windows 2003, 2008, R2 how tos
What is S.M.A.R.T.? SMART is an acronym for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and it is just a simple monitoring system built into your hard drive. The idea behind SMART is to predict drive failures so you can protect your data (i.e. copy it to something else) before it dies Read more…
If you have security software that you can not uninstall using the normal methods like ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS there are several ways to succeed. 1 – Uninstall AV Using Command Line Script: Most software companies, especially those with enterprise / corporate products, have an easy way to uninstall their products using Read more…
In this video we explore the 10 features in the Microsoft Edge Chrome based browser that you should be using but probably aren’t. We cover: Immersive Mode with Read Outloud PDF Markup Reopen Closed Tabs Home Page Daily News 9 Dot App Selector for Office365 Apps Coupons & Competitor Pricing Read more…
Unless you are very new to using Windows, you will know that Microsoft has made enormous strides in driver management over the decades. The Driver Roll Back feature has saved our butts a few times. However, there is still one area that is seriously lacking and that is the removal Read more…
If you are having problems with your printers or queues, there are several steps to take to clear the system and we will go through them in order of easiest to most difficult: 1 – Easy Print Resets Click START and type PRINTERS Click on the printer you want to Read more…
What is BIOS? BIOS is the acronym for Basic Input Output System. A BIOS is the firmware (meaning that it is changable code stored in a physical chip) that tells the operating system SOFTware what the physical HARDware is capable of. Without a UEFI / BIOS, Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS, Read more…
Put simply, a Permanent Denial of Service (aka PDoS) attack is a hack that intentionally causes physical damage to a device. WHY WOULD SOMEONE PDoS? DoS stands for “Denial of Service” and usually that means an attacker wants to temporarily block access to your system so they can extract Read more…
Since the last Windows 10 upgrade one of our staff noticed that Windows File Explorer did not show their profile path (We are always on beta’s which change every few weeks to there is little point to explaining the build details). Specifically, the missing user is “Calgary” and so the Read more…
We recently tried to connect to the administrative shares (i.e. C$, E$, admin$, …) on a PC that was not part of a Domain using a Microsoft Account that was setup on that remote PC. We were frustrated to find it errored out with “You might not have permission to Read more…
We recently licensed a copy of Windows Server 2016 from a website named Digital Software Planet. There instructions were to download and install a 180 day evaluation copy of Server 2016 from the Microsoft Evaluation center. They also provided a standard product license key but when we entered it we Read more…
We recently ran into a simple Java Security error that through off our techs. The error stated JAVA APPLICATION BLOCKED: APPLICATION BLOCKED BY JAVA SECURITY and our techs thought this had to do with the Java’s browser integration. They spent time working though Chrome, Edge and IE11 security items but Read more…
I was amalgamating all of my old backups oneto a single USB drive when I stumbled on a DVD from 2006 that had a large file named “Web1-Primary_BU_Mar12_06.bkf” . After a few minutes of thinking I remembered that .BKF stands for BacKup File and remembered that “Windows Backup” had been Read more…
You can’t uninstall / reinstall DNS from a Domain Controller so if your DNS server has insurmountable problems, make sure that you have a second DC with a working DNS then dcpromo (demote) the problematic DC, make sure DNS has been removed, then repromote that server to be a DC. Read more…
We are often asked about how to revive older servers when all you have is the physical server. How can you wipe out server and install a fresh copy of Windows Server 2012 when you don’t even have a copy of Server 2012 and you are new to working on Read more…
In most cases servers from Dell, HP/Lenovo, and other big OEMs ship with the Windows operating system preinstalled and often they come with a “media pack” to allow reinstallation. The problem is that you can easily misplace that media pack (DVD or USB stick) between the time the server is Read more…
A disk “partition” is just a logical slice of a hard drive. Logical means that you still only have a single drive but it is virtually cut into pieces so that if one partition has a problem, the whole disk will not fail. Let’s look at each of the different Read more…