I am pretty sure I’m not the only one who wants something more descriptive than DSC1900298.JPG to name my digital photos. And yes, I know that Windows Explorer allows you to rename pictures en masse, but I don’t like the convention they have chosen in that the first file is named [common name].JPG, then the subsequent files are named common name.JPG and so on and so forth. I had a few requirements for how I wanted to go about this: ... Read more

As part of our process to disable user accounts, we take ownership of the user’s server-stored documents such as roaming profiles and redirected My Documents directories. We then either keep access restricted to the domain admins group or grant access to a replacement user who should receive access to the departed user’s files. With an upgrade to Exchange 2007, we have taken advantage of the Powershell access to Exchange objects, and have scripted the mailbox provisioning and account disable processes. ... Read more

Dell, Broadcom, and Microsoft have decided to partner up with the release of a technology called TCP/IP Offloading, or TOE for TCP/IP Offload Engine. It was bundled together in the Scalable Network Pack (SNP), included and enabled by default with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Server 2003. The gist of this technology is to enable high-load enterprise applications to be easily scalable. For those of you familiar with the OSI model, TOE moves layer 3 and 4 processing out of the OS and CPU into the NIC. ... Read more

The information in this blog is offered AS IS with no warranties made on the content. While information relating to configuration of computer systems posted here is generally tested on my own systems, extensive testing has not been performed. I am not responsible for any loss or damages, including loss of data, that may be occur at the use of information contained within this blog. All original content on this blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. ... Read more

Every now and then somebody asks me if there is some way around paying Adobe hundreds and hundreds of dollars if they just want to create some PDF’s. Answer? Absolutely! Two free PDF printers you can use are CutePDF and PDFCreator. I have not used the latter, but I use CutePDF myself, have recommended CutePDF to several people, and have not had any problems with it. If you are looking for a bit more functionality, such as creating a single PDF from multiple PDF’s, rearranging pages or adding/removing pages, converting PDF’s to MS Office documents, etc, be sure to check out PDF Converter Pro from Nuance Software. ... Read more

On a recent Exchange 2003 to 2007 upgrade, I ran into a very frustrating issue that significantly delayed our deployment. All new mailboxes that were created on using Exchange 2007 tools (Exchange 2007 Management Console or Powershell) were missing several crucial ADSI attributes, namely: legacyExchangeDN msExchALObjectVersion msExchMailboxGuid msExchMailboxSecurityDescriptor (set to “not set”, all other accounts have a blank value here) msExchUserAccountControl Of these, the most important seem to be msExchMailboxGuid and msExchMailboxSecurityDescriptor. ... Read more

This topic has been covered a bit (here, here, and here, for instance) but I have been working on a project that utilizes Virtual Server for testing, and it came up again. A consultant that was working on the VM’s in question apparently struggled for quite some time before he asked for help on it. So, I thought I would see if another post on this might help someone out. ... Read more

If you have ever had to take on a Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration of a server or other machine, you know that you generally have a fine balance of the following triangle of factors: cost, complexity, and reliability. It seems like the only way to get an easy and reliable solution is to throw gobs of money at either a VMWare infrastructure or something like Platespin. Don’t get me wrong: from what I’ve heard they both offer excellent solutions in that field, but it simply isn’t cheap. ... Read more

I had hoped to put this all in one post, but the thing would have gone on forever! Part I covered some basics in copying group memberships to an Active Directory user from another user, such as a template account, using Powershell. Part II will delve into my misadventures in gaining more control of user group memberships, including removing users from a group either by editing the group’s attributes or editing the user’s attributes. ... Read more

I recently had to spend hours figuring out how to properly modify Active Directory group memberships using Powershell. Some of the .Net methods have not yet been implemented, so I had to get a bit tricky with it. I could find the various bits of information I needed in various places, so I hope that collecting them here in one place is of some use to others. The scenario was that I needed to disable user accounts in a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory environment running with Exchange 2007. ... Read more