A common problem with Windows 7, recently picked up by Acorn’s Hertfordshire IT consultants, is that after joining it to a domain logons suddenly become painfully slow.  There are a number of suggested fixes out there, most noteably that of setting the desktop background as an image rather than a solid colour (a bug noted in a Microsoft forum post).

However, in this article we examin another cause of the “slow logon” problem which centres around DNS.  If the Domain Controller for the domain to which the Windows 7 PC is joined is multi-homed (that is joined to more than one network) , then Windows 7 clients may experience issues with slow logins which are not experienced with XP or Vista clients.  On the Windows 7 client if you run nslookup and try to resolve domain.local or whatever your local FQDN is you may see more than one entry returned.  In this situation a slow logon may result.  The same can occur if there are additional bogus DNS entries, perhaps carried over from a SBS Swing mirgration or virtualisation project.  Simply deleting these bogus entries in the DNS for the domain will resolve the slow logon issue.  For multi-homed domain controllers, more drastic action may be required, but the situation can at least be allieviated in the short term by using a local hosts file to resolve the FQDN for the domain to the correct, single IP address.

In short, we can see that Windows 7 handles DNS in a very different way to previous Microsoft desktop operating sytems and care must be taken to ensure that the domain environment is configured correctly.

In a perfect world we would never be concerned about our computers failing, nor would we have to worry about natural disaster, physical theft or human error.  Our business critical data would never be at risk from any of these factors and we could sleep easy at night, taking comfort from this knowledge.

Sadly we do not live in this utopian world, and we therefore need to take steps to ensure that valuable information such as business contacts, emails, text documents, presentations, contracts and accounts, all of which form the lifeblood of our businesses, are properly protected.

What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

Unfortunately for many businesses, it’s not until something does go wrong that the importance of a solid backup system is realised.  A few possible scenarios for data loss include:

Natural Disaster

Admittedly this is not an every day event, but the companies affected by the Buncefield oil disaster would now all agree as to the importance of a reliable data backup system.

Physical Theft

Without a dependable off site backup solution in place, should your computers be stolen, your data would be taken as well with no means of recovery.

Hardware Failure

All computers and their components are eventually subject to failure.  We can’t predict when, but sooner or later every business will be faced with a dead computer, or major failure of some kind.  The largest threat during a failure is that there will be some form of data corruption or total loss, and in many cases this can be irrecoverable.

Human Error

Computers are only as reliable as their operators.  Important files can be deleted in error, or amendments can be made to data only to realise later down the line that the original data is once again required.

What Can You Do?

There are a multitude of data backup solutions on the market today, and it can be a little overwhelming when trying to select a potential product.  Acorn Networks specialise in providing tailored backup solutions to businesses across Hertfordshire.  We aren’t tied to a single product, but instead carefully assess individual needs, and put together a suitable solution which meets both requirements and budget.

Sleep Easy…

Why not arrange a meeting with one of our data backup specialists who can put together the perfect backup solution for your business and put your mind at ease, knowing that whatever happens your data will always be safe.

• Boot the machine into safe mode and consider doing a system restore to a known pre-virus state, or:
• Download MalwareBytes AntiMalware - a free tool that’ll remove just about any virus (best run in Safe Mode)
• Particularly bad viruses will prevent the above software tool from running.  In this case:
  • Download the software on another machine (preferably an up to date version) and copy via USB stick
  • Rename the installer to something different
  • Once installed, rename the .exe file to something like “file.exe”
• Scans are best run in safe mode with system restore disabled

Some alternatives when you simply can’t get a virus removal tool installed or the machine fails to boot are:

• Avira AntiVir Rescue System
• Bit Defender Rescue Disk
• F=Secure Rescue CD

Remember, nothing beats having realtime virus proection installed, running and constantly updating.

The issue arises whenthere is not enough Non Paged Pool memory left to run IIS, thus webmail fails. This can be viewed by typing poolmon.exe –b in a command window on the server.  The top entry (when IIS is failing) will more than likely be the cause of the problem.  The most commonly seen entry when this problem is experienced will be ObCi which is one of the components of AVG.  If you have AVG installed on your server then this is almost certainly the culprit.  The solution is to remove AVG or speak to the vendor about other potential fixes for the version you have installed.

Of course this will only work for a RAID 1 volume.  RAID 5 would be a much more complicated situation with recovery being somewhat more difficult.

In short, network ports are like doors, and should be kept closed wherever possible.