Posts made by pchiodo

@garak0410 said in Most Workstations Don't Ping But Are Connected - Some Network Apps Are Locking Up:

@pchiodo said in Most Workstations Don't Ping But Are Connected - Some Network Apps Are Locking Up:

@garak0410

Hmm. in reading your error message it refers to COM+, but this doesn't seem right. It appears WMI may not have the correct fire wall rules.

On the Hyper-V server try this:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)" new enable=yes

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Event Log Management" new enable=yes

Pretty sure Symantec mucked up Windows Firewall.

You might try turning it off for testing and see if the problems go away. Then you'll know specifically if it is firewall related.

Trying this...

I did find an old SpiceWorks ticket (thank goodness for documenting) I opened over a year ago when we moved to the Cloud Based Symantec. It was titled New Anti-Virus - DHCP/DNS Issues. But my fault, I didn't document it very well at the solution...at the time, it said I couldn't ping or even connect to C$ on most workstations...my solution read as this:

"The File/Print sharing option was not allowed in firewall profile. I added it but it still didn't work. It was set to RED and not green."

That doesn't tell me much...don't know if I changed it on the Symantec End, Windows Firewall end and if that, which server?

I really do think Symantec mucked up some things...

Also side note, I have Webroot uninstalled on a suspect machine that will not PING and I actually have all of WebRoot's firewall turned off for all machines...still pinging issues...so guessing it is on the server(s) that I removed Symantec from.

I was going to mention that it really sounded like a server side issue with the multiple clients failing on the writes. Google search also provided some Symantec removal tools that might be of assistance.

You might also attempt to restore the firewall to defaults. You can do this through the Windows Firewall config. There should be an option on the left hand side to restore defaults.

Like I said previously, you can try and just turn off the firewall on the server and see if the problems go away. If so, you know that it has something to do with the firewall.

@guyinpv said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

@pchiodo
Ya that's never going to happen.
We ship around 500 orders a month. It's just enough for us to handle "manually" without needing a full ERP.

A product like ShipStation is perfectly suitable for our warehouse to get packages out. Where it fails is one step back, at the order management level. We need to do all the things with orders before it's ready to process for shipment.

This involves nothing more than good "notes" as far as most of us are concerned.

1. When did order get placed?
2. What products were in stock? Are they now pulled/allocated?
3. If not in stock, are they on order? If so, connected to what PO from what vendor? When can we expect delivery?
4. Does a line item need customization? If so do we have it out yet? Where? When expected to return? Are we waiting for a PO AND customizing?
5. Does a line item require customer to send US something? If so, have they sent it? Have we received it? Is it out for assembly or customizing? When is it expected to be done?
6. What is the most current status of the order? That is, the thing it needs immediately before further processing?
7. Who is in charge of processing current steps with the order? Perhaps multiple people.
8. Can orders be auto-tagged when certain conditions are met, or certain products involved. For example X product always need customizing, so it could be auto tagged with certain processes or todo right away.

At the end of the day, all of that is just a whole lot of notes. They could be statuses, or categories, or tags, or text fields. As long as the software makes if VERY easy to see at a glance what orders need what, what they are pending on, what's happening, etc.
The boss wants a constant overview of all pending orders like "12 orders need that thing, 8 orders need that, 3 orders are waiting on that PO, 12 orders are out for customizing at X vendor", etc etc etc. Customizable views for employees so each one can see the set of filters and tags most relevant to them.

Again, a lot of this can be accomplished simply with a robust set of tagging and categorizing and notes.

I don't believe we need full ERP suites with accounting and CRM to accomplish this. All this is, is a bit of enhancement on top of order processing before going to fulfillment. Once we establish "all the things are now allocated and in stock", the order moves on for fulfillment and shipping through something like ShipStation or just the Stamps and UPS software. If they are combined, that's what I'm looking for.

ShipStation is really meant for "those people who ship". What I'm looking for, is more like, something all employees use to process orders, take notes when customers contact us, make changes, etc.

It sounds like you need a small Access, or other DB with an active dashboard. I cannot think of a package that would do what you're asking. If you can define the full scope of your needs, you can probably get it programmed within your budget.

I would guess, that once you deploy an initial solution, the boss will ask for 20 other things he didn't tell you about.

@scottalanmiller said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:

it's anything but trivial.

Understatement!

I don't want to poor vinegar in your fruitloops, but your budget seems way low for this type of endeavor.

ERP packages are really designed around everything you mentioned short of accounting, and accounting is the primary focus of most ERP systems. QB is not the way to go, and better to change now rather than later.

You did not provide any indication of how big this company is, and an idea of the revenue. This would help tremendously in finding a good solution. But, you're going to need more money. $500/month will not get you there.

To say that having the software cannot cost as much as an employee is unrealistic. It should cost more, because it's going to do the work of multiple employees.

Generally ERP is going to cost from the low $20K to $millions depending on your needs and the number of users. For example; Syspro (which is not a horrible choice for your needs) will run about $30K for the initial install with 5 users.

This is NOT where you will spend the most money. Planning and implementation will cost at least this much. And you will have annual maintenance and upgrades.

None of these solutions are turnkey, and will require configuration, and in most cases, some customization. This will be true in your case, as you want to integrate with other packages.

The features you describe certainly are functions of ERP systems, and the trick will be to find one that has most of what you want, plus the ability to configure or customize to encompass the rest.

At the end of the day, if they won't or can't pony up, you may have to live with ShipStation and make some customizations or some work-arounds.

Good luck

@garak0410

Hmm. in reading your error message it refers to COM+, but this doesn't seem right. It appears WMI may not have the correct fire wall rules.

On the Hyper-V server try this:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)" new enable=yes

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Remote Event Log Management" new enable=yes

Pretty sure Symantec mucked up Windows Firewall.

You might try turning it off for testing and see if the problems go away. Then you'll know specifically if it is firewall related.

Another thing to check for is the Symantec Network Threat Protection driver. You'll find this under Device Manager network connections as Teefer2 or something similar.

If you find it, it may be difficult to remove, as standard methods tend to fail.

You might want to look in the registry and delete the 'Config' entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network

Then you should be able to remove your network cards and the teefer2 entries from device manager.

Reboot, and then reconfig the network cards. Make sure you have the latest updated drivers.

@garak0410

If you have Windows Firewall disabled, re-enable it, then turn it off, but leave the service running, and see if the problems go away.

Start with one workstation and the server that appears to be dropping when writing.

Eating some delicious Monkey Bread

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Cleaning out my iPad Browser. .... Seems I have maxed the open tab limit. Hee hee

What's the limit, like 3 or 4?

I think I have like 30 tabs open.

You mean something like this:

http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/wp-content/uploads/toolbar.jpg

I will not be there this year. Have some drinks for me, and somebody better order Chicken and Waffles!

@momurda said in This Is Who Is Teaching College:

@scottalanmiller said in This Is Who Is Teaching College:

@momurda said in This Is Who Is Teaching College:

Scott what reality are you in? Most people graduate high school cant even do addition and subtraction without a calculator. Learning engineering physics and calc in high school is not happening anywhere in this country.

And you think that THOSE kids are going on to engineering schools and graduating?

Physics and calc is normal in high school. Every high school kid I know is getting that stuff. Or at least have access to it and only don't get it if they opt out of it.

@art_of_shred and I took the first two years of engineering university calculus together in high school, in fact, as did something like 30% of our class.

My nieces definitely get this stuff in high school, even in Texas.

Find my any high school in the US that doesn't offer physics and calc.

They offer it, but nobody is taking it except 1 or 2% of the kids who want to do more than work as a wageslave in a warehouse or work as minimum wage government employees. It isn't happening like you say. FFS the high school drop out rate in this country is approaching 20% for all students and youre saying everybody cant get engineering classes in high school.

This is a social failure and it's symptoms being cast on the educational system. Just because most of these kids don't want to learn, doesn't mean they can't, and it certainly doesn't mean it's not available. It is an injustice to brainwash these kids into thinking that the only way to a good job with good pay is through a college education and mountains of debt.

I saw this on SW:

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1881566-how-to-limit-printer-usage

At the time, there were 73 replies, and the "Best Answer" was to turn off printing for this employee.

I submit this is a management failure, not an IT problem:

My response:

*"Mike, I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but the primary issue is when management decides to use IT as a solution to a people problem. It is obvious this employee is the root of the problem. Deal with the employee, not the printer.

This is a clear sign of poor leadership. If they cannot sit down and talk to the employee, and then take the next step when they don't comply, but instead, sidestep the issue by inserting IT into the problem with all expectations that IT can somehow deal with a rouge employee, then they have failed as managers."*

@momurda said in This Is Who Is Teaching College:

Im talking about engineering as a specific example refuting what you and scott are saying that college is worthless. English Lit is worthless, nobody is going to argue that. Most humanities degrees are totally worthless, and I would question the intelligence of anybody spending 100,000 dollars to learn how to read books, or learn Social Studies for 4+ years.

College is not required to learn engineering. It can, in some instances, provide opportunities to explore areas of engineering that the average person might not have access, but certainly isn't required.

We hire engineers, and yes, they all have degrees, but we still have to teach them how we engineer our products. And, more to the point, we have non-degreed employees that know more about the engineering of our products and this industry then some of our degreed engineers.

@DenisKelley said in This Is Who Is Teaching College:

I thought this was debunked by Snopes https://goo.gl/lZ1RIr

Oh you sly (&^% - Yeah, you got me

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

loving the smell of incinerated electronics - cough cough

DROK DC to DC board that should have handled 3-23v input just fried D1. Guess that project is on the back burner.

Maybe I'll get n00bs installed on an mSD and see how that goes...

Geez man, you let out the magic smoke... it'll never work again.

This is exactly why I will take experience over education every single time. It's also why I put little weight into certificates. Especially if they have a bunch of certs and no related experience.

@Minion-Queen

Gotcha - No worries. Enjoy your steaks

@dafyre @JaredBusch

I would argue that deploying a single processor server in a production environment is not a best practice. And it appears MS is thinking the same way. With Server 2012, licensing was per processor, but with 2016 it is per core with an 8 core minimum.

@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I'm considering getting half a cow. . . The price per pound is $3.95 . . . Not sure if I have enough freeze room. . .

I take delivery on 1/2 a cow this week. Around 65 lbs. But I will can most of it not freeze it.

You're only getting 65 lbs of meat from half a cow? Wow, tinny cow, even without growth hormones.

I am really only taking 1/4ish of it. I do have to pay for the full half however.

You are getting ripped off. Hugely! - I grew up with this stuff. Typically, from a full grown animal, you'll get 440 LBS of freezer ready beef. (220 lbs for half, 110 lbs for 1/4) - From this, about half will be ground beef, and the rest in cuts such as roasts, steaks, ribs, brisket, and tenderloin.

Here's about how much freezer space is required for 1/4 cow:

http://www.clovermeadowsbeef.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/quarter-cow.jpg

Processing charges vary, but generally about $0.50/pound hanging weight, or about $475 total for the average cow (700lbs hanging weight + kill charge)

If you're only getting approximately 65lbs and still have to pay the processing for 1/2 cow, you're likely paying more than store prices for the same beef.

Just sayin'

@Minion-Queen said in Recommendations for anything cool to buy under $25 from Amazon?:

@pchiodo said in Recommendations for anything cool to buy under $25 from Amazon?:

And how could you live without one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CR35JQ/ref=gbps_img_s-3_0082_39ee86d1?smid=AX9B9677DI7OG&pf_rd_p=2644760082&pf_rd_s=slot-3&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=gb_main&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=J4EGZH8FR7SA592NGNS2

(would make @art_of_shred roll his eyes).

For this reason alone!