Server Installation Error message: (NO HDD FOUND)

Dear Reader, 

Having setup and installed Servers for most of our clients all over Liberia such as, Water Aid- Liberia, Populations Services International-Liberia, Tetra-Tech ARD, Equatorial Palm Oil etc. on numerous occasions without any headache, last month January 20, Saturday morning was an experience a System Administrator wouldn’t want to miss or get to the bottom of.

An order arrived in our office by DHL that morning for a customer named Master Trading dealer in auto mechanic and spare parts located on the same street we are located.  An instruction was given to us from our Head of Operations to unpack and set up the server for installation at the client site.

As techies, my colleague and I removed the item out of the box (HP ProLiant 360 dl 360 Server G8, 1x4 TB HDD, 16GB RAM, Intel/Dual Processor and a RAID Array System already installed.

The power cord of the server was plug into the electrical outlet and to the power port of the Server. It booted up smoothly showing no operating system installed. I quickly arranged my Windows Server 2008 R2 software disc and inserted it into the CD ROM of the server, and booted from CD in the boot setting. It started up well where I could select the edition of Windows (Server 2008 64bits Standard Edition). In the process of installing, the software should detect each of the 1TB in total of 4 drives in other to select which one the OS is to be installed on, but in the process, it displayed the error message on the screen shown below:

I tried several times of installing the OS using different CDs and bootable USB drive, but the problem persisted. I did many online research on the error message but couldn’t find a suitable solution. All I could see from other websites was to download and update some device drivers which I did download but that didn’t work as well.

This drew my colleague, Farman Elahi attention after verifying that all the hard drives installed were brand new and reading from our HDD tester. He entered into the BIOS and System setting from one option to another until he found ‘’Enable RAID ARRAY’’ and then he hit enter. The option was enabled, and the system prompted a restart. Because the Server was running a RAID security, all HDD would show invisible until they were enabled.

 During this restart all the 4TB hard drives read and an option to select which drive to install the OS was shown. Many thanks to Mr. Farman my colleague who came in during the middle of my server installation nightmare. As a team, together everyone accomplishes a mission. The software installed successfully enabling me to complete the below necessary configurations.

1.    Connect to mains and network switch – allow for a network cable.

2.    Install Windows Server 2008 R2Standard Edition and Server name Administrator

3.    Configure server with static IP address.

4.    Run DCPromo.exe and install basic domain

5.    Configure DNS on the server – set it up with forwarder details of local ISP’s DNS or Google 8.8.8.8

6.   I set the local DNS of the Server to point to its own IP address and not the ISP or Google’s.

7.   Add all workstations to the domain and create usernames and password for users,

8.   Copy existing profiles into the new domain profile.

9.   Users are set to local administrators for their workstations.

10.   Set up network share for HP and Dell printer and, a folder. (username: admin PW: *****)

11.   Test connectivity of all workstations to share.

12.   Set up router to allow connection to the server via the internet for support purposes – Port  redirection (3389) to the server IP address.

       13.   Installed TeamViewer Host 10 on the server for outside support or remote login

A week later, the customer requested a remote desktop connection configured on the server. In the server manager, I installed the remote desktop feature. Got back to the user’s laptop, entered username and password an error message pop up! “cannot connect remote desktop, you must add the user in the group manually or use terminal service” In resolving this I click on “Start”, right click on Computer and click ‘’Properties”. Click on add users. Like for the client I created a login credential in the Active Directory called ‘Admin’ so when I click on ‘Add’ I selected Admin, click Apply and Ok. Restarted the server and all was okay with the end-user. Thanks to my colleague Farman who helped me cross the first level of all these configurations.

by Daniel Collins

My stolen phone story

Image from here. 

by Farzana Rasheed

Last Sunday, we undertook a very exciting and memorable excursion to Tubmanburg. We piled into 2 vehicles around midday and, left for Tubmanburg, capital of Bomi County. We visited a farm and then went for a picnic at Blue Lake. We had a lot of fun and, I took a lot of photographs. I had specially invited friends for this excursion and, went to the farm to take photographs for a business proposal I will be putting together to help my friend get some funding to expand his vegetable and livestock farm. 

Unfortunately, my phone was swiped by an adept thief that evening. We came back home at around 9:30 PM and while we were unpacking our car, I set my purse down for a moment. Our building's security guard was helping us of course but then 2 other security guards from the neighbouring buildings had also rushed to help us. Our building only has 2 apartments and the front door is locked at all times. I picked up my purse after hardly a minute, put it on my shoulder and stood by the door waiting for the security to come back down. I locked the front door and went upstairs where Haresh was putting the water cooler, bags and basket of wet clothes away. 

After about 20 minutes, I realised my phone was missing. I immediately realised it must have been nicked from my bag. I dragged Haresh downstairs and, we saw that the security guard was not there and the next shift's fellow was there. We made a lot of noise and, one of the security gave us the address of the security guard who was there when we had just arrived from our trip. Apparently, the head of the company also lived close by. We drove to Vai Town, with another on-duty security with us, met our security officer and brought him back. 

After coming back to Randall Street, we did our own investigation. The security guard, Anthony, who had come back with us was adamant that he did not steal the phone nor that he knew anything. We identified 1 security who had come to help tow the bags besides Anthony. He emptied his pocked and, said he was a Muslim man and would not steal anything. We couldn't find the 3rd phone.

During this time, we noticed a spark on the LEC pole. We then piled back into the car -  Kavita with us too of course - and, went to Water Side. We patiently waited for the security guard to report the spark to the emergency. We came back to Randall Street. It was after midnight. 

Haresh decided to become bold and declared he would give a $ 300.00 award to anyone who brought the phone back.

We had been calling the phone throughout the evening and, someone kept cutting it off.

We went upstairs and, after 10 minutes an LEC crew came over to fix the light pole with the spark. The LEC crew wanted a tip but I ignored them because I was in a foul mood. 

Happy that the LEC had responded so quickly but dejected we got mugged, we went to bed. 

The next day, we decided to see if we could remotely access our phone (something we could have tried to do the very night). I also posted about my stolen phone on the Liberia Expats Google Group and, got some sympathetic e-mails including one from a close friend who offered to help by suggesting we seek middle people to call up the phone and, then exchange the phone for money. 

Meanwhile, we remotely locked our phone using Google's Android Device Manager.  You will need to sign into your Google Account and have your IMEI number ready. We found ours on the box the phone came in. But you can retrieve the number once signing into Google in case you signed into Google from your phone. See an article here. 

The phone was immediately locked with a message saying that a $ 300.00 reward would be provided if the phone were returned. Sure enough within a few minutes, the phone rang and, Haresh spoke to the man on the other end. The fellow told Haresh that he'd bought the phone for $ 275.00 but wouldn't mind giving the phone back for $ 300.00. 

He asked whether Haresh would involve the police and, he didn't want trouble. A time was set to meet. 

Haresh contacted the CID and, planned a sting operation. 

We arrived at the agreed meeting place, also having coordinated with the CID. The alleged thief asked us several times on the phone whether we had contacted the police and we denied it. We were to meet on Lynch Street. We parked at the meeting point and waited for the thief. No one showed up for 15 minutes and the thief's phone was off. We kept looking at pedestrians with a phone and wondered whether that was the thief. 

After a while we drove off and, the thief rung us up about 30 minutes afterwards. He was angry. Why did we call the CID, he demanded. Haresh fumbled and said he hadn't. The thief retorted: but why was Monk there? 

We couldn't contact the thief afterwards. He switched off his phone. Haresh sent begging e-mails to say that we should re-negotiate a new deal.

I couldn't believe that the CID had let themselves be exposed. We thought they were a bunch of bumbling fools. Others told us the CID is always hand in glove with the criminals anyway. 

We gave up. Haresh said we should get a new phone. I was extremely angry at myself for losing an expensive smart phone. Why did I set my phone down on the pavement for even a few seconds? Why did we let all these security rush to our aid? Why wasn't I more careful? Why didn't we remote lock the phone that very night?

I asked my friends to help out by calling the phone and, see if we could buy the phone back through a third party. I asked my friend Bendu (she has a tea shop on Randall Street) for help. She said she would ask around. Monrovia is a small city and, it's not hard to reach criminals. They usually smoke drugs she said and sell stolen phones for small amounts of money.

My phone was stolen on a Sunday night and after these efforts and feeling frustrated and exasperated, we received a call on Thursday night saying they had our phone! We couldn't believe our ears. There had been a raid on the ghetto behind the Mother Patern college and, my phone was found. Because the phone was still locked and our contact number was on it, the CID was able to call us.

The next day Haresh went to the Police Headquarters and retrieved my phone. He unlocked the phone and proved it was ours. The head of the CID explained that the police had made a raid and, the head of the community had produced the phone himself. Haresh gave a token cash gift to the police which he accepted. After all, it doesn't hurt to have the police in our good books.

I got my phone back and, am extremely grateful. My photographs were deleted though and I was quite sad. We put so much stock in our photographs, especially on special occasions with friends. Photographs are taken to be shared on social media and, as shallow as that sounds, we grow so attached to our smart phones and, our photographs. I also felt bad because I had wanted to use the photographs of the farm for a business proposal.

Haresh gave the phone to a phone expert who tried to root it but no luck. Rooting it would have given us a chance to retrieve deleted photographs. But no luck! I've learned a lesson. I will install DropBox on my phone and, back up my photographs. I will lock my screen.

My phone is back and, I am very glad. 

Configuring a Remote Access to a Server: Research, Resilience and Ingenuity

Servers are extremely valuable tools for companies: they improve teams’ productivity and efficiency by allowing workers to share files more easily. However, the added value of a server can be increased by setting up remote access connections. It means that users not connected to the server network can remotely access documents stored in the server through the Internet. As an example, someone in the US can access a server located in Liberia.

To enjoy this feature, not only you need to buy licenses for Microsoft (one license per user), but you also have to configure both your server and computers.

NATC recently configured and installed a Windows 2008 Standard R2 Server for a client. It was a particularly complex and arduous task, consuming a lot of time and energy as we went through the following steps:

1. Research on Microsoft support website
2. Call Microsoft tech support
3. Use an IT engineer based in Canada for support
4. Extensive online research

It is only at the fourth step that our technician Jonathan Barwon found new directions and got a sense of what had to be done. It took him hours to set it up, but we can sum up all the operations in three main phases:

1) Server management: Add new roles

On the server, you need to activate the remote desktop functionality through the start menu

2) Web access configuration

On the server, in the remote desktop services, you need to enable the web access configuration

3) Connect a Windows 7 work station

Through your web browser (preferably IE), connect to the server and allow connection from computer running any version of remote desktop.

After the installation, our technician also made sure to activate the back up features of the server (i.e. shadow copies of the server hard drives), so our client data will be protected from any potential loss.