Professional Grade Notebooks/Laptops

For many years now we have been selling Acer TravelMate series notebooks as our main portable product line.

They come out of the box relatively clean, meaning that they come out of the box with very little third party software installed on them.

We have been so busy with server related sales and projects lately, that we have had very few notebook sales since late last year. Today, one of our clients is getting set to refresh some of their Acer units so we dropped into Acer’s site to see what was available.

Acer TravelMate 5740G-6765

Windows 7 Pro 32 bit, Core i5 520M, 4GB RAM, etc.

Now, the equivalent Acer TravelMate 6593G series notebook we sold at the beginning of this year was about $1,800. Any guesses on what the 5740G would sell for?

If you guessed that it was around $1,100 you would be about right.

How the manufacturer managed to shave close to $700 off the cost of the system is where we have cause for pause.

Since we have had the Toshiba Tecra S10 here in the shop, and a number of S10 series Tecras out with our clients, we are now quite sure that the best quality product for the money, in our opinion, would be the Tecra S11 series available to us at this time.

Yes, there are other manufacturer’s products out there. But, for now, we will see if we can suggest to our remaining Acer laptop based clients that they move over to Toshiba.

BTW, Toshiba (Canadian Web site) makes a Core i5 series tablet that can handle 8GB of RAM in it! The new Tecra S11-011 with an i7 620M and 8GB of RAM would be an ideal virtualization demo machine! Either machine with an Intel 160GB SSD would really step up in performance too.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

So, Just How Fast? 160GB X25-M Versus 250GB WD SATA – Both In Acer TM6592 Series

For comparison’s sake, we did the following tests on Acer TravelMate TM6592 series laptops with a fresh install of Windows 7 Enterprise x64 OS. Both laptops have the same CPU and RAM configuration as well as BIOS version.

This TM6592 is using the factory installed 250GB Western Digital WD2500BEVS SATA hard disk:

C:\Windows\system32>winsat disk
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -read -n 0'
> Run Time 00:00:15.74
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -read -n 0'
> Run Time 00:00:13.56
> Running: Storage Assessment '-scen 2009 -drive C:'
> Run Time 00:01:26.55
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -write -drive C:'
> Run Time 00:00:13.29
> Running: Storage Assessment '-flush -drive C: -seq'
> Run Time 00:00:08.55
> Running: Storage Assessment '-flush -drive C: -ran'
> Run Time 00:00:13.01
> Running: Storage Assessment '-hybrid -ran -read -n 0 -ransize 4096'
NV Cache not present.
> Run Time 00:00:00.09
> Running: Storage Assessment '-hybrid -ran -read -n 0 -ransize 16384'
NV Cache not present.
> Run Time 00:00:00.05
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                  44.80 MB/s          5.2
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                     1.25 MB/s          3.5
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate         5.79 ms/IO          5.1
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs               13.61 units          6.3
> Responsiveness: Long IOs                   21.19 units          6.1
> Responsiveness: Overall                     288.42 units          6.0
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor                0.0
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write                 54.38 MB/s          5.5
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes  7.824 ms       5.1
> Latency: 95th Percentile                     15.855 ms          4.9
> Latency: Maximum                             40.617 ms          7.9
> Average Read Time with Random Writes   8.321 ms         4.9
> Total Run Time 00:02:32.26

This TM6592 is using a second generation Intel X25-M 160GB SSD:

C:\>winsat disk
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -read -n 0'
> Run Time 00:00:04.41
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -read -n 0'
> Run Time 00:00:00.36
> Running: Storage Assessment '-scen 2009 -drive C:'
> Run Time 00:01:20.96
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -write -drive C:'
> Run Time 00:00:07.86
> Running: Storage Assessment '-flush -drive C: -seq'
> Run Time 00:00:01.19
> Running: Storage Assessment '-flush -drive C: -ran'
> Run Time 00:00:01.19
> Running: Storage Assessment '-hybrid -ran -read -n 0 -ransize 4096'
NV Cache not present.
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-hybrid -ran -read -n 0 -ransize 16384'
NV Cache not present.
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                263.91 MB/s          7.6
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                   243.05 MB/s          7.9
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate       4.29 ms/IO          5.7
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs            16.37 units          4.6
> Responsiveness: Long IOs                 100.06 units          1.9
> Responsiveness: Overall                   1638.23 units          1.9
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor                1.0
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write                 99.40 MB/s          6.5
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes  0.427 ms       7.9
> Latency: 95th Percentile                     1.671 ms          7.9
> Latency: Maximum                             2.033 ms          7.9
> Average Read Time with Random Writes   0.489 ms       7.9
> Total Run Time 00:01:36.63

By the numbers:

• 250GB SATA drive:
• Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read       44.80 MB/s          5.2
• Disk  Random 16.0 Read            1.25 MB/s          3.5
• Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write       54.38 MB/s          5.5
• Total Run Time 00:02:32.26
• 160GB SSD drive:
• Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read       263.91 MB/s          7.6
• Disk  Random 16.0 Read          243.05 MB/s          7.9
• Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write        99.40 MB/s          6.5
• Total Run Time 00:01:36.63

Given the above numbers, it is not difficult to justify the extra cost of the 160GB SSD to our clients. The performance increase is so _huge_, that they see payback in a matter of weeks.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

New Acer XP SP2 + Office 2007 SBE = 1GB Microsoft Updates!

This has to be a record for us!

Microsoft Update is 1GB!

Included in the updates is Office 2007 SP1, Office 2003 SP3, SQL 2005 Express SP2, and a couple of other larger ones.

This is a new Acer TravelMate 7720 that has been downgraded to XP Pro SP2 with Office 2007 Small Business Edition installed.

The actual download volume may be a lot less depending on how the Office 2007 SP1 download comes down. In the list it is indicated at 697MB!

We have mentioned about our Workbench Bandwidth Saver before, however what we have discovered is that it is only working with XP loads.

Windows Vista seems to have its own way about getting the updates and that way seems to bypass the caching feature of ISA 2000.

So, what that means is we are not plugging in any Vista machines that will be delivered to client sites where they have WSUS installed.

The other option for us is to use the suggestion that Chris mentioned in the comments of the above earlier post: Import the registry settings for our WSUS server and wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow until the system has gone through all of the necessary install and reboot cycles.

We place the above wuauclt command into a batch file that is on our Technician's Thumb Drive and copied to the desktop on any system we are installing. A copy of the batch file also resides on the client's WSS Companyweb site along with a share \\MySBS\Company\Network Admin\ folder that we keep somewhere on the network.

This is the registry settings for Windows Vista to import:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"WUServer"="http://MYSBS-SBS01:8530"
"WUStatusServer"="http://MYSBS-SBS01:8530"
"ElevateNonAdmins"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000000
"AUOptions"=dword:00000004
"RescheduleWaitTimeEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RescheduleWaitTime"=dword:00000001
"RebootWarningTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RebootWarningTimeout"=dword:00000005
"RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RebootRelaunchTimeout"=dword:0000000a
"DetectionFrequencyEnabled"=dword:00000001
"DetectionFrequency"=dword:00000001
"AutoInstallMinorUpdates"=dword:00000001
"UseWUServer"=dword:00000001
"NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000000
"ScheduledInstallDay"=dword:00000000
"ScheduledInstallTime"=dword:00000003

Note that MYSBS-SBS01 would be your own internal or workbench server.

You could always export the settings from one of the Vista workstations on the domain hosting WSUS v3 that is to be used as an update source. If the domain is workbench based, or a new setup for the workbench, and no Vista machines have touched it yet then a vanilla Vista VM would work to at least connect to the WSUS v3 server and get all Vista related updates cached.

Here is a screen shot of a vanilla Windows Vista registry before importing the above settings:

Vanilla Vista install. No Windows Update Key

Once all of the install cycles have completed, delete the above imported registry settings, force a GP refresh, reboot, and the system should connect to Microsoft's update site with no problems.

For those systems that are going to be installed in a peer to peer or stand-alone situation, make sure to run "Windows Update" from the Search field and upgrade the system's update source to Microsoft Update to catch updates for Microsoft Office and the like.

Thanks Chris for the initial pointer. It looks like we will be using this method to update Vista as we go forward. We just need to figure out if we are going to install a separate WSUS v3 instance on the workbench LAN.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Acer TravelMate 5720 Series observations

We just received a new TravelMate series Acer laptop.

The TravelMate 5720 is based around the new Intel 8000 series Core 2 Duo processors with 3MB of Cache between the cores.

Out of the box it has Windows Vista Business x86 installed with the typical Acer twin hard drive partitions now formatted in NTFS. It also has the Windows XP Professional downgrade DVDs included in the box.

The unit itself is a bit smaller than the Canadian 6000 series TravelMates and it shows in the keyboard layout. The Enter key has a chunk missing from its bottom left hand corner to accommodate the "\" character key and the left Shift button has the same "\" key beside it too. The extra keys are to accommodate the French keyboard layout judging by the different green characters also on the keys.

It takes a little getting used to the need to reach the finger a little further to get to the Enter or left Shift keys. This may initially be a bit of a challenge for those whose touch typing skills are near entry level. Keep in mind that we are dealing with what seems to be a Canadian localized model.

All in all though, the new 8100 series Core 2 seems to perform quite well relative to the 7000 series Core 2 processor based laptops we have been selling. Between the configured 2GB of RAM and a 250GB SATA hard drive, there will be decent Windows Vista performance with enough storage to spare.

We do find that outfitting a laptop with 3GB or 4GB for Windows Vista does make a difference on the laptop's overall performance characteristics though. This is important to note if we are looking at providing a unit to our more advanced or performance oriented client users.

For the moment, this particular unit provides a good value for the price especially for our non-profit clients. So, we will stick with it until Acer's product line evolves yet again.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Acer hard drive failure, flaky behaviour, and subsequent BSOD STOP framebuf 0x000000EA

Lately, one of our client's users was complaining about their laptop taking an inordinately long time to boot up.

To us, this usually indicates to us that there is a physical problem on the hard drive in the area where the OS has files written to. The extra time is the OS rereading the same sectors over and over again to get a proper read off of them.

So, we contacted Acer for a new hard drive. They sent one out immediately as this particular client always purchases the Acer Total Damage 3 Year warranty.

In the mean time, we took a ShadowProtect image of the existing OS and restored it to an identical replacement hard drive we keep around the shop for situations like this. Thus, we get the client's user back up and running in short order, and we place the incoming warranty drive on the shelf to be swapped back out when the user has some time to spare.

The hard drive swap did indeed work. The system now booted up in a reasonable amount of time, and seemed to be running all-around in a quicker manner.

So, out the door it went.

We then received a call from the user a few days later indicating that the system had blue screened again, and that their Kinston USB flash drive (DTSP) was no longer working with the laptop USB ports.

They were on-site and required an immediate replacement to get productive again. We brought in one of the older laptop spares they keep around for situations like this.

When we brought the system back to the shop, we figured that the preveious hard drive failure may have caused some spotty corruption in Windows XP, so we took the replacement warranty hard drive sent to us by Acer and ran the restore to factory default recovery DVD.

We had started the process at the end of the day, and this is what greeted us the following morning:

Windows XP Pro: STOP framebuf 0x000000EA

Ouch.

A force power down, and a power up again brought the system up into the Windows XP startup routine and subsequently the Acer setup routine once into the OS.

But, given the number of other flaky things the laptop was doing, along with the BSOD on recovering to factory default, this is a pretty clear indication that something has failed or is failing on the system main board.

A phone call into Acer, and we will be seeing a courier here to pick the unit up shortly.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Latop will not power up when the power button is pressed

Ever get one of these calls: "Hi, my laptop won't power up. I can't seem to do anything to get it to start".

While it does not happen too frequently, it does happen, and there does not seem to be a limitation to one manufacturer.

The only fix for this problem is to pull the battery and the A/C and leave the laptop sit for about 5 minutes.

After the time period, plug the A/C in only, and press the power button. The laptop fires up with no issues.

Once the machine is up, have the user power it down, then plug the battery back in.

They should be good to go from there.

We have seen Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo (today's call), and others do this.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Setting the Num Lock Key for Logon

There is a registry setting that one can change to enable or disable the Num Lock key for the user at the logon screen.

InitialKeyboardIndicators

For users on desktop PCs, setting this value to 2 in order for the Num Lock key to be lit before logon is generally a good idea.

For laptop users however, the opposite is true since in most cases the "number pad" is embedded on the actual user's keyboard. Thus, when the user goes to logon to the network, they get an unexpected character from that section of the keyboard. It also gets a little annoying to have to use the Fn key on the laptop every time they logon to turn Num Lock off.

For laptop users, we set this key to "0".

One of our Acer laptops came back from a visit to the warranty depot with this setting enabled for some reason.

From the Microsoft Knowledgebase: How to enable the NUM LOCK key for the logon screen.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Acer & IBM-Lenovo seem to include the XP Downgrade now

We have been working with a number of Windows Vista based Acer TravelMate 6592G and Lenovo T61 laptops.

Out of the box, we fire them up and run through the Windows Vista initialization which can take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes depending on the speed of the system.

We do that for each new laptop we receive on behalf of our clients. Once the initialization is finished, we create the Windows Vista recovery media for our archives.

Initially, laptop manufacturers were not necessarily providing the ability for us to easily downgrade the Windows Vista installation to Windows XP Professional. We had to install an OEM copy of Windows XP Pro, then download and install every component driver which could be a hit and miss affair.

Fortunately, that has changed lately. Both Acer and IBM are now supplying a set of recovery disks to downgrade the laptop to Windows XP Pro.

That is no simple feat either. The manufacturer essentially has to double up on image creating for each Windows Vista model.

Now we can essentially babysit the system to change disks as the Windows XP Pro recovery media runs.

While the cost of providing the downgrade disks can be distributed across hundreds of thousands of units for the manufacturer the same cannot be said for our clients.

So, this is definitely a step in the right direction for all concerned.

Oh, and remember to make a copy of those disks for your archives. ;)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

System Builder Tip: Windows XP converting FAT32 to NTFS

We just rebuilt an Acer 6460 that is about a year old. The laptop came with a Hitachi Travelstar HTS541616J9SA00 160GB 5400RPM SATA 2.5" drive.

This is the second Hitachi drive failure in this laptop since the unit was purchased.

We are experiencing a very high rate of failure on their laptop hard drives relative to the other manufacturer's drives we see installed in the laptops we sell. Toshiba hard drives run a somewhat close second.

After running the system restore DVD, we ended up with a single FAT32 partition on the replacement drive with no recovery partition.

So, to save a little time we ran the Windows XP built in FAT32 to NTFS converter.

From the command line, one runs: convert c: /fs:ntfs [Enter]

The OS will not be able to run the conversion since we are converting the system partition. It will balk at dismounting the system partition.

Answering yes to the request to run the conversion on the next reboot will solve it.

In this case, the system started the utility on the reboot, then rebooted the system once to continue the conversion process.

Once the conversion is complete, it is important to scan the drive with the Defragment Utility. There will be a bit of a messy organization on the drive after the conversion, so we will need to defragment the drive.

Once that is done, we went on to run all of the available updates and setup the laptop for the user.

Microsoft KB 307881: How to convert a FAT16 volume or a FAT32 volume to an NTFS file system in Windows XP.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Acer 6592G - Partition Magic 105, 106, 116 Errors

When we receive Acer laptops, we run through the Acer setup routines which take some time before doing anything else to the laptop.

The second order of business is eliminating the second "Data" partition that all Acers seem to come with. Lately, the system partition has been formatted NTFS, so we no longer need to convert from FAT32 and run an extensive defrag.

However, the first TravelMate 6592G that we received refused to be read by Partition Magic when the Acer's drive was slaved up to our data mule system.

When Partition Magic is first fired up, it sends out a bunch of the following errors against the Acer drive:

• 105 Partition starts on wrong boundary
• 110 Partition table number of sectors is inconsistent
• 116 Partition table Begin and Start inconsistent

Whether we choose to repair the issues (it does not interfere with the ability to boot the OS when back in the laptop), or leave the issues alone, we end up with the following:

Partition Magic 8: None Existent/Bad Disk

This situation is made even more frustrating when we head over to Symantec's Partition Magic Support page.

Once we find the relevant error and click through to its "solution" we see:


Essentially, it is not relevant at all.

So, where does that leave us? In search of a different partitioning utility. Keep in mind that we are dealing with an XP OS based NTFS partition on an Acer laptop setup.

After a bit of a search, we came up with what we believe to be the best possible alternative: Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (DDS).

After a download, install, and reboot, we were greeted with the following after DDS fired up:

Acer's partitions are visible and workable

Interestingly enough, there were no errors against the Acer hard drive when DDS started up. So, we used DDS to delete the "Data" partition as shown, then to extend the system partition.

When we clicked on the Checkered Flag to start the conversion process we were greeted with:

Acer hard drive extension process

The process finished with no errors. When we went back to the DDS console we saw that we now had one large system partition:

Acer system partition

We purchased the DDS 10.0 utility. It is worth the money by far.

To us, this is another nail in the Symantec coffin. We will no longer be purchasing newer versions of Partition Magic. This is unfortunate, as we have been using PM long before Symantec ever got their hands on the product. It was a great product.

UPDATE 2007-10-09: It seems that Acronis Disk Director will not convert FAT32 to NTFS as I had originally thought it could. The first partitions we worked on were already NTFS so it wasn't discovered until tonight when we were working on some Acers with two FAT32 partitions.

On to the next one. We will try the Paragon product suggested by Chris Knight.

My apologies for the mistake!

UPDATE 2007-10-22: Well, it looks like Paragon can't do it either. :(

We can delete the trailing FAT32 partition, but when we go to expand the NTFS OS partition, we cannot access it.

D: Partition is Invalid

We see the red indicating that the OS partition on this particular Acer laptop hard drive is "Invalid".

We can't seem to Merge or Redistribute Free Space in the Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 GUI.

It makes us wonder just what the chicken Acer is doing with their hard drive images.

After opening the CompMgmt.msc on the Mule system with elevated priviledges, we were able to delete the FAT32 partition that was seemingly there after the Paragon software deleted it.

On to Acronis, and guess what? We can extend the partition:

Acronis Disk Director: Resize Partition

So, it looks like it is going to take three separate steps:

1. Use one of the utilities that can read the available partitions
2. Delete the trailing FAT32 partition and hope it takes
3. Verify in the local machine's Disk Manager & delete if still there
4. Run Paragon or Acronis to see which one can continue on from there.

What a pain.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

SBS 2K3 - Group Policy computer settings not applied

In the continuing saga of merging two FAT32 partitions on a set of TravelMate 8210 laptops we just delivered, we ran into a strange problem.

We have a set of GPOs set at the domain level for the various security needs of this particular firm.

We kept getting the following error when the policies from those GPOs were trying to be set:

Event ID 1202 - SceCli: Security policies were propagated with warning: 0x4b8: An extended error has occur ed.

Clicking on the link in the error brings up the Help & Support Center pointing to KB 324383: Troubleshooting SCECLI 1202 Events.

Scroll down to the 0x4b8 section and they ask you to change a registry setting to enable debug logging. Run a gpupdate /force instead of secedit BTW.

That didn't work for us, so, off to the next search that landed us on: KB 260715: Event ID 1000 and 1202 After Configuring Policies. Again, no help or at least the article couldn't help us, but it did bring up the following error when we went to check the local policy settings for the administrator:

Security Templates: The Group Policy security settings that apply to this machine could not be determined.
The error returned when trying to retrieve these settings from the local security policy database (%windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb) was: The parameter is incorrect.

All local security settings will be displayed, but no indication will be given as to whether or not a given security setting is defined by Group Policy.
Any local security setting modified through this User Interface may subsequently be overidden by domain-level policies.

Someone didn't have their spellcheck enabled on that last line - overridden! ;)

To check the local GP:

1. Start-->Run
2. gpedit.msc
3. [Enter]

Therein we find the key! The local security database is somehow toast.

A quick search for the first line in the error error turned up the process we use to fix the database. Run the following command from the command line:

esentutl /p %windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb

And you will see the results will below:


Once that process finishes, run the following line from the same command line:

gpupdate /force

The system should ask to be rebooted once the domain GPOs have been processed. A successful SceCli should also now be in the App log.

Sure enough, once the system rebooted, all security policies were in place.

Buried about half way down (could have missed it) is the above command line fix: MCSE.MS: Re: Group Policy Security setting could not be determined.

Thanks to Doug Knox for sharing that fix!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Just a quick post... That Phone Company, Acer Laptops, and more

Things are absolutely nuts around here right now...

The Phone Company finally got their poop together, as did the ISP riding on top of their equipment so we finally got our clients back up and running in the city burrow taken down by the Phone Company. They came back on a totally different segment, so DNS records and more needed to be updated accordingly.

We had another funky issue with the four Acer laptops we merged the two FAT32 partitions and converted to NTFS. That will be blogged about hopefully tomorrow morning. Basically, they were refusing to accept GP security setting updates. Took a while to figure out where the problem was and the fix.

We are doing a Tech Assessment for a client that is pretty much 100% Mac. It is providing a challenge, as we have only sporadically worked with Macs. So, we need to burn some serious midnight oil figuring out how we are going to integrate them into an SBS environment. To complicate things, they have 5 locations.

Anyone have Mac on SBS experience? Let me know, because we could use some help in that area!

Off to the races! ;)

UPDATE 2007-06-20: Macs and SBS: After some searching the following resources have come up for adding the Mac, or at least gaining access, to the SBS domain.

A blog post on the Windows Small Business Server Documentation Blog with a link to a draft document on adding OS X 10.3+ Macs to an SBS domain.

Document link: Connecting Mac OS X 10.3 and Higher Clients to a Windows Small Business Server 2003 Network (Word document).

Check the comments on the above blog post for errata. There are some things to note there.

Links came via Susan Bradley: Connecting a Macintosh to SBS 2003 Server via SMB.

Eriq Neal: Connecting a Macintosh to SBS 2003 Server via SMB has what looks like the original list of steps for connecting the Mac to SBS shared resources (via Susan's post).

Eriq's Mac related posts on his blog: Lessons Learned - Things I wish I had known...(Mac tagged)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

SBS 2K3 - All Editions: Client Setup Wizard Error & Fix

When we receive Acer laptops, we normally pull the hard drives right away and at the minimum convert them to NTFS before booting the laptop for the first time. Acers come with one or sometimes two partitions formatted FAT32.

We missed one and this is what happened when we went to add it to the SBS domain:

Client Setup Wizard: Client Setup could not remove a special account created to migrate user settings from the previous user of this computer. Contact the person responsible for your network.

Heh, that person is me! ;)

These Acers were 8210 series laptops that had two FAT32 partitions on them. The 6460 series we were selling until we couldn't get any only had one FAT32 partition. Took it for granted that there would be a single FAT32 partition on these ones too.

I am not sure exactly why things go wonky on systems that were installed with two existing partitions with one eventually be eliminated. Things like desktop icons loose their images, and in some cases programs stop working altogether until they are reinstalled. A lot of grief with this particular scenario. Just try and uninstall an application after removing that second partition! :(

We were fortunate in this case as no apps were installed on the unit before heading down to the client site. We do have a cached image of all of their custom apps, but we decided to deliver and setup there due to timing.

So, how did we get rid of the error?

It is actually quite simple: go to the local Users & Groups and delete the _sbs_netsetup_ account from Users. You can then remove said user's directory from Documents and Settings.

Keep in mind that the setup did fail.

We have to remove the system from the domain, then rerun the mysbs/connectcomputer again to get it back on the domain. We would have to make sure the the Client Computer list on the SBS server reflects the needed changes before adding the system back to the domain too.

Or, as we chose to do, we continued setting up the system. It was added to the domain, but the SBS setup routine did not change the system name, add the appropriate users to the Local Admin group on the system, connect the domain profile to the existing profile in Documents & Settings, and run the client wizard after the final reboot.

After completing the missing tasks, we had a fully functional system on the SBS domain.

I do hope that Acer changes their system image setup to one NTFS partition soon!!!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

System Builder Tip: Acer Laptops, FAT32, and Two Partitions

I have spoken to Acer's support people for a variety of things over the years.

And, to date, none of them can answer why Acer does what they do with laptop hard disks from the factory.

Buy an Acer laptop and you get a machine with three partitions, the recovery partition that is only accessible via the backup utility, your system C: partition, and a data D: partition.

They are formatted FAT32.

No Vista folks. We would need to change that system partition to NTFS at the least.

Two very important aspects to this situation:

1. Make changes to the partitioning scheme using one's favourite partition utility just after firing it up for the first time, and a couple of Acer's utilities might break, but for the most part all is good.
2. Use that utility after installing Office, applications, updates, and more, and things BREAK!

That things break in the second situation puzzles me. If the D: partition was completely empty, other than the System Volume, why would things break?

Every time I have had to do this, I have had to run the repair/reinstall for Office, and other applications. Otherwise, the icons are blanks, Acrobat's icon and file icons are blanks, and so on.

The extra amount of time involved to prep a new laptop is an extra expense for our clients. Thus, Acer is "pricing" themselves out of sales.

Then what happens when people find out that in order to take advantage of their Vista upgrade they just received, they have to muck around with command line utilities, and risk loosing their data? Me thinks support is going to be inundated with calls for assistance with their Vista upgrades.

Perhaps FAT32 is just easier to work with and provides an opportunity for reduced support exposure?

Or maybe Acer's imaging tools are just that old.

Message to Acer: NTFS, not FAT32 is the way to go! ONE (1) partition, not two partitions please!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists