Idealistically Caspan

Some Crazy Ideas From Caspan's Head!
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BlackBerry Z10 ProClip Mount in 2013 Mazda CX-5

March 25, 2013 No comments

I got myself the ProClip for my BlackBerry Z10 the other day and I just thought I would share with everyone how it is and what it looks like. I am very impressed with the build quality of the mount. It is very solid and very nice looking. The cost of the mounts are a little pricey but you do get what you pay for. I have a CX-5 and only have 2 solutions to chose from, I could mount on the A pillar or and a vent clip in the middle dash. I chose to go for the A pillar as this would put my device right at eye level where quick glances to it could satisfy my curiosity. The installation was very easy and straight forward, I did note that the mount was not just as simple as a firm press to get it into place but more of a holly crap I’m going to break something if I press harder.  Once it was in place it was very firm. I installed the holder for my BlackBerry Z10 will little to no effort but was scared because I tightened the one screw way to much and stripped the thread. The other 3 holes held still and the mount was very firm. I could not believe how firm when driving and trying to read a message from the screen. I am use to those goose neck ones and the vibrations were extreme by the time it reached the phone making it bounce all around. I was very pleased with this purchase after install. I was worried about one thing though, my partner has a white BlackBerry Z10 and the back is not the same as the black BlackBerry Z10. When I tried to place her device in the holder was not as tight of a fit as the black one. SO it looks like BlackBerry has changed the dimensions of the back doors on the devices between the two materials they are made from. Next to that this is a really good mount and well worth the month.

Part Number for ProClip

  • CX-5 Mount - 804782
  • BlackBerry Z10 - 511447

Pros

  • No suction-cup marks on my windshield
  • Build quality is amazing
  • Device does not vibrate around
  • Opening for charging
  • 360 degree swivel with 20 degree tilt

Cons

  • Expensive, just under $90 with shipping and taxes to Ontario
  • Does not fit the White BlackBerry Z10 as tight (Not ProClips fault) It still fits but just not as snug.
  • Install was not as simple as describe as just “snapping it in” I really had to use some strength to get the top clip by the window to snap in.

Final Conclusion
The mount was well worth the money spent. I have no regrets yet and since installing I have put in a dedicated micro USB cable from my battery that fits perfectly in the slot left in the A pillar with the mount. I would recommend this to anyone that would like a professional looking mount for their device.

 

If you have any questions about the BlackBerry Z10 and the ProClip mount please feel free to ask below!

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© Caspan 2013

BB10, BlackBerry, RIM none

Voicemail Icon not showing in the Hub or in Hub Management

February 21, 2013 2 comments

We had a user whose voice mail icon would not show in the hub or peak, when looking in Hub Management settings there was not ever an option in there to turn it on or off like the other devices had. It was like voice mail was not even an option for the hub to display!! After calling our carrier Rogers, it turns out that Rogers had to send what they called a “Network Level Flush or Resend to Switch” command to the device while it was still powered on and then I did a battery pull and the voice mail icon was back under Hub Management settings and in the hub and peak.

I hope this helps anyone else that is having this issues that the voice mail icon will not show up and is not an option to display in the Hub Management.

 

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© Caspan 2013

BB10, Random Thoughts none

BlackBerry Device Services – The specified account is already assigned!

January 22, 2013 No comments

Thespecifiedaccountisalreadyassigned

If you have set up the new BlackBerry Device Service in anticipation of the new upcoming BlackBerry 10 launch or to manager your organizations PlayBook devices you may run into an issue like I did. I followed the BlackBerry docs to install my BDS and logged into my new BDS website using the service account I used to install it with. I then proceed to add the required administrators form AD. The problem was that i kept getting an error every time I tried that “The specified account is already assigned” This was a brand new server and shared nothing with our old BES server so how could this account already be assigned? After a bunch of trial and error i finally figured out the issue. If you are having the same issues please follow the steps below:

  1. When adding enterprise administrator I have read that you have to be logged into the site as the same service account that you installed BDS with. In my case I had no choice as this is the only use that could get in after my install.
  2. Display Name: When it asks for Display Name this needs to be the name that you want to show in the user list of the user you are about to add, it can be anything.
  3. Authentication type: I left this as Active Directory because this is where the admin user was that I was adding.
  4. User name: There is where it gets confusing, what user name is it looking for? This is the username of the user you are trying to add
  5. Domain: this is the domain where the user you are trying to add is located.
  6. Administrator Password: now you would think this would be the password of the user you are adding right? Wrong, this is the password of the administrative account that you are logged in as!

After you realize what each field is looking for it makes sense but it’s about clear as mud why they are so generally labeled and could mean three different things. I was getting the error because I was putting in my account that I used to log into BDS with as this is what I thoguht it was looking for. I hope this helps everyone!

 

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© Caspan 2013

BlackBerry, RIM none

A Better Way To Manage Product Keys For Small/Medium Businesses

January 10, 2013 No comments

 

Licenses

If you have ever managed licenses for your small/medium business then the above picture might look familiar to you. Software providers love to give you something called a product key that is required to install and run your newly purchased software. In a large organization normally you would use Volume Licensing and not have to deal with retail packaging and product key cards. Most home users would only have 2-3 of these cards to have to contend with for each machine. For a small/medium business you get a little of both worlds, sometime you buy in volume but sometime because of budget constraints you can only get a few copies per month. So us lucky small/medium business people get to deal with stuff like the above picture, a dogs breakfast of product keys.

For most IT teams this would normally not be an issue, you would just copy the product key into an Excel Spreadsheet and keep track of who is using that product key. Simple right? Well it is but what happens if you get audited? Microsoft will email you a request for all these licenses, but sometimes will require prof that you own those product keys. Just because you have the key does not prove that you purchased it, the only prof that works is the product card and maybe a receipt. So you have to keep these product cards so you can prove that you own these products!

The other problem is that Microsoft loves to give you these cards and then put absolutely no product identifying text on them. So you have a product card but then nothing to relate it to what product it is for. I would say 80% of the time it is there but 20% of the time it’s not.

 

So I decide to fix the problem for everyone, introducing the Universal Product Key Card (UPK Card):

UniversalProduckKeyCard

The UPK card will clearly state:

  • The vendor (in this case Microsoft)
  • The product key
  • The software that this product key is for
  • Licensing type, ie Retail, Upgrade, OEM
  • The processor architect
  • A bit.ly or short link to download the software

The card would be a standard business card size. This way you can manage all your UPK cards in a business card zipper case. On the back could be more licensing information, for example some products can be installed on a laptop and a desktop like the Home & Business version of Office 2010. You could also place a phone number for support etc.

 

This solution would be so amazing if we could get someone like Microsoft to start doing this and then maybe everyone other software provider will follow them and we can manage all our licenses with a nice business card wallet for the office.

 

I hope someone that matters at Microsoft reads this and understands our pain and realizes that a business card size product key card would make so much more sense!

 

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© Caspan 2013

 

Computer Tips & Tricks, Random Thoughts none

Move the User Folder To A Separate Drive/Partition (The Right Way)

December 9, 2012 33 comments

2013.01.02 – An important note that I just found is that you cannot do a in place upgrade of your OS if you do change the location of your Users directory to a new location. I would assume if you are techie enough to do this you would not be doing in place upgrades instead you would be doing fresh installs, but click here for the MS KB article if anyone is curious.

You may have read my other post Windows 7 – How To Move The Entire User Folder To A Different Drive. In this post I explained how you can move the User folder to a different drive using ROBOcopy and a few tricks to get Windows to be okay with the Users folder in a different location. This solution has worked for me for some time and I have had no issues even deploying this method at work. The thing that bothered me though is that ROBOcopy cannot copy symbolic links or junctions which meant that all the these items no longer existed in the new Users location.  Me being me I decided to set out and find a better way to copy the Users folder and all its special folders to a different location. What I found was a lot of other sites explaining the exact same thing as I did, so I felt better knowing that I was not the only one doing it this way.

I first started my search by looking for a command line tool that would allow me to properly copy the Users folder and its junction points and symbolic links. I was also looking for a tool that was a built in tool so that I didn’t need to download or install something. After a week of searching I followed a couple of links to a site that started to talk about making an unattended answer file for Windows and then you can specify where you want your special folders to be located. I was aware of using an Unattended install files through my years of IT and I don’t have an issue using them. What I do not like about unattended install of Windows is that you have to create media that is only good for one certain install. I also did not feel like creating a custom installer to be honest, I am lazy. So an unattended install was a solution but not the perfect one I was looking for.

By chance I was looking through the comments on an article about how unattended installs work and read a comment then mentioned something called “Windows Audit Mode”. I can admit that I do not know everything about Windows but normally I have at least heard of most things. Windows Audit Mode was something I had never heard of before so my mind wanted to know what it was.

I decided to look this up on Tech Net and there was a Microsoft article on it. This Audit Mode looked very promising and it  is already built into every Windows installer DVD. After doing some playing around and some experimenting I found this Audit Mode did exactly what I wanted and I would like to share with everyone how I got Windows to move the Users folder for me all legit and all using built in tools from Windows!

 

Please note this has to be done from a fresh install. You cannot change the location of the Users folder after you have already started to use Windows already! 

  1. Install Windows just like you normally would, set your partitions up etc…
  2. You will get to a point in the install where it asks for a user name and a computer name after a reboot, this is called the OOBE setup. If you do not get this OOBE screen then you might have a customized installer from your maker of your computer and I am not sure how to force your installer into Audit Mode, if anyone has a way please let me know in the comments.
  3. On this first screen you will press “Ctrl+Shift+F3″ (press and hold Ctrl+Shift then hit F3).
  4. Your system will reboot and you will boot into a Windows desktop.
  5. A System Preperation (sysprep) application will start automatically,  click cancel to this program.
  6. You are now in something called Audit Mode, time to do some magic.
  7. At this point make sure all your drives are set up in their proper order and have their proper drive letters.
  8. At this point you will need to create an unattended file that will need to be on the machine that is in Audit Mode. You are welcome to type it out but the chances for error are way to high. If you have internet on the new machine and the drivers are installed you can copy paste from below (short link to this post http://caspan.com/?p=579), if not you will have to use a second computer to copy the script below and then copy it to the new machine.
  9. In the file above note the following changes that might have to be made:
    Line 4 : If you are installing Windows x64 (64-bit), value prosessorArchitecture should be amd64
    Line 4: If you are installing Windows x86 (32-bit), value prosessorArchitecture should be x86
    Line 6: Change the location of “D:\Users” to the location of your choice
    Line 7: This whole line is optional. If you do not what to change the location of ProgramData then remove this entire line. If you do then change the Location of “D:\ProgramData” to the location of your choice
    Line 11: Change the drive letter in “wim:E” to that of your CD/DVD drive where your Windows 7 installation DVD
    Line 11: Change the Windows edition at the end of the line to that you are currently installing (HOMEBASIC, HOMEPREMIUM, PROFESSIONAL, ULTIMATE, ENTERPRISE
  10. Save this to a file called relocate.xml. The name is not important but no spaces is ideal because we will be calling it from the command line so no spaces equals easier.
  11. This file will need to be on the machine that is in Audit Mode I please it on the D drive for me as it is easy to find.
  12. On the new machine open cmd.exe from the run dialog
  13. Change your directory to “C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\”
  14. From here you can run the following command “sysprep.exe /audit /reboot /unattend:D:\relocate.xml” where D:\relocate.xml is the location that you saved your file to that we made earlier.
  15. You should see a small window open that says “Syusprep is working” and a small progress bar. You computer will reboot after it is complete.
  16.  You machine will boot back into audit mode. If you look around your computer you might notice that nothing has changed yet and this is expected as the unattended file has not actually run yet.
  17. You can no click “OK” to the System preparation tool.
  18. The machine will reboot and boot back into that first OOBE screen and you can do the rest of you setup as you normally would.
  19. Once Windows come up you can check your system and now you will see that your user drive has been moved.

At this point you can continue to use Windows just like you normally would but there are a few steps that I like to take to make sure that if for any reason a bad programmer calls the C:\Users folder or C:\ProgramData by its name instead of using system variables then we need to account for this. What I like to do is create 2 Junction point to cover this issue should it ever happen.

If you open a command prompt you can create the junction point by doing the following:

  1. mklink /j C:\Users D:\Users (where D:\Users is the new location of your users folder)

This will create a Junction point so that if any program ever calls to these old location it will point it to the new location. This will help just in case some badly written application makes a call to the old location.

Please if there is any questions or any comments please feel free to post them below. I love hearing feedback if this worked for you or not. I really hope this helps others out as it has helped me out a lot finding this tool.

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© Caspan 2012

Random Thoughts none
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