Michael Kelley's questions

One of our computers has started to constantly acquire a new lease from our DHCP server (a Trendnet router.) I get these 3 messages every couple of minutes, and the messages are logged at the same time:

Your computer was successfully assigned an address from the network, and it can now connect to other computers.

The system detected that network adapter Local Area Connection 3 was connected to the network, and has initiated normal operation.

The system detected that network adapter Local Area Connection 3 was connected to the network, and has initiated normal operation.

(Yes, the last message is repeated twice.)

Because of this, the computer is having constant problems with communicating with other computers on the network. It's used as a CruiseControl .net server, so it intermittently fails to copy files to network locations, and it fails to connect to our subversion server.

The lease expiration time on the router is 1 week, so I don't think it's an early expiration issue and I'm not having this problem with any other computers on the LAN. I've updated the drivers for the network interface and that didn't seem to have any effect. I've power cycled the router, and I've rebooted the computer. I installed a PCI network card and it's still having the same problems, though the time between the message sets is longer (about 1/2 hour instead of a couple of minutes.) The last thing to be updated at the time this problem started was a Windows Defender definition, so I don't think it's any recently installed software.

My question is: are there other things I can do to debug this problem, or does anyone have any idea what is going on?

EDIT: I've also changed ethernet cables and ports on the switch and I still get the same problem.

EDIT: I tried reinstalling and restarting TCP/IP (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/19/reinstall-and-reset-tcpip-internet-protocol-in-windows-vista-2003-and-xp/), but that didn't seem to help.

In a PowerShell script, how can I check if I'm running with administrator privileges?

My current configuration is a Dell PowerEdge SC440 server with 2 SATA 160 GB drives in RAID 1 configuration. I bought two 1 TB drives and I want to replace the 160 GB with these 1 TB drives. There is only 1 partition on the virtual drive.

The first thing I tried was to remove 1 160 GB drive and replace it with a 1 TB drive. The 1 TB synched correctly, so I replaced the other 1 TB drive and that synched successfully. I was hoping I could extend the partition or at least create a new partition with the unused space. Unfortunately the Disk Management snapin only sees the virtual drive as 160 GB. I tried use Gparted, but it only recognized the virtual drive as 160 GB.

My question is what is the recommended way to acquire the extra space in the 1 TB? Can I take one of the 160 GB drives out, stick it in another computer and clone that drive, stick that back in the server, stick the other 160 GB drive in and sync that with the newly cloned driver? Or is there another easier way to do what I need to do?

I would prefer to solve this problem with freely available software.

I have a folder on my Windows Server 2003 that I'd like to share with all computers on the network, but I want to force people to input a password (at least initially) to connect to the share. I tried adding a password to the "Guest" account, but it never asks for a password. I've tried setting up a separate account with a password, but I get "Windows cannot access \server\" message. What's the best way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?