Being an IT Technician, I run into all sorts of technical issues. One of my client’s Terminal Servers needed to be rebooted about once a month, and I wanted to find out why. After doing some research, I found an article on the Microsoft site that gives a description of the problem and a resolution.

There is a known issue with Terminal Server that causes it to keep RDP connections open even after the user disconnects. This creates extra load on the server over time and dramatically slows it down. Here is a link to the article:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/03/06/performance-issues-due-to-inactive-terminal-server-ports.aspx

By: Tony Purkey

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

I’ve been consulting and supporting corporate IT infrastructure for several years now. Lately, much of my work has been in remote desktop and network support, from walking remote users through program operation to installing software and devices. Remote support tools are necessary for almost any IT pro.

I’m sure many of you have used Microsoft’s RDP client to connect to systems. RDP is great for management of servers and systems where there is very little direct user access to the desktop. In my experience though, having access to the user’s desktop and sharing what the user sees is instrumental in solving problems. RDP is hindered in this due to the fact that when you RDP into a machine, the user cannot see the session on their monitor. RDP is also limited to professional versions of Windows and Windows specifically. In a lot of cases, I do not have complete control over the provisioning of systems, and supporting home versions of Windows and also OSX is a must.

This is where joinme.com comes in. It creates a connection to the active console session of the user’s computer, be it any flavor of Windows or OSX. Simply type in joinme.com into your browser of choice, and then have your user do the same. The user will need to click the share option on the joinme.com website. Depending on the browser and browser settings, it will prompt to download or run the joinme program. At this point, have your user run and then click allow to any UAC prompts. When it’s done installing, the joinme toolbar will be displayed at the top of the screen. Simply request from the user the 9-digit number displayed in this toolbar. Type this number into the join field on joinme.com on your computer and click join. Your remote user’s desktop will be displayed inside the browser. If you want control of the user’s desktop?????????? You now have the ability to manipulate their system.

One small caveat to note is UAC enabled systems will freeze the joinme connection anytime a UAC prompt is displayed on the remote user’s computer. If you expect to encounter UAC prompts during your remote session, you can do one of two things. Direct the user to respond to the UAC prompt, and the joinme connection will reestablish. You may also disable UAC which will avoid the freezes completely. Joinme is a free to use service for non-commercial purposes. They do have a pay for service option that among other things offers a more robust application to connect to users’ desktops instead of running inside the browser. Hopefully this helps those of you that are looking for an easy solution to remote support.

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Dustin Fry

Recently, while trying to make a Win95 program run correctly in Windows 7, the UAC (User Account Control) was giving me problems. After searching high and low for a solution, I finally found this on the Microsoft Website. Here’s a little text from the page about this software. “The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 5.6 contains the necessary tools and documentation to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying Windows 7®, Windows Vista®, a Windows Update, or a new version of Windows Internet Explorer® in your environment.” I was really impressed with the size and ease of use.

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Tony Purkey

I recently visited my parents. As usual they always have some question regarding some issue they have encountered with their computer. This used to irk me, but anymore, I just bear it and grin as it’s usually something relatively simple (ie can you make that little icon on my desktop that takes me to Gmail again?) This time my mother was looking for a way to organize her pictures based on the date and time they were taken. Windows Explorer sorts alpha/numerically when you sort be name, but the program she used to import the pictures didn’t label them in a fashion that would allow this order to be chronological. Knowing that the file names were arbitrary forced me to rely on the EXIF data stored in the JPEG file. For those of you that don’t know, most all digital cameras these days store date and time information, among other data, inside the jpeg file itself. Assuming the date and time settings on your camera are correct, this information can be used to rename files using certain programs. One program I found online is called Siren.

This program is able to see the EXIF data stored in the photo and uses that to create a new file name based on whatever EXIF data you would like. As I said, I wanted just the date and time. To do this, in Siren, you first browse to the folder that contains the pictures you would like to rename. Next, in the expression box, you enter your file name. This can be anything you want, though to pull the EXIF data you need to use an expression variable. “%Xdo%ncs.jpg” in the expression box will rename all the pictures in the directory you’ve selected to “YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.jpg”. With “%Xdo” meaning to use the pictures’ date and time stored in EXIF and “%ncs” meaning to give a unique name if two pictures were taken in the same second. You can add whatever you would like before the expression variables to even further classify your pictures (ie. “Uncle_Bobs_Colorado_%Xdo%ncs.jpg”). This would create file names like this: “Uncle_Bobs_Colorado_ YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.jpg”.

As you can see, Siren can be a pretty powerful tool for renaming files. This was just a taste of what it can do. Extensive information can be found in the help section of Siren regarding all the other expressions that can be used. Hopefully this has equipped you with the knowledge to better tackle the endless help desk requests from family and friends.

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Dustin Fry

With the holiday season fast approaching, now is a good time to examine your company’s web presence. Online retail exposure is not a fad that is going away anytime soon. In fact, it is a growing segment with which you can augment your brick and mortar store. Each kind of business and clientele requires different approaches. Depending on your current online presence, it may only require minimal work to drive more business through your door. Some businesses need a way to sell products on the web, while others may just need more avenues to spread the word about their business.

You can use the web to create a two-way dialogue with your customers. Tools like Facebook and Twitter allow you to tell your company’s story, as well as update customers about new products and accomplishments your company has. Some companies are weary of creating an open public venue for customers to provide feedback because of the possibility of a customer leaving a bad review. This may happen, but the key to making it work to your advantage is how you will address such complaints. This will be where you can let your customer service shine. Consider if the customer had not left the complaint on your public page and instead posted it on their private page. This kind of thing may already be happening. Without providing a venue for customers to give feedback, you will lose the opportunity to correct their poor experience.

When it comes to selling products online, there are a lot of different ways to facilitate the shopping and purchase process. The best way to go for most is to have a custom online store with a custom cart that keeps the customer on your site. When a customer is taken away from a site to make the purchase, there is a lot of distraction that can happen, and the purchase process is more difficult. During the multiple steps, customers lose confidence in the process, and some even give up if there are any problems along the way. If you have a custom store and cart built, you can keep the customer on your site from beginning to end. By doing this, you streamline the process as well as minimize the possibility of customers quitting mid-purchase. A custom store and cart allow for more flexibility in running sales and specials. With these tools, you can turn hits (site visits) in to conversions (purchases).

(Source: Skynet Solutions)

By Joe Hart