Admin's Adventures

How to uninstall MS Office 2011 for Mac?

2010-10-23T12:49:00.002-04:00

Unlike with Office 2008 where you have to use a special Uninstall application, it is possible to uninstall a new MS Office just draging it to Trashcan.

Added later:
looks like it will not remove all stuff installed before: see here for the list of files you have to delete manually.

Windows Server 2003 Error when trying to login via RDP: The RPC server is unavailable.

2010-08-13T21:39:00.000-04:00

Got it today (Friday 13, huh!) after scheduled patches installation and restart.
Solution - connect to the box via remote registry and create the following registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
IgnoreRegUserConfigErrors = Dword:1

Devotion to Duty

2010-07-30T12:24:00.002-04:00

Happy Sysadmin's day!

by xkcd.com

How to create a "/dev/null"-like stub e-mail address in MS Exchange

2010-07-19T12:39:00.004-04:00

Via Active Directory, create a mail enabled distribution group with no members and assign it donotreply@somewhere.com e-mail address (and add any other e-mail addresses as aliases).

Java-based App error under Windows 7: The program can't start because MSVCR71.dll is missing from your computer.

2010-05-24T19:28:00.001-04:00

the file needs to be copied from the jre\bin folder to windows\system.

Windows: Delete a file with dot at the end of file name (c:\test\file.)

2010-05-12T15:43:00.004-04:00

There are two methods do delete such files. Unfortunately, Windows can't do that and even chkdsk is not able to resolve the issue.

First method: del "\\?\c:\test\file." - doesn't works for me, still getting a message mentioned "file can't be found" or something like that.

Second: Use Unlocker - works just great!

Exchange 2003 SP2: Resolve error 1023

2010-05-12T13:30:00.001-04:00

You can try a very useful piece of software for that - MFCMAPI
Download it: http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/

BES: How to separate company's and personal mailboxes on Blackberry.

2010-04-26T18:16:00.001-04:00

By default, all mails for BES mailbox go to Messages folder. If you have an additional mailbox (like gmail or something else), you probably will be confused, because all messages from this additional mailbox go to Messages folder too. To separate it (create another separate folder for BES mailbox), we have to update a database and resend service books to a device.

BBDBUpdate.exe -n localhost\BLACKBERRY -db BESMgmt -input EnableBESOnlyMessageApplication.sql

Create tar.gz on Windows box

2010-04-19T13:55:00.004-04:00

I've tried to use GnuWin package, but got an error while packing a file with very long filename, so I have to find something else. Fortunately, I found that free 7Zip can do that without errors.

You need to download a free command line version (see URL in the header).
7za a -r -ttar -so dummy [what to archive] | 7za a -tgzip -si [archivename].tar.gz

How to run x64 code under ESX on Dell OptiPlex 755

2010-04-14T11:54:00.000-04:00

If you're getting the "0xc000035a" error when trying to install a x64 guest OS under VMWare ESX(i), you can try to to set Trusted Execution (under "Performance" settings in the BIOS) to OFF.

LINUX: How to edit /etc/fstab in the single user mode

2010-03-29T14:50:00.000-04:00

mount -o remount,rw /

Make Windows 7 map your network drives properly

2010-01-22T21:05:00.002-05:00

We're use small vbs file to map network drives when user logging on. Windows System Log shows that script works ok under Windows 7, but network drives doesn't mapped properly. Finally I've found that Registry trick below resolve this.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

EnableLinkedConnections = 1 (DWord)

Linux: Set the "x" permissions for folders only (Thanks David W)

2009-12-30T15:40:00.004-05:00

find . -type d -print0 | xargs --null chmod 755

IIS Connection Limits (XP Pro)

2009-12-24T12:48:00.001-05:00

XP Pro allows 10 connections. This limit is installed by default by the metabase key MaxConnections for W3SVC, and there is no user interface method for modifying the setting. You can change this setting to any number less than 40 and it works, but that is not widely advertised.

Windows Media Player (Vista/Windows 7) stuttering while playing MP3 files

2009-11-25T22:03:00.004-05:00

Solution:

Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Sound -> Speakers / Headphones -> Enhancements - Check "Disable all enhancements" and Ok

Application popup: : \SystemRoot\System32\RDPDD.dll failed to load

2009-11-24T17:06:00.001-05:00

The problem is with the size of the session image space. The session image space is shared by the display drivers and printer drivers. If the sum of the drivers (rdpdd is an additional display driver) gets too big then there is no room left to load.

If you increase the size of the session image space then you can run remote desktop.

Add the following registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]

"SessionImageSize"=dword:00000020

Get a DELL Service Tag on the remote Linux system

2009-10-28T15:50:00.004-04:00

dmidecode -s system-serial-number

WinXP: Restore a lost wallpaper from cache

2009-09-18T20:53:00.003-04:00

actually, a cache of the current wallpaper bitmap stored here:

"C:\Documents and Settings\-User Name-\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Wallpaper1.bmp"

Remove an access list from ASA(PIX)

2009-08-19T17:44:00.001-04:00

To clear an access list from the running configuration, use the clear configure access list command in global configuration mode.
clear configure access-list [id]

How to remove a pre-login wallpaper from Windows Home Server

2009-07-09T18:21:00.002-04:00

Run Regedit and go there:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
Remove the "Walpaper" key

umount NFS filesystem fails in Linux

2009-06-01T14:37:00.005-04:00

there is a good example how to umount dead NFS share (let's assume that umount -f / doesn't work.

Quick fix to this problem is editing /etc/mtab file and removing the nfs filesystem mount point . In Linux /etc/mtab file contains all local and nfs mounted filesystems.By editing /etc/mtab i was able to umount hanged nfs filesystem on my Linux machine without doing a reboot.

Finally to resolve
failing nfs mount issue i commented the entry in /etc/mtab file :
#sun:/export /mnt/nfs nfs rw,addr=192.168.0.135 0 0.

Chuck Norris and IT

2009-05-21T11:18:00.000-04:00

The system works because Chuck Norris tells it to work
Chuck Norris doesn’t need a test suite. The test suite needs Chuck Norris.
CPUs run faster to get away from Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris normalizes all schema just by inserting random data
Chuck Norris can compile syntax errors
Packets travel faster than the speed of light for Chuck Norris, but he can still catch them
Chuck Norris has Internet 3
Check Norris can parse invalid XML
Chuck Norris can break Moore’s Law
Chuck Norris can fix everything without changing anything.

How to find the user / entity an email address is associated with in Exchange 2003

2009-05-11T15:49:00.002-04:00

Open the Acive Directory Users and Computers Management Console
Right Click on the domain > Select Find
Select Custom Search in the Find field
Select the Advanced tab
To find the entity with the email address spamtrap@danlance.co.uk for example, enter the following in the LDAP query field: (proxyAddresses=smtp:user@somain.com)
This will list the entity containing the email address entered.

Wild cards can be entered within the email address (*) to return multiple matches.
If you want to view all the email addresses within the results list, select View -> Choose Columns... and select Proxy Address - doing this in assoication with the query (proxyAddresses=smtp:*@somain.com) will give you a list of all entities within the organisation that have an email address, together with all the email addresses they have.

How to turn on an automatic logon in Windows XP

2009-04-21T14:15:00.001-04:00

Use "control userpasswords2" from command prompt to open related Control Panel applet.

Issue: Home Server Storage can’t calculate the size for a shared folder

2009-03-28T01:29:00.003-04:00

In the console below the pie chart, chart size calculation for certain folders never stops.
Within the Shared Folders tab in the console, some folders appear with size unknown.

Resolution: Reset security owner permissions on the shared folder.