I came across an article listing forty-three Windows utilities for enhancing the functionality of that less-than configurable operating system. There is some good stuff on this list, which isn’t hard to imagine since it’s pretty long.
One particularly important caveat is that you will not want to install all of these at once. For one there are redundant entries, multiple applications which provide the same or highly similar functionality. For two you will strap your system with superfluous processor strain running forty-three extra applications all the time.
My best advice would be to look over the list, try a handful of them, and keep only those you will continuously use and don’t get in the way of what you really want to do with your computer.
I installed a rootkit on my Vista machine. It was interesting to note that I have no virus software which would detect this root kit either in its zip file or in its executable. You can read about that dangerous file here.
My usual fall-back for rooting out deep clinging nasties is ComboFix. You can read about ComboFix here, but keep in mind it’s a last-line extraction utility and should be used with care (and maybe should be used by people who know what they are doing). However, ComboFix was not able to locate this particular nasty.
Not only was ComboFix unable to find this rootkit but Spybot, Avast!, Security Essentials, Sophos Anti-Rootkit, and some random others were all unable to rid my system of this annoyance (or even find it for that matter).
Finally I heard about a utility Kaspersky is making called TDSSKiller. (Thanks, Harry.) It’s specifically a rootkit extractor so don’t expect more than that, but as far as rootkit extractors go this one’s rockin the misty bog. I think it took less than two minutes to scan my system and offer to cure the file. And it did find a bad file and cure it. As far as I can tell it’s all better now. Well, it’s still Vista; it’s not better in that respect.
Previously I would reboot the machine (usually because it was required by updates) and Avast! would snap the nasty when it poked its head up trying to take action. I’ve rebooted several times now over a couple of days, and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Excellent thus far.
I found this great step-by-step guide for making a mapped drive in Active Directory for each user. It covers both sets of permissions (share and security), and it covers all of the basic details for each section in AD. Set up correctly this method even automagically creates each user folder as needed. Very comprehensive.
However, there is one detail they never explicitly mention and which may cause you to stumble (as it did me). They neglect to mention that you cannot use a trailing slash in your path or you will get an error when you try to Apply the new setting.
The specified path is not valid. Enter a valid network server path using the form: \\server\share\folder.
This error is not all that clear either. Though it does not itself contain a trailing slash, I find it so common to use one when you are referring to a directory (thank you all other computing that’s not Microsoft) it seemed only natural to include one. If you are reading this article then you probably also think nothing of using a trailing slash.
I don’t know for certain if this holds true still (in Server 2008 or SBS 2011), but it’s true in SBS 2003 (and presumably Server 2003).
I just installed Adobe’s Creative Suite 5.5 as an upgrade (from CS5) on a couple of machines here at work. It’s a long process (about an hour each machine) but I got through it without any troubles.
As is so often the case, I knew there would be updates available. So I set about seeking out the updater Adobe uses. Now that used to be handled by Version Cue (deprecated) and this thing called Updater6 or some such (deceased). What’s managing the updates for Adobe products today?
In the past you didn’t want to run the Help —> Updates because that would run updates for just the application from whose help menu you made that request. Back in those ancient days, though, every application had its own update option.
Not so today. Thinking this might be a good place to begin… no, that’s not right.
First I slogged through the shortcuts in the Windows Start menu searching for anything update like. Since the folders for 5 and 5.5 were present I went through both of them. They are very clean and streamlined; however, there is no mention of updates anywhere among the shortcuts there contained.
Next I trudged through the various Adobe folders. It’s a 64 bit machine so there are folders under both Program Files and Program Files (x86). Tried all the Adobe folders and those Adobe folders under Common Files (in both locations) and found nothing useful.
Talking with a friend he mentioned that Photoshop had an Update link. So I opened Ps and went to Help —> Updates. This launched something called Adobe Application Manager. Back into x86 Common Files I found a folder called AdobeApplicationManager (note the lack of spaces and thus it’s out of the expected alphabetical order).
You might guess that within that folder I would locate the executable for running this update application. Haha! Sucka!
There is an executable in there. It’s called Set-up.exe. This little gem fails upon execution thusly:
Adobe Error
So it goes. Who needs updates anyway?
The short answer to the problem is to open Photoshop (or one of the other applications which happens to have an update link under its help menu) and use Help —> Updates to run the Adobe Application Manager. Remember: not all applications in the Suite have such a link.
Good luck with that.
Of course if you find a way to run this application directly or where it is located feel free to share.
I suppose this is rather late in the game for me to write a little post about the Group Policy Management Console but here it is nonetheless. I usually work with SBS (Small Business Server) machines where the GPMC is part of the traditional bundle (as of SBS 2003 r2?) and so I am very used to having it available to me when I am working in Active Directory or with Group Policies.
That being said, it’s not included by default in the regular Server 2003 (I know: ancient). It’s very useful however because it allows you to clearly view which elements exist in your policy (rather than having to slog through all of the elements to locate those that look like they have been changed). It’s not perfect as it would be preferable to edit directly in the console and not have to open the usual (slogging) editor. So it goes.
Regardless you can get the installation package here. (Be forewarned that this download will fail in Opera and Firefox so you’ll have to dust off IE.)
Once you get the installer on your server, remember to click the “Unblock” button in the Properties dialog or Windows will throw an error when you attempt to run it.
I was asked to set up a handful of laptops for a specific one-day event where users would be taking a survey on them and that was pretty much the end of it.
I created a special limited user account for the purpose and removed that user account from the AD group Domain Users so that special account would not be able to login anywhere I did not specify. Then I created a Group Policy for a security group in which that special user was a member whereby the particular user restrictions were passed to that special user (such as forcing the Home page in IE to the survey users were to take).
Next I created a special bucket in AD to hold the few laptops for this project. I then was able to create a Group Policy forcing my special domain security group as a member of the local Users group on the laptops in that bucket.
Let’s go over this scenario again in detail.
GroupEventUser contains one user (EventUser). These are both housed in a bucket in AD (UsersEvent). The five machines (we’ll call EventMach1–EventMach5) are in another bucket (LaptopsEvent). The bucket LaptopsEvent has a GPO which forces GroupEventUser into the local Users group on each of the five machines there contained.
This Group Policy Object can be created here in the GP Editor:
Computer Configuration —> Windows Settings —> Security Settings —> Restricted Groups
That’s the easy part. Setting up the actual object is a bit confusing. You’ll want to, of course, “Add Group…” at Restricted Groups.
Then you will enter the name of the group you are forcing into the Add dialog (in my example I would add GroupEventUser). With this object now created you will open its Properties dialog (this will open automatically when you create the object) and in the field “This group is a member of:” (by clicking the associated “Add…” button) you will add the name of the local computer group you will force your AD group into (in my case Users which is the local users group thus allowing my domain group GroupEventUser login privileges on those machines in LaptopsEvent).
Once again, you create a policy object named after the domain group you are adding to the local group, and add the local group in that object’s member of section.
Clear as mud? You can see this somewhat confusing article where I got my information about the GPO for forcing the group membership. (In part I wrote this article because there was a lot of forum posts telling folks this could not be done. See this one for instance. There were many others. Google is your friend.)
I am going through our Active Directory here with the purpose of cleaning things up and making sure everything is up to snuff. A lot of the changes we want made are common across many users. I didn’t want to change each user with the exact same information (everyone works for the same company, for example).
I found this great free utility for making bulk changes in AD. (You can find some additional information about ADModify here as well.)
It’s a bit clunky but it does what it claims to do.
The download is a ZIP and you’ll have to go into the Properties dialog and click to Unblock executable extractions. There are a few dll’s and a couple of executables in there. One is a command line tool, but I have only tried the dialog.
You can put it anywhere you’d like. I put it in a folder where I keep other tools (called Tools). No installation required. It will create a log (XML) file in its folder for each operation you perform. A little annoying but easy enough to manage.
When you run it, it brings up a plain dialog where you can drill into AD. Once you choose the first two settings (Domain List & DC List) and click the green button you will be able to drill down until you are at the level you’d like to bulk change. There is an option to seek out in recursive fashion too. Select the bucket of interest and choose Add To List-> and this will load all the objects per the search you created into the right hand pane. Select the ones you want (click, ctrl-click, & shift-click work).
Next you will click Next>>>. This will bring up a more or less familiar AD dialog. You’ll note the obvious difference that there are check boxes by which you select which items you intend to alter. Once you check a box you can input data into that field to bulk change all the items selected in the previous step.
Works great and is making this process of cleaning and updating a lot easier.
You may be sending mail to a Public Folder on your domain, and that’s pretty cool. However, if you try to send a sizable attachment with that message you will run into trouble.
The usual setting for Anonymous under Properties > Permissions > Client Permissions is Contributor. This gives Anonymous (e-mail) the ability to create items in the folder. If you attach a tiny GIF or JPEG it’s no problem. The message is accepted and it sits happily in the Public Folder. But if you send a large JPEG or PDF (multiple MB worth) you will get an SMTP time-out or perhaps some other equally meaningless error.
To remedy this you must give Anonymous (or the e-mail address sending the file) Read permissions as well.
Why read? Perhaps “receive an attachment from” is like “I allow you to read the attachment you have sent to me as I store it for you” or some bullshit. I don’t know. Just do it, ok.
Had a call today from a human female in accounting. Her caps lock key was stuck on whether it was on or off. It was only doing this in Word.
I came over and tried the usual guessed-at stuff which she had of course already tried: turn the caps lock on and off, use the shift key (no change, still all caps), restart Word. I didn’t want to just reboot the machine.
Instead I climbed into the driver’s seat and started what we like to call troubleshooting, but which is really much more like sitting in the bath tub making motor boat sounds and occasionally splashing one hand against the top of the water.
For whatever reason I copied a word and pasted that on a new line. Turned the caps on and off again, and all was back to normal.
She thought I was pretty amazing. She asked me what had been the problem. I started laughing so hard I had to leave the accounting offices.
It may come to pass that you want to install 7-Zip on your Windows 7 machine (no relation). 7-Zip is a great archive utility that can handle nearly any archive file you might care to throw at it (from zip to rar to iso to tarball and all points in between). It also handles a new(ish) archive type with the extension 7z (comic book archived as cb7).
Of course you will want to download and install 7-Zip.
Now once you get that installed you may discover that it does not automatically assume archiving duties for all of the file types it can access. Nope, it’s not that sort of invasive weed of a program. It is ready for you; it puts certain items in your context menus so as to be easily available; but it doesn’t just take charge.
On Windows XP it was a simple matter of selecting a file of the extension in question, a zip file for instance, and asking XP to open that file with 7-Zip and making certain the check box for always opening was checked. This probably ought to work in Windows 7 but I got a big fat nothing for my efforts down that path.
I am used to having to browse for 7-Zip when making the file association as Windows can’t be reasonably expected to guess that I want to use an archive manager to open a file with an archive extension. No big thing. However, after browsing to the 7zFM.exe (that’s the file manager) and selecting it and clicking the Open button I failed to notice that 7-Zip had not been populated in the “Open with…” dialog and so my file association went to the first item in the list: Adobe Reader. Annoying but I’ll just try again. Nope. Windows will not populate the dialog with the 7-Zip file manager or anything else in the 7-Zip folder.
Surely though if I just open the file manager directly and go into it’s options (Tools —> Options… —> System) I can simply ask 7-Zip to grab those file extensions for itself.
Dreaming can be so pleasant.
It caused a ripple through my operating system indicating that changes may well be taking place. Regardless, the icon for the 7-Zip file was still Adobe’s red icon and when I returned to the Options dialog in the file manager everything was again unchecked.
Nice. The solution? Open the 7-Zip file manager as an administrator and selecting the extensions will take. You’re not out of the water yet I’m sad to say, though you are very nearly there.
Now, finally, you can open the “Open with…” dialog and you will find 7-Zip waiting to be selected.
