucher I had. I got an amplified indoor aerial. I hooked it all up and did a channel scan, made a cup of tea and to my surprise Myth had found a whole load of channels, BBC One, BBC Three and even some Radio channels if not all of them.
Maybe a cup of tea does solve everything. I didn’t expect much as every time I set-up the AverTV DVB-T Volar stick with Windows it would fail completely, the software isn’t the best in my opinion.
Anyway it was great I could watch live TV, pause it and rewind it I’ve even integrated XBMC so I can watch other TV Shows and Films.
I only downside so far is that I don’t get any channels on MUX2. That’s ITV, Five, etc. This isn’t surprising as according to ukfree.tv the rating for the local transmitter for MUX2 is quite low. I figure because I am using an indoor aerial and between the two is at least a house the signal must be getting blocked. I thought I’d check out why the roof aerial was performing badly. I have a nose outside and I find this…
The two cables should actually be connected. Not too much of an issue really, I plan to set this up properly when I move back to Stafford but its been a good little exercise so far and I hope to write up some more detail of my experiences with it on here.
Although I say that with a lot of things.
24
Mar
Up’ed The Game on BOINC
I’ve boosted my grid crunching this week so I should be seeing I few extra credits each week. I’ve reinstalled the BOINC client on a few PCs and quite easily configured them with the BAM account manager, it really is very quick and simple to use.
I found one host that wasn’t reporting jobs, not sure why but it wasn’t setup to connect very often. This has resulted in about 15 work units being completely but never reported. I caught this too late and the deadline has past, so some lost credits there.. I’ve also restarted crunching for Rosetta@Home as it appears Seti:Home is running low on jobs.
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