Quality Control @ Dell WPD
Our office participates in the Dell Warranty Parts Direct service program. Basically it allows us to be “self-maintainers” and order our own warranty parts as needed rather than having to wait on hold with support to go through the same troubleshooting steps we’ve already completed. It’s usually an efficient way to get bad parts replaced under warranty. One of my coworkers ordered a motherboard last week. Today when he opened the antistatic bag he got an unwelcome surprise:
The Intel ICH7 chip and surrounding components were heat damaged and filthy. There was also what looked like burned thermal grease all over the chip (suggesting that a heat sink may have been installed, though the original failed board in our system had no heat sink and the chip was as clean as it was from the factory). Click the image to get a larger view.
Flipping the board over revealed additional damage to the contacts for the various components installed around the chip:
As a disclaimer, we’ve never seen damage like this before in warranty parts sent to us. In fact, most parts are in great shape and some even have that “factory new” smell to them. This instance though, seems like either laziness or incompetence. I don’t know how something this bad could have made it through any quality control process. Visual inspection should have been the first clue. It’s not like it’s just dusty. IT’S SCORCHED. I also don’t know how much difference blogging about it will make, but at least it’s documented out there now. Dell, what’s up?
Recover permanently deleted mail in Outlook
Follow-up: More ways to shrink Office documents
Last night, I made a post about shrinking Powerpoints without any special software. Today I was saving a Word document and noticed the “Tools” menu, clicked it and saw … wait for it …
Compress Pictures!
This is an even simpler method for reducing Microsoft Office document sizes. Once you click “Compress Pictures,” you can choose the level of compression (printed or screen / web), and whether to delete cropped areas of pictures or not. You still have the original image, right?
The only thing left is to make this the default option during Office setup; If it’s possible, you’ll see it here. Please comment if you experience success with this tip 
Joel
Edit: Found another awesome resource for reducing Office Document file sizes: University of Queensland “Ask IT” page (they also have the same information in .PDF handout format)
Setup a Windows XP Administration Workstation
From Digg:
Tips for setting up a Windows XP Pro computer to perform administrative tasks on a MS windows network. Links to downloads of the tools you’ll need.
I love it when I come across another great blog. Thanks Rob Durkin!
Drastically reduce PowerPoint file size – EASY!
Got a call from a user today:
“I need to send a powerpoint to a grant organization, and it’s got to get there TODAY! I tried sending it but got a message saying that it exceeds the limit for this user. I need you to take that limit off as soon as possible!”
Whoah, whoah – hold your horses. Those limits are there for a reason. How big is the file?
“I don’t know! Can you please just take the limit off?”
Well, let’s see what we can do first. Right click the file and click … [explaining right click vs. left, what tab the file size is listed on under a file's properties window (it's the general tab)...] OK. So the file is 11MB. That’s 7MB more than the limit. Let’s try something:
- Open the document and right click on an image.
- Click “Format Picture.”
- Now click on the tab “Picture.”
- Click Compress
- Select “All pictures in document.”
- Choose a resolution (hint: screen creates a smaller file).
- Check “Delete cropped areas of pictures” and “Compress Pictures.”
- Click OK (and Apply if prompted).
- Save the file. If you’re paranoid, save it with a new name.
So what’s the file size now?
“It says 1.1 em-bee”
You should be able to send it now.
“Wow, thanks!”
Resource used:
Microsoft Office Assistance: Reduce the size of your PowerPoint files
Boot Windows PE from RIS with PXE
Just a quick post: I’ll be taking a look at this:
How to boot the Microsoft Windows Preinstall Environment from an RIS server by using PXE-enabled clients
looks promising.
SMS + VirusScan = HELL
We’re experiencing the following symptoms:
- Very high CPU utilization
- Vitrually unresponsive systems
- Violent end-users
- Vicious finger pointing (not really, but it was a good V-word!)
While doing research, we’ve noted that the 2 things common on systems with these symptoms was that SVCHOST.EXE (Automatic Updates in this case) or CCMEXEC.EXE were the main CPU hogs. Killing CCMEXEC, running ccmclean.exe, or sometimes killing the Automatic Updates service would bring the system back from the brink.
Googling for “ccmexec cpu” and similar phrases came up with a few places to start looking:
SMS Admin newsgroup
MyITForum Discussion
Hopefully we’ll get this nailed down and have:
- Responsive systems
- Readiness for update deployments (we’re temporarily suspending them until we get this worked out)
- Really happy customers
- Raises (maybe not).
My mind is going… or: Working with HALs
Here are some initial resources as I’m beginning to delve into the area of Hardware Abstraction Layers during our image build cycle. We’re looking at what HAL types can be mapped to others and which are incompatible to begin to consolidate some of our system images. Some Microsoft kb articles:
How to Troubleshoot Windows 2000 Hardware Abstraction Layer Issues
How to force a Hardware Abstraction Layer during an upgrade or an installation of Windows XP
HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Setup
More information to follow once we begin to more fully understand the copncept of Hardware Abstraction Layers.
Disable Chassis Intrusion detection
After deploying Dell OMCI to about 600 desktops and portables, an alert began displaying upon user logon:
Needless to say, users were somewhat confused by this.
To get rid of the message, we either had to:
- Run around to every Dell PC in the organization
- Uninstall Dell OMCI
- Remotely disable chassis intrusion detection and clear any current detections
Obviously we chose option three. With Dell’s OpenManage IT Assistant software, I was able to build a remote CIM command line to execute on a set of systems (in our case any system that was reporting a status of degraded). Here’s the command we ran:
system cim action=setcim ipaddress=$IP username=$USERNAME password=$PASSWORD authenticationlevel=packet classpropertyvalue=Dell_SMBIOSsettings::ChassisIntrusion:4
To execute the command, I setup a new command line task in ITA, targeted at a query of computers whose status was not “OK.” I set this to run once an hour, since clients were still being discovered and inventoried as this was happening. By setting the query to only hit degraded clents, we avoided running this needlessly on clients already configured properly.
Dell OpenManage Documentation
Dell’s Systems Management platform has been around for quite awhile. It has recently been getting more and more usable and comprehensive. While attempting to test and implement it in our achitecture, I have scrolled through pages and pages of documentation, forum threads, and configuration pages. Here are the pages that have been the most useful for me:
Dell OpneManage Client Instrumentation User’s Guide
Client Instrumentation Documentation
Dell OpenManage Server Administrator User’s Guide
Server Administrator Documentation
Dell OpenManage Client Connector User’s Guide
Client Connector Documentation
Dell OpenManage IT Assistant 7.2 User’s Guide
Here’s the platform in a nutshell: The Client Instrumentation (or Server Administrator for servers) is installed on the managed system and interfaces with the system’s data providers (BIOS, Disks, Chassis, etc), and makes this data accessible through the standard WMI interface. On the Management Station (usually a server set aside for Systems Management), the IT Assistant and Client Connector allow administrators to access and manage the systems and their configurations through the WMI Interface. IT Assistant is the main management application (one to many) that provides an overall view of system health and status and Client Connector (one to one) can be launched from IT Assistant to manage an individual client. Server Administrator can also be launched from within IT Assistant for individual Server Management, though it runs on the managed server rather than on the management station.
Some nutshell eh?