IT Expert Voice

KVM stands for “keyboard, video, and monitor” and describes hardware devices that enable IT professionals to interact with and operate remote devices (servers, mostly) that may lack all of these items. A virtual KVM extends the concept further and uses remote network access so a desktop or notebook PC provides the keyboard, video, and monitor inputs and outputs for network attached devices.

Real KVMs cost money, sometimes substantial sums; virtual KVMs are cheaper, if not free. Savvy CIOs and IT professionals find them useful, functional, and affordable. READ MORE

One important task in keeping notebook and desktop PCs up-to-date is periodic scans of installed drivers to make sure they’re current and working properly. The more computers (or reference hardware configurations) you must maintain, the more important this task becomes. Fortunately, lots of good tools abound to assist in this task.

Keeping up with change is always a tricky and sometime irksome part of maintaining current, correct hardware configurations. Despite your best efforts to create stable, persistent reference configurations, bits and pieces here and there will keep changing. That’s particularly so for the hardware components that go into standard desktops and notebooks. But the drivers that support the display cards, network interfaces, chipsets, peripherals, and other components that go into and onto such systems also stay in an ongoing state of ferment.

In dealing with device drivers, however, you can bring considerable assistance to bear on maintenance tasks, particularly in the form of driver scanner tools. Basically, these distributed toolsets combine client-side software that enumerates all the devices on a Windows PC and checks related driver information (particularly version numbers and file dates) against a server-side database that compares what’s found on the scanned PC to what it has stored about the most current drivers available. The scanning software marks that driver as “current” if the installed driver is at least as new as what’s in the database, or its version number is greater than or equal to the database information.  If, however, the database has information about a driver that’s newer or that has a higher version number, the driver is marked as “outdated.” READ MORE

Though Windows 7 is still pretty much a newcomer to the desktop operating system scene, it’s been around long enough that IT pros will encounter the occasional circumstance that demands — or at least calls out loudly for — a complete reinstall of this much-touted OS. In the sections that follow, I lead you through some cases where a reinstall is highly recommended (if not absolutely required) to make a PC work properly.

Windows 7 has been around in full commercial use for several months, depending on how you count: since August 2009 (MSDN release) or October 2009 (commercial release). Though it may seem that reinstalling Windows is unnecessary, in some cases such a maneuver makes good sense. These include a switch from 32- to 64-bit environments, changing your BIOS hard disk access mode, and for classic Windows degunking maneuvers. READ MORE

We like to imagine that every OS installation will work just as well as the vendor promises. When things don’t work out, identifying and remedying the case of failure can be time consuming and frustrating. This lesson in “how to determine why Windows 7 didn’t install” may help you troubleshoot a problem of your own – and save you from a Lost Weekend.

Over the past 13 months—that is, starting in March, 2009, when I began work on a book entitled Windows 7 in Depth—I’ve worked more or less constantly with Windows 7 across all of its versions. Because my responsibilities on the book included the OS install and configuration chapters, I probably installed Windows 7 over 200 times just for that project alone (it ended in July, and the book appeared in August). Since then, I’ve installed the OS at least another 200 times for other projects and tests, including various netbooks (Asus, Dell, MSI, and so forth), notebooks (Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, MSI, etc.), desktops (Dell, HP, Asus, and Velocity Micro, plus numerous DIY systems put together from components). Until a couple of weeks ago, I never encountered a single problem that stopped me from installing Windows 7 itself.

But when I decided it was time to switch my primary test system over from Windows 7 Ultimate x86 (32-bit) to Windows 7 Professional x64, I ran straight into a brick wall. See Table 1 near the end of this story for a detailed description of its initial and final components, plus other components I tried, as I worked my way through problem diagnosis and repair. In this article, I describe the sequence of events that occurred, explain how I finally diagnosed and fixed my problem, describe the vendor’s response to my problem report, and then meditate on what I learned through sheer dint of effort while working through this incident. My hope is that others can benefit from my experience without necessarily making the same missteps that I made along the path from problem discovery to diagnosis to ultimate solution. READ MORE

Love it or hate it, nobody runs networks without TCP/IP somewhere in that picture nowadays. Here, we take a guided tour of some great toolbox elements—most of them free, but all of them fabulous—that IT admins and even power users will like and use regularly. READ MORE

Microsoft introduced the Reliability Monitor in Windows Vista, and improved it in Windows 7. This tool tracks errors and installations, and compiles data regularly to calculate a value called a Stability Index (SI) that ranges from 1.0 to 10.0 and represents system stability. This article explains how to keep the SIs on your PCs at or near 10.0. READ MORE

Solid state disks (SSDs) offer real speed, low power consumption, and a compact form factor. They make costly but terrific system disks, though it takes some effort to migrate onto an SSD from a conventional hard disk. This article shows you how to make that transition for your end users or customers, with special notes for Windows 7. READ MORE