Transferring my Blogger.com blog and custom domain to GoDaddy for hosting and dns management

I've just transfer my custom domain over to GoDaddy to do my DNS and domain management there.  Since I no longer had a hosting plan with HostGator, only a domain management plan, it seems they would not allow me to add custom A records to my domain, which is critical to getting Blogger to work with a custom domain.

So I signed up at GoDaddy and initiated the domain transfer. It wasn't too painful. Clicking on some confirmation emails, entering some keys that were emailed to me to verify that I owned the email account associated with the domain, unlocking my domain at HostGator, talk to HostGator chat support and getting them to send me an authorization code to approve the transfer.  Then I just had to wait a day or two until I received an email from HostGator saying the domain was ready to be transferred and asking me to click a button to approve it.

Once I got the domain into the GoDaddy system, I went to the Domain Manager, selected my domain and hit the Namersevers button. I told it I wanted to "park" my domain and use all of the default GoDaddy nameservers.  

Then I went to DNS Manager and clicked on Edit Zones under my domain name. Here is where you enter your custom A records. Just hit the Quick Add button in the "A (host)" section and add these records...

yourdomain.com    216.239.32.21

yourdomain.com    216.239.34.21

yourdomain.com    216.239.36.21

yourdomain.com    216.239.38.21 

Then go down to the CName (Alias) section and add the following record...

www   ghs.google.com

In my case, I already had a www record there that was setup by default. I'm not positive but I thought that might cause I problem so I deleted the other WWW record.  Might cause problems if you had the same subdomain pointing to two different destinations.

So then you just go back into your Blogger settings, switch your publishing destination to be your *.blogspot.com address for a moment, save settings, switch back to custom domain (advanced settings) and enter in your full domain name - www.jasonhartman.net.    Then you can also check the box that says to redirect the naked domain to the full domain name with WWW.    My blog is now working fine, with and without WWW in the address.

I initially had some problems because I went into GoDaddy first before I started the actual domain transfer and set some Offsite DNS settings and indicated that this domain soon would be transferred to GoDaddy. But it seems that it didn't transfer in correctly, because the Domain Manager showed my domain name twice - one of them said (Pending Transfer).  So I just deleted that one and started off with the new clean domain and all the default settings for DNS stuff.

I think this issue also lead to some other early problems trying to get my email account and email forwarding accounts working.  After I would create an email account, the status of the account would change to "Pending setup: validating MX record" and never seemed to leave that status, even if it was just a forwarding account to bounce my mail to another server.  But once I got rid of the bad domain, parked the new domain and reset all of the nameservers to the defaults, I could create email accounts and email forwarders with no problems.  

Problem loading and finding drivers for Windows Home Server (WHS) PC full system restore from backup

I'm a big fan of the Windows Home Server (WHS) product - specifically the earlier versions prior to WHS 2011 before they removed the Drive Extender feature. I've deployed several HP MediaSmart servers for small businesses and home offices.  The full PC restore feature has come in handy on several occasions. You just boot from a CD, connect to your WHS box and select the image that you want to restore and sit back and relax while it completely restores your PC.

The only real tricky part of this process is making sure that the WHS boot environment recognizes your hardware drivers - network cards, hard drives, disk controllers, etc.  If it can't talk to your network card, it won't be able to find your WHS server, if it can't talk to your disk drives, you won't see any drives available when you try to select the drive mapping during the restore process. 

Most of the time it seems to find all of my hardware without any issues. Sometimes it will be missing the Ethernet controller so you'll need to provide drivers for that.  Typically you can just go to another PC on your WHS network, open the WHS console, go to Computer & Backups, select the PC that you are trying to restore, right-click and select View Backups, select one of the recent backups and hit "Open"..., select a partition, and let it open the backup so you can see the files.

On each partition, you'll find a special folder that WHS has created called "Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore".  You copy all of these files to a USB flash drive and then put it into your PC that you are trying to restore.  Then boot into the WHS environment again.  When it gets to the screen were it detects your hardware, you'll need to hit the button to tell it to scan your drives for additional drivers.  It will then scan your USB drive and it SHOULD find all of the proper hardware drivers.

This method has worked for me 100% of the time until last week.  I was trying to restore a Dell Inspiron laptop that would no longer boot.  Even when I copied the drivers from the "Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore" folder, I was still missing Ethernet and storage controller drivers.  So what I did was look up the service tag on the Dell laptop, go out to the Dell.com support and drivers page and manually download the Ethernet and any storage-related drivers I could find.  These will be compressed .exe files.  Make sure you run them first, so they will extract all of the files into a folder tree.  Then grab these extracted files and put them on your USB drive.  The location on the USB drive doesn't seem to matter - it scans the whole drive.

Once I manually downloaded my drivers and put them on the USB stick, I rebooted into the WHS restore environment once again, told it to scan for additional drivers and thankfully it found them this time!  My Ethernet card was listed as well as the hard disk controllers.  Now I could browse and see my WHS box on the network, select my PC name, select my most recent backup and then it asks you to map the partitions that you want to restore C: to C:, D: to D:, etc.

Hopefully this will help if you run into this situation.

6 more free apps for your HP TouchPad | ZDNet

For those of you with brand new HP Touchpads, here is a link to get a few free apps. Typically these cost $$ but there are promo codes in the article that allow you to get them for free.

6 more free apps for your HP TouchPad | ZDNet:

'via Blog this'

Free Box.net account for HP Touchpad user - max file size limit of 100MB

As part of your HP Touchpad purchase (like the $99 version I just purchased), you are also entitled to a free 50GB of online storage from Box.net.  As far as I can tell, this seems to be pretty similar to Dropbox.  You get an online folder that you can sync and access from different devices - including the HP Touchpad obviously.

Just look for the Box.net app in the HP app store on your Touchpad. When you launch it the first time you'll be asked to create your free account and get your 50GB of space.

While the 50GB of free space sounds great, there is at least one "gotcha".  If you have a paid plan, even a smaller 25GB for $9.99/month, the max file size is 1GB.  That would be enough if you wanted to upload some lower res movie files to watch on your tablet.  BUT the free HP Touchpad accounts have a max file size of 100MB per file!!  Ouch!

I guess thats fine for some music or documents but don't plan on keeping an online movie archive on box.net and transferring them to your Touchpad.  You can always connect your Touchpad to the USB port on your PC and transfer files that way of course.

I was able to buy a $99 HP Touchpad tablet with WebOS - Quick Review

The HP Touchpad Tablet

I'm a real sucker for a deal. I always say "Hell, I'd buy an elephant if I found one for 80% off!".  Well how about a $400 tablet for 75% off?  HP introduced the Touchpad tablet just a few months ago and they've already discontinued it due to dismal sales, dropping the price down to $99 (16GB) / $149 (32GB). The trick is finding them at the sale price before they are all gone.  I was able to score one from Bestbuy.com and pick it up at the store last weekend.  You may have luck for the next week or so just showing up at your local BB in the morning to see if they have anything.  It's possible that HP.com maybe be getting more in next week as well.

I've been planning to get an iPad at some point - maybe waiting until next year to get an iPad 3 but I certainly couldn't pass up a $99 tablet with a very similar feature set.  Even if you never use a single "app", the browser built into the Touchpad is excellent and it fully supports Adobe Flash.  This means that most of your favorite websites will be fully functional.  You don't need an app for every little thing - news, weather, sports scores, music streaming,  etc.  In fact, the most impressive thing was that I was able to run a Yahoo Fantasy Football mock draft on it, which is a major Flash-heavy site.

The app store is very limited.  Maybe 7,000 apps.  But it's got the biggies like Facebook, various Twitter clients, weather, CBS Sports, USA Today, Pandora (though it's designed for small screens like a Palm phone), etc.  No Netflix streaming app that I could find. Though maybe the site works via Flash?  I read reports that Hulu.com works in the browser.

Honestly, I haven't done much email on it but the email client seems just fine.  You can add multiple accounts and the OS has some cool features for sliding the windows around to let you determine what you want to see - email accounts list, inbox list, message body, etc.

I've ran into a few articles talking about ways to boost the performance and make it run a little quicker, via overclocking and disabling some of the excessive system logging.  Check out this article from ZDNet for details.  I haven't tried it yet myself.

I also like the fact that I can print directly from the Touchpad to my HP Color LaserJet CM1415 wirelessly.

You'll probably want a few accessories.  Here is the official HP case.














And there is also an official HP wireless bluetooth keyboard which could be pretty handy.

You have not been added to the Blackberry Enterprise Server error - no enterprise data plan

I was trying to add a new Blackberry Curve to a Blackberry Professional Server (predecessor to the Blackberry Express Server) but it would not connect to the server. I entered the email address and wireless activation key but it just sat on "Contacting Server..." for several minutes.  Then I would get an error message that read "You have not yet been added to the Blackberry Enterprise Server. Please either cancel this request and contact your support team or continue and wait for a response".

The issue in my case was that the user was using his personal Blackberry and he did NOT have an enterprise data plan (Blackberry Enterprise Plan, Blackberry Corporate Plan, BES Plan, etc. Not sure what each carrier calls it.).  He just had a regular consumer data plan called Blackberry Internet Service plan I believe.  Another clue was that the Enterprise Activation option was missing from his phone.  Even when looking in Options -> Advanced Options there was no mention of Enterprise Activation.  I found one post that recommended going into Options -> Advanced Options -> Host Routing Table and click "Register".  Once I did this, I COULD see the option for Enterprise Activation.  But that's when I ran into my error message above.

He's going to contact Verizon and upgrade his plan to a corporate plan and then I should be able to add him to the Blackberry server.

My favorite Bluetooth headset for iPhones (and other phones) - The Jawbone ICON

I've tried out several different Bluetooth headsets for my iPhone but so far the best I've found is the Jawbone ICON.  The Icon comes in several different styles - The Thinker, The Hero, The Rogue, etc. but they all have the same guts - the style just changes the appearance slightly.

This is "The Thinker" style that I have.

If you connect it to your PC with the included USB cable, you can update the firmware to provide A2DP support.  This allows you to wirelessly listen to music and podcasts on your iPhone, in addition to simply using it for making calls.  I use it for listening to podcasts quite a bit.  You can also hold in the single button on the Icon and it will trigger the iPhone's voice dialing feature so you can say "Call Jason Mobile" to dial the number. This is really handy when you get in the car and you've forgotten to take your phone out of your pocket or laptop bag.  However, I wish there was some way for the Caller ID feature to pronouce the names on your Contacts list.  Instead, it simply announces the number of the incoming call ("Call from 555-7689").

There is a customizable voice in the phone that announces the incoming calls, the battery life remaining ("About 1 hour of talk time remaining..."), etc.

The sound quality is excellent though I would strongly recommending adding these Jabra eargels which are made specifically for the Icon to really give it a custom fit and increase the volume a noticeable amount.

These eargels give the Icon a great custom fit.

Microsoft Onenote template for wedding planning

I've been a big fan of Microsoft OneNote since day one.  It's a great place to store un-structured and semi-structured information - as opposed to very structured information like a proposal or business plan which you would create in Word.   I have a OneNote section for each of my clients were I keep info like server names, IP addresses, steps to perform certain tasks, locations of software installation folders on the network, contacts for other vendors (phone, internet, etc.), screenshots of error messages, checklists for various upgrades, etc.

But now I've just found a new use for OneNote.  Microsoft has published an excellent Wedding Template for OneNote. It has a wide variety of pages to track things like guest lists, food selections, vendor contacts (florist, catering, photographer, etc.), music list for the DJ, things to pack on the wedding day, etc.   Very well thought out.

You can download the template right here.

Here is a nice blog post that describes it in a little more detail with a few screenshots.

And since I'm running the OneNote for iPhone app, I can access this information anytime I need to.

How to share your 3G or 4G USB mobile broadband connection

Many of my clients are using mobile broadband devices (air cards, USB modems, data modems, etc.) such as the Pantech UML290 from Verizon. This is a USB device that plugs into your laptop and gives you internet access via the wireless phone network. Recently I needed to find a way to share that single connection with a few different laptops.  I had originally looked into buying a regular wifi router and turning it into an access point but then I stumbled onto a piece of hardware built for this exact purpose.

I found the Cradlepoint PHS300 Personal Hotspot .



This little device is about the size of an iPhone and it's a wifi router that uses your USB modem to connect to the internet.  It's currently about $55 on Amazon.com.  So rather than plugging your USB modem into your laptop, you plug it directly into the Cradlepoint Hotspot.  Once it establishes a connection to your wireless carriers mobile network, it then broadcasts a local wifi signal that you can connect multiple devices to (laptops, iPhones, iPads, etc.)

I setup one of these guys last week and so far it's been working great!  It was a little tricky to configure at first.  I would make sure you download the firmware and drivers ahead of time from the Cradlepoint website. You'll probably be able to connect your laptop to the default wifi network out of the box but the cellular connection may not work until you update the firmware to support the latest USB mobile devices. So if you already have the firmware downloaded, you'll be able to install it in the device.  Their website has a list of all of the currently supported devices.  It DOES support some of the newer 4G devices such as the Pantech UML290 that I mentioned earlier.

Some fixes for slow Youtube app on iPhone and iPad over WiFi connection

Update! : The original Apple built-in app for YouTube has been removed as of iOS 6.  Be sure to go to the App Store and get the new official YouTube app from Google.   This new app is much nicer though it does still seem to suffer from the same ol' problem of slow loading videos.  

One issue that I've run into many times that doesn't seem to have a 100% solid fix is dealing with the really slow loading of YouTube videos using the native YouTube app on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. Sometimes it's really slow over a WiFi connection but it will work fine on the much slower 3G connection.  Seems backwards.  The theory is that the native YouTube app is pulling in whatever the highest quality HD version of that particular video is - so it might be loading a very large 720p or 1080p video, which can take some time.

One workaround is to skip the native YouTube app provided by Apple and instead use the m.youtube.com mobile site. The site defaults to "high quality" but doesn't pull in the really large HD versions of videos so it loads faster in theory. Plus it has some nice searching and sorting features that are not present in the native app.

As far as fixing the native app, I've tried all sort of suggestions.  One popular suggestion is to change the DNS servers that your WiFi connection is using.  People have suggested using Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) or some other DNS provider like OpenDNS.  I've also seen people recommend changing channels on your WiFi router or disabling Wireless N and only using Wireless G networks, but there is no way I'm turning off Wireless N just to get some dumb videos to load faster!

But the one thing that DOES seem to work for me is to clear the cache for your Safari browser.  I'm not sure how this is related to slow loading YouTube videos but it does work for me most of the time - at least better than any other fixes I've tried.

How to clear your Safari cache:

1. Go to Settings app
2. Scroll down and click on Safari
3. Click on Clear Cache
4. Confirm that you want to Clear Cache on next window

Update! : In the latest version of iOS, it seems that the "Clear Cache" button doesn't exist now so you need to hit "Clear Cookies and Data" instead.

Now try your YouTube videos and see if they load any faster.  If it's not working immediately, you might want to trying forcing the YouTube app and/or Safari app to close. (Double-click home button to bring up running apps list. Hold finger on Youtube or Safari until it starts to wiggle. Hit the red X to kill it.)   Or you could also try rebooting the phone.  

I hope this helps!  Please comment if it works for you.  Or do me a favor and click on an ad or two. :)

Correct order to start and stop Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) services

The Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) is made up of several different services. It's important that you stop and start them in the proper order if you need to shut them down for maintenance or troubleshooting purposes.

Stop the services in this order :

1. Blackberry Controller
2. Blackberry Dispatcher
3. Blackberry Router
4. All remaining Blackberry services

Then start the services in this order:

1. Blackberry Router
2. Blackberry Dispatcher
3. Blackberry Controller
4. All remaining Blackberry services

Home electronics dying? Might need a voltage regulator like APC LE1200.

In the span of a month, one of my clients had to replace a new HP Laserjet CM1415FNW twice and Medialink Wireless N Router twice (great router by the way, nice strong signal).  They were both connected to surge protectors.  After the first incident we thought maybe it was just a rare lightning strike.  But then when the new replacement items were dead a week later, we figured there must be a more serious electrical issue.

Using a P3 Kill A Watt Monitorit looked like the voltage in the office was running a little low. It should have been right around 120v but it was dipping down closer to 112v sometimes.

So after some research, I decided to get APC LE1200 Line-R 1200VA Automatic Voltage Regulator from Amazon, it was the best deal i could find.  This device is not just a surge protector, protecting from spikes, it also protects from extended under-voltages and over-voltages.  It adjusts the output up or down to give you a nice clean signal in the safe range, right around 120v. It's pretty much the same thing as a power conditioner you might have for your home theater components, though this APC Voltage Regulator is much more affordable.

Note :  This is NOT a UPS - it doesn't have a battery to keep you online when the power is out.

You'll hear a "click" and can see if the LED light changes to the OVER or UNDER indicator so you'll know when it's working.  As I mentioned, it's also a great surge protector and it has 4 outlets on the back side.

Since I've installed this device, the client hasn't had any more power issues or dead electronics.  I'd highly recommend getting one to protect your electronics - computers, laptops, televisions, plasma, LCD's, monitors, home theater components, amps, bluray players, dvd players, receivers, DVR's, etc. I've already bought one for myself and I'm planning on picking up a few more.














Side note :  I've just bought one for my basement to protect some new electronic musical instruments that I've purchase -  an Alesis DM8 USB electronic drum kit and an Alesis MultiMix 8 USB FX mixer.  (I've also started a little blog to share my experiences with my electronic drum set - MyEDrums.Blogspot.com . Head over there for some reviews and instructional videos. Thanks!)

MRxSmb error 8003 on SBS 2003 Server - master browser

After adding a new Dell Windows 7 64 bit laptop to a Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 domain, i started seeing an error message in the servers System event log.  The event source was MRxSmb and the event ID was 8003.

The description said "The master browser has a received a server announcement from the computer [insert-computer-name] that believes that it is the master browser for the domain on transport NetBT_Tcpip_ etc. The master browser is stopping or an election is being forced."

And the computer name mentioned in the error message was the new laptop that I had recently added.  So you need to go to that PC that is named in the error message, go to Services in the Admin Tools area and stop the Computer Browser service.  In my case, stopping it wasn't good enough. It would restart every time the computer rebooted, even though it was set on Manual start up.  So you should change it to Disabled.

Now keep an eye on your event logs and this message should no longer appear.

Basically this laptop was announcing itself to the network, saying "Hey, i'm the master browser for the whole network".  But that job should really be left up to the server, not a random PC.   And when we say "computer browser", we aren't talking about your web browser.  This is a network service that allows PC's on your network to be aware of what other PC's are on the same network.

Turn off 4G in your Verizon USB Modem (aircard, mobile broadband internet)

I have a few users with the new Pantech 4G LTE UML290 USB modems from Verizon. Some of the users are in locations with very weak 4G signals. It's constantly dropping the connection.  One tip from Verizon tech support was to disable the 4G service in the device and just allow it to connect to the 3G network which will hopefully provide a more stable signal and not disconnect them constantly. This should also work on other Verizon 4G LTE devices from LG and Verizon (such as the Verizon 551L and LG VL600).

Here are the steps:

1. Launch VZ Access Manager but don't connect
2. Press Ctrl-D to launch the "hidden" system settings window
3. The password is diagvzw
4. Select "Settings" from the menu
5. In the "Preferred operating mode" section, change it from Global to "Auto CDMA"
6. Close out of VZ Access Manager and relaunch it

Now you will always connect only to the 3G network.  You'll need to repeat these steps and go back to "Global" if you want to re-enable 4G mode.

And it's usually a good idea to always check for updates within VZ Access Manager - it will update the VZ software, Windows drivers, device firmware, etc.

Microsoft CRM 4.0 ASP.NET Error 1309 - your registration period has expired

This post is somewhat related to my previous post with a similar error message but the detailed error on that one says "you have reached the maximum number of user quota".  Please see that post if that is your ASP.NET error when trying to login to Microsoft CRM.

In this case, the users aren't able to login to CRM 4.0, they get an error saying "Invalid User Authentication".

This was a test/demo CRM installation on a virtual server that hadn't been used in a while.  The only clue I found was an ASP.NET error in the Application event log.  Source = ASP.NET 2.0.5.727.0. Event ID 1309.

Digging thru the error details, I found this...

Exception information:
  Exception type: CrmException
  Exception message: Your registration period has expired

Since this test/demo system had sat idle for a while, it had passed it's 30 day trial period and the registration wizard was never run.  So once I ran the CRM Registration Wizard, this error went away! But I'm wondering why it wouldn't simply provide a user prompt telling them this issue when they try to login via the browser, rather than making me dig through ASP.Net error logs???

Also, as I mentioned above, once I fixed this issue, I ran into another similar CrmException error that still prevented users from logging in, it said "You have reached the maximum number of user quota". Then I had to manually edit some SQL tables to fix this issue. Please see this post if you are also having this issue.
 

Microsoft CRM 4.0 ASP.NET Error 1309 - CRMException - maximum user quota

I was working on a Microsoft CRM 4.0 system the other day for one of my clients. It's mainly used for demo and testing purposes so it hadn't been used in a while.  The customer was unable to login to the server.  When they tried to login to CRM via the browser, they just got a message saying "Invalid User Authentication".

I spent quite a while checking security settings, IIS settings, etc.  Didn't really see anything CRM-related in the server event logs either. But I did see one error showing up at the exact moment the user was trying to login. But the source wasn't MSCRM, it was ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0.   Event ID 1309.

There was a long list of details on the error but the part that jumped out at me said this..
Exception type : CRMException
Exception message : You have reached the maximum number of user quota

So it sounded like they had more active user accounts than licenses. This is possible since the company was imported from another domain with different user accounts and probably not mapped appropriately. I think originally they were on a 30 trial installation and hadn't registered it so maybe that gave them an unlimited number of users during the trial period?  Since I had just registered it earlier to solve a different error, that might have kicked in the quota problem.  Though it seems like the browser login should have told them about being over quota, rather than having to dig into the server logs?

Anyway, I ended up going directly into the SQL tables and making some changes. I went into the SystemUserBase table. I was looking at the IsDisabled (bool) column.  Should be "True" for disabled users.  After counting the number of active users in the table, they were definitely over their 5 user license.  So I manually changed the IsDisabled value to "true" for all but 5 users.   Then I was able to login to CRM with no errors since they were now within their quota!

While you are there, you can also adjust the TYPE of user account via the AccessMode (int) field. 0 for full access, 1 for administrative access, 2 for read-only access. But this isn't necessary to fix the user quota error message.

I didn't see this error documented anywhere else so hopefully this post will show up in Google and help some other folks.

Microsoft delivers Office 2010 Service Pack 1 | ZDNet

Microsoft delivers Office 2010 Service Pack 1 | ZDNet

Test post using the BlogThis! extension for Chrome.

Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 is available

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010 has just been made available for download.  You can read more about it here.

Here is a list of some of the updates...

• Outlook fixes an issue where “Snooze Time” would not reset between appointments.
• The default behavior for PowerPoint “Use Presenter View” option changed to display the slide show on the secondary monitor.
• Integrated community content in the Access Application Part Gallery.
• Better alignment between Project Server and SharePoint Server browser support.
• Improved backup / restore functionality for SharePoint Server
• The Word Web Application extends printing support to “Edit Mode.”
• Project Professional now synchronizes scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists.
• Internet Explorer 9 “Native” support for Office Web Applications and SharePoint
• Office Web Applications Support for Chrome
• Inserting Charts into Excel Workbooks using Excel Web Application
• Support for searching PPSX files in Search Server
• Visio Fixes scaling issues and arrowhead rendering errors with SVG export
• Proofing Tools improve spelling suggestions in Canadian English, French, Swedish and European Portuguese.
• Outlook Web Application Attachment Preview (with Exchange Online only)
• Office client suites using “Add Remove Programs” Control Panel,  building on our work from Office 2007 SP2

You can grab the 32 bit version here.   Or the 64 bit version here.

Official launch of Office 365 cloud offering from Microsoft

PC Mag has coverage of today's official launch. Office 365 provides hosted Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync services, starting as low as $7/month per user for small businesses.  If you'd like to check it out, you can always sign up for a free trial.

Back in business

Trying to get my blog back in action.  Checking out some of the new Blogger features and settings.  Updated the layout too. Looks nice!