The ongoing saga of my HP Laptop

As readers of this blog may be aware, I bought myself a HP G70-111EM laptop back in January, however had to return it for repair following a burning smell when booting. For many years, I have used only Toshiba laptops, but was convinced by a special offer in my local electronics store.

I received the repaired unit back from HP last Thursday. For two days it was fine, but upon booting it this morning, had exactly the same symptoms as when I sent it in for repair. I telephoned HP and asked whether I could have a replacement unit, as clearly mine was unfit for purpose. I was informed that no, I had to send it in for a further repair. This means that out of ownership for one month, I have had 5 days usage from this machine.

I have sent an email to the CEO of HP in the UK asking him to take some remedial action before I start bringing in big guns such as Trading Standards etc.

Their response will be posted here.

Is there anyone out there?

Just curious - does anyone read this blog?

Networks

I had a call today from a client stating that one of the network printers at a remote site was not responding to the Head Office print server, yet would respond to individual workstations at Head Office. This company runs two networks (one for external support and one for internal usage).

The main routers for the IP Clear circuits used for WAN connectivity provide NAT services to route across the two networks.

Pinging the printer from the main server produced a response, yet pings from the print server were being lost.

The printer had its default route set to a broadband router (which mainly provides DHCP services and redundancy in the WAN link) this router had full connectivity to the internal network and the the print server was set to have its default network as the support network and to utilise the support router.

Changing the default route on the printer to the main router gave immediate connectivity both from Head Office/remote workstations and the Head Office print server. Perhaps I was being a bit too clever for the broadband router when I initially set up the routing tables.

Support for TurboCash

I am now an approved consultant for TurboCash. If you wish advice with accounting software (I am also experienced in Sage and Quickbooks), please do not hesitate to contact me.

Setup/Custom Reporting can all be provided at a reasonable price.

FindaPro Relaunch

I've just uploaded the re-work of the FindaPro directory website. There are still a few tweaks to put in place, but the client wanted the revenue streams up and running as soon as possible. The site has been written using PHP and MySQL and is fully bespoke, featuring postcode searching and a content management system.

Why not pop over there and have a look?

Duplicated MAC addresses

Had a fairly interesting one today, a client complained about the speed of their proxy server running squid.

This machine has two network interfaces and upon investigation it transpired by looking at their router logs that both had identical MAC addresses leading to all sorts of mayhem.

Disabling the second network interface (which was only in the machine as a 'hot spare' resolved the issue.

Odd Jobs

Not much of note for today, setting up a VPN endpoint for a customer using a Draytek router, re-installing some network printers that had been inadvertently deleted and re-mapping a windows share onto a linux machine.