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 enough, until the point of the install “wizard” where it prompts for installation directory. It listed C:\RAPID, and had a dropdown menu so I could choose one of the mapped drives; but instead of listing mapped drives it only offered the local C:\ drive. No problem, the instructions on the screen said reboot if it doesn’t list your mapped drive. Wait a few minutes for the reboot… and no good, just C:\RAPID again; time to call support.

After starting a WebEx session, so the tech could see what I was saying was true, we copied the RAPID directory from the mapped drive to C:\, then ran the Paychex Preview software upgrade on C:\RAPID. When the upgrade was complete, it was just a copy and replace over the RAPID directory on the mapped drive and the deed was done. Oh yeah, don’t forget to run WS_Setup.exe from each workstation to create appropriate shortcuts to the mapped drive.

After chewing on this for quite a while, I found the issue: a checkbox on the Ports tab “SNMP Status Enabled”, which when checked (along with SNMP turned off on the print device) will result in the printer being listed as Offline. Once the box was unchecked, it was back online and the customer was back to printing once again.

Many times I need to change settings or install/remove software on someones PC without logging them out of the system, in which case I will go to %windir%\system32, shift+right-click CMD.exe and choose Run As…

Once I’ve opened a Command window with an account in the administrators group, I can start the Services MMC (services.msc), Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) or Computer Manager (compmgmt.msc), plus many more useful consoles from the command line. Often times I need to remove software or make a change to network settings which involves Control Panel Applets. These also can be run at the command-line (or Run… prompt if you’re already logged in as an administrator), some of my favs are listed below.

Appwiz.cpl – Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features in Vista or Windows 7)
Ncpa.cpl – Network Connections (for changing IPs and DNS)
Powercfg.cpl – Power Options (perhaps for turning off Standby or enabling the Performance setting)
Sysdm.cpl – System Properties (lots to find here: Remote Desktop, Pagefile, System Restore settings, etc.)
Wscui.cpl – Security Center (change Automatic Updating, the Firewall and Malware monitoring)

Want more? Check out the Wiki page.

CPU-Z – A great utility to find out what kind of memory is installed in a system. This is especially useful when a system is a plain box with out a service tag or serial number.  And it’s really annoying to open a box only to find the memory is without a label.

Magic Jelly Bean – This little gem has been in my toolbox for a long time. It grabs the key codes for popular software installed on a system (Adobe, VMWare, Office) including the OS. This is very useful if you have a disk, but lost your installation key or have lots of keys and don’t know which ones were used on a particular system.

Wireless Key View - And finally, this tool grabs the WPA/WEP wireless key(s) from a Windows system (must be using the built-in Windows wireless utility) when you can’t see the actual text or log into your wireless router.

And while you’re visiting these sites, check out the other free software they have. You’ll have your 32GB thumb drive filled up in no time ;)

My first impressions have been favorable. I’ve been using Slim Browser for quite some time, but it still uses the IE7 engine and the performance has been lackluster as of late. I’ve stuck with Slim Browser over the last couple of years due to features like double-clicking tabs to close sites and not having multiple browser windows open when going from an internal to external site. These items seem to have been addressed in IE8 and so far I’m impressed with speed and functionality. Try it out (Windows users) it’s free.

On a production machine, I consider the Shutdown Event Tracker worthwhile, especially in environments with multiple administrators. When in a lab situation or testing environment, this prompt before shutdown gets old quickly. 

To change the setting go to Start > Run…, type gpedit.msc and press OK.

Drill down: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates and highlight System. In the right pane, double-click the “Display Shutdown Event Tracker” and choose Disabled.

You’re done, no more need for a reason to shutdown the system. (BTW, this tip works with Windows Server 2003 and you can even enable the Shutdown Event Tracker for Windows 7, Vista and XP.)

This is a very critical update due to the fact your system can be affected by just visiting a website.

Go to Windows Update and patch your system!

Thanks to Ron Crumbaker, a simple fix is all that is needed. The steps are listed below, the actual commands are in bold.

1. Stop Automatic Updates service – net stop wuauserv
2. Register wups2.dll – regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups2.dll
3. Restart Automatic Updates service – net start wuauserv

Looking at Apple’s OS X delivery model, not to mention the Linux community, the operating system gets a refresh every year or two. And peering into the past a little, the Wintendo platforms (95, 98, 98SE, ME) all were released a few years apart. For the 32-bit family there was a large gap between NT4 and Windows 2000 (Oct 1996 and Feb 2000 respectively), but XP came out in Oct of 2001 and XP SP2 (essentially an OS refresh), in August of 2004. There’s a timeline on Wikipedia.

So how does this make Vista a failure if Microsoft is just staying on track with it’s release schedule?

A great amount of information can be found at the SuperSite for Windows.

It can be downloaded via Windows Update and at the source: Microsoft.com