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I am frequently asked to allow access to our servers for 3rd party company usually trying to fix some sort of software issue in their application (the typical scenario.) Most companies tend to use applications such as GoToMeeting or Live Meeting which I’ve never really been in favour of. Recently I was told that in order for a new implementation to commence I would have to give a company VPN access to our network and Remote Desktop Connections onto the relevant servers.

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Posted by James Clements to Terminal Services, Windows Server 2003 | add a comment

I have been using VMware ESX for quite a while now and while the technology is a brilliant concept every now and then I find a small problem or pitfall that always seems to bug me! I have a 3 node ESX cluster that I implemented in my work office and was working on configuring a 5 node cluster when I noticed an issue with VCenter (formally Virtual Center) that had occurred in both environments. It seemed that for no apparent reason when I rebooted the server running VCenter the 'VMware VirtualCenter Server' (or 'vpxd' windows service name) service failed to start. This was kind of annoying, more so knowing that the new 5 node setup was going to a datacenter where people would be less likely to spot that it hadn't started after the reboot of the server running VCenter!

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Posted by James Clements to Registry, VMware | 2 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

As part of my Service Level Agreement at work I have to produce a monthly uptime report for each server. Rather than generate individual reports for each server I decided to write a KiXtart script that would generate a report for all servers and email it to me each month.

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Posted by James Clements to Scripting, Windows Server 2003 | add a comment

At work there is an old web application that is managed offsite by a hosting company. It runs on Oracle 9iAS. Apparently there is an issue with Oracle 9i and the web service will frequently crash (due to a known caching problem) taking the application offline.

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Posted by James Clements to Scripting, Windows Server 2003 | add a comment

I recently bought a batch of Dell Latitude E4300 laptops as replacements for outdated machines at work. I retained one for myself and after a few days decided to wipe Windows XP and install Windows Vista Business. Everything was fine until I wanted to burn a copy of Knoppix from an .ISO image.

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Posted by James Clements to Hardware, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 7 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

I recently had a problem when I rebooted an Exchange 2003 server after some updates and it refused to display the winlogon screen. Instead it sat at "applying computer settings". I left it for around 10 minutes before realising something was seriously wrong.

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Posted by James Clements to Exchange | add a comment

Every now and then I find myself needing to create a file of a certain size for one reason or another. This is usually for testing in situations where people are experiencing email attachment issues or disk quota problems, things like that. The quickest way to do this is to use a Windows command line utility called fsutil.exe. This command line tool can be used (amongst other things) for quota management, system info enumeration and some basic file manipulation.

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Posted by James Clements to Command Line, Windows XP | add a comment

I just had an issue where I was trying to install PowerDVD 5.1 onto a Dell laptop with a fresh Windows XP install. The PowerDVD software was on Dell branded media and I had reinstalled the laptop using a non OEM Dell branded version of Windows XP Professional. It seems that there is a check during the installation process of PowerDVD to verify that the software is indeed being reinstalled back onto a Dell branded computer. As I hadn’t used the original reinstallation CD that came with the laptop I had half guessed that PowerDVD was going to complain.

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Posted by James Clements to Software, Windows XP | 20 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

I have 6 Adtran Netvanta 1524st switches on which I wanted to disable STP (spanning tree protocol). After checking the switches through their web interface and using SSH to check the Adtran Operating System (AOS) command line help I was unable to spot any obvious method of disabling it.

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Posted by James Clements to Hardware | add a comment

Here is a registry key I run from a startup script to disable the option that allows users to invoke a "Log on using dial-up connection". Having had experience of working in a school I know how kids will use any excuse to distract them from logging onto a computer and starting the lesson!

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Posted by James Clements to Registry, Scripting | add a comment