The Ultimate KMS Reference Guide

Since Microsoft likes to put all of the KMS client keys and command line tools in 37 different places and change the links around AND call them two different things (KMS client keys and Generic Volume License Keys), I’ve decided to put all of that together into a single page – more for my reference, but I’ll share. <update April 2019> Since there are so many more editions with different KMS keys, it may be … Read more…

Ubiquiti Networks Unifi AP Review

For the last few years wireless in our house was provided by a Cisco AIR-AP1252 dual band A-G-N access point – as seen here: Let’s just say that it’s not the most attractive thing in the world. I was given two choices by “the board”: either find a different solution, or put it somewhere out of sight. I first chose the out of site option and moved the AP to the basement. This worked for … Read more…

StarTech HSB430SATBK – Fan Replacement

The StarTech HSB430SATBK is a great drive cage – it fits into 3 5.25″ external bays and gives you 3 3.5″ SATA hot-swap HDD bays. Unfortunately, fans going bad is not uncommon. Here’s a quick how to if you ever need to replace the fans on the StarTech 4 bay HDD cage. First remove all the screws from the back plate – don’t remove the screws from the fans – they are screwed into the … Read more…

ATT Galaxy S2 Jelly Bean Update

A few weeks ago, I received a text from ATT telling me that there was an update available for my Samsung Galaxy S2 – Jelly Bean. The directions included a link to a website (http://www.samsung.com/us/attgalaxys2/update) that eventually instructed me to use Kies to apply the update, just like ICS – no OTA update here. I then realized that I needed to install Kies on the computer I was using and proceeded to do so…this took forever … Read more…

Eye-Fi and FreeNAS: Delivery Failed – Failed to deliver picture

I recently moved all of my CIFS shares over to a FreeNAS box (more on that later) including the share that housed all of our photos. We use an Eye-Fi card in the DSLR to auto-upload all the images whenever the wireless network is in range – and it has worked flawlessly….until now. I have a Windows 7 VM that runs the Eye-Fi helper application since it won’t run as a service and requires a … Read more…

Outlook 2013 – Attachment Check Reminder

This may very well be the best new feature of Outlook 2013 – it should hopefully prevent people from forgetting to attach attachments to emails. Here’s how it works – you can try it for yourself! Type up an email and include the words “have attached a file” or something similar and don’t actually attach anything. Then click send – and you get a nice reminder stating that you may have forgotten to attach a file. … Read more…

LogMeIn Free Limited to 10 Machines

Recently, I logged in to my LogMeIn account to provide some “remote support” to my parents when I noticed a nice error message stating that You will soon have to pay for more than 10 computers – the free version will be limited to 10 computers only. I was able to remove a few computers that had either been replaced or that I was no longer actively managing…but I know of several companies that use … Read more…

Comcast Xfinity Fastest In Home WiFi?!?

Comcast has been touting a new “feature” to try to keep up with Verizon FiOS – it is all over radio ads and TV commercials…they have ‘The fastest In-Home WiFi’! Way to go, Comcast – let’s make a bogus claim, not back it up and confuse customers while you’re at it! First let’s compare the most common Internet speeds from both providers: Comcast: 50Mbps down, 10Mbps up – $75 per month FiOS: 50Mbps down, 20Mbps … Read more…

Galaxy S2 Wireless Constantly Disconnects

I recently upgraded my wireless AP in an effort to stream live TV wirelessly (more on that later). The new AP is a dual-band N capable model from Cisco – it replaced a G model from NetGear. Ever since then I noticed that our phones would CONSTANTLY disconnect then reconnect to the wireless in our house. This only happened at home – it didn’t happen in the office. Looking at the configurations I noticed the … Read more…

Upgrade to the Home Lab

My home lab environment (or home datacenter as it is starting to become…) started several years ago. First I had just a Server 2003 box that was a DC, file server, RAS server…then Server 2008 and Hyper-V beta came out. A few more disks were purchased to store virtual machines – but 2 spindles and limited RAM only goes so far. Then Server 2008R2 was released so the host received an upgrade – both the … Read more…