Hibernation in Windows 2008 - turn it off!

Unless you want to run Windows 2008 on a laptop, I cannot see why Microsoft in their wisdom would enable hibernation on a server operating system — by default! As this creates a file named c:\hiberfil.sys which is the same size as the memory in the server this is a huge inconvenience, especially running in a virtual environment where you want to keep your disk partitions small.

You can, of course, turn the hibernation off and delete the file by using the following command from the command line:

powercfg -h off

Note: several times I have got the following error message at the command line, despite being a domain admin:

You do not have permission to enable or disable the Hibernate feature.

If this happens, create a shortcut to 'powercfg.exe -h off' and then right-click it and choose 'Run as administrator. This will elevate your priveleges and enable the file to be deleted.

Microsoft: nul points.

Windows 2008 Remote Server Administration Tool

After finally switching from XP to Vista over the past few days, I came to update some Group Policy Objects this morning, only to find that the GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) that came with the Windows 2003 Adminpak no longer works. Apparently it is not Vista-compatible (I have heard that such problems exist!)

Oh well, I thought, I'll just get the Vista-compatible one. Cue a 2 hour trawl through the web. Apparently the GPMC was available in Vista pre-SP1 but for some reason Microsoft removed it when SP1 came out. They then re-released it as part of the Windows 2008 Remote Server Administration Tools but failed to put any mention of it on their website so you can't find it. Eventually I stumbled upon this thread http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistasp/thread/81571529-c84c-4db2-8d9b-0943f1870031/ which explains how to get it and run it.

In a nutshell, here's how to obtain and enable it:

1. Uninstall the Windows 2003 Adminpak if you currently have it installed
2. Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ff6e897-23ce-4a36-b7fc-d52065de9960&DisplayLang=e (32bit) or http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d647a60b-63fd-4ac5-9243-bd3c497d2bc5&DisplayLang=en (64bit)
3. Install it
4. Enable the Remote Server Administration Tools from the 'Turn Windows features on or off' box in the Programs and Features applet in Control Panel
5. Make a brew while waiting for the features to be configured (this took about 10 minutes on my PC)
6. The tools are now available in the Administrative Tools menu
   

Yet another example of Microsoft frustrating their customers by overcomplicating something that used to be very simple, but hey, I should be used to it by now...

HP Procurve Mini-GBIC compatibilty matrix

HP have a document which lists which Mini-GBIC (i.e. Fiber uplink) devices are compatible with with which Procurve switches.

You can find it here: http://cdn.procurve.com/training/Manuals/Mini-GBIC-Support-Mar2009.pdf

Twitter is stupid

Well, I gave it a go, I tried to like it, but I just don't see the point of Twitter. I can't be bothered checking a web page every few minutes just in case someone I don't know has put the equivalent of a badly-spelt text message on there. I tried using TwitterFox which is a Firefox extension that just pops up the tweets when you receive them, but I found it just distracted me.

And very, very few of the tweets I received were of any interest. That is, if you could actually tell what they were about, most of them seemed to be just garbled abbreviations which you had to squint at then go and do a load of research on. To me, this defeats the object of having a so-called 'quick and easy' system of communication. True, Stephen Fry's tweets were sort of sweet in a whimsical kind of way, but do I really need to know (or care) that he is sat on a plane on the way to Singapore? Nope, I'll find that out when your TV programme is on in a couple of months, Stephen.

So I have uninstalled TwitterFox, and unless someone can explain to me what Twitter is actually good for, other than annoying me and getting in the way of my actual WORK, I won't be bothering with Twitter again. Just in time, as I read in Computer Weekly that they are currently trying to work out aa way of making money from the users.

Quelle surprise.