When I'm troubleshooting issues I find in Event Logs, one of the first places I head to is, http://www.eventid.net.  When you go to the site you can enter an EventID and you'll get back a list of EventID's that match along with the various "Source" entries they apply to.  Once you find the issue that matches your event there's a link to click on where you will find a comments and links from others who have encountered the same issue.  This in itself is a great resource, but for a very reasonable fee you can sign up for an account that will allow you to have one-click access to any links referenced in the comments, the ability to set notifications when/if there are updates, no ad banners and more.

The next time you get stuck check them out and if you find value in the site, signup and help them keep it going.

If you have a tape stuck in a drive and it won't eject here's a quick fix that will work with most drives.  First, power down the drive.  Now press and hold the eject button and power up the drive, continuing to hold the eject button in until the tape ejects.  Obviously if your drive is an internal one you will have to power down the system it's connected to.  In most cases, if this works you'll be able to use the drive again without issue.  I don't have a technical explanation for what happens so I'll just say that the drive apparently got its "eyeballs crossed" and needed to be reset to release the tape.

I was at a client site today setting up a new laptop for them to use for client presentations.  During the course of the process they asked that I reset the password on the account they used for these demos.  Pretty straightforward request right?  Well, I went through the process from the Users screen within Server Management and through Active Computers and Users directly and regardless what I tried I could not reset the password.  After a little detective work digging through all the various options on the account I finally found the culprit.  I had forgotten (and didn't document) that when we setup this account a few years ago that we had restricted it to only being able to logon to the original demo laptop that this new one was replacing.  The client wanted a little extra insurance that someone using that account wouldn't be able to logon to another system.  So what was happening is the password reset was working correctly.  However, when I attempted to use it on the new laptop to run the Connect Computer Wizard (or via OWA when trying to test the password that way) it would return an incorrect password error.  It never gave me an error stating I wasn't allowed to access the computer I was attempting to logon to.

In summary I've learned several valuable lessons.  First, when setting something out of the ordinary don't forget to document it.  Second, don't forget to look at the big picture.  I was so focused on trying to determine why, as a domain admin, I couldn't reset a password I never considered that the password reset had actually worked and something else was amiss.

I spent yesterday getting my last SBS client up to SP1.  Yeah, I know SP2 is now out, and I doubt I'll wait as long to roll it out, but right now I'm taking a wait and see approach and let my peers work out the kinks ;-)

So getting back on topic, the upgrade went smoothly and everything looked really good.  I had a few hardware changes to implement, BIOS, Firmware, etc., but all in all pretty straightforward.  All of the patches had been applied and then I took that last pass through Microsoft Update.  Waiting for me was the aforementioned SP2 and IE7.  Well, I normally don't surf the 'net from a server, except to go to Microsoft Update, pull down a hardware patch from a vendor site, etc.  Even so, I felt it made sense to load IE7 because of it's additional security features, phishing checks etc.  So I kick off the download and everything goes smoothly.  At the end it's time for a reboot.  After the server comes back up, I log in and get the expected little "pop-up" that says it's setting up my personalizations.  Problem is it stayed that way for the next 20 minutes (When I saw it pop up I went off to complete an update on one of the desktops and came back to wrap up the server).  So when it was still there after 20 minutes I knew something was wrong. I started digging around with Task Manager (Since it was "stuck" I had no desktop, explorer, etc.).  When nothing obvious showed up, I decided to log off and back on, on the off chance it was a one time glitch.

So logging back in, I'm right back where I left off.  So in digging around logs after I killed the process (and still had no desktop) I saw a reference to Java.  That brought back a memory of one of the things I did at the start.  I had uninstalled the really old version of Java that was on the server during my cleanup process prior to kicking off the SP1 install.  Well guess what!  IE7 doesn't like the lack of Java support, hence the "hang".  So I figured no big deal, I'll grab the latest Java and install it.

Now comes the "fun" part of the story.  Without a desktop and IE7 hanging, there's no way to get out to Sun's Java site.  So I figure I'll go to it from one of the desktops and then drop it on the server.  From there I could use the "New Task" feature of Task Manager to execute the java installation app, The problem is that if java is already installed on the machine you're using then you can't get there from here as it takes you to the "verify installation" page. So I do a Live Search for "Sun Java download" and on the list of 'hits" is the manual download page, located here, http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. I download the version for Windows and head back to the server. I bring up Task Manager, click on File-->New Task and browse to the Java download.  I execute the application and as soon as it finishes the IE7 personalization finishes and I'm at my desktop. Whew!

So what did I learn from all of this?  That I shouldn't throw things in at the last minute.  That I should review my plan before starting and then see if there's anything I want to add.  If so, then add it at that time and put it on the checklist.  So you can bet from now on, I'll make sure Java is on the system prior to trying to install IE7 and that if I remove an old version of an app that I make sure I either have an updated version or I know that I won't need it again.

How often have you connected in to a site remotely for a support issue and the first thing you have to do is wait for the system vendor's bitmap logo to slowly crawl down the screen.  Well, there's a simple fix for this as long as you don't mind hopping into the Registry.  The logo you're seeing is setup for the default user as wallpaper.  To eliminate it, it's a simple matter of clearing the value in the following Registry key:

HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper

Just set the value to nothing and no more logo during login!  It makes a big difference even when you're connecting via a high speed line.

Like always, make sure you have a good backup of your Registry before making any changes.  One mistake in there and you could render your system unuseable.