Thursday, September 28, 2006

I have installed the Dell PowerEdge 2900 server today. Had to follow all the documentation to install Microsoft Windows server 2003 R2 and patch it and then install bunch of highly sophesticated management consoles. It was a good learning lesson because server has different hardware configuration and needs different approach as compared to a PC. Got to learn how RAID is configured and how consoles are used to remotely manage servers just to name a few.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Paul came with his toshiba laptop which failed to boot. He had all his work on that machine which we were supposed to recover for him. Now if the machine does not boot how to recover the files of it......PROBLEM......Alan had today only bought in this smart piece of software called ERD Commander 2005 which was capable of doing this stuff. But I must say more than just having this software some experience and expertise was required. Alan managed to do it and showed me as well. Afterwards I went through all the features of the ERD.
We recieved the Dell PowerEdge 2900 Server today. I went through all the documentation that came along with it.
On tusday I learnt about Microsoft Windows Server 2003. I insttaled it onto my desktop and patched it.
Went through its security settings and features. Worked for a while on Dreamweaver and went through some tutorials and features of it.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Extensively learnt how to select TFT monitors, their specs, prices and different brands. Installed Visual Studio and SQL server on PC. We had a new started today in development. Talked him through his Dell D520 laptop with all the specs and company standards that we follow.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Learnt about history and infrastructure of networking (routers, switches and hubs). Their different types and configurations. Alan gave me a book, Cisco Begginer’s Guide to read.
Installed Microsoft Frontpage 2003 on my PC and went through a tutorial on how to make a website.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Week starting 14.08.06

I was shown all the departments and introduced to the colleagues. Alan briefed me about the job description and what he expected of me. He straight away started explaining about the hardware configuration of a desktop. I learnt about most of the hardware in the box and their specifications. The unit he opened to explain me was ancient but he did it just to give me an overview of what is it like. I also had the opportunity to see the server and Alan taught me the difference between a server and a computer. He went through all the technical aspects of it which I reckon will definitely help me in some point of time.

Then I started with configuring my first computer which was a Dell desktop for one of the new starters. Alan showed what all to do and how. He explained everything precisely with emphasis on what is the need of it, how important it is and what difference does it make.

In the last couple of days of the week I had the opportunity to assist Zak who is a Consultant and was working on a project for KFC at their Hounslow outlet. We had to monitor with the help of PDA’s the operation of Hand Held Tills being used by them during busy hours and later on provide them with the detailed analysis and presentation of the same.

In whole my first week at placement went really well and wasn’t bad at all to start with.



Week starting 21.08.06

I got to configure dell laptops for Andrew and Gary who were supposed to start next week.
The dell laptops come with windows XP professional installed on them. Alan explained how to configure for a particular user and what all needs to be installed in general.
He even explained to me in detail about IP Address and OSI Layer and gave me Windows Server 2003 book to through.

He explained the importance of system backup and how to use system recovery techniques.
We tried ASR (Automated System Recovery) which is featured in Windows XP Pro and found that it doesn’t help without the floppy drives.
Then we tried to do the same using Norton Ghost 9.0 which helps create backup on the network. We created the image of one of the new laptops and later booted of the Norton cd and restored using the image on the network.

Later part of the week was spent assisting Zak at KFC.



Week starting 28.08.06

Alan had already installed a beta version of vista on the laptop. We went through the features of vista and tried to create backup using vista. Vista allowed to create the backup image on the DVD. We found that vista compressed the data before creating the image onto the DVD. We booted the system of the DVD and it all worked well.

Then I had to see one of the consultants who wanted office 2003 on his laptop and his wireless was not working either. He had an old Compaq laptop which did not come with wireless so he had a Netguard wireless card which wasn’t working. I checked that he had the driver installed but it still wasn’t working. All I could think of was uninstall the driver and install again. I went for it but still it didn’t work. I had to ask Alan and he installed the latest driver from Netguard website and it all started working then.

I had to assist Zak again on Thursday and Friday.


Week starting 04.09.06

Monday
Zak needed a laptop so I configured it up for him. I had to install Windows XP onto one the laptops which had vista for him.
Installation went alright until I found that network connection wasn’t there hence I couldn’t patch the machine. As per rule I looked for the network driver by running the drivers CD and found that it was there. Steve came to the rescue and asked me to still extract the driver files and download.
Then I had to put Anju’s desktop PC ready on her desk . The problem this time was again of the network. I connected the Ethernet cable but the connection wasn’t there. I looked at all the available options but couldn’t get it working.

Tuesday
In the morning the first thing I did was fixing her LAN up. Actually I dint have a clue that I have to activate her network line physically from the network hub which is there in our server room until Steve showed me how to do.
Later in the day Anju had a problem logging in so we had to change her password. Then she had a problem with sending/receiving e-mails. Everytime she had to click send/receive to send or receive e-mail which shouldn’t be like that. On finding out she was offline and wasn’t connected to the mkexchange server. I had to go through the internet to find out what could be the problem because Alan wasn’t there and Steve had some important stuff to do. Eventually I managed to fix it up.

Wednesday
I learnt about the hardware specification of the Dell Optiplex GX520 desktop. Alan showed me all the hardware components inside the box and explained. We discussed about the history of computers and about the companies which are present today. We searched on the internet about different hardware components and their costs. Alan discussed how to build a PC according to the needs of the client. He even taught me about motherboards and and what all they comprise of.

Thursday
We had the job of providing BBC with four HP laptops having same stuff. Mark had prepared one of them which took him a day. All we had to do was create the image of that and restore onto other three. We used Norton Ghost 8.0 to create the image across the network but couldn’t restore it to HP laptops. The Norton restoration CD actually did not have the Network driver of HP. So we copied the contents of the built HP laptop onto an external hard drive. This did not work because HP took the external hard drive as the C drive of the system. Then we tried to extract the HP network driver from its website and copied it onto a USB floppy drive. But HP didn’t understand that either.
Eventually we found that the HP laptop had its own Backup and restoration software installed onto the system so we used that to create the image of the built up laptop and restore it on the new laptops.
In between I even mapped the administration drive of MKFILE for Trish.

Friday

Week Starting 11.09.06

Monday
Built Alan’s laptop for Ulrick Lorentzen. I used Norton ghost to restore the image of Steve Hodson’s laptop across the network on mk_prod\uranus onto Ulrick’s laptop. Then generically changed the computer name and added Ulrick to the domain and created an account for him. Configured Microsoft Office 2003 for him and his outlook.

Tuesday
Created ISO file of Microsoft Office 2003 burnt it onto a DVD installed it onto a laptop. Used Norton ghost to backup laptop across the network on Uranus \ mk_prod then booted the system of the CD just to verify if it works.
Alan told me that it is possible to retrieve data of the formatted hard drive using software tools like Disk Commander and ERD Commander which was quite shocking to me just because I never knew about anything of that sort.
He got Disk Commander and was about to talk through it but unfortunately it did not work because the laptop we tried it on was the latest dell one and the software was old so it did not support.
Then installed Office beta version 2007 onto my desktop and familiarised with it.

Wednesday
We had Ulrick’s name spelling wrong in first place so we had to change it everywhere to ULRIK.
All we had to do was rectify his name on active directory then change his computer name and registry using regedit. His mail mail account required changing so had to delete his present account and recreate it.
Then I had the task of cloning Myles Rose’s laptop on a external USB hard drive. I logged in as administrator and installed Norton ghost onto his machine. Activated it using the serial key and rebooted.

Thursday
Built a Dell520 laptop for new starter. Ulrik wanted to print off some color pages so had to set up a color printer for him. The printer didn’t print a test page so had to trobleshoot it.
Had to browse through Oki website to find the driver for C7200 printer and extract that file while going through the printer installation wizard.




Friday
Alan took me down the road to Tiscali’s data centre for a quick check of the servers. He showed and explained to me about them. Later I built a couple of laptop’s for Andrew and Megan.

Week Starting 18.09.06

Monday
Built a new dell D520 laptop for Andy Bell according to his requirements. Andrew Lookes saw a blue screen of death on his D505 so had to diagnose using a dell diagnostic CD. Booted off the cd and ran the diagnostic tool. Just went through all of the hardware and eventually came acroos a error on the hard drive with displaying message

Error Code 0F00:0244
Msg:Block 6518005:Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected

Contact dell technical support centre with the above details for complete diagnosis.

Tuesday
We had a western digital external hard drive which we used for cloning purposes. It did not respond in the way that it showed unallocated space on it. We were a bit concerned because it had important images on it which we might require. We tried to figure out the problem. We managed to know that the hard drive was working fine it was just that we have lost all the data stored on it. You can say it probably got erased or deleted. So we tried a software product called Easy Recovery Professional from a website ontrack.co.uk but it only allowed to recover a read only mode and did not actually retrieve it.
Then I learnt from Alan about the Virtual PC’s and virtual applications and practically installed Vista within XP.

Wednesday
I leaned about company’s Active Directory and how it all worked. Alan even taught me the different ways in which active directory can work and how important it is to build a right one. I learnt about Terminal Servers as well. I later reinstalled Windows XP Professional onto Matthew’s Dell D810 laptop and patched it.
Then we had to spec a new server for imaging purposes. We only do dell’s so it was like we went to their website. Alan talked through how to decide the spec and what all technologies are available at the moment. Everything seemed quite interesting and was an excellent learning edge.

Thursday
Alan was sick and decided to work from home. I investigated for a way to present my work impressively. I could find the option like having a blog or my own website. I started surfing the net for how to create and manage them. I came through quite a lot of options. I think it will take me a while to decide.
I have found this very interesting way of putting my work online by using a blog. It will probably help me maintaining my diary. The only problem is that it doesnt allow me to back date anything and hence all the entries will come up on present date.