Thursday, April 26, 2012

Backup Exec 2012

Exciting times! This time around Symantec actually has added a few features I’ve previously been missing!

In no particular order here are my favourites

  • Backup to virtual machine. With option to convert existing backupset to virtual machine. both vmware and hyper-v
  • Autoupdate for remote agents when central server is updated
  • Support for powershell commands
  • Simplefied disaster recovery. No longer the need to have exactly the right version of OS on disc when performing recovery
  • Improvements on the vwmare-agent, which provides the ability to redirect restore to newer hardware-versions. For example redirect to “Hardware Version 8”. Great for migrations hopefully!
  • Improvements on the exchangeagen, which provides ability to restore mailbox or public folder items into PST-files. This is a great one! This never worked well when you had to restore directly into the active exchangedatabase. Hopefully this will remove our need for third party software to do exactly this!
  • When backing up virtual disks, only used space is transferred. Goes for both hyper-v and Vmware.

On the negative side they seem to have overhauled the old system of using policies to create jobs, which I’ve been forcing everyone around me to use. It’s gonna be interesting to see if the new methods are scalable like before…

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Remote Desktop Services in Workgroup mode

I had a case where a customer wanted to run RDS on singleserver. The idea was to run DC and TS on the same server to save hostingmoney. A bad practice and not really optimal to run on a virtual host with limited memory. The thought struck me if we could manage without the DC the system might run much smoother.

While googling for information a noticed that it was sparse with info for this scenario on the net. It did however work splendidly.

What you need to do

1. Install Server 2008 R2

2. Install server server role Remote Desktop Session Host and Remote Desktop Licensing

3. Configure Per User Licensing mode

4.  Add these policies to make life easier

Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components> Remote Desktop Services> Remote Desktop Session Host>Printer Redirection>Specify RD Session Host server fallback printer driver behavior> = default to PCL if not found

Computer Configuration>Windows Components>Remote Desktop Services>Remote Desktop Session Hos>Connections>Sets rules for remote control of Remote Desktop user sessions = enabled, with user permissions

5. Create users from Computer Management> Users and Computers and add these to Remote Desktop Users group.

For a single server environment this method might sometimes be justified, otherwise it’s a DC-environment that is recommended.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Don’t use time.windows.com

At a seminar I once learned that we shouldn’t use the default ntpserver time.windows.com. Which is preconfigured in all Windows installations. This server is apparently under quite a big load. I can imagine, seeing how usually people don’t look twice on this settings.
To change it, change time and date settings, choose Internet Time and change to a less travelled ntpserver. In sweden we can use one of the following:
            server 0.se.pool.ntp.org
    server 1.se.pool.ntp.org
    server 2.se.pool.ntp.org
    server 3.se.pool.ntp.org
image
 

The Internet Time tab won’t be visible if the computer is member of a domain. then this settings is being handled by the domain controller.

Great week for WinPhone and Windows

This week we got both Skype for WinPhone and much sought after upgrade for Skydrive!

Skype has been in the works for months! Now I can finally call people from my phone when Im at home in my mountain lair with incredible bad cellphone reception!

Also updated is the Skydrive services. New this time is a clientapplication which makes skydrive available through Windows Explorer, just like an ordinary folder. What’s nice with this is that you can also add your skydrive folders to your Windows Libraries. My Lumia 800 autouploads all taken pictures to my Skydrive, so taken pictures now magicly turns upp in my Windows Picturelibrary!

I’ve previously been trying to make this work through a myriad of third party applications and hacks but they can now all pass into the past. Good thing too, since they’ve got nothing on the MS Skydrive app! Im curious though, too if MS will merge Skydrive and Mesh in the future. Now they’re both active in the activity field and other than it looks a bit messy with all these extra icons it’s probably not very memory effective.

As of now my mesh is eating up:

MSOSync.exe 4MB, WLSync.exe 23MB, MOE.exe 47MB. Totalt 74MB.

Skydrive.exe 10MB .

Hmm, they could probably trim the Mesh-services a bit I think, though Skydrive most likely only connects to online webservices and doesn’t “think”. Hopefully this will all sort itself out in Windows 8.

Here’s MS promovideo of the new skydrive:

SkyDriveVideo.mp4 , can also be viewed on blog below, since this link probably doesn’t work…

References:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Can’t delete folder because thumbs.db is in use

To get rid of the annoying “Can’t delete folder because thumbs.db is in use” error, do the following

1. Open gpedit.msc

2. In User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Windows Explorer

3. Enable “Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files” .

Now, you loose some functionality doing this, by the error is far to annoying to keep.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Great tool for cleaning up on Terminal Servers

Got to use ICSweep today to clean out user tempfiles on a Terminal Server. Very effective. In my case server was loosing all diskspace due to a printer spooler gone awry. Lost 4GB in 3 minutes… a bit distressing…
Check out site below for details
http://www.conetrix.com/Blog/post/Utility-to-Delete-Temp-Files-on-a-Terminal-Server.aspx
http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com.au/CAD_TSUtils.htm

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Error while accessing datasheet-view in SP2010

Some of our customers have run into a problem while trying to access datasheet view of a list when using Office 2010 64bits version.
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A common solution to this is to install the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components (x32).
Link to download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=7554F536-8C28-4598-9B72-EF94E038C891&displaylang=en
Link to MS information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2266203
Technorati-taggar: ,

Official site for feature requests on Windows Phone

http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions

Had some trouble finding this earlier so im putting it here.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Lumia diagnostics

cool diagnostic tool on the Lumia. Push ##634## to start it.

Good for verifying that all hardware is ok.

DaRT–crash analyzing tool, among other things

DaRT is a nifty tool that should be in every Windows-technicians portfolio.
You need to have access to Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack to aquire this tool, but this is usually available to Volym Licensing subscribers.

It’s an official Microsoft Tool and it can scan an offline OS and among other things do the following:
- Scan for Virusinfections
- check BSOD-dumps
- restore deleted files
- crack forgotten local passwords
- browse harddrive and mount USB-drive and copy files from localdrive to usb
- repair disc-volumes
- perform dod-standard Disc Wipe
- manage and add drivers
- Check integrity of systemcritical files.
- Access and edit registry

Steps to create ERD disc.
 1. Install ERD Commander Boot Media Wizard.
 2. Mount a iso with Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2. Note that some tools only work if the image on which it is based on is the same as the target system.
           a. Some of these tools are Hotfixa Uninstall, SFC Scan, Computer Management, Event Viewer,  Locksmith.
3. Choose which tools should be included. Something like locksmith might be something you left out in this disc, if it is intended to be distributed in some form.
4. Update Sweeper definitions.
5. Add drivers if needed.
6. Add additional files if you have some tool you want to include.
7. Specify location
8. Create iso.
9. Burn created ISO.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Color coding list view

I had a situation where a customer wanted different row-colors in the list view depending on certain values.
This could be solved using conditional formatting and a custom view.
To create a conditional formating on a list.
I had a situation where a customer wanted different row-colors in the list view depending on certain values.
This could be solved using conditional formatting and a custom view.
To create a conditional formating on a list.
1. Create a custom view in Sharepoint Designer
2. Create a Conditional format by marking a field, and pick it from Options ribbon.
3. Select Format Row and pick field name and choose conditions
4. In Style, choose category Background and Background-color
5. Save
image
Very handy for situations where certain conditions need to be highlighted given certain circumstances.
Referenser:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdesigner/archive/2007/11/09/an-introduction-to-conditional-formatting.aspx
http://davepyett.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/sharepoint-2010-list-views-formatting-tip/
http://sp365.co.uk/2011/09/sharepoint-designer-2010-conditional-formatting/
http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/20088/simple-way-to-color-code-a-column-in-a-document-library

Friday, April 13, 2012

Second hacked website this week…

A few strange sites out there right now. These have a tendency to show up in google results and redirects you to site where “Windows Antivirus 2012” is trying to “scan” your computer. Complete scam obviously, didn’t even bother to change the gui depending on the visiting browser so everything looks like XP. It seems that sites that are infected have Wordpress and Joomla 1.5 in common. A few sources on the web indicates that this is a result of poorly managed .htaccess file or a vulnability in an old module of “Advanced Module Manager”. Anyways just ESC and close the page to be rid of it. To be safe just close the whole browser and start a new session.

A good site to check if a site is has any issues is http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/ .

Also here are a few dumps of the infected website

image

image

Some malware tries to force itself on you aswell, just close it.image

The google results are also a bit weird, the subinformation is a bit dodgy…

image

In conclusion, keep your site updated!

References:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=432&t=705216&start=30

After using Nokia Lumia 800 for 3 months…

I still enjoy it! Though none else seems to belive it’s possible to be satisfied with another phone than the iPhone I beg to differ. I previously had a iPhone4 but in the end the phone was pretty slow when doing basicly everything. The camera was still the worst part, taking forever to open the shutter and things like that. This is Lumias biggest strength! It so fast when navigating, which is what I and other businessusers mostly do.

But still here are a few issues that I find rather annoying with the Lumia, small issues but still.

- Pictures or attachements in emails often doesn’t download. and the button to download these is to small and far down.

- When using self-signed certificates on your Exchangeserver there isn’t a easy way to install these. On the iphone you just needed to accept the selfsigned cert and eveything was golden. On the Windows Mobile 6.1 you could just copy and install the cert to the phone memory. But on the latest WinPhone I had to send the certificate to my Gmail and open the Gmail from the Lumia to be able to install the cert. From OWA the .cer was blocked. I understand the security issue here, but it shouldn’t be this hard to install a cert when it is allowed on the server!

- The phone reboots to easily. It’s happend on more than one occasion that I accidently rebooted the phone because I leaned towards something so the powerbutton got pressed for too long. It should be required to make a screen gesture before it restarts. For some reason the screen shows that you have to drag the screen downwards to restart, but if you keep pressing that power button it restarts anyways. Bad design call!

- Where is Internet Sharing? We're waiting and why do they get in Hong Kong but not in Sweden? Whats the hold up?

All these are things that should be fixable through software updates. So get to it!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Updates for Nokia Lumia 800

Nokias own site for keeping tabs on when software updates are comming. This varies depending on the country and operator it would seem. This seems to be the one to look at, since Microsofts own Winphone Update site doesn’t seem to apply to Nokia for some reason.

http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/nokia-lumia-800-software-update/nokia-lumia-800-software-update-availability

Powershell and Uptimerobot

Uptimerobot can be quite tedious when you need to update many monitors at once. For example say you bought the license for Uptimerobot and n...