Build a Windows Server Update Services(WSUS) Server

1. Install Internet Information Services
   To verify that IIS was installed, open a web browser, and navigate to http://127.0.0.1/. You should receive an Under Construction page if IIS is installed successfully.
2. Install Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 2.0 and WinHTTP 5.1
   http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=47251
3. Install .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package
   http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=68935
4. Install Report Viewer Redistributable 2005
   http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=70410
5. Install Microsoft Management Console 3.0
   http://go.microsoft.com/fslink/?LinkID=70412
6. Give Read permissions to Network Service on the root of the drive where the updates will be stored. In this case, it will be E:.
7. Install WSUS
   a. Set the location to store updates.
   b. Create the WSUS database
   c. Configure the update site.
   d. Set Product and Classification download settings.
   

New User Account Not Showing Up on Login Screen in OSX 10.5

Macs in a predominately Windows environment don't play well. We all know that. But here's another reason that they don't play well. With OS X 10.5 systems, when you bind the computer to the domain, when new users log into the system, their account will be created but the account will not show up on the login screen. When creating local accounts, I've found that OS X 10.5 has no problem also displaying on the login screen. However, when a network account was logged into the machine, their account would not show up on the login screen. In Tiger, I didn't have problems, but since this is our first Leopard build, we're having all kinds of fun. The fix is simple, however.

1. Launch Directory Utility, which can be found in the Applications\Utilities folder.
2. On the Directory Servers tab, click + to bind it to the domain.
3. Click the Services tab.
4. Double-click where it says Active Directory.
5. Show the Advanced Options.
6. In the User Experience tab, right below, tick the box that says Create mobile account at login.
7. Reboot the system.

Recover Deleted Emails in Outlook

Ever get that weird feeling in your stomach after you delete something and realize that you need it? We all do. In Microsoft Outlook, you can recover your deleted emails quite easily.

1. Open the folder where the email was located.
2. Click on Tools -> Recover Deleted Items.
3. In there, you'll see a list of your emails that you recently deleted. Highlight the emails that you want recovered, and click Recover Selected Items.
4. You emails will then be recovered back to its original folder.
   

Hide Contacts from Showing Up in GAL

In certain environments, you may have created contacts which you don't want to show up in your Global Address List (GAL).

To hide these certain contacts,

1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. Locate the contact that you want to be hidden.
3. Open their properties and go to the Exchange Advanced tab.
4. Tick the box that reads "Hide from Exchange address lists".

In my case, it took about 5 minutes for the contact to be hidden in the GAL. If you're using Outlook in cache mode, it may take up to 24 hours for this change to take effect.

Force Empty Trash in OSX

If you put files that are in use in your trash, OSX will prevent you from emptying the trash can. To force deletion, hold down Option then Empty Trash.

This was useful to me today when apparently, I had 50GB of data that was sitting in the Trash but couldn't be deleted. Somewhat of a pain.

Recreate a Show Desktop Shortcut

Its so easy to accidentally delete your Show Desktop shortcut on your Quick Launch bar in Windows XP and Windows Vista. However, it is also easy to recreate this shortcut if you accidentally delete it.

Here's what you need to do to recreate a Show Desktop shortcut.

1. Create a new text document in Notepad.
2. Type in the following lines.
   [Shell]
   Command=2
   IconFile=explorer.exe,3
   [Taskbar]
   Command=ToggleDesktop
3. Save the file as Show Desktop.scf.
4. Move this file to your Quick Launch toolbar.

Propogate Exchange Public Folder Permissions

Work hard, but don't do hard work. This applies to so many things, but never more appropriate than doing tedious and repetitive work. Changing the permissions on a few folders is no problem, but what if there are thousands. Here's how to change permissions on all subfolders for Exchange Public Folders.

1. Launch Exchange System Manager
2. Drill Down to Administrative Groups -> [Your Org] -> Folders -> Public Folders.
3. Right-click on the parent folder that has the permissions that you want to push down to the children.
4. Select All Tasks then Manage Settings.
5. Select Overwrite Settings.
6. Select the settings that you want to overwrite on the children.
7. Click Finish to confirm your changes.

The changes may take a while if you have many subfolders under the parent.

Error when Running Exmerge.exe

Today, I had a difficult time launching Exmerge, which is a cool little tool I might add. On lauch, I would receive an error message which read "This application has failed to start because EXCHMEM.dll was not found."

When you download Exmerge from Microsoft's site, you can extract the files anywhere you'd like. However, you can only extract it in one location for this tool to launch successfully. You'll want to extract the Exmerge files to C:\Program Files\exchsrvr\bin\. Any other location will generate the error message above.

Prevent Windows Messenger from Starting at Launch

The other day, I noticed that Windows Messenger started launching again when I logged onto my computer at home. Playing around in Group Policy, I found a setting that would prevent it from starting up.

1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor. You can do this by clicking Start -> Run -> type in 'gpedit.msc' -> click OK.
2. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Messenger.
3. Right click on the setting that reads 'Do not automatically start Windows Messenger initially' -> Select Properties -> Enabled -> OK.
4. Restart your computer.
   

Office 2007: Initializing the Places Bar

In Office applications, when you initiate a Save As command, you may experience a window that pops up and says "Initializing the Places Bar". During this time, it can take a a few seconds to a few minutes to bring up the Save As window that you're expecting to see.

What is happening is the Office application, whether it be Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, is trying to find any network drives that you have mapped. If it can find the network drives, then this process will be fast. However, if it can't find the network path, then the process have to time out and then the Save As dialog box will come up. If you have multiple network drives that can't be reached, this can take a very frustratingly long time to time out and complete.

To correct this:

• Make sure that all of your network drives are able to be accessed. If they can't be accessed, you'll want to disconnect the drive or make sure that it's accessible.
  
• If you have group policy in place, then you'll want to review your policies and make sure that there are no places bar locations that can't be accessed. You'll need to have your systems administrator, or whoever manages your group policy look at this, but it can be found in the Group Policy Management Editor under User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Classic Administrative Templates > Microsoft Office 2007 system > File Open/Save dialog box > Places Bar Locations.

In my environment, we had an entry in group policy for the Places Bar Location that pointed to a server that no longer existed. Once that key was disabled and the changes were reflected on all of the domain controllers, I rebooted my system and the Save As command ran lightning fast.

Clear Outlook AutoComplete Cache

This tip is especially useful if you've sent an email to someone, but accidentally misspelled their email address. Clearing the cache will delete this entry and allow you to create another entry that is correct.

1. Quit Microsoft Outlook.
   
2. Click on Start -> Run
3. Type in %appdata%\microsoft\outlook.
4. Delete the file [profile name].n2k.
5. Relaunch Outlook.

Outlook will then create a new .n2k file to store your cache.

Linux: Whats the Super Button?

In the Linux world, the super button will be your Windows key on your keyboard.

Setup Windows Machines as Media Servers for Playstation 3

If you want to play your MP3 collection that you have stored on your computer on your Playstation 3, you can setup your Windows machine to act as a media server. This will allow you to access all of your MP3, so that you can play them on your TV through your Playstation 3. You will be able to view your pictures and videos on your computer as well. The setup is really simple, and literally takes about 2 minutes.

1. Launch Windows Media Player 11.
2. Right Click on the Library tab and select Media Sharing.
3. Check the option Share My Media.
4. On your Playstation 3,under Photos, Music, or Video, select Search for Media Servers.
5. Go back to your PC, you should see a screen that says that an unknown device is trying to connect. Allow the device, and you should now be able to play your files on your Playstation.
   

Disable Firefox Extension Install Timer

Whenever you install an extension for Firefox, Firefox makes you wait for about 5 seconds before you can click the install button. Its somewhat of a mechanism to protect you from malicious websites...and in some cases protect you from yourself.

You can disable this timer, but remember to be very careful.

• In the URL field, type in about:config and press enter.
• Search for security.dialog_enable_delay.
• Double click on this entry, and set its value to 0.

You then can install extensions without having to wait.

VMware Infrastructure Client could not establish the initial connection

After upgrading VMWare Virtual Center to version 2.5, I received a message that read

• VMWare Infrastructure Client could not establish the initial connection

To correct this error, you would need to log onto the VirtualCenter server and make sure that VMWare VirtualCenter Service is running. After I started this service, I was able to connect to the VirtualCenter Server to maintain my guest OSes.

Delete Files that are in Use in Windows

If you try to delete a file, but the file is in use, you will likely get an error message that reads

The action can't be completed because the file is open in another program.

What this boils down to is that you need to figure out which process is using the file. A good utility to figure this out is called Process Explorer. Process Explorer is basically Task Manager, but all juiced up on steroids.

Process Explorer is really a powerful tool, but figuring out which process is using a file is actually quite simple.

1. Click the Find menu at the top and select Find Handle or DLL.
2. In the windows that opens up, type in the name of the file that you want to delete and then click Search.
3. Below, a list will show which processes are using that particular file.
4. You can then close that particular application/process and try the delete again.
5. Optionally, you can find the process in the process list, kill that process tree, then delete the file.
   

Microsoft Outlook Error Code: 0X8004010d

Microsoft Outlook will throw out an error that reads

An unknown error occurred, error code: 0x8004010d.

I was able to generate this error when I was trying to mount a PST file. The problem ended up being that there was very little to no free disk space available on the same volume as the PST. Once I cleared up some space, I was able to add the PST with no additional problems.

If you're having problems deleting files because they are in use, you can follow this guide on figuring out which processes are using files.

Show BCC Field in Outlook

To show the BCC field in all new messages that you compose, click New and compose a new Mail Message. Up top, click on Options and then click Show BCC.

To hide the BCC field, do the same thing and untoggle the BCC field by clicking Show BCC again.

Change Grab's Default Filetype

If you use Grab to take screenshots on your Mac, you don't really have many options as to which type of file Grab is going to save the screenshot as.

You do have options to change this default file type. Simply type one of the following commands in Terminal (found under /Applications/Utilities) to change the default.

• defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
• defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf
• defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png
• defaults write com.apple.screencapture type psd
• defaults write com.apple.screencapture type tif

Solving Entourage Launch Issues

Entourage in Microsoft 2008 is by far not a very fun email client to use. This is especially true when Entourage won't even launch for you to read your email.

You may receive the following errors which will prevent Entourage from launching.

• The Rules file appears corrupt. Rules cannot be used.
• The Signatures file appears corrupt. Please remove the Signatures file from your Office 2008 identity folder and relaunch.
• The Mailing Lists file is corrupt.

All three of these error message prevent Entourage from launching, however, they are quite easy to fix. You simply have to navigate to the following folder and delete the files called Mailing Lists, Rules, and Signatures.

Macintosh HD/Users/[your user name]/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/

Once you remove those files, Entourage will recreate those files and Entourage will launch without issue.

SimpleTech External Drives Suck

At work, we purchased some SimpleTech 1TB drives for use with our disaster recovery plan and let me just start off by saying that these drives would cause more of a disaster than relieving one.

The drives come in a plastic case that feels really quite fragile and flimsy. There are small vents on the bottom of the drive for cooling purposes, but the slots are very thin and probably would let in much air to flow in and out of the casing anyways. There isn't even a fan in the casing to get the air moving.

The problem with the thin air vents and no fan is that this drive will overheat. When it overheats, the drive will restart itself and break connection. This is not something that you're going to want to deal with in a DR situation.

With that, I decided to try and re purpose this drive. I've never tried time machine in OS X Leopard so I wanted to give that a shot. Backing up data to this drive was somewhat slow. Not necessarily the drive's fault, but slow either way. When using time machine, the drive would consistently overheat and power off.

These drives are just so pathetic and worthless. I wouldn't want to store anything that is valuable to me on this drive at all. Its really quite odd because the smaller SimpleTech drive that I got to use with my MacBook works fine. I can leave that drive plugged in all day with no problems. Either way, if you're looking for an external hard drive with high capacity, avoid these SimpleTech drives at all costs. Unless you don't really care about the data that you're storing on these drives. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Change Settings for All New Word Documents in Office 2008

When creating a new Word document, Word 2008 creates the new document based on the normal template. If say you didn't like something in this template, you can modify the template so that this change is reflected in all new Word documents. The process is very simple.

1. Click on File, then Open the following document.
   Macintosh HD/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/Normal.dotm
2. Make any changes to this document that you'd like and then Save.

That's it. When you create a new document from now on, your new Normal.dotm template will be used.

If you want to revert to the original Normal.dotm file, you can simply rename the Normal.dotm file. Word will then create the default Normal.dotm file and restore the default settings.

Add Icons to a User's Dock via ARD

When performing a mass deployment of a software application, the hardest part is actually deploying the software. The second part is adding dock icons to the user's dock for the new applications. This could have been very useful for me when I was deploying Adobe CS3 or Microsoft Office 2008. However, finding this tool now will make software deployments even easier with a little less confusion for the end-user.

The tool is very appropriately called AddItemToDock. Its a very small tool, no GUI, simple command line. This application can be pushed out as an installer package, allowing you to send a simple command to add whatever applications to the dock that you want.

The usage for this tool is very simple. So simple in fact, that I'll just tell you what it is.

• additemtodock [application path] [application2 path] [application3 path] ... [applicationN path].

So if you wanted to add Calculator.app to the dock, you could simply run the command

• additemtodock /Applications/Calculator.app

You can add more applications in one command if you needed to or just multiple additemtodock commands.

The one drawback that I did find was that the command can only work under the current logged on user. So it won't work if the computer is sitting on the logon screen. Also, if you run the command as the root user, it adds the shortcut to the root user's dock.

If there's a more automated way of doing this, I'd love to hear it. Post a comment and let me know of software deployment techniques that you use is your environment.

Download Any Video On YouTube

While messing around, I Stumbled Upon a cool little website that lets you download any video off of YouTube. I have yet to play around with it more, it definitely looks like a very useful tool.

The website is called YouTubeLoader. You can simply enter the URL of the YouTube video that you want to download into the website, and it will return a link that you can save. Save the file as an FLV file and you're good to go.

You can play the resulting file with VLC Media Player which is an awesome media player.

MacBook Firmware Update Issues

When trying to update my MacBook's EFI firmware, I came across this odd error message. The message read "An unexpected error occurred (0). Your firmware can not be updated."


The problem lies wen trying to update the firmware on an Intel-based Mac that does not have a standard GUID partition table. Essentially, this means that if you have Windows installed on your Mac, you won't be able to install these firmware updates.

There is a way to get around this, however, it takes a bit of work to make it happen. You could simply backup your data, and reformat the drive to a GUID partition table. Or you could install OSX on an external FireWire drive, boot to the external drive, and then install the firmware from there.

Full details can be read on this Apple support article.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303609

Create Tables in Word Without Your Mouse

In Microsoft Word, or any application that uses Word as a text editor, such as Outlook, you can easily create tables with only typing in a string of characters.

Typing in +----------+----------+ then pressing Enter will create a row with 2 cells. After you press enter, you can then press Tab to create more rows.

Try it if you don't believe me.

Take Finer Control of Your Speakers in Leopard

In OS X Leopard, you can take finer control of the volume control. Simply hold Option and Shift and then press volume adjustment buttons, you can adjust the volume in 1/4 bar increments.

Deploy Office 2008 via ARD

Deploying Microsoft Office 2008 via ARD to your company's Mac isn't much of a difficult task as it is tiresome. However, for Office 2008, Microsoft was a little bit nice in the sense that the installer is in package format.

Roughly, my deployment strategy was the following.

• Remove Office 2004.
• Remotely install Office 2008.
• Push out preference files.

And away we go...

Step 1: Remove Office 2004
We only want to remove Office 2004 applications. We're not necessarily concerned with wiping out their Entourage database or what other goodies they may have created. It's important that you don't delete their Microsoft User Data folder in their Documents folder because this folder contains their Identity that we're going to need to transfer to Office 2008.

With that said, we're only going to remove the Microsoft Office 2004 folder from the Applications directory. To do this, send this unix command to the target computers.
rm -r "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004"

Step 2: Install Office 2004
I won't go into the details on this step because its more on how to use ARD, but I will give you what you need to know.

Since the installer on the DVD is in .mpkg format, we can simply push this out through ARD. Use the install package option in ARD to do this.

Step 3: Set preferences
If you're not particularly concerned with making sure that your users have particular settings, then you can skip this step. If this is a concern, then we'll need to create preference files to push out to your target computers. One setting that may be of concern is saving in the new docx, xslx, or pptx file formats. This process isn't very difficult either.

Launch the Office 2008 application that you want to have special preferences. Open that application's preferences and make any changes that you need. We now need to find this preference file and make a copy of it.

The preference files can be found in ~/Library/Preferences/, where ~ is your home folder.

For Word, the preference file that you need is com.microsoft.Word.plist.
For Excel, the preference file that you need is com.microsoft.Excel.plist.
For Powerpoint, the preference file that you need is com.microsoft.Powerpoint.plist.

With your copy of preference files, set read and write permissions.. This will allow you to push this out to many computers without having to worry about the user being able to access that file. I don't think that giving full permissions to a preference file is really going to affect anything, as the user will be free to make changes to that file anyways.

Copy these modified preference files to the users Preference folder within their library.

Step 4: Transfering Identity
When the user logs in, their dock will still contain shortcuts to Office 2004 applications. The user will need trash their dock icons and recreate new icons for the new Office 2008 applications. When the user launches an Office 2008 application, they will have to run through a wizard to complete the setup. The wizard basically walks them through transferring their identity and entering their name.

Once the user has completed transferring their identity, they will be all set to go. Wasn't that better than running around with the install DVD and installing one by one?

Windows Key Shortcuts

A Brief list of my favorite Windows key keyboard shortcuts.

[Windows Key] + D: Minimize or restore all windows
[Windows Key] + E: Launch Windows Explorer
[Windows Key] + M: Minimize all windows
[Windows Key] + Shift + M: Restore all windows
[Windows Key] + L: Lock the computer
[Windows Key] + R: Launch Run command dialog
[Windows Key] + F: Search for files
[Windows Key] + CTRL + F: Search for computers
[Windows Key] + F1: Launch Help and Support Center
[Windows Key] + Pause/Break: Launch System Preferences
[Windows Key] + U: Launch Utility Manager

Watch YouTube Videos in Higher Quality

To watch YouTube videos in high quality, all you need to do is add the string "&fmt=18" to the end of the link.

So if you had this YouTube link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU, you could watch it in high quality by viewing this link instead, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU&fmt=18.

Enable the Root User in OS X Leopard

1. Launch Directory Utility. This can be found in /Applications/Utilities/.
   
2. Pull down the Edit menu and select Enable Root User.
3. Set a password for the root user and click OK.
   

Why are My Videos All Pink?

What happened to me was that after running a Windows Update, suddenly all of the videos that I played in Windows Media Player played with a pinkish/purple tint. I couldn't figure out what happened. Videos that played in other players weren't pink tinted at all. VLC Media Player was fine as was Apple Quicktime.

What it ended up boiling down to was that an update for Windows Media Player broke my video card drivers. So I reinstalled the video card drivers for my NVidia GForce 7900GT and rebooted my computer. After the reboot, all of my videos were back to normal.

General Failure Error in Outlook

A message generated by Microsoft Outlook "General Failure. The URL was: [website]. The system cannot find the file specified."

This error is caused when you have other browsers installed and Microsoft Internet Explorer is not the default browser. Yes, pretty dumb if you ask me.

Firefox Fails to Launch

If the FireFox web-browser fails to launch, it often means that something in your profile is corrupt. I've experienced this a few times on Windows systems, but not so much on the Macintosh platform. To correct this on the Windows side, simply navigate to the following folder and move it to your desktop. You'll want to make sure that you show hidden files and folders.

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\

Windows Vista
C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Mozilla\

After you've copied this folder, relaunch FireFox. A new profile will be created. If you had any bookmarks, you can restore them by drilling into the copied Mozilla folder and locating bookmarks.html. Copy this file and place it into the new Mozilla folder that was created.