Blog entries

help4IT - Top 10 Free Microsoft Windows PC Applications and Programs

Thu, 06 May 2010 09:57:07 +0100

help4IT Top 10 Free Microsoft Windows PC Applications and Programs
Get more from your Microsoft Windows PC with our top 10 list of the best free Microsoft Windows PC Applications and programs.

This week’s blog is continuing the theme from last week’s posts of free applications, but this week (drum roll please) for the Microsoft Windows PC.

There really is a plethora of alternative pc applications and programs for the pc available without sacrificing functionaliRead More...

help4IT - Top 10 of the best free Google Android Applications

Administrator — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:00:56 +0100

help4IT Top 10 of the best free Google Android Applications
Get more from your Apple iPhone with our top 10 list of the best free Google Android Applications.

Google Android is the newest kid on the block but has certainly made a big impact. The open source mobile operating system has already built up a strong and loyal fan base in the short time it has been available. There are some great applications out at the moment and the future is certainly looking bright for the mobile fRead More...

help4IT - Top 10 of the best free Apple iPhone Applications

Administrator — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:00:32 +0100

help4IT Top 10 of the best free Apple iPhone Applications
Get more from your Apple iPhone with our top 10 list of the best free Apple iPhone Applications.

The Apple iPhone has quickly become one the most popular handsets around, with its stunning user interface and a massive market place of paid and free applications growing at exponential rates every day it is one the most desirable handsets amongst mobile phone users. The phone unit itself is a testament to Apples design skillsRead More...

help4IT - Top 10 of the best free Blackberry Applications

Administrator — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:58:29 +0100

help4IT Top 10 of the best free Blackberry Applications
Get more from your Blackberry with our top 10 list of the best free Blackberry Applications.

The Blackberry or Crackberry as it has been dubbed has a strong user base especially amongst the business community. Featuring a simple user interface and built in qwerty keyboard on some of the models, it can make an excellent tool for mobile productivity when you don’t want to use or carry a laptop.

The majority of BlaRead More...

help4IT - Top 10 of the best free Windows Mobile Applications

Administrator — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:54:45 +0100

help4IT Top 10 of the best free Windows Mobile Applications
Get more from your windows mobile with our top 10 list of the best Windows Mobile Applications.

Windows Mobile has often been over looked what with all the publicity and uproar surrounding the iPhone and Android fanfare. What is often forgotten is that Windows Mobile has been around longer than both the aforementioned and has a great back catalogue of both free and paid for applications.

Microsoft .NET Compact FrRead More...

new day new blog

Administrator — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:35:04 +0100

Well what can we say, no blog postings since November but hopefully we be able to address this with some great postings over the next few months now that Christmas and Easter are out of the way.

To kick off the new year we thought of giving you all a very late present with 4 articles with some of the best free mobile applications available for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile.

Enjoy.

How to remove old NICs after virtualization

Tom Finnis — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:37:35 +0100

After performing a physical to virtual conversion one of the tasks you have to do is to set the IP address of the new virtual NIC. When you do this you then get a warning message saying the IP is already assigned to the physical NIC, Windows 2008 is better than 2003 as it at leasts removes it from the old NIC for you.

All the same this seems a bit illogical, that physical NIC is no longer connected to the server so why should it keep the details? Also it can cause confusion for somRead More...

Unable to activate Windows after virtualization

Tom Finnis — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:39:37 +0100

I've been migrating a client to vSphere 4 this weekend and have encountered this problem with all their servers, and its not the first time either so I thought I should share the solution.

This is most common with Dell servers and their so called "OEM" licensing, and its another one of their sly cost-saving measures that you dont notice until they really cause you a hassle. To elaborate a bit more, you may or may not be aware that OEM stands for Original Equipment ManufactureRead More...

Outlook 2007 Reminder not Working

Meraj Khalid — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:09:56 +0100

Below are instructions that might help you to resolve outlook reminder pop up problems.

As Microsoft already defined a normal procedure to resolve this issue but in some situations this solution doesn’t work so probably follow Procedure two which I am going to define in this article.

Please first check the basic configuration of the Outlook.

Please check whether the Display the reminRead More...

How to access the local console on ESXi 4.0

Tom Finnis — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

We've just acquired a pair of HP DL380 G6s for our vSphere 4 test lab, they have the new Intel Nehalem Xeon CPUs and chipset with all the latest virtualisation features. Plenty more to come on all that but first of all here's something you won't find in the documentation. Having just installed the ESXi 4.0 hypervisor on the servers the classic question came up from one of the junior technicians - "what's the difference between ESX and ESXi?". Someone else then answered that ESXi doesn't have Read More...

IE7 and IE8 - self signed SSL certificate not trusted?

Tom Finnis — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Although proper SSL certificates from providers such as Digicert and Verisign have become much cheaper nowadays there are still many occasions when you might prefer to just use a self signed certificate. One of the most common occurences of this is with SBS server, to provide SSL secured web services such as OWA and RPC over HTTP. However the certificate warning you get everytime you open the web site is annoying and maybe confusing for less experienced users. In older versions of IE you coulRead More...

Checking Internet Bandwidth Usage on a Cisco PIX or Router

Tom Finnis — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100

One complaint our helpdesk hears quite often from clients is that "our Internet access seems really slow today", which is a particularly vague and subjective problem. Once the technician has established that this condition is affecting all users and isnt just a temporary period of high demand what can he do to establish the cause of the problem?

Usually the lack of Internet bandwidth becomes apparent when the technician opens a remote session on theRead More...

SCO Unix on VMware ESX - virtualisation solves a client's problem

Tom Finnis — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100

A few months ago we took over the IT support for an insurance firm in the City, but with the contract we inherited a problem the previous IT company couldn't resolve. Part of the firm's business still ran on a ten year SCO Unix server which was barely clinging to life and hadn't been backed up for three years. They still had a support contract with the original suppliers of the SCO system but they had quoted over £10k to migrate their data to the current platform. The system was runningRead More...

Recovering files from a failed hard drive

Eusebio Echevarria — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0100

I received a phone call from a friend who uses a Macbook and they asked me if it is bad when you turn the Mac on if nothing appears on the screen except a folder showing a question mark. After a few minutes of research and a few probing questions I found that the hard drive was making the dreaded clicking noise. It was apparent that the hard drive in the Macbook had died!

In this particular model Macbook the hard drive was accessible by removing the battery then unscRead More...

Authenticated and anonymous SMTP relays in Exchange 2007

Tom Finnis — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Petri have just published my latest guide which shows you how to setup authenticated and anonymous SMTP relay services on an Exchange 2007 server.

You can view the article here

SLAs You get what you pay for

Mustafa Suleman — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Since it's launch into the mainstream in the 1990's ADSL has become a very cost effective ways for small businesses to perform large amounts of Internet activity without having to pay for expensive corporate level T1 connections. However as with most things in life "you get what you pay for". The fundamental problem with low cost ADSL connections is the service level agreement. We get many calls to our support desk with reports of ADSL downtime, most of which arRead More...

Standardised email signatures in Microsoft Exchange

Mustafa Suleman — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Being one for detail I'm amazed every time I receive emails from different users from the same organisation but with differing signatures. Most of these emails come from small to medium businesses with some really slick marketing in general, in fact one could relate it to somebody wearing a very sharp evening suit with a pair of white sport socks!

Microsoft seem to have omitted this essential feature which has prompted a host of third party applications available in the market plaRead More...

Public Folders on Windows Mobile & Blackberry

Tom Finnis — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

This is a subject I haven't looked at for some time, maybe surprisingly its something we don't get asked about all that often. A typical scenario might be where a company has an Exchange Calendar Public Folder containing details of company events, important dates and so on. They want their mobile users to be able to view this calendar on their Blackberrys or Windows Mobile phones so how do they go about it?

The short answer I discovered at the time was that they can't Read More...

Setting up a LAN Extension Service (LES) WAN connection

Tom Finnis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

LES circuits have become increasingly common in recent years for providing high speed WAN links between two sites, usually either between two company offices or between a client site and an ISP PoP (Point of Presence), where it is used to provide Internet connectivity. The limiting factor is usually distance to the nearest PoP as the LES circuit cannot cover more than about 15km so they tend to be limited to city environments. It is based on fibre optic technology but the end connections are Read More...

SBS Backup Email Notification Trick!

Meraj Khalid — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Now you can configure SBS email notification without enabling the SBS health monitoring feature in few simple steps.

Before starting this procedure you need to know why you are doing this:

If you configure default notifications in the Health Monitor of your SBS management console, every time you open or reboot the server, the successful alert will be sent too. So to avoid this situation you need to follow these few steps