- Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Windows imaging.
by Darragh Ó Héiligh 17 Oct '15

17 Oct '15

Hello, I know this topic has come up a few times but I generally don't follow it. I'm therefore very sorry for asking a question that has come up before. I generally don't need to go near this kind of thing but I've a laptop that needs quite a bit of work that I need to have finished by tomorrow. Therefore, what free tool do you recommend to image a laptop running Windows 7? I really need to fully image this with 100% certainty that I'll be able to restore it if something goes wrong. Here are the hoops I'm going to have to jump through. 1. Image the laptop. 2. Separately update the user data. 3. Update it to Windows 10 4. Swap out the hard drive with a solid state drive. 5. Install Windows 10 again. 6. Install Office 2016 7. Install Jaws. The user doesn't need it, but I'll want it for admin and configuration work. 8. Restore the user data. 9. Install all other needed applications. The reason that I'm going to do a fresh install of Windows 10 is this machine has been used every single day by a non-computer user for the past 4 years. He hasn't had admin access but for some reason it's running very slowly. I need to do an upgrade to Windows 10 first so that it recognises the upgrade and activates on the fresh install. The threshold 2 update due to be released soon will remove the need to upgrade as it will do a fresh install and activate using a Windows 7 product key. Unfortunately the user needs this by tomorrow night. Any ideas? Darragh

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Windows imaging.
by Darragh Ó Héiligh 17 Oct '15

17 Oct '15

Hello, I know this topic has come up a few times but I generally don't follow it. I'm therefore very sorry for asking a question that has come up before. I generally don't need to go near this kind of thing but I've a laptop that needs quite a bit of work that I need to have finished by tomorrow. Therefore, what free tool do you recommend to image a laptop running Windows 7? I really need to fully image this with 100% certainty that I'll be able to restore it if something goes wrong. Here are the hoops I'm going to have to jump through. 1. Image the laptop. 2. Separately update the user data. 3. Update it to Windows 10 4. Swap out the hard drive with a solid state drive. 5. Install Windows 10 again. 6. Install Office 2016 7. Install Jaws. The user doesn't need it, but I'll want it for admin and configuration work. 8. Restore the user data. 9. Install all other needed applications. The reason that I'm going to do a fresh install of Windows 10 is this machine has been used every single day by a non-computer user for the past 4 years. He hasn't had admin access but for some reason it's running very slowly. I need to do an upgrade to Windows 10 first so that it recognises the upgrade and activates on the fresh install. The threshold 2 update due to be released soon will remove the need to upgrade as it will do a fresh install and activate using a Windows 7 product key. Unfortunately the user needs this by tomorrow night. Any ideas? Darragh

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Why should I buy VmWare Workstation?
by Andrew Hodgson 17 Oct '15

17 Oct '15

Hi, Been a faithful Hyper-V user for a long time using both Windows and Linux VMs. After upgrading to Windows 10 I find my dev Debian images are no longer working with network for some reason, not a huge problem, I will reinstall and get it working again with Chef recipes. Unfortunately whatever I do I just can’t get the installer to pick up network using network install images. Googling didn’t pick up anything much either. Other than the stability of running on a VmWare environment, are there any other real advantages in getting Workstation over Hyper-V? Andrew.

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to users of Image for Windows
by David Mehler 17 Oct '15

17 Oct '15

Hello, Do we have any users of Image for Windows? I used it on a win7 talking install to back up a 160 gb hd which worked fine. I then put another drive in an enclosure, this one a 500 gb hd and loaded the image on to that. This also went fine, booted it up the new drive and all is working. Except... Well, image for windows did not enlarge the partition, I've used ghost way way back in the past from bootable floppy with batch files and it had an option to resize the disk, I've got a 160 gb partition on a 500 gb drive. I'm needing to know two things: first, can this be avoided in the future, can image for windows automatically resize to a larger drive? Secondly, I need to resize safely the 160 gb partition so it will fill the entire disk. Thanks. Dave.

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Why should I buy VmWare Workstation?
by Andrew Hodgson 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

Hi, Been a faithful Hyper-V user for a long time using both Windows and Linux VMs. After upgrading to Windows 10 I find my dev Debian images are no longer working with network for some reason, not a huge problem, I will reinstall and get it working again with Chef recipes. Unfortunately whatever I do I just can’t get the installer to pick up network using network install images. Googling didn’t pick up anything much either. Other than the stability of running on a VmWare environment, are there any other real advantages in getting Workstation over Hyper-V? Andrew.

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question for the managers ...
by Katherine Moss 15 Oct '15

15 Oct '15

Hey all, Opinions would be great on this ... which is more powerful in hiring decisions in the IT community these days? (Especially in Massachusetts.) I have a college degree, though it's in English, so I highly doubt it was even considered when I got my helpdesk job here. Someone I know who has no college degree, no IT or industry certifications, and he's sitting here getting all the jobs he wants, while meanwhile, I know someone more talented, not to mention, better at what he does, who's been trying for years to get a job, he's got a certification, and not getting callbacks at all, even though he'd be more than qualified for what he's applying for. You think it's the blindness VS sighted battle again? Or do you think it's college VS no college education? (though correct me if I am mistaken, though aren't certifications nearly as powerful and authoritative as college degrees, especially when you've got someone like me working in IT with a college degree in an entirely different field with zero certifications?)

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PHP on Windows Server: performance and research findings ...
by Katherine Moss 13 Oct '15

13 Oct '15

Hello all, As the subject implies, what experience do you guys have running PHP on Windows as oppose to that on linux? I've heard different things; some say Windows is better, while others say that they can't get the newest versions of PHP working on Windows because the nice installer's disappeared, hence causing many more mistake avenues. I'm running several community sites(along with a few business ones) with a friend of mine, and he won't have mission critical PHP applications running on Windows stating "catastrophic" things happening. The problem? He can't state any examples. Bias, do you think?

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PHP on Windows Server: performance and research findings ...
by Katherine Moss 12 Oct '15

12 Oct '15

Hello all, As the subject implies, what experience do you guys have running PHP on Windows as oppose to that on linux? I've heard different things; some say Windows is better, while others say that they can't get the newest versions of PHP working on Windows because the nice installer's disappeared, hence causing many more mistake avenues. I'm running several community sites(along with a few business ones) with a friend of mine, and he won't have mission critical PHP applications running on Windows stating "catastrophic" things happening. The problem? He can't state any examples. Bias, do you think?

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Hardware refresher: speaking as a blind person
by Katherine Moss 12 Oct '15

12 Oct '15

Hello all, Just had a rather embarrassing moment yesterday when I attempted to insert some new ram modules into my server and then realized shortly afterward that either, I don't know how the heck to do it anymore, or I'm too skittish to, due to last year's events (had a particular person in my life who thought he knew it all, and for him, teaching me and nurturing my tech interests was not in the cards.) Well, so as blind individuals, how do we insert ram modules properly? (I, or rather my father, added eight gigabytes to the existing four, though now only two slots appear to be filled.) They must not be seated properly, because he, fully sighted, was struggling with it as well. If it helps, the model server I have is a Dell PowerEdge T110, and from what I've heard, that board's a pain in the butt to work with. When working with ram as a blind person, is a motherboard a motherboard? Or are they all different? And not to mention the color codes? (this particular board has black and white slots.)

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Adding a Windows 10 System to Small Business Server 2011
by George Bell 12 Oct '15

12 Oct '15

Since this is very likely to come up sooner or later here, does anyone know of any detailed (and plain English) documentation which advises precisely what needs to be added or changed in SBS 2011 to have a Windows 10 Pro system working fully? Policies are one thing which appears to be an issue. George W F Bell Managing Director Techno-Vision Systems Ltd 76 Bunting Road Ind. Est. NORTHAMPTON NN2 6EE, U.K. Tel: +44 (0) 160 479 2777 Fax: +44 (0) 160 479 2726 Email: George(a)techno-vision.co.uk<mailto:George@techno-vision.co.uk> Web: http://www.techno-vision.co.uk

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