I’ve reviewed Dropbox and Google Drive, so you can pick between the two. Personally I like Dropbox because it comes with a lot of your folders already set up for you and some cool extra features. I will describe how to do this with Dropbox, but if you replace “Dropbox” with “Google Drive”, it works the same. I’ve added a few Google specific items to the end of this post for convenience.

This is pretty much the smartest thing you can do with your files besides constructing your own cloud backup system in a secure facility.

If you are unsure what the term “cloud” refers to, here’s a pretty good YouTube video explaining it. For our purposes here I am talking only about “Cloud Storage”, which is storing your stuff on an internet based service.

Moving Your Stuff To Dropbox

First thing you need to do is check your Dropbox Folder. It comes with a few sub-folders already set up. You should already have a Photos folder, and you may or may not have the a Documents folder. If you don’t have one, right-click any of the white space in your Dropbox folder and select “New -> Folder” and name it “Documents”.

Stuff You Should Move To Dropbox

Read the below information carefully as Dropbox is much more suited to some things than others. I’m assuming all you have is the starter 2 gigabytes. If you have more space you can add more of these things to Dropbox.

Documents – Most likely if you took all your Documents on your PC and put them in Dropbox it wouldn’t take up 10% of the space. Move them all over first. Doesn’t really matter what kind of Document it is, move it. The programs for editing those documents can work out of your Dropbox folder just fine.

Pictures – You can actually store a lot of pictures in 2 gigabytes. Move your most important photos to Dropbox first. This is what most people want a copy of anyway. Put them in the Photos file. Bonus: Storing your photos on Dropbox gets you a cool slide show on the web interface!

Videos – Dropbox is not a good option for backing up your video collection. They are usually just too big. Now if you have extra space you could probably fit a few of them on here. I’ll talk more about this in another article.

Music – Like Videos, Dropbox isn’t really for music backups. You can put some here but your local backup is really the best place for it.

Now once Dropbox has synced, you can actually work on your Documents directly from your Dropbox folder. This is a really good idea to start doing this as they are automatically backed up every time you save the file.

I also have a few Portable Apps on Dropbox and put my website backups there as well. Just about anything you want to keep handy can be placed there, including data files from a few programs.

Some applications are coming out these days that can work directly with Dropbox too.

The Advantages of Working Out Of Dropbox

So now that you have your Documents, Pictures and maybe some of your music moved over to Dropbox you should exclusively work on these things out of the Dropbox Folder. What I mean by this is, when you want to make a change to a file, open your Dropbox folder and change the file in there. The reasons are many, but I’ll show you a practical example of how great it is.

Step 1 – Go install Dropbox on another PC that you own. Use the account that you set up for the computer it is already on.

Step 2 – Open your Dropbox folder after about 5 – 10 minutes. You NEED to be on the internet.

Step 3 – Make a new Document of some kind, say a Word Document in your Documents folder. Type some stuff in it. Save it. Close the document.

Step 4 – Check the Dropbox Documents folder on your other PC (The one you didn’t make the document on). The new file is now there.
Step 5 – Make a change on the original computer you installed Dropbox on.

Step 6 – Check the same file on your second computer. The changes will automatically update.

Optional Step – Go to Dropbox.com on your work PC. Sign in to the site. You’ll see your stuff in the web interface there.

This is the power of cloud storage. In this case it is always up to date. If all your PC’s crash, your stuff is still in Dropbox and will download as soon as you install it on another PC. You can use it practically anywhere in the world.

Your Smartphone and Dropbox

Go ahead and get the Dropbox App for your phone. They have Android, IOS, and Blackberry. Sign into it there. Your stuff is now on your Smartphone and accessible from it. If you have Android or iPhone go ahead and get the free copy of Quick Office. You can view and edit  your documents from your phone now if you need to. If you save it on your phone, it synchronizes to your PC’s pretty much instantly.

Specifically About Your Pictures

Dropbox has a cool “Camera Upload” function that will automatically upload photos to a “Camera Uploads” folder in your Dropbox folder. So when you plug in your Camera, Flash media (SD/xD/MMC/Compact Flash cards), or a USB drive to your computer and it finds pictures, it can automatically save them to your Drobox account. This is great actually as it automatically backs your stuff up and can be shared instantly with other Dropbox users if you so wish.

At least on the Android app you can set it to automatically upload your pictures when you take them from your phone (or automatically upload when you are on WiFi).

So now you’ve got your pictures automatically backed up from two kinds of devices without even having to worry.

A Few Things About Google Services

I said this article was going to be mainly about Dropbox, but it’s worth mentioning a few things if you are a Google fan like myself. If you use Google services for your stuff, it’s pretty much constantly backed up. You can also access most, if not all, of your stuff stored on your Google account from your smartphone/tablet. There are a few things you should consider doing that may not be enabled by default.

I will say before anything else, Google mines data from your stuff. I’m not sure how far this goes, if they mine everything you put in your Google account or not, but I’d assume so. Just be careful what you put on the internet.

Sign Up For Google+ – If you do this and get the Android app for G+ (and possible the iPhone app too) there is a setting that will have it automatically upload your photos from your phone to G+. Don’t worry, by default these photos are not shared, you have to specifically share them.

I can’t stress enough how awesome this is. There’s a commercial I saw about a guy who took all his baby’s pictures with his phone (bad idea), didn’t put them on his computer (bad idea) and then proceeded to lose his phone (very bad idea). He was not aware that it was automatically uploading his stuff to his Google account. His relief when he found out he hadn’t lost his son’s pictures must have been tangible from two states over. I can personally vouch for how great this is, having lost some stuff myself.

Photos Not From Your Phone – Google Drive doesn’t have any sort of auto-upload functionality yet so you’ll probably have to do this manually. Picasa will allow you to do this. If you don’t already use it, I’d suggest starting. I’m sure Google will add this functionality soon.

Sub-Folders – Sadly you’ll have to make all  your sub-folders manually. This may not be true if you have a new Gmail account. Mine’s pretty old and didn’t come with any default folders. I think this is due partly to Google having it’s own organizational methods. I may circle back to using Drive more effectively in another post and address this.

Use Google Docs – Unless you have some privacy concerns, it’s worth noting that Google Docs has most of the same basic features as Microsoft Office. From a web browser no less. Go ahead and just use it for your word processor, spreadsheets, presentations and all that if you aren’t required to use Office for some reason.

E-mail and Contacts – If you’re using Google for all this, it’s worth repeating that you should make a habit of entering ALL your contacts directly into Gmail. If you do this they are syncronized to your smartphone as well. You can also have Gmail check your other e-mail accounts and dump it all into one place, which is handy. Check Part 1 about how to do this.

So if you haven’t organized your stuff already go ahead and do that. Just make sure everything is split up by library, and don’t worry about getting too detailed about it.

The first thing you need is a good external hard drive, or a large thumb drive if you just have documents and no pictures. I’m going to assume you have some of all the categories in the previous article, so go get a large external Hard Drive. I recommend getting at least a 1.5 terabyte hard drive. If you can find one with twice as much space as your computer though, that isn’t too much.

Choosing an External Drive

If you just want someone to say “Get this drive” I’ve provided some links below to some good drives on Amazon. You can skip this brief part if that is you. If you want a little more information I’ll explain external hard drives a little so you can make a better choice.

There are, for our purposes, two kinds of external drives to look at. One is what are called “Desktop Drives”. These are bigger external drives that need a power supply and sit on your desk. They aren’t meant to be portable, hence the “desktop” part. These are usually where you find the most capacity for the lowest price. You will find these referred to as 3.5” hard drives. This is referring to the physical size of the hard drive inside it.

The other is the portable drive. These are usually smaller, many no bigger than a large cell phone, and are meant to be carried around. These are sometimes called 2.5” hard drives because they use the smaller form factor drives found in laptops. They are usually a touch more expensive, and their capacity is smaller than the desktop ones for the same price. The advantage they have is that they don’t require an AC adapter to work. They run off the power provided by your computer’s USB port.

Personally, I recommend having one of each, especially if you travel. If you get only one, get a portable drive as they are usually a little more rugged. I’ve had the desktop ones die from getting dropped six inches on carpet. You need to get the highest capacity one you can afford. You can get a 1 Terabyte drive for about $99.

If you have multiple PC’s in the house, get a desktop version and hook it up to your main desktop. I will post how to back up multiple machines automatically soon.

Backing Up Your Computer

Ok so you have an external hard drive and you want to back your stuff up. I’ll show you how to do a manual backup, and an automatic backup.

Now I’m going to assume you got a hard drive bigger than the one in your computer. If you have a 1 terabyte hard drive in your computer, you should have at very least a 1.5 terabyte external drive. What we’re going to do is back things up twice.

Quick and Dirty File Backup

So here’s how to do a manual, fast backup. This has no capacity for going back in time and restoring earlier versions of a file. This backup accomplishes two things: It gets you a backup now, and gives you a little peace of mind.

Step 1 – Click your Windows Button.
Step 2 – Click on your Name.
Step 3 – Hold down the CTRL key and click the Documents, Music, Videos, Favorites, Pictures, Desktop and Download folders. This will select all of those folders individually.
Step 4 – Release the CTRL key and right-click on one of the selected folders.
Step 5 – Select “Send to -> “ then select your external drive.
Step 6 – Wait.

This will copy everything in those folders to your external drive. When you want to do this again, repeat Step 1 – 6 and when it asks you if you want to replace the files select “Yes”. Now you have a basic local backup of your stuff. Wasn’t that easy?

Now you just need to remember to do this every so often so that you have a more or less current backup of your files. This kind of backup lets you quickly access your files without having to go through fancy backup software that can sometimes take a while to restore your stuff.

Full System Backup

So now that you have a quick and dirty backup method you can move on to backing up your entire system. This is where that having more capacity on your external drive than your PC comes into play.

You might want to do this before going to bed as it can take a while to complete the first full backup.

Step 1 – Go to your Start Menu and find your Backup and Restore program. This is included with Windows and depending on where you got your computer from it might be under Accessories, Accessories -> System Tools, or Maintenance. It could also be above all the Start Menu folders.

Step 2 – When Backup and Restore loads you’ll see a link stating that Backup has not been set up. Click this link.

Step 3 – On the first screen select your external drive. Mine has a drive letter of J, but yours might say E: and have a slightly different icon depending on manufacturer. Click Next after selecting your drive.

Step 4 – On the next screen, select “Let Windows Choose…”. This is usually the default option. You want this because it will back up EVERYTHING on your computer. This is good because if your hard drive goes out, you can restore from this backup and your computer will be exactly like it was when it was backed up last.

Step 5 – On the next screen leave everything like it is unless you’d rather your computer back up to a different schedule. I find once a week is enough, but you might want once daily backups or something. When done, click “Save Settings and Run Backup”.

Step 6 – Wait on the backup to complete. This can take a while.

Step 7 – When done you’ll want to make a System Repair disc. Put a blank DVD in your DVD burner drive, click the link on the left hand side of the Backup and Recovery screen and follow the instructions.

Step 8 – When the DVD is burned put it in a safe place. You’ll need this disc if your computer crashes and you need to restore your complete backup.

To restore your system from this image, simply boot from the Recovery Disc with your external hard drive plugged in and follow the directions on the screen.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a System Recovery disc for your computer, they’re pretty generic so you can make one from any Windows 7 machine, or download the image for one here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/ (I got this link via Lifehacker.com).

Other Backup Software

I’ve just shown you how to make a near fool-proof backup for your computer that automatically runs every Sunday at 7:00 for your computer. It will restore a machine from a blank hard drive if you have to, or restore specific files. I’ve also shown you how to make a secondary backup of your main files for quick and easy access.

You may want some more advanced software to handle your backups than what Windows comes with. Personally I would suggest that anyone and everyone buy a copy of Acronis True Image Home. This is really the best software out there now. A lot of major businesses use this software for their stuff and it came highly recommended to me. I’ve set up an Amazon store page with this stuff all in one place. The prices are really good on Amazon so I would urge you to buy the software there. I would also buy the family pack if more than one PC is involved.

Nero is also a good backup alternative. I’ve added a link to the Amazon store for it too.

External Hard Drives

I decided to add my recommendations to the store I mentioned above as it puts everything in the right place. I added a few good Seagate and Western Digital drives. Again the prices are really good on Amazon.

So here’s the store.

The phrase, “backup your stuff”  really annoys me because it doesn’t say anything. Most of the time people just tell me, “Yeah I should really start doing that”, then they don’t. Likely because they have no clue how to do it, or see the price tag on a lot of backup solutions (I also hate the word solution when applied to a piece of hardware or software, as if either solves anything). Or they don’t have time.

So what I’m going to do with this set of articles is show you how to back your stuff up for very little cost, or possibly free. I like free. Also I’m going to talk about how to change your habits so you don’t have to worry about it as much. You’ll have the side benefit of being able to get to your stuff anywhere.

Figure Out What You Need To Backup

You need to spend about five minutes figure out what you need to make a backup of. Some of these backup programs like Carbonite will kind of figure this out for you but, really you should know what you have, where it is and how to back it up manually. You also need to know why your stuff is important.

So let’s take a look at what you might have. Here’s a short list of stuff.

• Pictures – Family photos are the first thing people ask me about backing up. Most people don’t even care about anything else. If their computer crashes they always ask me to get these back if I can’t do anything else.
• Videos – Falls under the same class as above. Plus you might have movies you downloaded you might want backed up, or at least put somewhere else so they don’t take up space on your computer
• Documents – Most home users don’t have just a ton of documents lying around on their computer. You might have a resume, some stuff you brought home from work, maybe that novel you are writing, and some other stuff. Tax papers and things like that fall into the ‘documents’ category as well.
• Music – A lot of people are really attached to all the songs they’ve downloaded over the years.
• Applications – The programs you have on your computer.
• E-Mail – Self Explanatory
• Contacts – Your phone contact list.

Change Your File Habits

I know a lot of people who just throw everything on the desktop and try to remember what it all looks like and hope for the best. This is a bad idea. One trick to a good backup system is having your stuff organized in the first place and being consistent. I don’t know how many catastrophes I’ve had to deal with that would have never happened if there was a little more organization and consistency.

First of all, use the Libraries in Windows 7/Vista. They’re awesome. Put your music in your music folder (iTunes does this automatically), videos go in Videos, documents go in Documents, and pictures go in the Pictures library. This will not only make things a lot easier to find, it also simplifies what you have to back up, and if you do decide to just buy a backup program it’ll make it a lot easier to recover your stuff.

So if you know where your stuff is now, and it’s not organized, go ahead and take twenty minutes to dump everything in those folders. Don’t worry about making sub folders if don’t have them already, just move everything into its proper Library. I’ll post some suggestions on how to organize this further, but go ahead and just dump everything into their proper folder right now. It’s amazing how little time this actually takes.

Note: Cut and Paste, or drag and drop everything where it need to go. If you Copy and Paste you’ll end up with duplicates, which will cause you to use twice as much space.

Change Your E-Mail and Contacts Habits

I’m going to show you how to do something practical now to ensure some things will probably never get lost.

This applies to small businesses as well as home users. One thing I’m always asked, especially when a cell phone dies is, “How do I get my contacts back?”. The other is “Will I lose my e-mail?” in the case of dead PC’s. Well, if you are only concerned about this when your phone dies, you’ve already lost the game. Personally I used to use one of the utilities that came with my phone to import/export my contacts list to my computer and link it up with Outlook. I then backed up everything from Outlook using the Export feature and making copies of my PST files.

Guess what? I lost all that stuff years ago due to a combination of faulty hardware, and a bad backup! I had to start over.

But guess what? I haven’t had to make a backup of my contacts or e-mail since 2007 and I have every last one of them. I have lost many computers and phones since then.

Here’s what you need to do.

Step 1 – Get a Gmail account now.

Step 2 – Use the tools Gmail has to import your e-mail from whatever other service you use, or from Outlook/Outlook Express.

Step 3 – Import all your contacts into Gmail, or enter them manually.

Step 4 – Sync your smart phone to Gmail, this works on Android, iPhone, and Blackberry. Believe me, I know, I’ve done it for dozens of people.

Step 5 – Always use Gmail to add new contacts. Always. No Exceptions. Cool thing, if you enter a new contact on your phone into the Gmail address book, it will sync automatically to Gmail. If  you enter one in Gmail, it will sync automatically to your phone when you open your contacts list!

Now, barring Google going out of business and all their stuff being destroyed, you’ve got a pretty solid guarantee of never losing your e-mail and contacts ever again. Plus, they’ll all be with you wherever you go.

Another side benefit is that if you use Google’s online services it can show you your contacts on its other services.

The biggest most awesome benefit when you get a new phone all you have to do is sync it to the same Google account. Like magic everything is on the new phone in a matter of seconds.

Part two about actually making a backup of your stuff will be posted very soon!

Do you have two or more computers? A lot of people do, a laptop, desktop, work computer, media box, tablet, and cell phone. How do you get files between them? You could use a flash drive, or your network, or you could use a service like Dropbox or Google Drive which syncs your files between all your devices over the internet.

The great thing is, you don’t have to do anything. You just put the files in a special folder on your computer and they automatically upload to a cloud and when you look in that folder on another computer, they are just there. In fact you just work out of that folder and everything is backed up and synced between your devices.

The Same

Google Drive and Dropbox work the same way. They have a software client you install on your computer which makes a special folder and puts a little icon down by your system clock with status messages. You can work directly out of this folder and you won’t notice any difference between that and working out of your libraries on your computer.

They also both have a good web interface that you can work out of too. You can drag files from your computer to the web page and it uploads automatically. This is handy if you are on another person’s PC and need to get a file to yourself. This is easier than emailing them. Just drag, drop and done.

The Different

There are a couple of big differences between Dropbox and Google Drive.

Storage Space

Dropbox starts you off with two gigabytes for their free version and Google starts you out with five. Obviously you aren’t going to store your DVD collection on these services, and they aren’t really designed for that anyway. So Google is clearly the winner in starting space on their free service. I’ve seen a few articles that say Dropbox is either now starting you off with 5 gigabytes, or very soon will be. If that’s true (their website still says two) then there is no real difference in the free service.

You can get more space by paying for more obviously. I’ll include a pricing chart for comparison. I could not find anything on Google’s site about getting more space due to referring people, or any other way other than purchasing more space. Dropbox will give you extra space for referring people, up to 18 gigabytes free. They also run promotions for more space if you help them test things. Recently they did this with photo uploads and I now have 7.8 gig space, up from the three that I had previously.

Google’s service is new, so this might come later.

Pricing Options

Dropbox also increases the amount of extra space you get per referral. Google is the clear winner on pricing between the two services. Fifty dollars a month for a terabyte of space is a pretty good deal.

Features

On a basic level the two services work exactly the same. They do have other features though.

One notable difference that I have found is undoing mistakes. Dropbox has a method for recovering things that were deleted from the Dropbox folder on your PC, which has saved me many times. I deleted a file from Google Drive’s special folder and it just disappeared. I found a way to recover it but it doesn’t show a ‘deleted date’, so that’s a little confusing as to which document was the one I wanted. Basically it showed two documents with the same name and modified date in the trash bin, and I know they were different.

Google Drive is a lot more feature-rich in general. A huge advantage if you have a lot of documents, or have a tight budget, is that Google Drive links directly to the Google Docs features. So if you have a bunch of documents on your computer, you can upload them convert them to Docs format and edit them directly from your web browser anywhere. This allows you to make full use of all Google’s relevant services directly from Drive. This is true for their mobile app as well. What this translates into for the home user is that you can buy a really cheap PC and have use of a business class office suite for free, with plenty of space to store your stuff in.

I’m in fact writing this article on Google Docs as proof of the concept.

I tried to do the same thing with Dropbox on my phone, I was able to edit the documents but only because I have QuickOffice installed on my phone.

One thing in Dropbox’s favor is the auto-upload pictures from your USB connected camera, and cell phone. This is really useful if you take a lot of photos and want to make sure they are safe, or are putting them on a computer you don’t use often. I found it quite handy on a recent trip I took as when I plugged my camera in it uploaded them to Dropbox automatically and I could share with my family instantly. To be fair, Google offers a similar option with mobile phones and Google+.

Which to Pick?

Before I wrote this, Dropbox was my clear recommendation. After writing this I see the choice isn’t quite as clear. Google Drive gives you more features for free, but is definitely not as user friendly and doesn’t conform to your standard Windows way of doing things in the web interface. That isn’t bad, but most home users are using Windows so it’s definitely a plus.

Dropbox starts you out ready to go. It gives you a few folders, including a public one, and a bunch of “how to use this” documentation right in your Dropbox folder. Everything is manageable from Windows/Mac/Linux and you never have to use the web interface if you don’t want to.

Google Drive gives you an empty folder. Most of the management is done directly from the web interface, and not from the program on your computer. This is expected since Google services are pretty much entirely web driven.

So what it boils down to is really, how much of a fan are you of Google? If you use Gmail and their other services, Drive will work for you seamlessly, you already have it, and sort of replaces Google Docs. It’s also going to be available for Google Apps soon. Also, if you need a lot of space Drive is definitely the cheaper option now.

My personal recommendation is still going to be Dropbox for most people, though. You can get five gigabytes of space pretty easily by recommending friends. It’s a bit more user-friendly starting off, and all the features Drive has can be easily provided with free software.

You can edit your documents on your PC with OpenOffice or LibreOffice. If you have the mobile app, Quick Office will let you edit things on your phone. It’s the auto-uploading of photos that really sealed the deal for me.

Dropbox is also not tied to Google in any way as far as I’m aware. If Google’s data mining policies are a concern for you, it’s the obvious choice.

Where To Get Them

Dropbox – You can sign up for Dropbox by following this link: Dropbox Sign-Up. It takes just a few minutes to get going. I put this on every computer I use where permitted.

Google Drive – All you have to do is log into your Gmail account and click the Drive link. It will start you off there.

Well fortunately there are a few things a home user can do to check their internet and see potentially what the problem is before calling Tech Support. The first thing you should do if you haven’t already is go through my “How to Fix Most Internet Problems” article.

Here’s what to do if you are completely down:

Check If You Are Resolving DNS

Resolving DNS is fancy IT speak for, “Can your computer find the IP address of a site by its name.”  It actually means more than that, but for home use the following overly simple explanation should suffice.

Every website on the internet has an associated “IP Address” so that your computer can know where that website is located on the web. When you type ‘google.com’ into your web browser, your computer asks a Domain Name Server what the IP address for google.com is. It then takes the returned IP address and goes to the site. For instance google.com’s IP address as of this writing was ’74.125.227.105′. If you copied and pasted that IP address into your browser it would go directly to google.com.

What you want to find out is if your computer can look up a DNS address. This assumes you are logged in as an administrator account on your Windows 7 computer.

Step 1 – Open a command prompt by clicking your start menu and typing “cmd” into the search box and hit enter.

Step 2 – Type “ipconfig /flushdns” and hit enter.

Step 3 – Type “ping google.com”. You should get something very similar to this back:

If you only get the first line where it says “Pinging google.com [74.125.227.105]” but then no replies it means you are at very least resolving DNS. That means that your router is at least seeing your ISP’s domain name servers and they are responding. It also means you aren’t getting traffic back from the internet. The blockage is MOST likely on your service provider’s end.

If you get a “Host not found” error, it means you flat aren’t connected to anything. This could show a bad router, modem or even bad settings in your computer. So let’s try and eliminate the computer as the culprit.

Check your Network Settings

If you followed my advice on setting up home wi-fi then follow these instructions here to make sure your computer’s settings are correct.

Step 1 – Right Click on the network connection icon down by your system clock and select Open Network and Sharing Center. Note: If you connected wirelessly, this will instead look like a cell phone’s signal icon with the five bars.

Step 2 – Click on “Change Adapter Settings”.

Step 3 – Right click on the active network connection and select “Properties”.

Step 4 – Select “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click the “Properties” button.

Step 5 – Make sure your settings match the picture below.

If the settings are set to “Use the following” on either of those, and you followed my guide to setting up your router, the settings are just wrong and fixing that will probably solve your issue.

Step 6 – Click OK on the TCP/IP properties window, and on the adapter properties window. If you made any changes you will need to wait a few seconds for your computer to apply them.

Step 7 – Check and see if you can resolve DNS now. If you can, try opening a website.

If this doesn’t solve your problem then the next possibility is a bad router.

Router Issues

The easiest way to take the router out of the equation is to hook your computer directly into your modem and see if that solves the problem.

Step 1 – Find the cable leading from your router to your modem. On the back of the router it’s the cable in the port marked “Internet” or “Modem” if you have a normal home grade router. Disconnect this cable from the router and plug the end that used to be in the router directly into the ethernet port on your computer.

Step 2 – Unplug the power from the modem, count to ten, then plug it back in.

Step 3 – Once the modem has booted up completely, try resolving DNS.

If that worked then it’s probably your router causing the problem. You can reset it back to factory defaults then run through my Wi-Fi guide again and see if that fixes the problem.

If it doesn’t work it’s PROBABLY your modem, or the ISP. At this point you should really call tech support and see if they can’t help you. Sometimes telling them you did these things will speed the process up.

If you have another computer with an ethernet port on it, it’s a good idea to test a second one just to make sure it isn’t your computer. Most of the time it isn’t because other devices in the house will be connecting fine, and that computer won’t.

NOTE: Some ISP’s like AT&T might sell you a modem that is also a router, they typically call these “Gateways”. You might also have a modem/router combination for your cable internet. If this is the case you typically need to call tech support anyway.

Please be aware that if you have AT&T’s DSL service and you got one of their 2WIRE gateways, you’ll be happy to know that unlike most ISP’s AT&T fully supports this hardware. Their tech support agents can either walk you through fixing most basic networking problems with it or actually resolve the problem from their end by logging into it themselves. This is very convenient if you aren’t very tech savvy.

Slow Internet Troubleshooting

This problem is a little more vague and hard to pin down than being completely down. For one you need to know what speed internet you’re paying for. Let’s assume you are getting 3mb download speed, and 1mb upload. This is a common plan across the US.

Step 1 – Go to speedtest.net.

Step 2 – Click the “Begin Test” Button. Wait for the test to complete.

When it completes, as long as you aren’t streaming videos or have some other device using the internet, you should get something within 10%-15% of your speed back. So if you have 3meg/1meg, your download speed should show something like 2.7 at the lowest, and your upload should be .8-.9 at the lowest.

If it is lower than that your ISP may be having a problem. You can eliminate your own hardware by running a speed test on another device. If it shows the same, turn off all internet using devices except the computer you are on, your router and your modem. Run the test again, see if it is still the same.

If the speedtest never gets better, you should call your ISP and see if they can fix it. Sometimes things just come loose on their end, settings get screwed up, etc.

If it is better on another device consistently, you might want to run some anti-malware software on that computer or call someone to check it out for you.

I have a user now who isn’t receiving faxes from the outside, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to show the process.

Assume the User is Mistaken

The first thing you should assume when you have incoming fax issues is that the user is wrong about what’s going on. This is especially true if the problem just started cropping up.

The simplest explanation for faxes not coming in is simply the party on the other end is dialing the wrong number. The other simple thing to check is the user’s Junk E-mail. In my user’s case this was the problem.  In fact, this is the second most common problem. The third most common is the user has made a rule in their Outlook and forgot about it, or you’ve changed something on the fax server and those e-mails no longer match the rule and go somewhere else.

If none of those are the problem, here’s how to troubleshoot the problem and see exactly what’s going on.

Step 1 – Check your fax settings. If you’ve got a newer FaxFinder check your incoming routes under “Fax Configuration”. Make sure their fax extension is correct according to the information the user has been given out. They may have just given out a wrong number, or their business cards got misprinted, or something similar. Make sure your own ducks are in a row in other words.

Step 2 – Send them a fax from an external number. You’ll want to test from outside your system, sending the user a fax from your own fax line, which might go through the ShoreTel system anyway, doesn’t prove much. Personally I like to use FaxZero.com. They give you a status page you can watch, as well as a report on whether it was successful or not.

Watch your fax status under “Status and Logs”. Eventually you’ll see the FaxZero fax coming in. This is a good way to make sure it’s going to the right person. You’ll get this:

Note how it shows the user it’s going to, so everything here is going to the right place. If it showed anyone else in that second table, you’ll know your route is wrong or that ShoreTel may not be passing the correct digits. The latter is HIGHLY unlikely. If the wrong digits are being passed, it’s probably your phone company sending the wrong set of numbers. Just call them, they can fix it pretty fast usually.

One reason this user might not have received faxes is that in this case she has a separate fax number from her direct voice line. This might show that I had not entered her fax number into the DNIS Map for the trunk group these calls come in on. In that case it would not show her as the intended user and would dump it into the default e-mail address in the fax server.

Step 3 – Assuming all the above happened correctly and the fax still didn’t go through to the user, you can check the inbound fax log for what happened. This will usually tell you pretty quick what the problem is. It might simply be it can’t find the e-mail server, or failed due to line noise or whatever.

If you look in the details of the fax you’ll see what happened to the fax after it was received. In this case the fax passed just fine with no errors.

So now check the Mail log and make sure the e-mails went through correctly. Here’s what mine looked like.

So if your mail queue is empty it’s a pretty safe bet that the e-mail is going out. one thing to check is get with one of those other users and make sure they’re getting their faxes at this point because you might just need to check your SMTP settings.

In my case, this part was working fine. E-mails are being sent out. So if you get to this point, it’s safe to assume your ducks are in a row, so it is probably an issue with the user’s account.

Fax Server is Working Correctly Now What?

No problem with the fax server at this point. Faxes are coming in, it is passing e-mails off to the mail server just fine, but the user still isn’t getting them. This is where you need to go through their e-mail to make sure that they aren’t just overlooking it.

The other, more common reason is that Outlook is dumping them into their Junk E-mail so check that as mentioned above. Also check any other spam quarantines you might have, though typically most firewalls don’t scan internal e-mail. Check their Outlook/Gmail rules as well and make sure it isn’t getting deleted that way.

Check your e-mail queues on your e-mail server as the fax server relays through that, and it might be stuck there too.

If they got your FaxZero fax just fine then the last possible explanation is that the sender is dialing the wrong number, so you can safely tell them that is the problem. You might even be proactive and call the sender and make sure they have the right phone number in their contact list.

Some partners might say I’m revealing arcane secrets about the phone system and costing them money, but this is actually documented elsewhere. I’m just simplifying the steps a bit.

These instructions are for Multi-Tech fax servers. I’ve only tried them and some open source fax servers. They are the easiest to work with, and have the best support I’ve seen. They’re also fully certified to work with the ShoreTel phone system. So there’s no reason not to get Multi-Tech.

You’ll need a switch, or set of switches, with as many analog extension ports available as you have fax server ports.

I’ll break this up into sections so it doesn’t get confusing. I tend to do all these steps together but it probably makes more sense if you prep the ShoreTel system, then the Fax server, then connect them.

ShoreTel Settings

Setting up the ShoreTel system for a fax server is more about having enough available analog extension ports on one of your switches for your fax server. If you’ve got a four port fax server, you need four available analog extension ports. Most switches can accommodate this.

This guide assumes you are using ShoreTel 12.2, a voice T1 or PRI for your phone lines, and installing the Fax Server in your Headquarters site. It also assumes you use four digit extensions, but it works for any length, you’ll just have to adapt your settings to accommodate where appropriate.

Step 1 – Set Up Analog Extensions on your Switch

Find a switch that has four ports on it that can be freed up for extensions. This will mean that switch can use 5 less IP phones for each port you use, so make sure it has room for this. You’ll need one port per port your fax server has.

Go to Platform Hardware -> Voice Switches / Service Appliances -> Primary to see your switches.

To set a port for being an analog extension select the port in the switch menu and select “Available”. Your quick start guides can tell you which ports can be used as extensions, but simply looking at the drop down menus will tell you.

Be aware you don’t have to put all of them on one switch, it’s just easier to manage if you do.

You’ll see in the picture that four of my switch ports are set to “Extension” this happens when you assign an extension to a certain port in the User settings page.

Step 2 - Set up your fax extensions.

You’ll need an extension for each port in your fax server. I would set these extensions up outside your normal extension groups to keep your DID numbers consistent. Call them “Fax Server 1″ through “Fax Server 4″ if you have a four port fax server. These need to be Extension Only, don’t give any of them a mailbox.

Instead of assigning this extension to a phone, assign it to a Port and put it on the first port you made available on the switch from Step 1. Set Fax Server 2 on the second port, and so forth.

Important: Set the “Fax Support” option to “Fax Server”. You’ll find this just below the check box for “Make Number Private” in the third section of the page.

Click Personal Options for Fax Server 1 and give it a call stack size of one. Then set the Standard call handling mode up for “Busy/No Answer” and set the destination to “Fax Server 2″. Repeat this for each extension in the chain. Fax Server 2 will forward to Fax Server 3 when busy and so forth. When you get to the last one in the chain, set it to go to Fax Server 1.

I think this can be done with a hunt group easier but ShoreTel used to recommend against this so I’ve never tried.

Step 3 – Set Up A Fax Redirect Extension In Your Headquarters Site

Click on your Sites Menu and open your Headquarters site. Set the Fax Redirect Extension to “Fax Server 1″. That’ll make sure when the ShoreTel system hears a fax tone it redirects the fax to this extension and hands it off to the fax server.

Step 4 – Optional: DNIS Numbers

Do not do this if you are using everyone’s direct number as their fax number too. 

The whole point of a ShoreTel system is that you have one contact number for everything so this part is optional. All you really need is a DID for each user. However, some organizations have separate direct fax numbers for everyone. There are many reasons why you’d do it this way, not the least of which is that you may have always had separate numbers for faxing to each person.

The advantage for this is the phone at the user’s desk doesn’t ring and beep like it does having it redirect from their normal direct number. This is how to set this up.

The other advantage to DNIS numbers is you can port your old analog line numbers to your PRI and have those faxes sent to someone’s e-mail. You can even get more direct numbers for specific fax numbers for marketing campaigns and such. I will do a separate blog post on this as it is enough to be another topic.

Make sure you’ve ported all your Fax numbers to your PRI/T1. Go into your Trunks Menu, select Trunk Groups and open your PRI trunk group where these calls come in. Click the “DNIS Map” button and this is the tedious part of this process.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and put the last four digits of the first fax DID into the first box, and then type the full number into the second box, have it go to an Extension and select “Fax Server 1″ as the destination. Click the Add Record Link.

Do this for every Fax number.

Important! Make sure you click save at the top here. I’ve entered about 200 numbers once and forgot to hit save and it screwed up all my work. Clicking the Add This Record link does not automatically save what you just did.

Fax Finder Settings

This is how to set up the Fax Finder fax server. I’m assuming here you have a relatively new fax server. If you have one of the old FF420′s the screens will be different but the concept is going to be the same.

You’ll need a crossover cable and a laptop for this as Multi-Tech hasn’t yet moved into the 21st century on how appliance firmware design.

Step 1 – Go ahead and rack your fax server near the ShoreTel switch you’re going to wire it into and turn it on.

Hook your laptop into the ethernet port on the back of the appliance with a crossover cable. Set your laptop’s IP address to 192.168.2.5 and the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0. You don’t need a gateway.

Open a web browser and go to 192.168.2.1. I’ve found the newer versions don’t seem to like Chrome too much, but Firefox and Internet Explorer work fine.

The default username/password for most Fax Finder appliances is admin/admin.

Once in, click on “System Configuration” and Click on network. Give it an IP address, Subnet mask, gateway, and DNS servers.

Click the save button and then go setup your SMTP server in the next section, and make sure the Timezone setting is correct under time. It will probably reboot. You can now hook the fax server up into your network and access it from the IP address you just put in.

Step 2 – Wiring

This step is intimidating to some people. There are a few ways to do this and I’ll try to get some pictures up soon of some of the things I refer to.

The Easy Way

Get the little 1′ long ShoreTel Amphenol cable (25 pair) that probably came with your ShoreTel switch and hook it up to a standard 12 port Patch Panel or “harmonica”. A harmonica is basically a strip of female phone jacks with an amphenol jack on it. Most of your supply chain shops like Border States, or GraybaR will carry these.

Attach this to your ShoreTel switch. Run some normal phone line cable from port 1 on the back of the fax server to jack 1 on the harmonica. Do this for all ports.

Please note that the Amphenol cable that came with your ShoreTel switch is wired up specially. If you use a normal 25 pair amphenol cable this won’t work out quite right. Also note that  you need a female to male cable.

The Hard Way

The hard way sucks, but can be done. Get an amphenol cable and cut the end that doesn’t go into the ShoreTel switch off. Strip back a few inches of wire on this end. You’ll need some RJ11 female jacks to do it right, or some wire splice clips if you don’t care. I won’t describe the don’t care method. It looks terrible.

The pin outs vary greatly by switch. The best thing to do here is find the Install guide for whichever model of switch you’re using to figure out what ports do what. You’re looking for which pairs are the Extension or Universal ports. On the ShoreGear 60 every other pair is a Universal port up to pair 15, and every other port from 17 to 23 can be used as Extensions. This information is usually on page 2.

You can find all these guides here: http://support.shoretel.com/products/voice_switches/

So you’ve figured out you need to use ports 1, 3, 5, and 7 for your fax server ports. Refer to the following guide on Wikipedia which shows what pair is what on the standard 25 pair wiring scheme. Here’s the chart, but the graphic on Wikipedia is easier to decipher.

For pairs 1, 3, 5, and 7 you’d need the following colored pairs: White/Blue, White/Green, White/Slate, and Red/Orange. You’ll need to wire each of these into the center pair of your RJ11 jacks (it’s usually color coded white/blue on the jacks).

Hook your phone lines into the jacks you just wired up and then place them into their corresponding ports on the back of the fax server.

Step 3 – Fax Configuration

Log back into your Fax Finder.

Click on Fax Configuration. On the modem drop down box select “All Modems”. Make sure that the routing box is set to “DTMF Digits”. I set the baud rate to 33600, and everything else is left the same. You might want to adjust the number of rings.

Click Save

I typically don’t make any other changes in Fax configuration. It is set to send PDF files by default.

Setting Up Users

Once you’ve got everything wired up and your settings are correct in the ShoreTel and Fax Finder you can now set your first user up and test to make sure that everything is working correctly.

I’m assuming that you’re using the one number does it all method.

Step 1 – Set up Fax Redirect in ShoreTel

Log into Shoreware Director and open up a user. Scroll down to the third section (it starts with Mailbox Server). Make sure the Fax Support drop down is set to “User – Redirect”.

Step 2 – Add User to Fax Finder

Log into your Fax Finder and click on Users. Click the Add link up at the top.

Fill in the fields.

Username – I typically use their Windows username here.

Full Name – Self Explanatory

Password – Self Explanatory. If you push out the client software it’s a good idea to make this something simple. 

Phone Number/Fax Number – These two fields are mostly cosmetic for basic fax to email functionality. I fill it in for completeness and so their cover pages are filled in.

Organization – Self Explanatory

Include Cover Page – I leave this unchecked but you can force an outgoing cover page. 

Under the Create Inbound route check the “add route” box and put their extension into the “Fax Extension” box.

Click Save

Assuming everything went well you can now send a fax to that user’s DID and they should get their fax. I would use a website like FaxZero.com to send the test fax as it’s an outside line.

If your user gets it then everything is correct. You can use the status menu to see if everything is ringing correctly and the right digits are being passed.

Other Steps

Typically this is something your partner will do before you get this started, so you’ll need to know this for your DID’s to work correctly. In your Trunk Groups look at the “Inbound Section” and see how many digits are being sent from the CO. Most of the time it’s 4 or 7 or 10 if you are in the US, but it could be any number really. You’ll also need to know which digits are being passed. Usually it’s the whole number, or the last four digits but your phone company can tell you this.

These digits are the part of the number that need to go into the fax extension box if  you are using the DNIS method. When you use DID’s, even if the last four of the DID are different from the extension, the Shoretel system should pass the extension to the fax server.

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I did a telnet session into one of my phones to see what commands were available.

I copied and pasted a lot of this from the telnet output of my phone. I’ve tried to run most of these commands and commented whether it works or not. If anyone has any additions to this please use the comments or contact me form so I can add it.

This is a work in progress and I’d welcome any submissions on commands that have been discovered. If it’s something that can ruin the phone, please make note of that when you submit.

ShoreTel Related Commands

These are some commands not expressly listed in the “help” system in the phone.

bootChange - This will let you enter the IP address, ShoreTel server IP and other things. This CAN be useful if you’re trying to change something on a remote phone.

printsysInfo - Shows a lot of system info for the phone. You can see MAC address, IP address, which FTP server it is set to download from, SNTP server information and all that here. This will show firmware versions as well.

reboot - Reboots the phone.

ping “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” - Pings an IP address. you need to enclose the IP address in quotes.

prtleveltabs – Prints the volume levels of the various audio outputs on the phone.

setAllCallApearanceLEDs [state] – Just for fun, you can turn on and off all the Call Appearance LEDs. State is a 0 or a 1. I did type that right, there is only 1 “p” in Apearance.  I haven’t figured out how to turn them green.

Networking Commands

Command – ShoreTel/VxWorks Documentation – My Thoughts

hostAdd “hostname”,”inetaddr” – add a host to remote host table; ”inetaddr” must be in standard Internet address format e.g. “90.0.0.4″ – Command works. If you don’t have a DNS server this could be somewhat useful as it adds a host and IP address combination to the phone.

hostShow – print current remote host table – Works. Shows the host table with hostname/ip address combinations. In mine I got the following output:

netDevCreate “devname”,”hostname”,protocol - create an I/O device to access files on the specified host (protocol 0=rsh, 1=ftp) – Works. This is a file access command. Not sure what use it might be.

routeAdd “destaddr”,”gateaddr” – add route to route table – Works. Adds a network route. This might can be used as a way to direct a phone to the ShoreTel server without the aid of a static route in a router. Will have to try this.

routeDelete “destaddr”,”gateaddr” – delete route from route table – Works. Removes routes added with above command.

routeShow – print current route table – Works. Shows the current routing table.

iam “usr”[,"passwd"] – specify the user name by which you will be known to remote hosts (and optional password) – Works. Probably a vxworks specific command. Not entirely sure of use.
whoami – print the current remote ID – Works. Got the output “value = 1 = 0×1″. Again might just be a VxWorks thing with no relevance to ShoreTel.
rlogin “host” – log in to a remote host;”host” can be inet address or host name in remote host table – Doesn’t work. Returns “undefined symbol”.

ifShow ["ifname"] – show info about network interfaces – Works. Shows information about the physical interfaces on the phone.

inetstatShow – show all Internet protocol sockets – Works. Shows ports and sockets the phone might be using. Could be  useful if you have firewall issues.

tcpstatShow – show statistics for TCP – Works. Shows stats on network activity.

udpstatShow – show statistics for UDP – Works. Shows UDP stats. Same as tcpstatShow, just shows UDP protocol stats instead.

ipstatShow – show statistics for IP – Works. Overall IP stats.

icmpstatShow – show statistics for ICMP – Doesn’t work, or might not have had data.

arptabShow – show a list of known ARP entries – Works. Shows ARP table.

mbufShow – show mbuf statistics

IO Commands

This looks like VxWorks file system commands. Not entirely sure that this can be used for troubleshooting purposes. I won’t comment on these as they are almost identical to DOS commands. these probably have a real potential to screw your phone up.

cd “path” - Set current working path

pwd - Print working path
ls ["wpat"[,long]] - List contents of directory
ll ["wpat"] - List contents of directory – long format
lsr ["wpat"[,long]] - Recursive list of directory contents
llr ["wpat"] - Recursive detailed list of directory
rename “old”,”new” – Change name of file
copy ["in"][,"out"] - Copy in file to out file (0 = std in/out)
cp “wpat”,”dst” - Copy many files to another dir
xcopy “wpat”,”dst” – Recursively copy files
mv “wpat”,”dst” – Move files into another directory
xdelete “wpat” - Delete a file, wildcard list or tree
attrib “path”,”attr” – Modify file attributes
xattrib “wpat”,”attr” - Recursively modify file attributes
chkdsk “device”, L, V  – Consistency check of file system
diskInit “device”  – Initialize file system on disk
diskFormat “device” – Low level and file system disk format – This seems like a bad idea.

Typically this is due to something called “Asymmetric Routing”. Any number of things can cause this, and it’s not always problem with your network. What happens is a packet takes a different route from point A to point B than it does coming back from point B to point A. The Cyberoam will by default drop the return traffic as it didn’t come back the same way it went out. This is a good security measure.

Sometimes you can fix your network topology, sometimes you can’t but the Cyberoam will still drop that traffic. A firewall rule will not always fix the problem either. If you’re sure that what is getting dropped is not a security risk, here’s how to bypass it.

Bypass Stateful Inspection

Step 1 – Log into your Cyberoam CLI. You can telnet/SSH into the Cyberoam, or click the “Console Link” at the top of your Web GUI. 

Step 2 – Put your username and password in. If you logged in through the Web GUI, just the console password will do.

Step 3 – Type 4 for “Cyberoam Console” in the CLI

Step 4 – To bypass the inspection from one network to another type the following:

“set advanced-firewall bypass-stateful-firewall-config add source_network [source network IP] source_netmask [source subnet mask] dest_network [destination network IP] dest_netmask [destination subnet mask]”

Note: You don’t have to type the command out. You can just start each parameter that is in bold and hit tab, the Cyberoam will fill it in for you.

Example: You want to bypass traffic inspection from 192.168.1.0 to 192.168.2.0 you’d type this: ”set advanced-firewall bypass-stateful-firewall-config add source_network 192.168.1.0 source_netmask 255.255.255.0 dest_network 192.168.2.0 dest_netmask 255.255.255.0″

Step 5 – If  you need to bypass traffic inspection both ways, type the above command again, only reverse the source and destination networks.

Caution: It is extremely easy to mistype IP addresses. You can check your work by typing “show advanced-firewall” in the console. If you need to remove an entry use “del” instead of add after the “bypass-stateful-firewall-config” part of the command. You can usually use the up arrow on most telnet clients to cycle back through commands and replace just that word in the line.

I’m making a prediction today (04/21/2012) that the stress testing will fail and Blizzard will push back the release date to my previously predicted but not posted online date of last quarter 2057. I could be wrong on this as I predicted Duke Nukem Forever would come out in 2056. We all know Gearbox managed to get it out in July of 2011, though I hear it sucked.

Anyway, I could be wrong but I think this Beta is just a staged excuse to release Diablo 3 later because something is wrong with it. Remember, World of Warcraft was in beta hell forever.

NOTE: The Amazon link below said release date May 15, 2012 when I posted this.

See larger image Diablo III: Standard Edition (Computer Game) List Price: $59.99 USD New From: $58.99 In Stock Used from: $37.99 In Stock Release date May 15, 2012.