Tips, tricks, & insight from people who know.
I have been updating some of my Visio diagrams lately and wanted to use stencils that were more realistic and stumbled upon these Dell provided stencils. Just follow the link below.
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pvaul/topics/en/visio?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=gen
Enjoy.
–Himuraken
If you have ever had to join a pre-existing user/profile to a Windows domain, then you certainly know the pain that comes with migrating the old profile. Very few users find new (read clean) profiles very entertaining. So most people copy the contents of the previous profile’s folder to the new one. That approach does work although read/write/in use errors are sure to follow during at least one stage of the transfer.
Many years ago I found a way to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time as the old way. If you are responsible for joining systems to domains at any level, this tip will save you valuable time. A typical usage scenario is when you are deploying a domain controller into a network with a pre-existing domain or a small workgroup with no domain.
Open up the registry editor and navigate to the following area: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. You will see several sub keys that are shorter than the rest, ignore these. You need to look at the randomly named keys in the format of S-1- ETC…. Each one of these keys corresponds to a user profile/account. Look for the string value named ProfileImagePath. This is the path to the user profile for that key. Identify the ProfileImagePath of the user that you want and double click it. Copy the entire path, this is important because you have to have the path identically as it appears here. Now, locate the key for the new profile that you want to map or steer to the old profile. Edit the ProfileImagePath for the new profile and paste in the path that you copied earlier. Log off and back on and you are good to go.
A couple of extra tips:
The new user account must have full access to the old profile or the profile will fail to load completely. One of the easiest ways to do this is grant the new account local administrator rights, but let your security conscience decide the best course of action for you.
I typically make the registry changes from the new user account/profile after verifying that I have access to the c:\documents and settings\oldprofile path. After editing the reg as the logged on user, just log off and on.
This has saved me countless time since I found and memorized this registry key. Hopefully it will help you out too.
–Himuraken
As a reseller of GFI products, I am very familiar with GFI FaxMaker. Almost all of my clients that use computer based faxing use GFI, but there are a few that use other solutions.
This particular client uses the server/client faxing that is built into Windows Server 2003 for sending faxes. The system has been impressively reliable and easy to use.
Recently, a new user of the fax server indicated that she was unable to see faxes sent by other users in the fax console under the Sent folder. All other users were able to view all sent faxes. The solution was simple enough if you know where to go.
Open up Active Directory Users and Computers and locate the user that you want to grant this ability to. Get the properties for the user and go to the Member Of tab. Finally, add the user to the Fax Operators group. Have the user close the Fax Console and reopen it for the changes to take effect.
–Himuraken
Using backup to disk (B2D) as a backup destination is becoming more and more common. I attribute much of this to the rock bottom prices of disk based storage as well as simplicity. It is much more convenient to point a backup to device A and call it a day, as opposed to tape and rotations etc..
Lets face it, you need to have that backup data available for as long as possible because end users often tell you about lost data when its too late. I cannot count the number of times I have been asked to retrieve files and email from 3 months prior… So retention retention retention.
Using a high capacity NAS with Symantec Backup Exec is a reliable way to achieve consistent backups and retain them for a long time. Several of the clients that I manage use Symantec Backup Exec and a large NAS for daily backups. Even though most of the NAS’ are 1TB and larger, it is not uncommon to run out of disk space when you are trying to achieve maximum backup retention.
When configuring your media set overwrite protection and append rules, it is pretty easy to make a mistake. These mis-configurations often result in media not be reused properly, thereby increasing the space used on the NAS. This will eventually lead to Backup Exec flagging the B2D device as low on space and cause all of your backups to be missed / failed.
At this point your have probably resolved the media set issues, removed the media from your device in Backup Exec, and physically removed the B2D files from your devices. Most likely, you will also notice that Backup Exec still lists the device as low on space. Restarting services and everything else you try will not clear this flag. The way that I clear this warning is actually very simple. Go to the Devices tab, and right click on your device. Click on enabled or online to set the device to disabled or offline. Secondly, right click again and pause the device. Next, right click and unpause. Finally you need to enable / online the device. At this point you should be good to go.
–Himuraken
Windows Vista users can now download and test drive the freshly released SP2 Beta. I haven’t had the chance to test it yet, but I would definitely give it a try on our “Vista Box” here and report back.
Cheers!
-Raul Montana
In an attempt to keep this post short and sweet I will cover a few of the basics regarding this bulletin. Microsoft discovered a remote code execution flaw in the Server service on versions of Windows 2000 and up. Originally, this flaw was exploitable only if your system had ports 139 and 445 exposed to the net. Fast forward to today, and there are virus’ embedded in numerous files including keygens, cracks, and various forms of email attachments. In short, the patch is necessary on all systems in your organization even if the above mentioned ports are closed. Microsoft’s announcement is here.
Please be aware that out of 15 servers that I initially patched, 2 became unavailable after rebooting to apply the patch. The systems that had this problem had no obvious similarities that I could detect. After the reboot communications to and from the server being blocked/prevented. Pinging another host on the same LAN from the server was not even possible. Removing the patch and rebooting resolved the issue on both servers. After that, I reinstalled the patch, rebooted and everything is working properly.
–Himuraken
Ran in to this one recently. During a recent attempt to add additional CAL’s to one of my SBS 2003 boxes, the license wizard would just close, regardless of whether I was trying to add, backup, or transfer licenses. Here are the steps that I took to resolve the issue.
Step 1:
Make sure that the DLL is registered properly by running the following from the command line: regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Windows for Small Business Server\Administration\wizchain.dll”. You should get a message stated the the DLL registered correctly. Try to use the license wizard again and proceed to step 2 if the issue persists.
Step 2:
Go to System Properties and then click on the Advanced tab. Next, click on Settings in the performance category. Now click on the Data Execution Prevention tab. Make sure that “Add License Wizard” is excluded from DEP. If the license wizard isn’t listed, you will have to add it manually. After this apply / save your changes and re-run the license wizard.
After performing the above steps I was able to successfully add and backup SBS CAL’s on my server. Another classic case of Windows protecting Windows from Windows… Umm, yea.
–Himuraken
Got a nice surprise yesterday morning when I tried to run the remote desktop connection, it failed. The error given was “The pre-release version of Remote Desktop Connection has expired. To download the full version of Remote Desktop Connection, go to Windows Update or contact your system administrator.” After checking Windows Update and finding zero updates available I began poking around my system. I queried Google a couple times and found nothing. My laptop is running Windows XP SP3 v.3244 which was the latest beta / release candidate. Setting the system time to a date prior to April 7th is a quick work around, but it comes with its own set of repercussions. Luckily, when I install SP3 I choose to archive SP2 files in case an uninstall of SP3 was needed. In safe mode go to C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$ and locate the files “mstsc.exe” and “mstscax.dll”. Create copies of these files and paste them into your C:\Windows\System32 folder. Restart the computer in normal mode and test your RDP client by going to Start -> Run, typing in mstsc, and click OK.
–himuraken