Chop Shop

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 Perhaps it is becoming more outdated due to the rise of PowerShell, but I have yet to work at a place that uses PowerShell exclusively.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 [...]

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 [...]

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.

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 .