Delboy’s Blog

Over the last 8 weeks I have been having a problem with Mozy the company I use for my online backup’s. Even though the problem is still not fixed I deiced to blog about the problem so far.

About 8 weeks ago I noticed that I had started to have 2 problems with my Mozy Home client. The first problem was a MozyServerError6 problem, the second was I noticed that my client was send more data than was being encoded, this was a real problem for me.

OK the first problem was easy I emailed Mozy and they told me that this was an error with there server’s and would be fixed very soon. I was told that my client would reconnect and this would not be a problem. This may not be a problem to most people but when you have 1.3Tb backed up to Mozy it can take a good couple of hour to restart a backup. 8 Weeks later I am still having the same problems with this first error which makes me wounder just how good are the server’s back at Mozy or how good are there engineer’s.

The second issue has been a far worse problem to try and get fixed. After speaking with a number of Mozy engineer’s over a 2 week period it became clear to me that none of them had a clue what they were talking about. Over there chat option I was told that this is not a problem and my data was being encoded and being sent to Mozy, over the phone I was told that this was an issue and to upgrade to the latest version. When I told him I was at the latest version he didn’t know what to say (I would have asked for the version number first). After more investigation at my end I now know that the client is not sending any data and has crashed just saying that it is sending data, it just sticks on the same file, that is until it crashes out with a MozyServerError6 problem.

After 4 weeks of fighting with Mozy about this problem and getting nowhere fast I was leaving for Microsoft’s TechEd. Imagine how happy I was when I came across a Mozy stand at the EMC Booth. It was here that I met Tom Metge who told me he was a lead engineer for the Mozy client, great I thought. I told Tom of my problem and explained to him how I was getting no support, Tom told me he was fully aware of the problem and how the help desk didn’t really understand the problem. Tom told me that there was another version getting ready for release to fix this exact problem and asked if I would like to be a beta tester to be sure the problem was fixed, I agreed. I had a number of emails back and forth with Tom showing him my log files and the error’s I was getting he told me one of his engineers to email me with a link to the beta version and all would be good. I spoke to Tom a number of times during my week and TechEd and all looked good.

A week after returning from TechEd and I still had not received the beta software and so I emailed Tom and surprise, surprise no reply. I have now emailed Tom a number of times over the last two weeks and as yet no reply, another sinning example of Mozy’s great support.

Yesterday I received a follow up call from my time at TechEd from Mozy, so I told the poor girl just what I thought of the company and the support they have. She told me that she will arrange a call with Mozy corporate to get this issue fixed but so far I have herd nothing. I will update this post if anything happens.

As of today 8 weeks after my problems started I have managed to backup just 10Gb in that time (I used to backup about 7Gb a night) I am no further forward and still no fix insight. In the whole 8 weeks I have only had 1 good call to Mozy when and egineer called Josh extended my subscription by 3 months as I have been unable to backup my data, but still no fix.

I will keep this blog up dated as to when or if I get my problem fixed.

******Update******

Please see this blog post for the latest update http://delboycarter.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/mozy-redeem-themselves/

I spoke to early, earlier this week when I thought all was well with Windows XP SP3. Today I sat down to watch my podcast’s shows when everything kept crashing. After I rebuilt my Apple TV reinstalled iTunes all was still not well.

The problem I was having was that the Apple TV kept loosing a connection with my iTunes and as such disappeared from the device list in my iTunes.  The only way to get the Apple TV back in the iTunes list was to close and reopen iTunes or power off the Apple TV. When I did get it back in the list as soon as I started to watch a show it would drop the connection.

Finally I decided that it most be SP3 and yes i was correct. What I can say is that the uninstall for for Service Pack 3 works very well, apparently better that the install and now that I am back to SP2 all is working well with my Apple TV.

In conclusion if you are using Apple TV I would avoid installing Microsoft Windows XP SP3.

Well I managed to install Windows XP SP3 on a number of my Windows PC today.

I can say that the download and install takes about an hour but it did install well and so far I have not had any problems with any of my machines.

Here is a list of the software that I am running and all is working well

• Norton AV
• iTunes
• AppleTV working well After more testing I found out that this had problems read this more recent Blog.
• Skype
• NTRConnect (Remote control software)
• Mozy Backup
• Microsoft Office
• File & Print Sharing is working well

So I can say that this time Microsoft seemed to have released a good service Pack. Fingers crossed all will be well over the next couple of days.

****** DO NOT UP DATE TO THIS VERSION ******

Today I upgraded my VMware Fusion to the new Beta 2.0 version. Here are a few things that might be help full if you are thinking of upgrading. I am currently doing my testing on a MacBook Pro with a 2.2Gbz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor with 4Gb of RAM

Problems I had with the upgrade

• This is not an quick and easy upgrade. Yes the software itself upgrades easily but the problems start when you need to upgrade your VM’s
• Make sure that you shut down all your VM’s before you do the upgrade, I found that once I upgraded and resumed my old VM’s I had problems shutting down to do the upgrade.
• Do not install VMware Tools with out upgrading the VM first (Virtual Machine - Upgrade Virtual Machine)
• I found that the upgrade, that included installing VMTools, took a very long time on some of my VM’s. For some of my VM’s this took over an Hour.
• Installing VMTools asks for the Microsoft I386 file, this was a problem because of the ISO/CD issue below
• VMTools would not install on one of my VM’s

Other Problems I have had

• I have not been able to get my VM’s to see my printers that are installed on my Macbook Pro
• There seams to be a problem when changing an ISO file for the virtual CD-ROM. Even when I disconnected and reconnected with a new ISO my VM would only see the old ISO. I had to connect the physical CD-ROM to fix this problem however this did not work on all my VM’s. Sometimes i had to reboot the VM to fix this problem.
• My VM’s are taking a lot longer to resume now
• Switching between Full Screen and Sigle Screen take a lot longer
• Shared Folder’s no longer works. When trying to get this to work my VM even crashed the first time on a Fusion product
• It takes a lot longer to establish a network connection when resuming a VM

What I Like about the New Version

• Multiple monitor support
• The ability to add more than 1 Hard Drive to a VM is very nice, especially if I need more space inside a VM
• The new Virtual Machine Library is much better
• The new setting menu is much easier to use

Over all after testing for the afternoon I would advise people to give this beta a miss I believe that there is still a bit of work needed here before the full release. The fact that my VM’s seem a lot slower and the CD/ISO problem is a real turn off for me. Now the big question do I go back or stick with the beta? This I am still not sure on maybe I will continue to use the Beta for a few days before I make up my mind.

***** UPDATE*****

As I have been working with this I have found the following problems with some not all of my VM’s

• Unable to run Windows Update. (I was able to install SP3 on some of my VM’s but Windows update just would not run all all of my VM’s).
• Microsoft Office Documents get corrupted when trying to download or open from Lotus Notes, again this worked on some of my VM’s but not all

Looks like I will be reverting back to the old version of fusion later today and waiting for the full release. I will post an update as to how the roll back goes. Wish me luck

***** Reverting back to VMware Fusion 1.1.2 *****

OK so I have decided to move back to Fusion 1.1.2 as the beta product is defiantly just that a beta product. Although the move was straightforward it wasn’t completely painless.
Here is what I did and the problems I had in reverting back to 1.1.2

• Powered down all my VM’s
• Downgraded all the VM’s (Virtual Machine – Downgrade Virtual Machine)
• Uninstalled Fusion 2 beta, using the uninstall script
• Installed Fusion 1.1.2
• Powered on the VM’s 1 by 1

This is where the problems started. All of the VM’s powered on OK but they were having problems with 1 of 2 windows devices. Some of the VM’s now can not install the “Base System Device” These VM’s are working fine and all is good apart from this device. My other VM’s had a problem with device “VMware VMCI Bus Device” the VM’s that had this problem also had problems accessing shared folder.

To fix this problem I did

• Uninstalled VMTools
• Rebooted
• Installed VMTools
• Rebooted

After this I got the same “Base System Device” problem, but shared folders now works fine as does the rest of the VM.

On the good side the Windows Update is now working (SP3 installed) as is launching and saving office files from lotus notes.
On the bad side Copy and Paste between VM and Host no longer works (I can live with this).

Needless to say I will be waiting for the full release of VMware Fusion 2.0 before I upgrade again. At that point I hope all works better.

***** Update*****

Just found out that I am now having problems with my VM’s that have a Bridged network connections. NAT connections are working just fine.