In this blog post I will provide you with the basics of using Visio 2010 to create a server room rack diagram.

As a Windows systems administrator, you may be required to document the contents of your server racks. The reasons for this documentation are myriad and manifold:

• Compliance with industry/governmental regulations
• Compliance with organizational IT policy
• Theft protection/insurance reimbursement
• Accountability to stakeholders
• General industry best practice

Microsoft Visio 2010 is a part of the Microsoft Office System suite that is optimized for the visualization of all business processes. Visio is especially well-suited to our work in IT.

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DriverView is a free portable and scriptable tool that allows you to view all loaded drivers on a computer.

DriverView is useful for troubleshooting hardware issues because it allows you, with just a mouse click, to view drivers that are currently loaded. The free tool presents all loaded drivers in a table view with the following columns: driver name, address, file type (system driver, network driver, etc.), version, company, product name, modified date, create date, filename, and file attributes.

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Speccy is a free system information tool for Windows that gives you a good overview of all hardware components in a computer.

The main purpose of a system information tool is to give you an overview if you log on to a new machine. This is why it is important for that utility to be portable. If you first have to install the tool, it will probably be faster to just use the Windows system information tool.

Speccy is available as an installable and a portable version. As far I could see, there is no difference between the two, so there is no reason to download the installable edition.

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NovaBench is a free benchmark software tool that allows you to test RAM speed, CPU speed, graphics performance, and hard disk speed.

The free benchmark software NovaBench is a simple tool, but it offers all essential benchmark tests. Benchmark tools that are not free usually have more sophisticated benchmarking functions with nice graphical outputs. NovaBench’s result page is rather simple, giving you just the plain numbers of the benchmark tests. However, if you just want to know how fast the components in a PC are, this is all you need.

NovaBench tests the RAM speed in MB/s, tests the CPU speed (floating point, integer, MD5 hash generation), tests graphics performance by measuring the 3D frames rate, and tests write speed of the hard disk.

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Memtest86+ is a free memory test software tool that helps you detect memory problems.

A few days ago, I blogged about Memtest86, a free memory diagnostics tool. Memtest86+ is a fork of the popular tool and comes with similar features and capabilities. Readers have recommended Memtest86+ and so I had a quick look at it.

At first sight, you won’t see any significant difference between the two tools. However, if you look at the revision history, you will see that the x86-secret team added quite a few functions under the hood.

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Memtest86 is a free memory diagnostic tool that allows you to perform RAM tests that go well beyond the test capabilities of most BIOS tools.

As I outlined in my memory diagnostic primer, memory diagnostic tools that are integrated in modern BIOSes can’t guarantee that a memory module is flawless. This also applies to Memtest86, a free standalone memory diagnostic tool. However, the utility is more sophisticated than most BIOS memory diagnostic tools. You can also use Memtest86 if you are uncertain which of the RAM modules has flaws and you just want a second opinion.

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This post gives a short overview of how memory diagnostic tools help you troubleshoot RAM problems.

Physical memory failures do not happen often, but when they occur they are fatal. Sometimes they won’t just crash the operating system but will also cause hard disk corruption. In the worst case, a destroyed database is the end result. This is just because one of the billions of memory cells confused a zero with a one. ECC (Error-Correcting Code) memory improves fault tolerance, but it is expensive and so are the supporting motherboards. And, of course, ECC doesn’t guarantee that RAM failures won’t occur.

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The Windows Memory Diagnostic tool checks the computer’s memory (RAM) for failures. If you have recurring error messages or computer crashes and can’t figure out what causes them, it might be time to check the memory.

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One of the biggest buzz words in IT at the moment is Green IT. IT does not have the best image when it comes to ecology; data centers in particular have a bad reputation because of the massive amounts of energy they use. Hence, when people talk about Green IT they often focus on servers. But if you want to go green, you can’t neglect the desktops. Depending on the hardware you use there is much room for improving the ecological footprint of your company.

If you bring up the idea in your next executive board meeting it will get support but one question will be raised: What does it cost? If it involves high costs the support will dry up fast. But going green doesn’t necessarily mean more expenditure. If everything is planned well, going green might even save the company some money. Here’s an example of how we managed to go green and save some bucks:

Last year many of our desktops ran out of support and their advanced age caused more and more malfunctions. It was clearly time to get new computers. Up to that point we used common desktop hardware. A single desktop burned around 70 W when the desktop was idle; more when the computer was under load.

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The German print magazine C’t (issue 24, 2009) recently published a good overview article of hardware analysis tools. In this post, I listed all tools that that have an English user interface and added a short description. Note that not all of the tools are free; I made a note if it is commercial program.

ASTRA32 – System information tool with support for driver trouble shooting and HDD health status checking. Prices start at $29.95

HWiNFO32 – System information tool. I reviewed the tool a few days ago.

SIW (System Information for Windows) – Is able to run in batch mode and can be used as simple inventory solution. Only free for private use; freeware version doesn’t support reports

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Windows once had a very bad reputation regarding stability. Windows NT improved the overall stability significantly, but perhaps Windows XP was the first Windows version that could be called stable. Due to sloppy programming of third party devices drivers, Vista’s stability suffered considerably. Windows 7 was remarkably stable right from the beginning, thanks to Vista’s groundwork.

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

It can be quite annoying if a system is continuously crashing with the famous blue screen of death (BSOD). There are several ways to find the culprit. The Windows Eventlog is always the first place you have to check, if problems occur. If Windows has already been already running smoothly for some time and only started bucking lately, then newly-added devices or updated drivers are most likely the culprit. As to my experience, applications rarely cause system crashes. But be aware that some applications install nonhardware drivers (anti-virus software, encryption tools etc.).

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The System Information Viewer (SIV) is a freeware tool that allows you to display information about your computer in remarkable detail. SIV is a tiny portable application that supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. The information is so detailed that if you are not a super geek, then much of the information will mean nothing to you. Nevertheless, this also assures that if you ever need any particular information about a computer, you will most likely find it in SIV.

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I am currently in the Philippines and it is a bit hotter here than in good old cold Germany. When I am working at the beach, I can literally feel my laptop sweating. It is a high-end laptop and its power adapter is as big and as heavy as a netbook; its components therefore produce a lot of heat. With CPUID HWMonitor I always have an eye on the temperature of various devices.

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Double Driver is a free standalone tool that allows you to backup and restore device drivers. This is useful if you have computers with pre-installed Windows and no driver disk, and want to re-install the operating system. Or perhaps you want to transfer a driver from one computer to another.

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Device Remover can do much more than its name indicates. It has all the features of the built-in Windows Manager plus a few additional functions that can be helpful if you have to troubleshoot device driver problems. Here is a list of the most important features of Device Remover:

• In-depth information about devices and drivers
• Print device tree
• Displays hidden, non-present, and problem devices
• Searches device drivers
• Bulk removal of device drivers
• Backup device drivers
• Open and export device driver registry entry
• Start/stop, enable/disable device
• Update driver
• Save detailed driver information

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