Back on 6 Nov I ordered a Gateway E-475M from PC Parts Ohio. I chose them on Dean’s recommendation. Well, almost two and a half weeks later and I still don’t have it. I got an email from them confirming the order. A week later I emailed them asking for shipping confirmation and a tracking number. They replied that it hadn’t shipped yet because they needed 7 to 10 business days to test it. I called last Friday to ascertain its status and it hadn’t shipped and may not have been tested yet.
Apparently, the tech had been on his honeymoon and no one seemed to notice that his work was piling up. Anyway, I was assured that it would ship Monday (today) and UPS would send email me a tracking number. It’s almost midnight and I have yet to hear anything.
I have never waited so long for an in-stock item to be shipped. I paid the fee to have it tested because I wanted to be sure the hardware worked properly. I don’t care about the operating system because I’m going to slick it and dual boot it with Linux and XP Pro. It’s shipping with XP Home, a product I have absolutely no use for.
15 business days to ship an in-stock item is unacceptable. Their technician taking time off shouldn’t be my problem. I’ll be calling today to check it’s status. If it hasn’t shipped, I’ll be very tempted to cancel the order and ask for a full refund. I’d never leave a customer waiting this long without some kind of communication or an offer of compensation for the wait.
I’ve got one computer running Windows XP on my Windows 2000 AD domain. I’ve got another computer that I’d like to upgrade from 2000 to XP and a notebook arriving soon that I intended to dual-boot with XP and Linux.
The problem I’m running into is XP doesn’t seem to play will with Windows 2000 Active Directory. The XP computer usually doesn’t run the logon script and, as a result, doesn’t map network drives. Occasionally, it will map one network drive and the home drive. Once booted, it can connect to my data shares which are on the domain controllers. This particular computer uses a 54 Mbps wireless connection but I’ve had the same problem with a wired connection.
I’ve tried a number of “fixes” such as changing group policy to allow process across a slow network connection and to run logon scripts synchronously. I’ve also changed the local group policy on the PC to wait for a network connection. The latest tip I’ve tried was to add a DWORD value RunLogonScriptSYnc with a value of 1 to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. None of these methods have resolved the problem.
One obvious solution is to upgrade my DCs to 2003 or 2008 but that’s not an affordable option. Another alternative may be to move my scripts out of the AD scripts folder and place them on the Netlogon share(s). I don’t think it would be a good idea to have the scripts in both locations. I’d probably have to change each network account to look for the scripts in Netlogon. Of course, circumventing AD kind of defeats the purpose.
I’ll keep looking for a workable solution. I’m open to suggestions.
I’ve got a laptop on the way. I’m planning to dual boot it with XP and Linux so this link will probably come in handy: The definitive dual-booting guide: Windows 7, Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step. It’s been a while since I’ve set up a system with both Linux and Mircrosoft so it’ll be an adventure. I think I did it with Slackware and DOS. That’s how long ago it was.
Having a dual-boot laptop will be useful for experimenting with Active Directory or Linux networking. I’ve been having some problems with Windows XP computers running logon scripss and group policy and eventually I’ll be converting from Windows Active Directory to a Linux-based network.
This is my second attempt at hosting a blog on my own server. I moved the previous blog to a hosted server after a disastrous Wordpress upgrade. For some reason, upgrades of any sort to the blog were problematic. I think it may have been due to the way I had set it up initially. I’ve already done one automatic upgrade to a plugin and it worked perfectly. Maybe I did it right this time.
I ran into a few issues setting it up, mostly with MySQL. I don’t really use it so I’m not very familiar with it. But I did figure it out with the help of Google. I also ran into a couple of permissions problems in configuring Wordpress and my blog editor but I was able to resolve them without much effort. I had to set up an .htaccess file. I don’t remember needing to do that before. But it’s good to be getting my hands dirty in the inner workings of a Linux server again.
Right now I’m planning to use this blog to discuss my own technical issues, putting forth questions and problems along with any solutions I find. I’ll also use it as a place for tips and tricks and useful information with a concentration on Linux and Windows. I’ll also bring up networking things as well. The blog will mostly be for my reference but if you find something useful here, that’s great. Feel free to offer advice and things to watch out for.
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