The Adventures of a Systems Engineer

As part of a project I am working on for my internship with MITRE I was tasked with building a Domain containing a Server 2003 Domain Controller, exchange 2007 Server, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services (MOSS) 2007 Server, and SQL Server 2005. Each service was installed in a server 2003 virtual machine and configured several months ago. The Domain Controller virtual machine was having some issues yesterday so it was wiped and a new Domain Controller was set up. All of the virtual machines were able to rejoin the domain without problem. However when the Exchange server had a number of quirks. The virtual machine hung for about 20 minutes on “applying security policy” during start up and was having a host of authentication issues that prevented outlook web access (owa) from working properly. Since the exchange server was part of a testbed environment the easiest solution was to build a new exchange virtual machine. The moral of the story is that exchange is extremely reliant on the domain controller and very sensitive to its configuration. Since the environment is entirely virtual there should have been more backup copies and snapshots of the virtual machines to revert to, both are good practices that will be applied in the future.

I am home for Spring Break this week and one of the first thing I had to do was play computer doctor for nearly all of my family’s computers. My sister got a virus on her laptop and my dad ended up with a virus on both of his computers. I do a lot of virus removal so I decided I share some very good free programs. The following are the top three programs I have found.

SUPERAntiSpyware

Malwarebytes

Spybot Search and Destroy

These programs will work wonders provided one thing, the virus/spyware/tojan that is infecting your computer lets them run. The newest breed of malicious viruses will prevent these programs from running and some will even stop you from visiting any antivirus websites. In the case that you do not have one of the very evil kind of viruses you can use the following free online scans.

Windows Live OneCare

Trend House Call

Back in September 2008 (before the severe economic downturn)  it become clear that my 2 year old laptop was no longer powerful enough to handle the average work load, let along gaming. After months of searching and price hunting I put together the rig outlined in this post. Without cutting corners I was able to build a quite powerful machine without breaking the bank (well not too much anyway).

Parts

CPU: Intel Quad Core Q6700 2.66 GHz -$215.70

CPU Fan: Thermaltake Silent 775D -$18.96 (after $10 mail in rebate)

Motherboard: XFX nForce 680i LT -$83.01 (after $20 mail in rebate)

RAM: 8GB OCZ SLI PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (4x2048MB) -$80 (after $40 rebate on each 4 GB kit)

GPU: XFX GeForce 8800 GT -$105 (after $20 rebate)

PSU: Antec BP550 Plus 550W ATX12V -$59.99

Hard Drive: 1 TB SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ -$96.99

Optical Drive:SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner -$25.99

Case: Briza 8-Bay ATX -44.99

Total: $ 730.63

All of the links above are to the actual places that I bought the parts from. There was a lot of rebates to deal with but I had shopped around for months and was convinced that the sales were good enough to warrant building my new PC. Notice that all the parts did not come from one site. I meticulously shopped each part so I could get the most out of my money.

Building the PC

I stated with the motherboard, 4 GB of RAM, the CPU, and the GPU. The case arrived a few days later. I had an old 500 GB SATAII hard drive lying around that I initially salvaged for the build.

It became clear very quickly that the 400 watt power supply that came with the case would be less then ideal. I also realized that if I wanted to get an OS onto the new PC an optical drive would be a nice thing to have. A quick order at NewEgg had the missing parts within 3 business days ( free 3 day shipping rock!).

Blood Sweat and Tears

After I had assembled the system I noticed something very odd. The system would not POST with both 2 GB RAM modules installed. Hours on the phone with OCZ (their support staff is amazing) lead to the recommendation that I send one of the RAM modules back. After receiving the new RAM I still had the same issue and the system was very unstable with just the one module.

Another hour on the phone, this time with XFX, yielded the suggestion that I return the motherboard to TigerDirect for a replacement. A quick call to tiger and they emailed me a label to ship out the motherboard for free. It turns out tiger has an awesome RMA system.

A few days later I got the replacement motherboard. I slipped in both 2 GB RAM modules and the system booted up. The increase of speed from 2 to 4 GB of memory convinced me that adding another 4 more GB for $40 (after rebates of course) was well worth the money.

A few months later I decided it was time for another upgrade. The hard drive that I salvaged for the original build was very loud. I had been shopping for a 1TB for a long time and finally gave into buying one. I found a Samsung SpinPoint for $100 with free shipping from ZipZoomFly and went for it.

Choosing an OS

Due to the fact that I have a processor that supports 64-bit Operating Systems it seemed like the best idea to go 64-bit. I installed an OEM version Windows Vista Ultimate. The decision to go with Vista was based on the desire to take advantage of the eye-candy offered by the Aero theme and Direct X 10.

Results of the Build

The PC is stable and super fast. No overclocking was done because it was not justified. A screen shot of the Windows Experience Index is included below. The only thing that the system falls a bit short on is RAM. I could have easily spent a lot more money on super high quality ram, but the OCZ SLI Ready modules that I got deliver more then sufficient performance.