What's in my backpack?

Every time I'm heading out the door, I throw a heavy backpack over my shoulder and drop it into my car with a thud.

What's in this bag I lug around to each client? Of course there's my HP tc4400 Tablet PC and battery charger, but there's a whole lot more, in no particular order:

• Small TechNet binder (Contents will be another post).


• An assortment of small screwdrivers for laptops and PCs alike


• Cables: 7' Ethernet, Cisco serial, USB to PS2 converter, USB to serial, iPhone charger


• 160 external hard drive, USB (for moving files and dumping images)


• Leatherman


• A small handful of unlabeled customer access badges and keys


• Three USB thumbdrives (1GB, 2GB (BitLockered) and 32GB)


• Small metal business card holder


• Sharpie and blue pen


• Tape measure

How Big are those Mailboxes

One thing I truly miss about Exchange 2003 is the list of mailbox sizes that were easily accessible in the GUI. But things must move on and the display in the Exchange Management Console for both 2007 and 2010 lack the ability to populate and view this information.

Exchange Management Shell to the rescue! If you enter just the basic Get-MailboxStatistics command it will be sorely lacking (and the sizes will be in KB). The command below will get Exchange to cough up a full list and friendlier MB display suitable for analyzing in Excel.

Open Exchange Management Shell and run the following:
Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName,@{label=”TotalItemSize(MB)”;expression={$_.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB()}},ItemCount

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 professional I should be using the latest operating system.

So I got started with swapping out the hard drive to start with a fresh install (always the best way to go), and tossed in the install DVD. The install went flawlessly and I followed with Windows Update, as one always should. Upon rebooting the system, it failed to start.

What followed was a large pain in the posterior: After attempting to do a System Restore (it failed, of course), I reinstalled. This time during Windows Update, I deselected some of the likely updates that may have caused the boot failure issue, same result. This process went on five times before I found the (in)correct update:Intel Corp - Display - Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family 16.6MB. Not surprising that it's a video driver, since those are typically the drivers that will hose a Windows system most often (rather embarrassed it took five tries to find out the obvious). Anyway, the update was released in September, 2009 and is one version behind what is available on the Intel website.

Once I skipped the Windows Update version of the driver and installed latest display driver from Intel, I was in business, actually Windows 7 Professional (can't MS marketing decide on a consistent nomenclature?).

Free PowerShell Editor

Yesterday I began to really dive into a new user script (which uses Exchange Management Shell) to bring it up to date and include more fields and features. As the script complexity grew, Notepad was no longer cutting the mustard.

I thought I'd be using Notepad++ or TextPad, both fine in their own right, but instead found PowerGUI. This PowerShell editor which finds syntax errors, includes definitions and much more; all for the low, low price of free. This seems to be a community supported by Quest Software who has a bunch of fine (not so free) tools for SysAdmins.

I'm now able to work on, and run, the script off network (read: at home). It's a helluva deal for the price, try PowerGUI for your next PowerShell outing.

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 and choose Repair, then System Restore. The trouble with this system was that System Restore was turned off and there weren't any checkpoints to go back to.

Enter the endless search online. More IT troubleshooting by Bing and Google. I'm not exactly sure which search engine got me there, but one forum listed the answer (albeit two hundered or so, lines down the page).
Boot from a Vista or Windows 7 disk and choose Repair, then Recovery Console. Once you have a command line to work with, cd to C:\windows\winsxs and del pending.xml, exit to reboot again and you'll see the "Configuring Updates..." message once more, but it will continue to the Windows login screen allowing for celebrations all around.

This was the fix that worked for me, hopefully you'll have the same luck.

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 to see that it was low on cyan.

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.

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 want before the dot, i.e. LinusMode, Dave, Matrix, etc. The icon will change to the one used for the Control Panel, and when opened it will list a plethora of settings.

Have fun, and be careful.