Posts
Acronis True Image 2010 for 30$
· β˜• 2 min read
Everybody is trying to survive on the market these days. Acronis is no exclusion. Having made a partnership agreement with Seagate, they actually give away the limited version of Acronis True Image along with Seagate drives. This means FOR FREE!

Windows 7 - Activation Problems
· β˜• 1 min read
Error 0x8007232B started to appear on each startup saying something about DNS/KMS problems. I felt something was wrong with the system. So I went to My Computer/Properties and found that for some reason my copy had 27 days to activate. Apparently, activation was reset due to installation or updates as I didn't update any piece of hardware.

G6 + Everest 5.02 = BSOD ?
· β˜• 1 min read
As you probably remember by previous articles, we have some HP G6 servers to play with. And I was quite surprised to see them fall periodically after Everest is launched. Strangely enough, when launched on a randomly picked server, around 33% Everest causes a BSOD.

PowerShell - view current version
· β˜• 1 min read
I'm usually lazy to remember which version of PowerShell (if any) was installed on each and every server in our site. Because each generation of OS has its own way to install/reinstall PowerShell, sometimes I need to see if it's anything there already and I need to perform a clean up.

Outlook 2007 SP2 works with Exchange 2007 SP1?
· β˜• 2 min read
Indeed, yet until now I was never able to make it work with our Exchange. Strange, it does work perfectly with direct on demand connection (common user’s home setup), but fails within Exchange. You are prompted to search for solution; however Microsoft won’t help you with that. A bug?

HP G6 DL380 - SmartStart is a dumb start!
· β˜• 2 min read
We had a chance to install 9 operating systems on HP G6 Proliant DL380 servers. 4 of them had to be Windows 2003 64bit and 5x32bit. To summarize, 64bit versions didn't boot after SmartStart initiated installation (NTLDR not found) and 32bit version went okay until we found nothing HP-related in the start menu of Windows 2003.

Powershell Special Characters And Tokens
· β˜• 11 min read
This article originally started when I was actively involved in PowerShell development. Now I am mostly updating it on request of my blog readers (people like you). After a few dozen updates over the course of many years, it is now regarded as one of the top resources in the Powershell community.

Firefox 3.5 hangs under Windows 7 RC
· β˜• 2 min read
I'm a keen fan of Mozilla Firefox web browser and was very excited when a new version came out. Having installed that on my Vista work PC and found a real speed boost, I rushed to upgrade it at home... only to find it hangs at startup on Windows 7.

Overclocking of Phenom 9500 (part 2) - disaster recovery
· β˜• 2 min read
That day I spent the whole evening testing mild overclock of HT ref clock by 10%. Nothing strange happened at that time, so I assumed everything was stable and so I was going to leave OC settings at this level. Anyway, it's nice to have it a little bit faster than it was planned by manufacturer, right? The next day I went to ACDSee to browse previously taken photos. Nothing special here, but strangely enough, Windows 7 went to BSOD while creating thumbnails.

Overclocking Phenom 9500 - Part I - vs Intel I7
· β˜• 2 min read
First, I’m not a big overclocker. Second, I’m not going to use any TEC coolers for ultra fast performance. Third, I don’t have a canister of liquid nitrogen. So, nothing fancy, just air, common non-black processor and a little customized case are going to be involved. If you think it’s pathetic, just don’t read lines below. But if you value your money and want something for cheap, keep reading.