Destination IP

An interesting fact i found out the hard way, windows 2003 wont align partitions on a SAN correctly all the time so to be safe i use diskpart.

Using DiskPart on Windows 2003 to create partitions:

DISKPART
> SEL DISK {x}
> CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY ALIGN=1024

Windows 2008 does this automatically.

This issue is easily solved with the following registry key.

Active Desktop crashes and when you try to restore active desktop you get a script error.

Windows 2000 is no longer supported and as such will not get windows updates that fix things such as timezones.
This means its up to us trusty admins to do this stuff by hand on the one legacy box that for some reason or another still runs the ancient operating system of almost a decade ago.
The registry key below will fix both the timezone issue and as per microsoft instruction, will maintain parity with older timezone areas so its best to run the whole reg change.

Its best to reboot the box afterwards to make sure everything updates correctly.

This was an issue where a virus tried to inject itself on the file server and after removing all traces of the virus itself it managed to inject an autorun.inf into the root of a network share on the file server.

obivously the .exe is a self generated file but what you need to do is dig into the root of the windows share eg. on the server f:/driveshare/ and check for a hidden autorun.inf file.

mine contained the following info.

[AutoRun]
open=7[1].exe
shellexecute=7[1].exe
shell\Auto\command=7[1].exe

as soon as this is removed the issue dissapears, some machine were stubborn however, in one case it took a process of (on the pc itself) removing the mapped drive, mapping to an alternate letter the same path then breaking that share and letting the logon script remap it back. I can only assume a caching issue was holding it there.

One of the best things to do is to understand all tasks running and make sure there are no un-necessary ones.
This techrepublic article shows you how to do that easily and efficiently.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=399&tag=nl.e071

We had an issue where by habit we delete the dell system partition because well, we don’t need it.
This creates a problem, the dell partition isn’t detected by WDS during an image deployment (because its formatted FAT) but it still takes the initial partition so the boot.ini that is created will use a 1 however that is taken up by the dell system partition.
Our plan is to not use that partition at all and we haven’t for quite some time, during our new image revision deployment one or two popped up and this solution was a godsend as its easy enough to walk someone through over the phone (since we have a centralised IT support staff and geographically separated offices.

a good article on how to sort out exchange send as permissions thanks to Microsoft and this link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998291(EXCHG.80).aspx

a great site link with info on how to remove a very annoying piece of av software from XP or Vista.

http://www.xp-vista.com/spyware-removal/xp-antivirus-2008-removal-instructions-xp-antivirus-2008

For those that may be looking to disable their IE browsers from running the silly connection wizard on startup i’ve got the Group Policy link, as well as the technet article should you need to know more.

Group Policy setting: Disable Internet Connection Wizard
This Group Policy setting is in User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer. It affects administrators as well as users.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490614(TechNet.10).aspx

When going through your policies you may want to re-evaluate the rate of group policy refreshes.
I find it useful to have them refreshing in the background but at the same time you don’t want them doing it to often, especially if you have WAN links with a number of users pulling across that link or anything like that.
The Technet Article is linked below, the useful links i required for my policies were as follows:

Computer Refresh Interval
Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy

User Refresh Interval
User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/3951b3be-8c85-4a17-8fff-481af6eaedf01033.mspx?mfr=true

Here is some handy info I lashed off pietschsoft to get our company info into system properties for the new SOE we are building.

Show Computer Manufacturer and Support Information (All Windows)
This tip lets you customize the System Properties page in Control Panel. This is especially useful if you run a computer store and want your customers to be reminded where they bought their PC and where to get technical support.

To add the manufacturer and support information you need to create two new files in the Windows system directly, normally “C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM” for Windows 95, 98 and Me and “C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32” for Windows NT and 2000.
The first file is a text file called “OEMINFO.INI”. To create the file open notepad and copy the template below, make any changes and save the file in the System directory.
OEMINFO.INI Template
[General]
Manufacturer=Your Company, Inc.
Model=Your Computer Model
SupportURL=http://your.support.site/
LocalFile=c:\your\local\support\file.htm

[Support Information]
Line1=first line
Line2=second line
Line3=third line
Line4=fourth line
...
LineN=nth line
; Create as many lines as you need by incrementing the Line number
The other file you need to create is a logo file. This is a standard Windows bitmap file (172 x 172 pixels), saved as “OEMLOGO.BMP” in the Windows System directory.
Once you have created both these files open System Properties from Control Panel and your company information and logo will be displayed. The details you entered in the [Support Information] section will show up when you click on the Support Information button.

http://pietschsoft.com/post/2004/08/Windows-System-Properties---Add-Custom-Manufacturer-Properties.aspx

So Microsoft Downloads gave me some interesting links this morning, addons to desktop search that actually look half useful(makes me wonder why they aren’t just part of the search to begin with).

Desktop Search Add-ins

Outlook Saved Mail
This one looks good, a brief quote from the download page.
“This iFilter allows you to perform a search on all elements of your MSG (.MSG) files including Message Body; Subject; From; From Name; From Address; To Name; To Address; CC Name; CC Address; Doc Title Prefix; Sent Date; Received Date; Primary Date; Conversation ID; Attachment Names and will indicate if an attachment is present within the .MSG. Additionally, content within attachments are indexed and searched.”

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=134ECBB0-C162-4D07-BEF3-0B602C4A79DD&displaylang=en

MS Networks Search
However great this sounds I’m wary of the bandwidth and load on fileservers by having this installed, with no central management you could accidentally DOS your own file servers. Not to mention gig to the edge, wan based file servers and vpn users will all suffer if this just treats servers as local resources.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=F7E981D9-5A3B-4872-A07E-220761E27283&displaylang=en

IE History Search
I personally don’t use IE for my primary browsing so this addon doesn’t appeal to me, it may be up your alley though so here’s the link.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=EA7F95D9-69AE-4639-9D76-A44F51109053&displaylang=en

Well what a royal pain this was, related to an app we use that on install would halt trying to find this file saying it couldn’t find a file that was clearly visible when I browsed to it.

Thanks to the guys at this forum linked, I was able to get there by following nimd4’s recommendation of giving my user account ownership then full control over the file, hit retry and voila it worked like a charm.
http://www.vistax64.com/microsoft-office/52821-ms-office-2003-error-1913-mapisvc-inf.html

Thanks to an article from techrepublic I found one good hint in there which I had never even heard of before, removing old or unused device drivers because they start up with your machine can help to speed up your systems boot times quite a bit. The article is referring to an XP tweak but it works just as well in Vista.

Full PDF linked here.

I noticed a handy article come through techrepublic today with some nifty vista commands to have on hand.

aero on and off
Right click the desktop and select new shortcut, where it says “type the location” put the following in their own shortcuts.

aero off
Rundll32 dwmApi #104

Aero on
Rundll32 dwmApi #102

Note: aero on will make your screen blink but aero off will do nothing so it just happens.

Task mgr
Bring up task mgr instantly

Ctrl+shift+esc

Shell Commands
This article also had some useful tips on shell commands that may come in handy, shoot through to see them.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=713&tag=nl.e132