No Connectivity

Problem: Background - A customer running XP Pro-SP2, with DSL installed at home could not access the internet; the LAN connection was reporting "Limited or No Connectivity". After much effort, and switching DSL modems, the DSL technician asked the customer to back out SP2; he was concerned that SP2 was not only reporting the "Limited or No Connectivity", but also causing it. This didn't solve the problem so the customer decided to cancel DSL service and try cable. Unfortunately, the cable technician couldn't gain access to the internet with the customer's machine, either. So, the machine was left running XP Pro with SP1 installed and no internet access.
Enter yours truly.....
The few times I had seen the "Limited or No Connectivity" situation before turned out to be network hardware-related (bad wires or ports), so I really didn't believe the machine or software really had a problem. But, since this was a brand new cable installation I gave the cable company the benefit of the doubt; the modem seemed to indicate no problem communicating with the cable service.
I tried:

1. Re-installing SP2 - No help
2. Running an XP Setup Repair - No help
3. Changing from the cable company-supplied USB connection to a known good Ethernet cable - No help
4. Installing another copy of TCP/IP - I thought this worked because the "Limited or No Connectivity" indicator went away and the connection seemed to be good, BUT we still couldn't get to the internet (throughout the process ipconfig showed the dreaded 169 address, meaning no address was being assigned by DHCP). Anyhow, no help
5. Moving the machine to another location with a known good cable connection - No help
6. Installing an SP2-related hotfix reported as a possible solution, and an associated registry fix (see:KB884020 and Reg Fix) - Sorry, but this didn't help either.

Solution: I had run out of time and patience and so had the customer, so we saved all her data and started from scratch. I wiped the hard drive, re-installed XP, then SP2 and all the current Windows updates. This allowed us to get on the network and back in business.

I hate to get to this point; we really didn't "solve" anything. But, sometimes you pass the point of deminishing returns and find that it's less expensive and less trouble to just rebuild the system. At least we didn't lose anything but our precious time..... :o)

Outlook - The Other Enigma

Problem: A user (Jill) wanted to share multiple Outlook calendars owned by another user (Jack). One calendar wasn't enough for Jack; he had to have a Vacation calendar and a Moose Lodge calendar in addition to his Default calendar. All the Microsoft documentation around calendar sharing fooled me into thinking that we can only share our default calendar. Well, the doc is wrong. One of my colleagues had to deal with this before, and gave me some hints so I didn't go completely crazy trying to make this work...

Solution: Using the names above, Jack had to give Jill permission to access his mailbox (Not just his calendar!!). He did this by right-clicking his mailbox name in his folder list and selecting "sharing" from the menu. Then he gave Jill the appropriate level of permissions to his entire mailbox. After that, Jack selected each of his calendars one at a time (making sure he also selected his DEFAULT calendar, not just the sub-calendars) and did the following: From the File menu he chose Folder and then Properties for "Calendar" ("Calendar", "Vacation", "Moose Lodge", whatever....). In the Calendar Properties dialog he chose the Permissions tab and gave Jill the appropriate level of permissions for each calendar. With me so far?

Now Jill logged onto Outlook and selected the Tools menu and chose Email Accounts. From this dialog she selected the View or Change Accounts radio button and then hit the Change button. Then she hit the More Settings button and chose the Advanced tab. Finally, she hit the Add button and selected Jack's mailbox. This process added Jack's mailbox to her folder list and listed all of Jack's calendars on Jill's Calendar navigator.

So much for your documentation Mr. Gates.... :o) No, really, if this is documented somewhere, I apologize and would like to know where it is. If I could find these things I wouldn't have to waste my time writing, and your time reading these stupid notes with the goofy examples and sexist color coding.

Everything I Learned in College.....

Problem: My son told me something amazing. All the scientific research that has been done on bumble bees shows that bumble bees cannot fly........ Apparently no one told the bumble bee. The same is true about some over-achieving humans. There are some people who we all know that despite their lack of formal education, perform above all expectations. They seem to just know what it takes to get what they want or need out of life (evidence: Bill Gates). I guess no one told them that they couldn't be as successful as they are without a degree. Or conversely, maybe someone DID tell them, only to be proven wrong.

Anyhow, success is not a problem. The problem is that some of these over-achievers are constantly badgered into getting a degree anyhow. "Gotta get that piece of paper! It'll look great on your resume." Pressure drags on for years, perhaps their whole life. My point is that a degree doesn't guarantee success and neither does success depend on a degree. It can mean different things to different people.

Solution: I think everyone should decide for themselves whether to go to the trouble of getting a degree; and it IS trouble. Those who don't have a degree but are meeting their own career expectations should feel good about their success. At any rate, it might be a help for me to list everything I learned in college. The list might not seem like much to you, but each of these items have been very meaningful to me. If you think they would be useful to you, maybe a degree could do the same thing for you (remember, no guarantees!!). Here's a list of everything I learned in college:

1. My diploma isn't printed on a sheep skin. It's just ordinary paper. Well, not ordinary; it's kind of wrinkled and old looking, like they couldn't find any new paper. Anyhow, it's not sheep skin; I think I would know that.
2. How to deal with tedium. Not everything was tedious, but college sure had more than its fair share.
3. How to follow rules. Rules, rules and more rules. I had to learn that if I wanted/needed something from somebody (like a degree), that THEY get to set up all the hoops. No matter how many hoops, or where they're placed, when they're placed, etc. I have to first find all the hoops and then jump through them.
4. How to deal with bureaucracy. I never mastered this but I learned enough about it to get by. That's all we need sometimes isn't it?
5. How to deal with egos, mine and others.
6. It doesn't matter how long it takes to get through college. I'm an odd case; it took me 20 years off and on to finally get the degree. I never saw the light at the end of the tunnel until the final year, but somehow I knew it would be there.
7. Perseverance. Enough said.
8. Your major doesn't matter as long as all the courses add up to a degree at the end. Of course employers seem to filter out resumes based on majors, but it really doesn't matter. You're better off not working for an employer who does that, anyhow..... ;o)
9. In general, other people value my degree more than I do. This goes especially for people that don't even know me. Strange but true. On the other hand, since I already had a job while I was going to school, the people I wanted it to mean the most to, my employer(s), couldn't have cared less.
10. Getting a degree is a lot of work. It's quite an ordeal, but don't let anyone fool you into thinking it's any more than that. It doesn't begin to approach what I would call true human suffering, no matter what you study or how long it takes.
11. I'm incapable of original thought. It's all been done before. As hard as I've tried I've never been able to find any subject that doesn't have a gazillion things already written about it. That's why you find these new PhD candidates studying the mating habits of Peruvian piss ants. (Geez, I gotta find something no one has ever done!) Sorry, that's been done, too.
12. It's literally impossible to know everything; corollary: it's okay to say "I don't know." I left this for last because it was my most useful lesson. It has saved me immeasurable time. Since I now don't have to know everything, I can equate that to mean I don't have to know anything........... (just kidding .. :o)

So anyhow, that's what college did for me and I wouldn't trade it for the world. However, since obtaining a degree has to be an individual effort, I think it also needs to be an individual choice.

Does it Ping???

Problem: (This one was handled by a colleague while I watched over his shoulder. I'll change his name to protect the innocent). Harry got a call about a slow computer. No need for details; we like to start from ground zero; they say it builds character. Anyhow, Harry found that the machine was relatively new, containing 1 GB of RAM and a 2+ Ghz processor. Initial testing showed that it was responding very slowly, especially while opening web pages. Harry checked for viruses, spyware, adware, space on the C: drive, all the usual suspects. The only thing that looked suspicious was some adware (79 objects discovered by Ad-Aware). He deleted the objects but saw no improvement in response time. Further investigation showed that the slow response was definitely isolated to network operations. Local tasks were screaming.

Harry opened a web page and watched it slowly paint the screen. While it struggled, he opened Task Manager and noted that CPU, memory and network activity were almost bottomed out. The page finally painted; Harry was just waking up when I got back with the coffee. Not sure how long it took. Harry even checked the TCP/IP settings in the registry but found nothing out of order for this machine (I won't go into detail on this because I'm not sure what he did). Anyhow, we suspected a network problem but couldn't prove it. This is the kind of problem we like to throw over the wall, but we knew our Networking friends would throw it right back. After all, it did Ping and it did eventually paint the web page.

Solution: Harry wanted to know if the network packets were being fragmented, causing the transmissions to take longer. He used 2 flags on the Ping command, -f meaning don't fragment this packet, and -l nnnn to specify a packet size. The max packet size he could use was 1500 (actually 1472, excluding the 28-byte header). The -f flag shows an error if the packet breaks up. Well, it didn't, but he did find something very interesting. By sending the larger packet size, he could see very erractic responses times to the Ping. Some of the responses would come back within a "normal" time, interspersed with responses that timed out. This is something we didn't see with the default 32-byte packet. The Ping responses were consistently inconsistent. Well, we know that this isn't true and complete network analysis but we felt that it helped our case. It did; our Networking guys investigated further and found a bad port on the router. Once plugged into a different port, the machine was fine.