I have installed Microsoft Exchange quite a few times as a syadmin and since the release of Vista one thing I seem to forget is to address the issue of Vista clients using Internet Explorer 7 that send email through Outlook Web Access.
Pre Microsoft office 2003 SP3, when creating a new MAPI email account in outlook 2003 the default setting was to "Use Cached Exchange Mode". I have noticed that after installing SP3 the default seems to now be disabled when creating an email account.
I use VMware ESX 3.5 and Virtual Center 2.5 since implementing it at my current workplace. Like many sysadmins I regularly keep on top of patching. I manually patch my ESX hosts when I see fit after pulling updates through Virtual Center. Subsequently, I recently applied the latest update (3.5 u2 or update 2) to all ESX hosts. As a frequent reader of The Register I was later surprised to learn of a bug where people had encountered issues when booting or VMotioning Virtual Machines on or after 12th August 2008.
I was recently asked to investigate a problem with a server and the lack of space on a partition. After a quick look using Treesize I noticed a suspicious folder being used by an application for logging purposes.
I have a server located in a data centre miles away from where I work. It currently runs Windows 2000 Server. Every now and then when I try to connect to the server I get the following message about the number of Remote Desktop connections being exceeded:
Way back in 2002 Microsoft released a security bulletin regarding what they called a 'vulnerability in HTML Help that Could Allow Remote Code Execution'. The issue is related to help files that many software vendors use in the form of compiled HTML help files that use the .chm file extension.
I used to work in a Secondary School and whilst I was there I developed an application using VB.net for students to run checks on and upload e-portfolios to a shared resource before submission to the examination board. The application worked fine so I packaged it into an MSI and deployed it. Everything was ok until the e-portfolio criteria was changed. I had to modify the application and redeploy the MSI.
Here is a tip to uninstall Symantec Antivirus (I use the corporate edition) when the uninstall password has been forgotten (NOTE: the default password is symantec) OR you are using a Symantec Antivirus Server to manage clients and the server has been reinstalled or corrupted thus losing the server group root certificate (stored in the 'pki' folder located in C:\Program Files\Symantec AntiVirus, this should always be backed up!).
A while ago I had an old computer with a single IDE hard disk in it running Windows XP Pro with many applications installed. I had a second computer with totally different hardware (different motherboard, vga, lan etc) and I wanted to move the hard disk from the old computer into the second one, retaining my windows installation/applications and boot from it. I was determined not to install Windows XP Pro again so I started looking into why the disk wouldn't boot when moved onto new hardware. It turns out that it's a problem with the driver for the IDE controller.
I was recently looking for a utility to mount an ISO so that I could install a program from the ISO image. Most of the applications that I have ever used for this (Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120%) require a reboot after installation to initialize the virtual CD-Rom drive before it can be used. I actually didn't want to reboot my workstation so I thought id have a quick Google for an alternative application. It turns out that Microsoft have written an application called 'Virtual CD Control Panel' (I've called it VCP for short).