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Windows 2003 Tools
edited by on October 18th 2012, at 12:13

Some direct links to useful Windows 2003 tools:

 
Deleting an account in Apple Mail deletes e-mail messages
edited by on October 17th 2012, at 09:21

Be careful when deleting a POP3-account in Apple Mail. Doing so will also remove all messages from the folders Inbox, Sent items and Trash, even if they are no longer on the server and only available offline.

To prevent this from happening, move/copy all messages to folders created inside the On My Mac section. These are folders that are kept locally and will not be affected when removing accounts. After which, you can safely remove the account.

 
(Re-)enable the touchpad on your HP Probook 4520s
edited by on October 8th 2012, at 16:32
It's quite easy to accidentally disable the touchpad on a HP Probook 4520s: double-tapping the left-top corner of the touchpad triggers the enable/disable switch. A LED indicates whether the touchpad is on or off: when the LED is lit, it means the touchpad is disabled, and vice-versa.

Users who are not aware of this feature can be looking to re-enable the touchpad for quite some time. A customer had a similar issue, and I was unaware the touchpad switch was actually built in the touchpad itself.



To re-enable the touchpad, all he had to do was double-tap the LED in the left-top corner. From a design perspective, it's quite neat, but not really user-friendly, or do we really have to read t  ...
 
Resetting the SPA3102 to factory defaults
edited by on October 8th 2012, at 16:04

You can reset the SPA3102 to factory default using the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and following these steps:

  1. Plug an analog (PSTN) phone into the Phone 1 port
  2. Dial ****: you'll hear a voice prompt.
  3. When the IVR is done talking, enter the sequence 73738, followed by a #.
  4. Press 1 to confirm. The unit will reboot to factory defaults.
 
Disable sent items in Outlook when using Google Apps Sync
edited by on September 24th 2012, at 12:32

Because Google Apps (Gmail) automatically puts a copy of your sent items in the Sent Items folder, it's rather redundant for Outlook to do this as well. Although Google Apps prevents the creation of doubles, it's better to just let Google Apps do it, as it's one less thing to upload (particularly useful on slow connections).

To turn off the copy of sent items in Outlook, turn off the option Save copies of messages in the Sent Items folder. You'll find this in the Outlook options in the Mail tab, section Save messages.

 
dnsmasq + openvz: set capabilities failed
edited by on September 24th 2012, at 12:24
When running dnsmasq inside a VPS on an OpenVZ server, you may get an error while trying to start up dnsmasq (this is in particular the case for Debian):Starting DNS forwarder and DHCP server: dnsmasqdnsmasq: setting capabilities failed: Operation not permitted

This is because dnsmasq does not run as root (which is a good thing). What happens is that dnsmasq gets started as root, then attempts to set privileged functions to the dnsmasq user before changing user from root to that user. When setting these capabilities fails, you get the above error.

The reason for failing is usually because either the kernel is missing the required features, or, in case of OpenVZ, the permissions are not pas  ...
 
Wine and Crossover broken in Mac OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.2
edited by on September 22nd 2012, at 12:08
With the release of Mac OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.2, Apple has made some changes to the X11/XQuartz implementation, effectively breaking OpenGL support in applications that use it. In particular, Wine, Crossover, and all other derivates (accept Cider).

Apple and the Wine development team are currently working on fixing the issue, but it's unlikely that the fix will come from Apple. Luckily, certain patches were already made available in the last few days, fixing the issue for at least a few versions of the Wine engine.

XQuartz, the alternative X11 for Mac, has a new release available which fixes the issue: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/X112.7.4.

Wineskin has released version 2.5.8, fi  ...
 
RemoteApps are black windows on a Windows 2008R2
edited by on September 19th 2012, at 12:48
When running some RemoteApp, published from a Windows 2008R2, you may sometimes experience that the application does not start properly. In the startup window, when clicking on the Details button, you see a black window and no contents at all. The problem mainly occurs when working via internet, via a wireless network, or some other slower-than-normal link. Additionally, when your session is logged off on the RDS server, you will be able to start the RemoteApp once; subsequently restarting the application results in the above specified behaviour.

The issue is caused by the Remote Desktop Session Host display driver on the RDS server. During the initial connection, the monitor layout packe  ...
 
View/edit/export Outlook AutoComplete information
edited by on September 18th 2012, at 10:38

NirnSoft has a useful tool to view, edit, import/export Outlook AutoComplete information.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/outlook_nk2_edit.html

It can handle all versions of Outlook that support this feature, as well as the the information stored in a message store (be it Exchange or local PST).

 
Exchange: move mail to a folder depending on which alias it's sent to
edited by on August 24th 2012, at 10:34

Currently, Exchange/Outlook only supports client-side rules if you want to move messages to a specific folder, depending on which alias it's sent to. This means that the rule only works when Outlook is running, which is not always possible.

You can workaround the issue by creating a rule that checks for the content of the message headers. This type of rule can be created server-side and will always run when messages arrive on the Exchange server. By checking whether the alias is present in the message headers, you can easily create a rule that moves those messages to another folder.

 
Back from Bronkow
edited by on August 23rd 2012, at 17:45
For a few weeks now I'm back from my holiday at Bronkow (Germany). It was my first soaring holiday abroad, and I must say that it was a revealing experience.

The weather was unfortunately not that great, but despite that, I still managed to fly around quite a bit. And with the less good weather, we also visited Berlin and Dresden, went to a spa nearby, went to Tropical Islands, and some other things. Of course, flying was the main activity: I flew some good times, did my first outlanding (albeit on another airfield), did my first flying-in-the-rain, and flew with water ballast for the first time. Others in our group did some "first timers" as well. For the pictures, check out the   ...
 
MySQL replication error 1236
edited by on July 6th 2012, at 14:06
Two possible occurences may happen related to this error 1236: either you get the error message like so:

Got fatal error 1236: 'Client requested master to start replication from impossible position' from master when reading data from binary log

Or, no error is given and the Slave_IO_Running is returning no while the Slave_SQL_Running returns yes.

If this occurs, it may be because the master went down unexpectedly (and has since rebooted). Because of this, the slave has not received the command to switch to the next binlog file and is stuck at the previous one.

In other cases, it's possible that no error is displayed, but that the Slave_IO_Running still says no. In this case, the master   ...
 
What to backup for MS CRM 4.0
edited by on July 6th 2012, at 11:56
  • SQL dump of the main CRM database (MSCRM_CONFIG)
  • SQL dump of all the CRM organization databases (usually organization_MSCRM)
  • The ISV folder in INSTALL_ROOT\CRMWeb
  • The contents of INSTALL_ROOT\Server\bin\assembly
 
Trapeze: MAC-based authentication gets ignored after correct set up in Ringmaster
edited by on July 6th 2012, at 11:49
At a client running a Trapeze/Juniper network with some MX-8 controllers, a bunch of MP-371B and an instance of Ringmaster software to control and configure it all, we were working on implementing MAC-address based authentication for one of their ESSIDs. After correctly setting up the necessary policies, and AAA servers, we noticed that any client could still connect to our network, despite all settings being correct.

Baffled at this, we started to look around, trying to figure out what went wrong. My collegue finally remembered the true cause for our problem, a setting in the Wireless Service Profile.

There, the Fall Through Access was set to last resort, which basically tells the network  ...
 
Reset the ARCserve 'caroot' password
edited by on July 6th 2012, at 11:32
If you lost or forgot your CA BrightStor ARCserv password, you can do the following to recover it.

Open cmd.exe, and navigate to the root of your ARCserve installation (e.g. C:\Program Files\CA\BrightStor ARCserve Backup\).

Once in the root of the ARCserve folder, type cstop to stop all running ARCserve services.

Use Windows to navigate to the sub-folder \Data\Discovery (e.g. C:\Program Files\CA\BrightStor ARCserve Backup\Data\Discovery). In there, you'll find a folder that bears the name of your server. Rename this folder (e.g. append ".old").

Back in the command prompt, type cstart to start the services again.

Run the command Authsetup /p "password" where "pas  ...
 
Shadowing a Windows 2008 Terminal Services session results in disconnection
edited by on July 2nd 2012, at 18:02

When running a Windows 2008 (R1) Terminal Services, and you connect with a RDP 7.1 client and try to shadow another session, it may happen that both clients get disconnected.

KB2523307 tells us that this is caused by RemoteFX being active when a new client is used.

A hotfix is available to address the issue, and can be requested via the KB.

EDIT: for your convenience, I've attached the hotfix (English only!), at least until Microsoft requests its removal...

 
Remote Desktop Server lock-down guide
edited by on July 2nd 2012, at 17:19
This article is a reference to a number of articles and links to provide information about how to succesfully lock down your Remote Desktop Server (2008R2) or Terminal Server (2003 / 2008). It is not a definite guide to how to perform a lock down, but will provide certain pointers, and highlight certain pitfalls. It is a work-in-progress and several additions will be made as the guide progresses.

You obviously need a Windows-domain running AD for lockdown to work properly. A standalone server running a local group policy can't be locked down enough to be useful. A domain is highly recommended.

Your DC or a member server (can be the RDS / TS as well) should have the Group Policy Mana  ...
 
Always show Computer icon on desktop
edited by on July 2nd 2012, at 17:18
To always show the Computer icon on the desktop via GPO, there are several things to be set. Aside of the obvious setting in GPO, you also have to add a registry entry through GPP to automatically show the Computer icon on desktop.

In User Configuration, Preferences, Windows Settings, Registry, add a new entry. Whether you want to enforce or not, is up to you. Either choose create (only applied once), or Replace (always apply).

The value is a DWORD value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel, named {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}. This is the CLSID for the Computer icon. Set it to 0 to have the icon shown on user's des  ...
 
Change duration of Windows 7 Desktop Slideshow animation
edited by on July 2nd 2012, at 15:36

When using Desktop Slideshow in Windows 7 (a slideshow of desktop backgrounds), you can change the duration of the transition between two images with a registry hack.

  1. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Personalization\Desktop Slideshow
  2. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value, named AnimationDuration. The value of this DWORD is set in milliseconds. Setting it to 2000 will produce a transition of 2 seconds, and so on.
 
Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions
edited by on July 2nd 2012, at 13:59
For the proper application of all parts of a GPO, including the Group Policy Preferences (GPP), you need to install the right client on your client computers. You can find a list of download links below.

Windows XP: http://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=3628

Windows XP x64: http://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=23680

Windows 2003: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6955

Windows 2003 x64: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14171

Windows Vista: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24169

Windows Vista x64: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15198

Starting from Vista SP2, you no longe  ...
 
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