Since last weekend I have been working on preparing a next financial year budget for supporting infrastructure of company.
Steve gave me rough outline of what all needed to be done. The most important being the Microsoft Software Asset Management for the whole company including our branches in America and Australia. After critical analysis of Microsoft Licensing Method its been found that we are on the verge of getting Microsoft Gold Partner Certified. I have created a document explaining the effect on our free licenses entitlement in case we get Gold Certified.
The next stage would be to create a group policy in Active Directory to scan all the machines across our LAN and WAN to perform software auditing task.
We could use Microsoft Software Analyser to scan all the machines and further polish the document explaining if we need any further licenses.

Dick McDonnielle had a scan meassage from McAfee Microsoft Outlook find vulnerability (925938). A buffer overflow message with description that a vulnerability exists in Miscrosoft Outlook that may allow for denial of service attack. A user would have to open a malicious e-mail attachment for an attack to occur. A successful attack would allow execution of code at the rights level of the victim's user account.
On following the recommendations I managed to download a update i.e. was KB924085. A microsoft office update and also updated his McAfee. I scaned his machine and that message did not occur again.

We had a task to install a business intelligence application Business Objects Enterprise on demo machine. After going through prerequisites we found that it reqired a database server and web application server which required configuring before hand.
We installed SQL Server 2005 and Java Web Application servers. Going through notes I had to develop a new empty database with login id and password as required.
Started with the installation and immediately message that it could not execute some file. I had to copy the contents of the disk onto the C: drive and run the files from there. After installation we could not log in to the application. It was asking for server name, login id, password and authentication. After comprehensive study of the installation notes it was found out that during application a default administrator and user account are created. We used those credentials to log in now. Every thing seemed fine until Stuart came back that he could not do anything when not networked and because the laptop was meant for giving demonstrations it had to work without a network. Then after some difficulties we manged to find out what could be the problem.
The application used Java web application server which always requires an IP address. When the system is not networked it would not have an IP address. So we created a network connection called loopback which has a private IP address and allows to make your own mini network.

We recieved the Dell PowerEdge SC440 server today which was supposed to be used to support Travelex applications. It was shipped without the operating system so the first task was to install OS on it. After successfull installation I noticed that the machine did not pick up the gigabit network controller driver so I had to put in the server installation CD and run the utility to update drivers only after going throught the installation instruction manual. The problem was resolved and I could now go to microsoft website and insatll all the security updates. Afterwards I installed the mcafee anti virus and joined it to domain. Then created a domain user account in the active directory and configured the machine for using that user account.

Sarah had problems with her notebook's keyboard and mouse. the cursor would keep drifting towards left whenever she tried to write anything anywhere. Her mouse pad did not work fine either. I first tried to look at the settings but could not find anything. Then opened the keyboard and replaced with another one. It worked fine after replacement revealing the cause of fault.

James's Dell Optiplex GX620 did not recognize the Lite-On DVD ROM. Tried to first scan for any new installed hardware in contol panel. Then replaced that ROM with another one which did not help at all. I simply meant that computer did not recognize any ROM. Rebooted the system and went to the system setup or bios menu. The CD or DVD ROM device was disabled. I enabled that and the system now recognized the device.

John Shouler had a couple of problems with his Dell Latitude D810. It did not allow him to write anything in the address bar. If he opens my computer and writes an address of some other location in the address bar there it does not allow him. Secondly the control panel kept on refreshing on its own. After looking at them I diagnosed it to be .net framework problem and after updating it I managed to resolve both the isues.
He even had an issue that there was message that popped up right hand bottom corner of the screen saying that wireless adaptor not installed. Actually he did not have his wireless adaptor enabled so I had to go to device manager and enable his wireless adaptor.
Later in the day we had a machine which had come down from Telford with some networking issues. It was not able to get an IP address from DHCP. On doing ipconfig it came with an IP address which was from outside our subnet mask. So I went to show all networks under start menu and on LAN connection went to properties. Selected tcp/ip option and found the properties to be set on specific IP address and DNS server settings. On resetting it to automatic the machine could manage to get an IP address.

Yesterday after getting a static IP address for mkhqspap server I installed VNC on the machine and ran the server service so that anybody could log onto it remotely using VNC viewer. After that I was supposed to install Oracle 10g application server disks to its hard drive.
The SBASE server went wrong. It did not display on the screen. I logged a call with Dell technician and diagnosted it to be a motherboard fault.
Jo Rosser emailed that she could not edit an excel file in sales directory under mkfile. It prompted her for a password everytime and because Paul Joy had created it and set the password up she didn't know it and Paul had left the business. I found that excel was password protected and after going through microsoft technet it clearly said that there is no way to disable it if you don't remember the password. So I had to come out with away that Jo could actually be able to edit it.
I Logged on mkfile as an administrator which gave me full control. Now I created another excel document and copied all the contents from the excel document which Paul had created onto new one and gave it the same name and replaced it. Jo could now see the same file at same location and edit it.

I was alone today in the department and there was quite alot to be done. To make things worse my PC went faulty. I had left it on last evening as usual but found it switched off in the morning. On turning it on I found that the screen was not displaying anything though the system was running. I tried changing the monitor first of all which did not help. Then opened the system and replaced the graphic card which had the VGA port on it. Tried again but no joy. It seemed that there is problem with the mother board.
Steve had assigned me a task through email with high priority to configure an application server which would be called MKHQSPAPP. The rest of the details were on mail. I manged to grab a spare laptop and configured my email account onto that machine in order get the details and start with it.
I had to format a system in the server room and reinstall Windows XP on it and name the machine as MKHQSPAPP. After getting the system up and running with all latest drivers and security softwares I was supposed to get a static IP address for it.

Ulrik called with a problem that he could not browse internet from his laptop Dell Latitude D520. Every time he launched the Internet Explorer 7 it came up with an error and did not allow him to browse at all. I had to personally go to his machine and try it out.
It was not that straight forward because I knew that it would probably get sorted if I go to microsoft website and patch his machine but to get there I need browser which is not working.
So I went to task manager and started a new task from there and browsed to the microsoft website and repaired the browser.
Afterwards I had to keep myself busy with software asset management task.

Wireless went down first thing in the morning. Reboot did not help then I had to take the router off and plug in to another ethernet cable. Wireless got picked up now.
Jon Gyngell's machine needed sorting up. His machine had actually crashed and Chris got the hard drive replaced. Steven was building it from scratch and wanted me to start from where he left.
I along with Chris intalled three new dell Power Edge 2950 rack servers in the server room.

I have just returned today from a long holiday abroad. Before leaving I had completed auditing for hardware to be collected from the employees. I could see some of the hardware already been returned in my absence and hence had the task of updating the audit list which was created.

Later in the day Steve asked me to find the compatible memory upgrade to 4GB for a Dell machine. He supplied me with the Asset Tag No. and the Dell Service Tag No. I used the details diagnose that it was Dell Optiplex GX520 which could have maximum of 4GB RAM DDR2 PC2-5300.CL=5.UNBUFFERED.NON-ECC.DDR2-667.1.8V.256Megx64. Then I move on to find the best price for it from Crucial Memory.