Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

TestDisk is one of those great little tools thats been around for a while. It started off in life as a tool to help recover lost partitions and and fix non-booting disks. Since then it’s grown somewhat and is now able to do a multitude of other useful things across a good selection of common disk formats; undeleting files, rebuilding FAT tables/bootsectors, to name just a few.

Despite knowing of many great little tools like TestDisk, its surprising how a simple change of context can simply wipe them from your memory. In the event of an iffy partition or disk TestDisk is just one of a few tools we go for. But strangely not if it was a virtual device.

Last week we needed to recover a screwed P2V conversion, because we quite simply didn’t have the time to redo the P2V process. The VHD was mountable, but Windows was telling us that it was simply dead, with no data. We sat there racking our brains until it was obvious: TestDisk! Why hadn’t we thought of it before?

We remounted the VHD, ran TestDisk against it, and as if by magic we were able to recover the NTFS partition.

So the moral here is don’t be a class A moron. Virtual devices aren’t always so different.

Posted by Karl in General | No Comments »

A date has been set for the release of the latest edition of Microsoft’s Office productivity suite. According to Paul Thurrott in his WinInfo blog, Office 2010 will be generally available from the 15^th of June 2010. This has since been backed up by an MS spokesman who has stated  “we expect Office 2010 and related products to be generally available in June 2010″.

The product has been in development since 2006  and the beta has been around for a while. The release candidate (RC) version was made available to MSDN testers on the 5^th of February.

Microsoft have also announced that customers purchasing copies Microsoft Office 2007 (from authorised resellers) between between 5^th of March and the 30^th of September will be able to download Office 2010 at no extra cost when available. So anyone who is looking to purchase the productivity suite software now need not worry about having an old version. For full details see here.

We have, of course, been testing out Microsoft Office 2010 for ourselves here at Glo (in fact this blog post was drafted in Word 2010). Keep an eye for out for a blog on our thoughts sometime soon!

Posted by James in General, Software | 1 Comment »

Well it’s no supprise at all to read that Microsoft have withdrawn the Windows Essential Business Server from their product line.

We were part of the closed beta back in late 2007 and even then I remember wondering why a customer would want this. Where as SBS is perfect for small businesses most companies want the extra control of the individual applications. Interestingly though we’ve started moving customers away from even SBS an onto Microsoft Online (first one goes live this week) !

Glad we never recommended it for sale to any of our customers.

Posted by Chris in Operating Systems, Servers | No Comments »

According to this help document on the Skype website they are no longer supporting or providing Skype for Windows Mobile. And within days of that annoucement it appears that Skype is now avalible on Symbian.

Of course Windows Phone 7 isn’t Windows Mobile so they may well change their mind when it comes out.

But with a supposed $1 billion investment on the way from Microsoft in the mobile market things could get interesting.

Posted by Chris in Mobile | No Comments »

Most companies start with a computer or two and at some point add a server. Maybe your company has already grown and now you have a several servers and a few desktops.

Usually we find that an ad-hoc network is initially built by someone within the company who ‘knows about computers’ and they then end up being responsibile for them. Alternatively IT support will be provided by a “man with his van” IT company.

Time and time again we see the following problems that a small business can encounter with this sort of support. This includes -

• Users and networks suffering when an IT person is busy, ill or on holiday!
• Back ups are unreliable and many companies think their back up works because they see the tape ejects every night !
• Many IT issues faced by companies cannot be resolved by their in house resource or their current engineer because the complexity of the network over time, has out grown their understanding of the issues involved. New technology brings more efficient solutions saving time and money, unfortunately often the knowledge and expertise is not avaliable and the company IT resilience suffers.

Glo Networks IT Ousourcing does of course solve all these problems and provides these extra benefits -

• As a Microsoft Certified Partner we have Microsoft behind us to provide support for all their software. That means always getting a solution to your problem.
• Don’t think about who you need to report the problem to, just give us all your IT problems. We will manage, solve and advise you on the issue keeping strong lines of communication with you – all of the time.
• Our online resolution system – Glo Help – enables us to rectify most problems remotely, ensuring costs for our service are kept to a minimum – no more expensive call outs by engineers, jsut an immediate response. All problems raised on Glo Help are responded to within ten minutes, indeed the average time taken is 3 minutes.

If any of the above sound familiar, we would love to show you how we can provide cost effective support for your IT requirements. Give us a call today.

Posted by Chris in FAQ | No Comments »