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Showing posts from June, 2013

Who owns the data?

Firstly, let me make it clear I am not a lawyer - IANAL. So naturally I was left stressed and scratching my head at a recent and very difficult situation. A client of mine was having a shake up at the top end of the company. I don't know why and I didn't ask. The boss was on leave, directed in some way by the Board of Directors and I was being given conflicted requirements - one boss saying "Don't do anything - stuff is happening in the background" while the boss appointed by the Board was asking me to do various things to essentially keep the business running. The way I've dealt with it, and I think it's probably the way to remember for the future is to request, in writing and signed by a large number of the Board members a document to give you permission to do as requested by the Board appointed Boss. I asked for the Board chairman, two other board members and the CEO or Boss to sign the document - thus ensuring a majority of high level stakeholders

Reducing the winsxs folder - why it won't happen until Microsoft change Windows Updates

Recently I, along with thousands of other system administrators, have been swearing more than usual. If you're one of these people, you know why - the winsxs folder starts to use huge amounts of space on your hard disk. If you've gone by Microsoft recommended practice and created a 50GB C drive, then you also know how quickly this screws you. Is there a way to reduce this folder? If you apply a Service Pack and go through the mechanism to apply it without chance of uninstalling it then you'll grab a little space back, but as you apply more updates, patches and new drivers the winsxs (or Windows side by side folder) will continue to grow. Theoretically it allows you to roll back if something goes wrong with some component of the operating system. In real life though, this isn't really done - we can just reinstall the busted component or whatever. The system that controls the winsxs folder is tied to Windows Updates - and as we all know in Windows Vista, 7, 8, Server