The worst network I've ever seen

IT Consultants often get called in when the incumbent Support people mess up, and up until recently I thought I'd seen it all.

We have this saying at Livingstone: "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you see the cost of hiring an amateur". It's a quote by Red Adair, and in our line of work I'm sure many can relate to that.


We got a call from a charity who told us that their Server was "dying and eating up all our files". That description was colourful but it proved to be accurate.


What I found was a huge monster of a tower Server, encasing three large and noisy fans. Opening up the box revealed the smallest and puniest motherboard I've ever seen in a server, and two disks clunking away. I could almost feel the data disintegrating from the disks ....

Sensing the worst I tried to pull a copy of the data off the Server, only for it to freeze every few minutes, requiring a reboot.


After a check of the settings in the Server I noticed that it was running Windows Server 2003 (not SBS), in a network with 10 clients. DNS was not configured, DHCP was running from the router, and the Server had never had a single update applied since it's installation over 5 years ago ....

When I realised that the server had never even been setup to access the internet, alarm bells started to ring.

I asked how their current support company looked after the server, and they told me that had to come in any time they needed to do anything (and of course charged them every time).

When I asked about backups, they said "I think the Support company does that for us ... but we're not sure". No, they didn't and they had never backed up a single file in 5 years.


There are lots of cowboys in the IT industry, but really - to sell a hacked-together Server with an inappropriate operating system (which later turned out to be illegal), don't even attempt to configure it properly and continually charge a charity because they couldn't work out how to give it internet access .... well, I am only glad I didn't meet those idiots!

Live Chat Clients

So the last few days I've been looking at LiveChat clients to add instant chat features to our website and the websites of our partners.

I've used such services in the past and found them quite helpful ... but only if you get through to a real person, and that real person actually knows what they are talking about!


After much research, I picked out 4 companies worth looking at:

* LivePerson
* BoldChat
* ProvideSupport
* Crafty Syntax


I know there are loads more, but the majority of them fall into what I would call "the LivePerson clone" - ie: they offer the same quality of services at roughly the same cost.

And I should mention COST straight up here. Normally services or software from different providers is in the same ballpark. Not so with LiveChat Clients (at the time of writing - November 2009).


So let's start off with costs (all UK £, excluding VAT, normal prices):

LivePerson.......... £99 per month
BoldChat............ £199 per month
ProvideSupport.... £15 per month
Crafty Syntax...... £free


That's quite a disparity, and having researched and spoken to all these companies they certainly feel their offering is "best value for money".

If money is no objection, BoldChat seems to be the premium service, although some of the features such as "preview visitor text before sending" seem a little too much like spying for my liking. In terms of scalability, for a large number of support operators it seems to have all you'll need.

LivePerson is probably the market leader right now, and if you strike a hard bargin they will drop to £80 per month (or lower: £60 was mentioned to me) easily.


However, if we're simply looking at value for money, then given the list of features alone, either ProvideSupport or Crafty Syntax would have to take the prize.


ProvideSupport offer very similar features to LivePerson, at a fraction of the cost. I should mention that all of these clients can be placed on multiple websites - you only pay for each support console. I also liked some of the additional features of ProvideSupport, such as a photo of the Support Rep. It's always nice for clients to see who they are talking to.


Crafty Syntax is interesting, and is obviously a labour of love for its creator and seems to be related to Olark, another Chat client that links into Instant Messanger accounts.

If I was running a forum or non-professional website, I would probably be tempted by Crafty Syntax. It's feature list is comparible with LivePerson, and of course it's free. My doubts in a professional environment are twofold - it does not have the look and feel of the other applications, and who would we go to if we needed support?


Taking all of this into account, for our needs I cannot see a valid argument for paying the extra money for BoldChat or LivePerson. Crafty Syntax is just too much of a risk for a professional company, so our winner (at least in terms of the first application we'll test) is ProvideSupport.


I'll post up some feedback when we've have a chance to test it.


In the meantime, there are various "comparison" charts listed below. Please beware: most of these sites are not independant and purposely skew the results to their own favoured products. I, on the other hand, am not biased, and I hope this information has helped!


As always, if we can help in any way, please give me a call on 0845 900 2822, or send us a message via our website: http://www.livingstonesolutions.co.uk/contact.html


Links for comparison:

http://live-chat-support-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.providesupport.com/product/comparison-chart.html
http://www.whoson.com/compare.aspx
http://www.livechatcomparison.com/index.jsp
http://www.pilpilon.co.il/boldchat-live-chat-software-for-websites-s-2186.html

Example 2

So, I promised two examples - here's the second one.

Do you ever have a PC that a client has bought from another company, with legitimate Windows and Office licences, but you haven't got the original disks, and ideally you would reformat and reinstall but to do that would make recovery of the legitimate licences impossible?

Sometimes you can find the right kind of media, even with a direct download from a helpful Microsoft tech.

Other times it's more trickey.

First problem with a PC that has been added to another domain is often that no one knows the Admin password. Simple to solve - download Spotmau (http://www.spotmau.com/). Trust me on this, it's the best £35 you've ever spent on software, and even if you just buy it for the Windows password hack, although there are so many great little apps in this very professional German software. (And no, I have no affliation with this company - I just love it that their software is cheap, professional and actually does what it says)


So the Admin password is hacked, so I can get into the PC ... but as soon as I do I can see that the hard drive is on its way out.

Quickly Mark installs Acronis TrueImage on the PC and we take a clone of the disk just in time.


We insert a new hard disk with the clone image on ... and nothing. No Boot Device Found. Somehow the old Administrator of their Windows Domain has locked out new hard drives being added. Nothing in BIOS (which had to be hacked with Spotmau too).

Okay, final hacking tool to the ready - Hiren's Boot CD, which contains a version of Mini XP, which boots directly from the boot CD, recognises the new disk and allows me get the PC to recognise it.


PC returned to client. "Was it easy?" they asked. "Sort of ..." I replied.


***Mission accomplished***


If you need any help with a similar problem, or just want to talk about the software mentioned above please give me a call on 0845 900 2822.

http://www.livingstonesolutions.co.uk/

Kick the PC

Hello and welcome to my new blog. I guess the name Kick the PC might confuse some of you ... but anyone out there who works as an IT Consultant will probably immediately relate.

You know, computers at their core are logical, completely logical. I mean each bit can only be a 0 or 1 (off or on), so surely you would expect troubleshooting to follow a logical pattern.

But too often it doesn't. And I'll give you a couple of examples ... and then you'll understand why I want to Kick the PC!


Example 1: Microsoft vs Dell

There's a little-documented problem with Dell PowerEdge 1900 Servers running Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server) 2003 R2, which causes the server to go into a never-ending reboot loop with the error message

"lsass. exe : When trying to update a password the return status indicates that the value provided as the current password is not correct"

This problem only happens with this make and model of server - but Dell won't take responsibility

This problem only happens with this version of a Microsoft Operating System - but Microsoft won't take responsibility


The only solution is a rebuild, which is great if you have the original setup disks with all the drivers for the SATA RAID array. But if you don't then you have to load up the drivers from a floppy drive. Er, a floppy drive? Does anyone have one of those anymore??

No worries, thought I, I have a USB floppy drive and I'm sure I can find an old Floppy disk. Except of course that the Dell won't allow you connect a USB floppy until Windows is set up.

Hmm, Microsoft only allow you to set it up with a floppy, Dell block you from using one.

Kick the PC. Well, actually I didn't ... there were clients watching!

After a little walk to calm down a little I hatched a plan. I would insert the 4 disk RAID5 array into a Netgear NAS caddie. Great. Inserted the disks ... and the Netgear NAS wouldn't recognise them.

More Googling revealed this was a common problem for disks formatted on a Windows Server and the suggestion was to remove one of the disks and put them back in.

Did that, the NAS started up. Yippee ... except that when I logged onto the Windows console it told me it was formatting the disks ... not what I wanted.

To cut a long story short, I put in an IDE disk, installed SBS on it, installed the SATA RAID array as a extended partition then made it primary and booted.

The Server was back with the client a couple of days later. I had no hair left. And because they were a charity I agreed to cap the charges for them (at the point where I thought it would take 4 instead of about 40 hours).

In this job, it's all about keeping your cool, thinking around the problem and at all times have a fall-back position.

The clients kept working through all this time, because whilst I worked on-site with the annoying server, our HelpDesk moved over all the data, registered a new domain name and rerouted their email. No loss of data, no downtime for the client.

***Mission accomplished***


If you have the same problem, please feel free to give me a call on 0845 900 2822, or visit our website: http://www.livingstonesolutions.co.uk/

One of the few places to list this problem on the web: http://www.winserverkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/windows-server-sbs/30821/lsass-exe-When-trying-to-update-a-password