Great Site and YouTube Help

Last night my daughter asked me if I could download the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special to my ipod so she and her grandmother could watch it on the TV. She had found them online at YouTube but wanted to see them on the big screen. I said, "sure I can do that," before realizing that I had actually never done that.

I had read through a couple of articles and message board posts that had me wondering just how possible this task was, when a further look down my Google search page revealed that my favorite daily blog, lifehacker had an article and a recommendation for me.

I read and then quickly downloaded iTube (also called Ares Tube). I am very happy to say that it was incredibly easy then to download and import the YouTube clips I wanted. In no time at all I had my daughter and mother quite happily watching Charlie Brown, which got me in bed at a very decent hour.

Fixing Software RAID-0

I had to fix a stripped array this morning, and that got me thinking (yes, and reading) about the correct way to fix software RAID volumes.

So, I thought I would quickly put down here the steps to restore RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-5 software arrays if you loose a disk and have to replace it for some reason, like I did this morning. I will spend the next three posts explaining how to do this for each one. Today, RAID-0 or a striped array.

RAID-0 (striped)

While stripped volumes do provide the best performance and storage option, they are not fault-tolerrant, so I sure hope you have a good backup of the lost drive or have the software handy to recreate the data on this drive.

Once you have determined that your drive is bad, or you have had to fix an error on the drive more than once, you can go ahead and delete the volume by right clicking on it in the bottom pain of the Disk Management screen (right click on My Computer, Manage, under Storage choose Disk Management).

If your new drive isn't installled go ahead and do so now. Once it is installed, Rescan Disks (on the View menu in Disk Management) if you don't see it as unallocated space in the drive view window.

Before you can create the new volume, you will have to make this a Dynamic Disk by right clicking on the disk name. Once this is done, you can right click on the drive and choose the option New Volume. From there, follow the promts to add the new drive to the Selected disks.

This is by no means a step-by-step or complete guide, there are other sites that do this much better than I can here, and I highly recommend the first one, as it has pictures and all:

Beginners Guide at PCStats

Disk Management from the Microsoft TechNet

5 Fun Gifts for the Geek on Your Christmas List

Do you have any Geeks on your list?

You know the ones, they dress in dark colors, and may sit in a cubicle or an office, but come 6pm, they are sitting in their basement in front of at least 2 monitors playing the latest online RPG.

Here are a few fun ideas if you have any of these folks on your list:

1. Have a mobile IT person in the family? Are they often running from system to system or location to location fixing computer issues? If so, they may need an Ironkey. This is a secure way to keep passwords handy and be able to browse the internet safely from any location.

2. When I first got into the IT business, someone got me a Wave, I had it only a month before I noticed dear hubby using it. I have not seen it since, but this is definitely a great stocking stuffer for anyone who likes to tinker.

3. I love this laptop tote. I am adding it to my own list right now.

4. I haven't tried the Sun Jar yet, but with all the attention that green gadgets are getting this year, I will definitely be adding a couple of these to my list for my siblings.

5. And last but certainly not least, if you have been putting off getting yourself or the top receiver on your list an iPod, now is the time. With so many to choose from, you can get one for almost everyone on your list.

Office Assistant & Unzipping Files in Windows XP

Office Assistant Error
I have a user who is getting this error:

There is no office assistant character files present on the system.
Please run setup in maintenance mode and install at least one character.

After a quick search, it seems this is because we often update Office 2000 around here by adding Outlook 2003. When this is done, a second Office Assistant is installed and the two then fight over control.

The instructions on this site suggest an uninstall/reinstall should fix my issue. I have plans to do so tomorrow.

Unzipping Files in Windows XP
I often have new users of Windows XP asking me to install WinZip for them, and while this is a fine product, it is no longer needed.

I found a nice site with pictures that I like to send to users so they can do this on their own, and wanted to document it here. There is no need to reinvent the wheel on this one.