GFI Home Backup 2009 – Quick Eval

Posted by: Justin

GFI recently released a few freeware editions for programs they use under the “We Care” initiative.
See it at www.gfi.com/frw
3 of the 4 products are light versions of commercial products, but there is a new one – a home backup software. I decided to install it on a Windows XP VM and test its feature set.
I [...]

SharePoint Backup using stsadm

Posted by: Justin

A complicated beast, SharePoint is!
I have worked with various installations of different sizes and importance.
A quick-and-dirty way to back the entire site and db is to use the stsadm tool.

Part 1
“C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe” -o backup -directory C:\SharePointBackups -backupmethod full
I would put this into a batch file to run daily. One thing Microsoft [...]

Using the Windows runas command…differently…

Posted by: Justin

I recently discovered a way to make use of the runas command in Windows 2003/xp (not sure about vista).
Using a special switch “/netonly” allows the credentials to be passed on without them being verified first.
Example 1 (excel)
runas /netonly /user:domain\administrator “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\excel.exe”
Example 2 (sql mgmt studio 2008)
runas /netonly /user:domain\administrator “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\ssms.exe”
See excerpt below…
****
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2382043.php
“All [...]

VBS from the master…Richard Mueller

Posted by: Justin

His site provides impressive VBS examples for group drive mapping, printer mapping, and other scenarios.
Perhaps it is becoming more outdated due to the rise of PowerShell, but I have yet to work at a place that uses PowerShell exclusively.
http://www.rlmueller.net/index.html
Below are a few examples I have created by working on his examples.
Here’s Richard’s logon3.txt example that [...]

Group policy & automatic logon

Posted by: Justin

Ever been working with a lab of computers and have to do something manually as a certain user?
I have…and I got tired of logging onto each one. So I got creative and found some tidbits of customized group policy templates to make this.
AutoLogon
This custom administrative template will allow you to set auto logon for windows [...]

Set home directory permissions en masse

Posted by: Justin

Ever been working at a customer site and realize someone has really messed with home drive permissions?
This batch file can help!
Credit to -  http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=5640
The text file can be renamed with a .bat extension and includes comments on how to use it.
SetPerm
Be careful with this – use at your own risk.

Exchange 2007 Agent Log GUI Tool

Posted by: Justin

This is a fantastic tool that can be installed on an Exchange server that runs content filtering (edge, or hub transport (if you have the anti-spam stuff installed)).
http://gsexdev.blogspot.com/2007/10/exchange-2007-content-agent-log-message.html
I have put the tool here for safekeeping…
cagenttracker

Mount VHDs in Windows

Posted by: Justin

Had an interesting issue where I had set up a new server in Hyper-V, but I could not install the integration services on the guest yet!
So…without them, there’s no network interface (this was Win 2003, no sp).
Without a USB drive handy at the time, I had to come up with another solution for getting the [...]

Exchange & SSL

Posted by: Justin

Exchange 2007 can be a bear to configure with SSL properly. I have spent a few afternoons fixing issues caused by certificate issues!
Here’s a brief walk-through I have used in the past to get a UCC applied and working for all functions.
Remove the old exchange cert (if applicable)

You won’t need to do this for a [...]

Email address characters

Posted by: Justin

Recently worked on a email server project where the client had several groups and users with email addresses containing # and other special characters….
This prompted me to review allowable characters in email addresses…
I found this article which sums it up nicely.
http://www.remote.org/jochen/mail/info/chars.html
In short…just use a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, _, +, and .