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Remove the Windows 10 Upgrade icon and prompt in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1
edited by on April 22nd 2016, at 14:14

If you are not interested in Windows 10, but are plagued with the icon and prompts to upgrade to Windows 10, you can get rid of this. The Windows 10 Upgrade comes with Windows Update in KB3035583. You can uninstall this update in order to remove the Windows 10 Upgrade.

Note that after removal, you will have to hide the update from Windows Update to prevent it from being installed again.

 
FTOS 9.10 removes MTU of 12000
edited by on April 22nd 2016, at 11:16

When upgrading Dell Force10 switches, keep in mind that starting from FTOS version 9.10, MTU per port can no longer be set to 12000. It is now limited to a maximum of 9216, making it the same maximum as the DNOS (Dell Networking) firmware. After the firmware update, the MTU of each port will automatically be adjusted.

For jumbo frames, this doesn't really change anything. An MTU 9216 on the switch still results in a datagram MTU of 9000, sufficient for e.g. Equallogic storage.

 
Windows 7 / 2008R2 is very slow to search for updates
edited by on April 22nd 2016, at 11:09

You may encounter the problem with Windows Update to take an extreme amount of time to search for updates. Additionally, the Windows Update process (part of svchost.exe) runs at 100% CPU time and uses a large amount of memory.

You can resolve this by installing the optional KB3102810.

If you are installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 / 2008R2, it is also highly recommended to install KB3112343 before searching for other updates. This considerably speeds up the search for updates.

 
ADMT 3.x PES installation fails with error "The supplied password does not match this encryption key
edited by on April 21st 2016, at 16:43
During the installation of ADMT PES (Password Export Server), the installer reports the encryption key password is wrong, even though you're absolutely sure it's the correct password. Although KB2004090 states this is for 3.1, the problem also exists on 3.2.

The reason for this is that the MSI installer does not elevate the session. If you are not logged on with the Administrator-account, the elevation does not occur automatically and the error mentioned above will appear, without any mention of elevation requirements.

To work around the issue, you can follow the steps below. This will ensure the MSI installer runs in an elevated session and the installation will continue as normal. Altern  ...
 
SQL Server Management Studio 2014 Service Pack 1 download
edited by on April 14th 2016, at 16:41

A bit hard to find through the search on Microsoft website, so here's the direct link:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46697

 
Azure Resource Visualizer
edited by on April 12th 2016, at 14:04
 
Enabling TRIM in Mac OSX 10.10.4 and up
edited by on April 8th 2016, at 17:22
Mac OSX 10.10.4 introduces TRIM support for third party SSDs. Until then, you had to use third party tools such as Trim Enabler in order to get TRIM on your SSD.

By default, when replacing your HDD with a third party SSD (i.e. an SSD not from Apple), TRIM is still not enabled. But you can run a simple command from a Terminal which will do just that:

sudo trimforce enable

This will enable TRIM on any SSD that supports it. Note that you will have to reboot for the changes to take effect.

If you wish to disable TRIM (why on earth would you do that?), you can run the same command, replacing enable with disable.

Note that trimforce does not completely replace Trim Enabler as it only enables   ...
 
Equallogic FW 8.x introduces default policy for daily automatic snapshot creation
edited by on April 8th 2016, at 17:08
Version 8 of the Equallogic PS firmware introduces a default policy for automatic snapshot creation. This means that by default, a daily snapshot will be created for each volume present in the group. The policy also states to keep 2 snapshots, which can be very space consuming, quickly filling up your Equallogic.

When upgrading the firmware to version 8 from an earlier version, this policy will automatically be created and activated, without telling you, causing headaches among those unaware of this change.

From the CLI, you can check whether the default policy is active:

grpparams default-snapshot-sched show



To turn off this policy from the CLI, type this:

grpparams default-snapshot-  ...
 
About Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) in Windows
edited by on April 8th 2016, at 16:16

Windows checks its access to the internet by performing an HTTP GET to the following URL:

http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt

If the request succeeds, Windows determines that the connection to the internet is up. The mechanism uses whatever has been set up as an internet connection and will also use any configured proxy.

 
Accessing online archive from Outlook
edited by on April 8th 2016, at 15:57

In-place online archive, this means having your online archive readily available in Outlook, is only available if you have Office ProPlus or a standalone version of Outlook. Outlook from Office Standard (including Office365 Business Premium) does not provide access to the online archive, and as such, it can only be opened from OWA.

 
Enable Remote Desktop and Remote Management on a Windows Core Server through scripting
edited by on March 17th 2016, at 13:30
There are a variety of methods to enable Remote Desktop and Remote Management from a script. This is particularly useful if you have many Core Servers and no SCCM or some other deployment system.

Powershell:

(Get-WmiObject Win32_TerminalServiceSetting -Namespace root\cimv2\terminalservices).SetAllowTsConnections(1,1)Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -ForceEnable-PSRemoting -Force

This enables Remote Desktop with NLA (first param), adjust the required firewall rules (second param), and finally, enables Remote Management.

Batch:

cscript %windir%\system32\scregedit.wsf /ar 0cscript %windir%\system32\scregedit.wsf /cs 1

Like the PS variant, this enables Remote Desktop while the second line   ...
 
Soft-reset a frozen iDRAC
edited by on March 17th 2016, at 09:34
Aside from pulling power cables from a Dell server or blade, there are some other ways to (soft-)reset a frozen iDRAC.

Each rack server has an i-Button on the front panel of the server. To soft-reset iDRAC, hold down this button for 20 seconds.

If you still can log on using SSH, you can also reset it that way, saving you a trip to the server room. See the last part of this article to see how to do this.

To reset the iDRAC on a blade, you can log in on the CMC to do so.

From Chassis Overview, click Troubleshooting, then click on Reset Components (the third item in the submenu, next to Diagnostics).

If you cannot log in using the web interface but still have access to the unit through SSH  ...
 
Cannot map a drive letter to a redirected folder in RDP
edited by on March 14th 2016, at 09:51

It is currently not possible to directly map a drive letter to a redirected folder when connecting to a server using Microsoft RDP. Most programs do not require a drive letter but in case you do need a "local path", you can create a symlink in order to achieve this.

MKLINK /D C:\MyFolder \\tsclient\MyFolder

This will create a "symlinked" folder on your C-drive, which you can then use to work with files and folders of the redirected folder. The symlink is persistent across reboots.

 
Customize the idle screen logo of a Cisco 79X0 phone
edited by on March 4th 2016, at 11:54
You can make your own logo to be placed on the idle screen. Follow these specifications to create it.

Format: save the logo as BMP in 256-colors (8-bit) and without colorspace info.

About colorspace info: by default, Gimp includes this info, resulting in a malformed logo on the phone. During export to BMP, deselect this option (under compatibility options). MS Paint never saves colorspace info so no specific settings are required.

Do not save in 16-color (4-bit), especially with MS Paint: you will lose the darker shade of gray (404040) because it is not part of the default 4-bit palette.

Dimensions: 90x56

If the dimensions are larger, the phone will automatically downsize, although it i  ...
 
Error 1325 when uninstalling HP Client Security
edited by on February 18th 2016, at 14:55

You may get the following error when trying to uninstall HP Client Security:

Error 1325: Hewlett-Packard is not a valid short file name.

The solution, albeit a very odd one, is to disable all CD/DVD drives on your HP system through Device Manager (Start → Run → devmgmt.msc).

After the uninstallation, you can re-enable the device.

 
Turn off highlighting of new programs in Start
edited by on February 11th 2016, at 15:08

You can turn off the highlighting of new and recently installed programs in Start menu/Start Screen. There's no direct group policy but you can use a GPP to insert a registry value that does the same thing:

  • Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  • Name: Start_NotifyNewApps
  • Type: DWORD (32-bit)
  • Value: set to 0 to turn off highlighting, set to 1 to turn it back on.
 
No NLA support when connecting to an RDS with Windows XP SP3
edited by on February 11th 2016, at 12:42
Windows XP SP3 and the latest supported Remote Desktop client update should support Network Level Authentication (NLA). But, when connecting to an RDS server with NLA enabled, you may still get the following error:

Remote Desktop Connection
The remote computer requires Network Level Authentication, which your computer does not support. For assistance, contact your system administrator or technical support.

NLA support requires the following on your computer:

Windows XP Service Pack 3

The latest version of the RDC: Remote Desktop client v7.0, although the 6.1 update will also work.

The component which takes care of NLA, called Credential Security Support Provider (CredSSP) is not enabled  ...
 
Save messages to file with Outlook 2011 for Mac
edited by on February 10th 2016, at 15:55

With the latest updates of Outlook 2011 for Mac, when opening a message, the Save As function is grayed out, so you can no longer save individual messages like that.

However, you can still drag the message from the Outlook window to your desktop or to a folder in Finder. This creates a eml file that Outlook can read later when you double-click it, and also includes all attachments of that message.

If you need an e-mail as a PDF, you can simply use OSX'es built-in "print-to-PDF" functionality.

 
Bandwidth limiting on a Cisco ASA
edited by on February 10th 2016, at 13:26
You can very quickly do bandwidth limiting for a certain network or range of IP addresses.

Create an ACL for the traffic to do bandwidth limiting on. It is required to have a separate ACL as the QoS policy has to be applied to a specific ACL.

So, suppose the internal address range that needs to be limited is the network 192.168.1.0/24, then this would become:

access-list guest-wireless-bandwidth extended permit ip 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 anyaccess-list guest-wireless extended permit ip any 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0

Next, set up the QoS policy:

class-map qosmatch access-list guest-wireless-bandwidth policy-map qosclass qos

Provide bandwidth limitations (in this case, it's set to 10Mbp  ...
 
Gracefully shutdown a Novell Netware (including Groupwise)
edited by on February 10th 2016, at 09:50
Every now and then, one comes across a true relic. One such relic is Novell Netware. As I never used Netware before, I quickly resorted to Google in order to figure out how to do certain things, and thought it would be nice to bundle them here.

One such thing is performing a graceful shutdown of a Netware server. Unlike other systems, where a single command is enough, Netware proves to be more of a challenge and has certain caveats when attempting to perform a shutdown. And this depends greatly on the version of Netware.

In the GWOA, press F7, then choose to shut down Groupwise. This will bring you back to the system console.

The only proper way is to run a file called SHUTDOWN.NCF. This   ...
 
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