Adding Windows XP Media Center to a Domain
During another domain migration yesterday, I came across a Windows XP Media Center PC in the workplace. This is certainly common with small companies, especially when they’re bootstrapping. You buy what you can afford and that usually means Home and Media editions of Windows. Those work great for a small network, but of course can’t be added to [...]
Optimize Windows Settings for SSD
So you got a shiny new SSD for your Windows system. As you may or may not know, there is only a finite number of writes to each sector before it becomes unusable, eventually causing the disk to be unusable. So what can you go to make sure it lasts as long as it can? I’ve [...]
Firing a SysAdmin
Recently I had to replace an IT guy who’d gone off the rails. Something odd about this profession seems to cause an unusually high number of them (say, compared to other engineers) to drop off the radar and partially or completely disappear. It usually happens in one of two ways, they start with sporadic attendance, [...]
Cisco ASA 5505 Software Upgrade
So you’re looking to upgrade your Cisco ASA 5505 to the latest and greatest firmware? Well take it from me, don’t update the ASA software first. If the ASDM software is not compatible with the updated ASA version, you will get locked out and have to get out your console cable. Not so bad, but [...]
Activate Windows and Office at the Command Line
I was recently looking for a way to activate Windows 7 and Office 2010 at a command prompt; this is what I found… Since the release of Vista, you can use the command line utility slmgr for Windows activation when using a MAK (or Multiple Activation Key). Windows Activation Open a command window (as administrator) And run… slmgr -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx slmgr [...]
Exchange Maintenance Tasks
There isn’t really a lot to be done with Exchange these days. Since the advent of E12, the code name for Exchange 2007, the maintenance task list has shrunk quite a bit. The items that do need watching are just a subset of the “old days.” Maintain your daily backups – probably the most important [...]
“Delivery has failed” error When Scheduling a Resource
There are plenty of answers to the error message: “Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists: Jane Doe Your message wasn’t delivered because of security policies…” In our case, Jane Doe was no longer an employee and her account was disabled. The sender of the message was requesting a meeting with someone who had [...]
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