20/01/2012
16:06
by: Alex Haines

New Company Identity

Just a little update to let you all in on what has been happening behind closed doors at Freedom I.T. Systems over the last few months. Some of you have been involved in consultation about this and we feel now is the time to let you all know that we are planning to change name to Freedom I.T. Solutions. We feel the new name better explains what we currently do as we are no longer purely a systems integration company, we now provide solutions to problems and queries that our customers may have.

The new website is still under development, but it won’t be long before I make it go live and you can all see the new name, logo and a couple of embarrsessing photos of me trying to look picture perfect. I will be keeping you informed over the next few weeks…

Posted in Company News, Website Development

28/06/2010
08:56
by: Alex Haines

Migration to New Hardware Completed

As a result of the unexpected downtime on the Monday 14th June and then the brief blip on Friday 25th June, Freedom I.T. Systems decided it was in the best interest of our customers to perform a migration over the weekend from the current setup to some new hardware. The work was scheduled to be completed by 02:00 this morning, but due to unexpected delays in DNS updates this target was not met and the work was instead completed as of 08:00 this morning.

No hosted data, including websites, databases and emails were lost in the migration, and each individual customer was only briefly unavailable for less than 30 minutes.

The end result is we are now hosted on faster and in theory more reliable and stable hardware and we have the ability to scale and cater for more users as and when.

If anyone has any problems this morning with email access (some people may need to open a cmd prompt window and type “ipconfig /flushdns” and then “ipconfig /registerdns”), then please get in touch with Alex, who is available all morning to deal with these queries.

Once again, thank you for your co-operation and understanding during this last month!

Posted in Company News, Customer Support Tagged , , ,

15/06/2010
08:12
by: Alex Haines

Unexpected Downtime (June)

All customers who use any of our platform services need to be aware that we have had some unexpected downtime between 14:23 and 18:45 on Monday 14th June 2010. Without getting too technical it would seem that one of our HDD (Hard Disk Drive) in the Raid Array failed which sent the machine critical. We then had to use our SLA (Service Level Agreement) with our Hardware Supplier to get them into the Data Center and replace the faulty HDD as well as test the others for any faults which luckily they did not have. Once the HDD was replaced the machine was booted into recovery mode, where we rebuilt the array offline and subsequently performed some basic tests. We have also now completed a full set of tests and believe that everything is working as it should be.

I need to stress that no user data has been deleted in this downtime and (in theory) no emails have been lost.

If you experience any issues after this downtime, or have any queries or want to know more about what happened, please contact Alex in the normal way and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused, especially as this was an unscheduled downtime.

Posted in Company News, Customer Support Tagged , ,

19/02/2010
16:29
by: Alex Haines

We Now Fix Game Consoles

Just an update to all of you who may be interested, we now fix all of the modern game consoles, including Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3), Microsoft’s XBox 360, Nintendo’s Wii and DS / DS lite! If you have any faults on any of these consoles, let us know and we will have a look at them, give you a quote and then do the work. Most of the repairs will be costed on a parts plus time to fix basis, but others, such as replacing a BluRay lens on a PS3 have a fixed cost.

Posted in Company News Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

25/12/2009
03:29
by: Alex Haines

Merry Christmas 2009

Freedom I.T. Systems Limited would just like to wish all of our customers, friends and family a Merry Christmas and to let all of you know that we can be contacted as normal on the 29th, 30th and for a reduced amount of hours on the 31st of December between 09:00 and 16:00.

For any out-of-hour emergencies for contracted customers, please use your normal number!

Posted in Company News, Customer Support

16/12/2009
15:11
by: Alex Haines

Teaching Myself New Tricks with SysPrep

Okay, so for most people visiting this website, i.e. my customers, your not going to be worried at all by this latest news entry, but I felt it worthy of note so that if you want, you can understand a bit more about the thought process that goes into some of the technical magic of Windows Smilie: :)

Mark Russinovich is quite a clever person who programmed a great tool called NewSID many moons ago and his company has been consumed by the all mighty Microsoft in recent years. He posted a blog entry recently where he removed his great tool from circulation. I was quite bemused by this and read the complete post in full. It goes into lots of detail, but suffices to say, the end result is that I now do not use his tool, but use Microsoft SysPrep in many more situations than I did before. It works behind the scenes using a much more systematic approach than Mark could ever have employed and does the job wonderfully.

Just goes to show that there is so much we can learn, even about things that are seemingly set in stone. I am still learning the whole topic of SID’S over again since I taught myself about NewSID and SysPrep and if you are at all interested in the technicalities, just drop me a mail and I will try and explain some of it.

Posted in I.C.T. Developments Tagged , , , , , ,

17/11/2009
18:13
by: Alex Haines

Emergency Maintenance (Nov)

All customers who use any of our platform services need to be aware that we will be performing some emergency maintenance on our platform servers from 02:00 Wednesday 18th November 2009. The process shouldn’t take more than fourty (40) minutes, there will be no losses of data during this maintenance and the email backlog should be sorted by no later than 03:00.

If you experience any issues after this maintenance window, please contact Alex in the normal ways and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused, especially so soon after the last emergency mainetance in October.

Posted in Customer Support Tagged , , , ,

27/10/2009
17:25
by: Alex Haines

Emergency Maintenance (Oct)

All customers who use our email platform need to be aware that we will be performing some emergency maintenance on our email platform from 02:00 Wednesday 28th October 2009. The process shouldn’t take more than fifteen (15) minutes and email will still be delivered afterwards.

If you experience any issues after this upgrade, please contact Alex in the normal ways and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Posted in Customer Support Tagged , ,

02/10/2009
15:14
by: Alex Haines

6 Ways to Know you Need a Server

It may look like other computers that you have seen before, but a server is the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of your business network and is essential to allow you and your staff to be productive during the work day.

A server is essentially a specialised computer that is used to manage information and resources in a centralised location. This powerful box of tricks is loaded with a specialist server operating system that is designed to perform specific tasks such as print processing, internet connectivity and internal email for all of the client computers attached to it.

  • Your computers are already networked in some way, but the performance is affected every time someone prints a large document.
  • You spend lots of time searching for files or copying them from one machine to another.
  • You want to restrict access to confidential files because you are worried that a nosey employee might find sensitive data on your network.
  • You want to accommodate flexible or home-working for you or your staff, but don’t know where to start.
  • You keep buying printers, fax machines and internet accounts as and when you get new staff and IT costs seem to be spiralling out of control.
  • You have lots of IT hassle such as viruses and network problems which are starting to impact on your productivity and profitability.

If you match even one of the above six, then you should still strongly consider contacting us to get a small server installed, but if you match two or more it is essential that you contact Freedom I.T. Systems as soon as possible to arrange a consultation as you are missing out.

Posted in Company News Tagged , , ,

21/09/2009
09:29
by: Alex Haines

Freedom I.T. Systems on bestofredditch

Freedom I.T. Systems Limited are now partnered with thebestof Redditch website and we would like you to pop over and have a look. If you live in the Redditch area you should take the opportunity to register on the site. This will allow you to take advantage of any special offers that other companies may be offering and will allow you to find recommended businesses and to give recommendations on others you have had dealings with.

If you’re feeling generous today and you have had work done by Alex in the past, you may also want to write a review for Freedom I.T. Systems Limited to let other people know how good we are!

Posted in Company News Tagged , ,