Microsoft offers Security Essentials to (very) Small Businesses
Since Microsoft announced its own anti-malware product, Microsoft Security Essenstials, back in late 2008, the product has been steadily getting better. When asked what I use for anti-virus, I always answer MSE or AVG Free. Both cost my favorite price, free, and are well regarded in the security community. The big news of course, is [...]
Paychex Preview Upgrade to Mapped Drive
This was actually too simple, but unless you speak with support, how is one to know? I was recently tasked with upgrading a server installation of Paychex Preview software, which according to documentation cannot be done on the host server, it has to be upgraded from one of the workstations via mapped drive. It seemed simple [...]
HP tc4400 and Windows 7 Boot Failure
I’ve been using an HP tc4400 Tablet PC with Windows Vista for quite some time now and thought it was about time I started using Windows 7 for work and not just home. Don’t get me wrong, I do like Vista (I think I may be only one of eight people), but as an IT [...]
Vista – Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 — 0% Complete
Last Friday I came upon a frustrating problem with a Windows Vista system that had applied updates during shutdown, but could not finish the process. This resulted in many reboots and an unusable computer; too bad it held the company’s only copy of QuickBooks. Typically the simplest fix is to boot from the Vista install media [...]
Network Printer Offline
Yesterday I was at a client site where everyone prints directly to the printers, rather than sharing via a print server. One of the PCs kept showing a printer as offline, even though everyone else was printing to it. From the PC you could ping the printer and even browse to the builtin web server [...]
God Mode in Windows Vista or 7
Following Paul Thurrott’s blog such as I do, today’s post listed a way to see a hidden GUI. There is quite a list, some of which are not normally exposed but via the Registry. This is really a pretty simple hack: Create a New Folder, rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} You can actually name it whatever you [...]
Control Panel Applets from Command Line
One of my customers doesn’t allow user accounts to be in the local Administrators group, something I wish more companies would do. In fact over 90% of infections could be stopped by not logging in as an administrator; but I’ll save that “soapbox” topic for another post. Many times I need to change settings or [...]
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