windows 2003, 2008, R2 how tos
If you are working on a WordPress site and see a redirect error like: CHROME: This Page Isn’t Working Right Now www.<YourDomain>.com redirected you too many times. ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS FIREFOX: The page isn’t redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. SAFARI: This webpage has a redirect loop The webpage at https://www.<YourDomain>.com has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for…
Diskpart is Microsoft’s disk partitioning command line tool and while it works well, it does not provide some protections from self inflicted wounds. One common DISKPART command to wipe a disk is CLEAN. CLEAN removes the volumes and partitions along with changing the first letter of every file to a ‘?’. Files that start with a ‘?’ are not shown in NTFS (i.e. dir command or in Windows Explorer) and the file system knows the…
In 2017 we recorded a video on how to remove partitions through command line. This is especially useful when they are stuck or refuse to be deleted through the DISK MANAGER console because they are protected system partitions. Today we explain how to remove partitions, including protected partitions, and reformat a previously used disk. The following commands work in old school CMD, newer school PowerShell or even the tomorrows school Windows Terminal: Open a command…
If you send email to a distribution group that is running off an Office365 Hosted Exchange account that is running in Hybrid mode with your on-premise Exchange server, the email may never be received. The email happily shows in SENT folder, has no errors or email bounces, and if you trace the email it shows as DELIVERED: This frustrating situation will occur if two conditions are met: The distribution group is DYNAMIC (i.e. based on…
Over time you will have a bunch of garbage apps automatically starting up. Things like Adobe Acrobat icons in your system tray, Google updates, printer software for a printer you don’t own anymore and more can really slow down your PC and make things a visual mess. There used to be two easy ways to manage these programs: Use TASK MANAGER > STARTUP press CNTL+ALT+DEL and select TASK MANAGER click the STARTUP tab right click…
There are four places that programs startup automatically from: 1: STARTUP FOLDERS AUTOMATIC STARTUP Both of these are in hidden folders so you need to change your view to show Hidden Folders as shown in the screen shot to the right Per User Startup Folder: C:\Users\<USER NAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup Startup Folder for All Users C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp 2: REGISTRY RUN & RUNONCE KEYS HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432NODE\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE Typically we see very little…
There are five ready ways to uninstall software: Using the GUI – Right click on the START BUTTON > APPS AND FEATURES > click the app in question > UNINSTALL Using a build in uninstaller – Go to the folder where the product is installed, look for something like UNINSTALL.EXE then create a shortcut to it, edit the shortcut and add /? to the end. Double click the shortcut to see the uninstallation switches WMIC…
Most users, especially those will laptops, will want Outlook to operate in Cached mode but you likely don’t want Outlook caching on boardroom / focus room / huddle room / client room computers. Cache mode copies a large amount of data from the Exchange server to an .OST file on local PC and in a boardroom that: takes a few minutes users seldom have in a meeting opens a security hole by putting potentially sensitive…
If need to have different settings for your users depending upon which computers they are on this is the article for you. Trying to set and HKCU entry based on the machine can be easily done but the process is not obvious. Our customers wants users to have the default 1 year of caching in Outlook so when they are on a plane, they still have their mail BUT they also was users to log…
If you have a mail server that you are having problems with, the easiest way to test it is using Telnet: Launch APPS AND FEATURES Install TELNET Windows 10 – PROGRAMS AND FEATURES > TURN WINDOWS FEATURES ON OR OFF Windows 2016 – SERVER MANAGER > LOCAL SERVER > MANAGE > ADD ROLES AND FEATURES > Telnet is a FEATURE Launch CMD always a good idea to RUN AS AN ADMIN, but not required Type…
If you have a folder that may (or may not) contain other files and folders that you want to delete using a simple command line, RMDIR (as in Remove Directory) is your friend. The syntax is simple are only two switches: /S = also remove all sub-directories /Q = Quiet / Silent / do not prompt user to confirm deletion The following command will remove the McAfee folder AND everything under it. rmdir /s /q…
If you want to retain control over what your staff can install you will need to disable the GET ADD-INS button in Outlook. Unfortunately there is no ready made GPO toggle GET ADD-INS off. To give you a false sense of security, there is a setting in the Office 365 Exchange Management Console to disable “User owned Apps and Services” with options for “Let people in your organization go to the Office Store” and “Let…
If you want to block programs from running on your corporate network, you can easily create a Group Policy Object (GPO) to make that happen. However, there are two GPO’s you can use but only one of them works well. Method 1 – GPO to Block Software By File Name This is the old way of blocking software and it has limited performance as we explain below: Launch REGEDIT Expand USER CONFIGURATION > POLICIES >…
If you need a copy of the digital certificate from a file you are using (perhaps for use with Software Restriction Policies), you can extract the certificate in just a few easy steps: Right click on the file and select PROPERTIES Click DIGITAL SIGNATURE tab and select the DETAILS button if you do not see the DIGTIAL SIGNATURE tab, the file is not digitally signed Click the VIEW CERTIFICATE button Click the DETAILS tab and…