Blog Archive • Helge Klein

OPNsense HowTo: IPv4 & IPv6 Internet Connectivity With FTTH Modem

This article explains how to configure OPNsense as your (only) internet router in a fiber to the home (FTTH) setup.

Samba File Server: Web Access Through Filebrowser With SSO & HTTPS

This article explains how to set up Filebrowser in a Docker container as a web interface for browser-based access to a Samba file server.

Samba File Server With Windows ACLs in a Docker Container

This article explains how to set up a Samba file server with Windows ACLs as a domain member in a Docker container.

Samba Active Directory as Authelia’s SSO Authentication Backend

This article explains how to configure Samba Active Directory as Authelia's authentication backend via LDAP.

Samba Active Directory in a Docker Container: Installation Guide

This article explains how to install a Samba v4 Active Directory domain controller in a Docker container. It's part of a mini-series about running Samba Active Directory and file server service on a home server.

Unbound: Conditionally Include Only Existing (Docker) Interfaces

This article presents a simple and reliable solution to flexibly configure Unbound with interfaces that may not exist when Unbound starts.

No Bluetooth Audio In Zoom Android App: Solution and Explanation

Getting Bluetooth headphones or headsets to work with the Zoom Android app can be a frustrating experience. This quick post documents the issue I ran into along with its solution.

Upgrading PostgreSQL in a Docker Container

This article describes the steps necessary to upgrade PostgreSQL to a new major version in a Docker environment. There are many articles on the subject, but I couldn't find any that were complete, correct, and concise. So I wrote my own.

LogQL: A Primer on Querying Loki from Grafana

This article introduces newbies to writing search queries in LogQL. It should help you get started with building Grafana dashboards based on log data in Loki.

resticprofile Backup Monitoring Grafana Dashboard

This article explains how to set up a Grafana dashboard to monitor restic/resticprofile backup operations.

Dockerized Ubiquiti UniFi Network Server Setup With Automatic HTTPS

This article explains how to set up Ubiquiti UniFi Network Server, a management software for UniFi devices such as access points.

Guide: WordPress on Dockerized Apache on Hetzner Cloud

How to set up a modern, fast, and inexpensive web server for WordPress. Design goal: low maintenance coupled with high flexibility.

Vaultwarden Setup Guide With Automatic HTTPS

This article explains how to set up Vaultwarden with automatic HTTPS certificates (via Caddy).

Docker Monitoring With Prometheus, Automatic HTTPS & SSO Authentication

This article explains how to set up Prometheus, Node Exporter, and cAdvisor with automatic HTTPS certificates (via Caddy) and OAuth single sign-on (via Authelia).

Regex Cheat Sheet: Regular Expressions For Cleaning Up HTML

This article presents a collection of regular expressions I frequently use to clean up HTML that was generated from some tools' export routines.

Grafana Setup Guide With Automatic HTTPS & OAuth SSO via Authelia

This article explains how to set up Grafana, Loki, and Promtail with automatic HTTPS certificates (via Caddy) and OAuth single sign-on (via Authelia).

Firezone: WireGuard VPN With User Self-Service Portal & SSO

This article explains how to set up Firezone with automatic HTTPS certificates (via Caddy) and OpenID Connect single sign-on (via Authelia).

Unbound DNS Server Configuration & Static IPv6 Address on Proxmox

This article explains how to set up the Unbound DNS server as the resolver for your home network. It also shows how to generate and assign a static IPv6 address to your Proxmox server.

Portainer Setup Guide With Automatic HTTPS & OAuth SSO via Authelia

This article explains how to set up Portainer with automatic HTTPS certificates (via Caddy) and OAuth single sign-on (via Authelia).

Tips for DevOps Pipeline Automation & Bash Scripting

DevOps CI/CD pipelines on platforms such as GitHub or Azure DevOps are basically shell scripts that run in the cloud and are triggered by events, e.g., a Git push. This article explains common mistakes with pipeline scripts and how to avoid them.

restic: Encrypted Offsite Backup With Ransomware Protection for Your Homeserver

This article explains how to set up restic (with the resticprofile wrapper) for automated scheduled backups of your home server.

Upgrading Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 & PHP 7.4 to 8.1 for WordPress

This post describes how I upgraded our webserver running WordPress on Apache from Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS to 22.04.1 LTS and PHP from 7.4 to 8.1.

ownCloud Infinite Scale With OpenID Connect Authentication for Home Networks

This article explains how to set up ownCloud Infinity Scale with OpenID Connect authentication to Authelia or authentik.

authentik: Authentication, SSO, User Management & Password Reset for Home Networks

This is my second article on how to set up a modern user management and authentication system for services on your internal home network. In the previous article, I used Authelia as IdP; this article presents an alternative configuration based on authentik.

Authelia & lldap: Authentication, SSO, User Management & Password Reset for Home Networks

This article explains how to set up a simple but modern user management and authentication system for services on your internal home network. The solution supports important security features like two-factor authentication and single sign-on, and only requires minimal maintenance due to self-service password reset.

Automatic HTTPS Certificates for Services on Internal Home Network

This article explains how to set up automatic HTTPS certificates via Let’s Encrypt for services on your internal home network without opening a port on your firewall. It’s part of my series on home automation that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server with (dockerized or virtualized) services such as Home Assistant and OwnCloud.

Installing Proxmox as Docker Host on Intel NUC Home Server

This is my first article in what is poised to become a series on installing, configuring, and running a home server with (dockerized or virtualized) services such as Home Assistant and OwnCloud.

DNS Exfiltration & Tunneling: How it Works & DNSteal Demo Setup

DNS is a protocol that lends itself to abuse because it's largely unmonitored and unrestricted. This article explains how data exfiltration from a corporate network via DNS works and shows how to set up a working exfiltration demo with DNSteal.

Windows Installer Errors 2503 & 2502: Called RunScript when not marked in progress & Called InstallFinalize when no install in progress

This is a quick post on how to troubleshoot situations where you get error 2503 (Called RunScript when not marked in progress) followed by error 2502 (Called InstallFinalize when no install in progress) when trying to install or uninstall software with Windows Installer.

Identifying MS Teams Application Instances & Counting App Starts

Microsoft Teams is a web application that needs a browser as a runtime environment. In order to keep things simple – at the expense of disk space – the Teams installation package contains not only the actual web app but also all components that are needed to run it, including Chromium. When you launch Teams, […]

Windows Terminal as Standard User With Dedicated Admin Account

Feature-wise, Windows Terminal is a fantastic replacement for the dated console host. It presents entirely new problems, however, in a secure setup with a standard user for day-to-day operations and a separate admin account for tasks that require elevation.

Windows 11: How To Configure Secure DNS (DoH) for All WiFi Networks

This post explains how to configure DNS over HTTPS (DoH) for all WiFi networks in Windows 11 via the Settings app. Unfortunately, this is less intuitive than it should be; I need a reminder every time I connect to the German railway’s WiFiOnIce, which only seems to work with Deutsche Bahn’s (insecure) DNS server (you […]

Split-Tunnel VPN & WiFi: No Internet via IPv4 Due to Interface Priority

I had a weird issue on my laptop: whenever I connected to our company’s VPN, I lost local internet connectivity. As it turned out, this was caused by incorrect network interface priority metric settings. To spare you and my future self many frustrating hours of troubleshooting, here’s what caused it.

Controlling RGB Keyboard Lighting Without Bloated Vendor Software

Vendors in the gaming space often make wonderful keyboards, but their software is not always up to par. Take the Razer Huntsman Elite: its software is a whopping 422 MB download that installs eight (!) background processes that consume valuable system resources all the time. Luckily, there is an alternative.

Free Services to Send Files End-To-End Encrypted

There are a number of services for sending files to someone else that are both free and secure. This post provides an overview.

ShareX: Free Screen Recording Tool & Mouse Pointer Offset Fix

This is a quick post to remind me of two things: 1) ShareX is the tool of choice for screen recordings on Windows. 2) On high-DPI (4K) screens there is a mouse pointer offset that can easily be fixed.

Changing the Location of Total Commander Configuration Files

Depending on how you installed Total Commander, the default settings location may resolve to the installation directory or the user profile. This article explains how to locate the configuration files and shows how to move them to any directory of your choice.

Finding (Executables in) User-Writeable Directories

This article presents two different detection types for insecure filesystem permissions on Windows endpoints: scanning for directories that are user-writable, and detecting processes that are started from user-writeable directories.

Checking Windows Hello Key Storage: TPM or Software?

Windows Hello for Business (WHfB) stores a cryptographic key on the device. The preferred storage location is a hardware TPM module. However, if a TPM is not available, the key may be stored in the filesystem instead. It’s surprisingly hard to determine the storage location for existing Windows Hello for Business keys. This article presents […]

How to Check the TPM Status & Enable the CPU’s fTPM/PTT

The recent Windows 11 announcement has created a lot of confusion due to the requirement for a trusted platform module (TPM). This article explains why your machine almost certainly has a TPM, how to check the TPM status and how to enable the TPM that comes with your CPU.

Top 10 IT Security Tips for Individual Users

This is a list of simple things that will protect you from nearly all the real-world IT security issues affecting individuals and SOHO users.

Royalty-Free Images for Blogs, Websites & Social Media

Social media posts are so much more memorable if they feature a picture. To make your blog articles look great on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., you, therefore, need to include so-called hero images in your posts. Several sites offer suitable pictures, high-quality and royalty-free. This article provides a list.

Splunk Search Results: JSON to HTML Table Conversion in PowerShell

Splunk search results can be exported from the UI as CSV, JSON, and XML, but not as HTML. This article presents a PowerShell script that converts exported search results from JSON into an HTML table for use with documentation, blogs, etc.

Adobe Acrobat & Photoshop: Network Connection Target Hosts

This post lists the internet communication targets of Adobe Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, and Creative Cloud. This post is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how to analyze the network traffic of any Windows or macOS app.

Citrix CVAD: Network Connection Target Hosts

This post lists the internet communication targets of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenApp/XenDesktop). This post is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how to analyze the network traffic of any Windows or macOS app.

Anatomy of WerFault.exe’s Application Crash Error Reporting

Not much information is available on Windows Error Reporting’s WerFault.exe, the process that is launched by the OS whenever an application crashes. This post documents the launch sequence of WerFault.exe and its related processes along with their command line parameters.

Windows OS, Services & Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts

This post lists the internet communication targets of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including its various services and UWP apps. This post is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how to analyze the network traffic of any Windows or macOS app.

MS Office & Teams: Network Connection Target Hosts

This post lists the internet communication targets of Microsoft Office and Teams. It is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how to analyze the network traffic of any Windows or macOS app.

Application Network Connection Monitoring With Splunk & uberAgent

This is part 1 of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how to analyze the network traffic of any Windows or macOS app.

Per-User Services in Windows: Info & Configuration

It’s a little-known fact that Windows comes with per-user services, background processes that complement the well-known per-machine system services. This article explains what per-user services are, how to create your own, and which configuration options there are.

JavaScript Linting (Static Code Analysis) in VS Code

Lint is a static code analysis tool that is used to identify various kinds of problems, with the goal of making source code more consistent and avoiding bugs. There are two popular linters for JavaScript: ESLint and JSHint.

VS Code as Markdown Note-Taking App

In the last few years, I have tried many note-taking applications. They all shared a common UX flaw: lack of keyboard accessibility. Finally, I had the idea to give Visual Studio Code a go and found note-taking heaven.

JavaScript Development with Type Checking in VS Code

This is a collection of things I found helpful for JavaScript development in Visual Studio Code, specifically the easy availability of TypeScript’s advanced type checking and error reporting functionality. Please note that this post is about lightweight JavaScript without any frameworks.

How to Check Which Bluetooth A2DP Audio Codec Is Used on Windows

This is a follow-up to my earlier article Bluetooth Audio Quality & aptX on Windows 10, based on a comment by reader eluxe. Windows makes it unnecessarily hard to identify the audio codec used by the Bluetooth A2DP profile, but there is a way. This post shows how to check if your connection makes use […]

Regex Search & Replace in WordPress Posts With WP-CLI

Maintaining a WordPress site that goes back years or even decades (as in this case) can be a challenge. You want to ensure formatting is consistent, even for old posts, and shortcodes are kept in check. As always, automation is key. This post shows how to search and replace in WordPress posts with the help […]

Twitter Automation: Scheduled Tweets From Google Sheets

This article explains how to set up a Twitter bot in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. It provides an easy way to efficiently schedule a large number of tweets in a consistent format.

Should I Have Separate Personal & Professional Twitter Accounts?

That was a question I was asking myself more and more recently. After a bit of deliberation, I answered it with yes. This article summarizes my reasoning.

Google Analytics: Cookieless Tracking Without GDPR Consent

This article presents a simple method to use Google Analytics without cookies. Going cookieless means there is no need for a cookie consent dialog. It also means much easier GDPR compliance. The only thing you need to do is to embed the Google Analytics tracking script in a different way, which should be possible with […]

Azure DevOps: Restricting Credentials to a Single Repository

You may find yourself in a situation where you need to limit a set of credentials to a single Git repository only – like I did when I was working on a Git-based configuration backup solution for Linux. In such a case, you want the Git credentials you are storing per machine to grant access […]

Improved Home Network Privacy With NextDNS & DNS over TLS (DoT)

This article is for you if you want to improve privacy and block ads on all devices on your network without installing any software, simply by configuring a modern DNS service, yet with the ability to override settings for individual sites, and with nice dashboards thrown in for good measure.

Linux Config File Version Control & Backup on GitHub

Linux famously stores all of its settings in files, making it easy to inspect, query, or backup the configuration with a plethora of tools, including Git. However, given that Git was conceived by the Linux community, there is surprisingly little integration. As a developer, I am used to managing everything with Git. Depending on my […]

Changing the Location of KeePass Configuration Files

Depending on your KeePass package (installer or portable), the default settings location may resolve to the installation directory or the user profile. This article explains how to locate the configuration file and shows how to move it to any directory of your choice.

End-to-End-Encrypted Team Communication & Collaboration Tools

This post is a collection of my notes about my search for secure collaboration and communication tools for smaller organizations, specifically vast limits. I will update it from time to time.

Find in Files With Grep-Like Context (Lines Surrounding Matches)

I sometimes need all occurrences of a search string in the files of a directory. OK, that’s easy. Here’s the difficult part: I need search results displayed with context around the matching lines. In other words: I need to know what is in the lines above and/or below the results. None of the text editors […]

Disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in Firefox Now!

Mozilla had planned to disable the insecure versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the TLS protocol in Firefox 74. Unfortunately, they reverted that planned change. This post explains how to disable insecure TLS versions yourself.

Switching from Chrome to Firefox

After many years as a happy user, I switched from Chrome to Firefox. How did that go? Astonishingly well! Here are some notes I took in the process.

Firefox Containers: Multiple (Gmail) Logins Through Privacy Isolation

To monitor web app performance and usage on any site (or just on your business-critical SaaS apps), take a look at our uberAgent product. In a nutshell, Firefox Containers makes it possible to log in to a website with multiple different accounts at the same time. This is accomplished through data segmentation: cookies and other […]

Windows Setup USB Flash Drive Not Showing Up in BIOS List of Boot Devices

There are countless articles on how to install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. Most of them, however, fail to mention a common problem: the USB flash drive does not show up in the BIOS’ list of boot devices. Here is a simple solution that often works.

Enabling Multi-Processor (Parallel) Builds in Visual Studio

Building larger solutions in Visual Studio can be tediously slow. Part of the reason is that the compiler does not make use of multiple CPU cores well. This article shows you how to change that.

Installing Office 2019 from Microsoft Partner Center with Deployment Tool

Installing Office 2019 as a Microsoft MPN silver or gold partner is a little more complicated than it used to be. Partner Center has keys but does not directly offer installation media to download. This article lists the necessary steps to get Office 2019 on your machine(s) without assigning Office 365 licenses.

Changing the Location of Notepad++ Configuration Files

Depending on what you selected during the installation, Notepad++ stores its configuration files either in the installation directory or in your user profile. This article describes a simple way of moving your existing configuration to a different location.

Looking for the Perfect Mechanical Keyboard (Office & Software Development)

I am a mechanical keyboard aficionado. I guess this started in the late ’90s when I typed on a Cherry G80-3000-LSMDE for the first time. The low force required to press a key combined with the tiny click when a keystroke registered created a typing experience that was both easy and precise. I have not […]

Blocking Office Macros, Managing Windows & macOS via Intune

How to completely block the execution Office macros on macOS and Windows. The configuration is centrally managed in Intune & extensible through PowerShell.

Total Commander: Getting Started

Total Commander is one of those few magical tools that can boost your productivity as an IT pro significantly. It not only replaces File Explorer; it does so in a way that makes you wonder how you suffered Explorer for such a long time. It has keyboard shortcuts for everything and is super-configurable, fast and […]

Migrating WordPress from Multisite to Single With MU-Migration

In addition to various commercial plugins, there is one free tool that helps with WordPress migrations to or from multisite installations. MU-Migration is a WP-CLI plugin that worked flawlessly when I wanted to convert helgeklein.com from a multisite into a single site installation. Here are the steps I took.

Windows Server 2019 on Hetzner’s EX62 & AX100 Dedicated Servers

This post is a follow-up to my 2016 article on how to install Windows Server on Hetzner’s EX51 hosted dedicated servers. Hetzner offers many types of dedicated servers at very attractive prices and – astonishingly – good support. This article lists some issues we encountered while installing Windows Server 2019 on the EX62 and AX100 […]

Searching for Keyword Strings in WordPress Posts

Surprisingly, there does not seem to be a plugin or some other “easy” way of searching your WordPress posts for certain keywords, shortcodes or HTML tags. However, if you have ever been through a theme migration, you know that standardizing on HTML tags and shortcodes makes the process a lot less painful. If you know […]

Renaming Multiple Files With Regular Expressions in Total Commander

I prepend every document I save to disk with the year, month, and day. While I do that manually for individual files, sometimes I encounter larger numbers of files with an “incorrect” naming scheme. Here is how to quickly rename many files with the help of the versatile Total Commander. Renaming Files With Regular Expressions […]

How to Configure SoftEther, a Free VPN Server for macOS & Windows

This post describes a real-world configuration of the free VPN server SoftEther. It shows how to set up a VPN for macOS and Windows clients on a Hyper-V Windows guest VM.

Hardware-Encode Video in H.265 with Free Tools to Save Disk Space

Many web meeting services have a recording functionality. Most recordings are provided as MP4 files with the video encoded in H.264 because that offers the most universal compatibility. However, it also needs a lot of disk space. H.264 has a successor, H.265, which only requires half the space for the same visual quality. This post […]

Free and Powerful Equalizer for Windows 10

Windows 10 does not come with an equalizer. That can be annoying when you have headphones that are too heavy on the bass, like the Sony WH-1000XM3. Enter the free Equalizer APO with Peace, its UI.

Modern Multi-Process Browser Architecture

An architecture overview of current browsers on Windows: Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Bluetooth Audio Quality & aptX on Windows 10

Bluetooth is a flexible standard. It defines various profiles that operate on top of the Bluetooth networking protocol stack and implement specific services, such as hands-free communications. Bluetooth devices each support a small subset of profiles, typically only one or two, according to their designated function. Bluetooth headphones and speakers implement the advanced audio distribution […]

Saving & Restoring Total Commander Tab Sets

Total Commander’s custom start menu is a great place to quickly launch all kinds of tools and programs that are otherwise hard to get to. However, TC’s start menu is not limited to external tools. It can be used to run internal TC commands, too. In this article, I am using that capability to build […]

Upgrading Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 & PHP 7.0 to 7.2 for WordPress

This post describes how I upgraded our webserver running WordPress on Apache from Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS to 18.04.1 LTS. Please see this article for more information on the server’s installation and configuration.

PowerShell Script: Test Chrome, Firefox & IE Browser Performance

There is more than one way to test the performance of web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or IE, but regardless of how you do it, you need a consistent workload that makes the browsers comparable. Unless you are testing with synthetic benchmarks (which come with a plethora of problems of their own) you need a […]

Enabling HTTP/2 in Apache on Ubuntu 18.04

A number of requirements must be met before HTTP/2 can be enabled for a website. This is a compilation of steps I went through to get HTTP/2 working on our Apache web server hosting WordPress sites.

How to Limit CPU & RAM via the Windows Boot Configuration

Testing the effects of different CPU and memory configurations is easiest when you run the tests on a powerful machine and restrict it to the required number of CPU cores and amount of RAM. Microsoft’s documentation of the relevant command is missing an essential parameter. Here are the commands you need.

Laudation to E2EVC – Experts to Experts Virtualization Conference

On the eve of my departure for E2EVC Athens I feel it is time for a laudation. Let me explain why.

Splunking the Aspect Ratio Distribution of National Flags

When I tried to align the Union Jack and the flag of Germany on a presentation slide I noticed that I couldn’t – their aspect ratios are different. A quick search led me to this list of aspect ratios of national flags on Wikipedia. Apparently, national flags are far from standardized. A broad range of […]

Creating an Application Crash Dump

How to enable local application crash dump creation globally or for a specific process executable only.

Standard Notes: a Note-Taking App with Client-Side Encryption

Note-taking is one of those topics that appear to have been solved long ago, yet offer plenty of opportunity for new contestants. There are multiple reasons for that, but for me the number one is encryption. The major players, Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, and Google Keep, store your thoughts and ideas in plain text on any […]

DiskLED is Now Open Source

DiskLED is a tool I wrote a while ago that displays performance counter data using an animated system tray icon. It comes with a graphical configuration dialog that lets you choose from all performance counters available on the local system – you can monitor network throughput just as easily as hard disk activity or memory […]

Inexpensive GPU Virtualization Options for Testing

For a new chapter in my ongoing series of talks and articles about browser performance I wanted to examine how key user experience metrics like page load time are dependent on available hardware resources. I prepared a VM and started my tests with a single CPU core and 2 GB of RAM, planning to gradually […]

Is Blockchain the Right Technology for My Application?

This is an attempt at guidelines to help in technology decisions about when and where to use blockchain technology.

Building a Fast and Silent Workstation PC

This article describes how to build a fast workstation PC that is almost completely silent (actually the fastest possible in terms of single-thread performance). It is based on a PC build published by German c’t magazine.

Hyper-V Backup – Products & Options

It’s 2018, and backing up Hyper-V hosts is solved, right? I certainly expected it to be when I took on the task of finding a simple and reliable way to back up three hosts colocated in a large datacenter. This article summarizes my journey and the findings resulting from it.

Browser Ad Blockers and Privacy

You have probably been in this situation: on some shopping site you put an article in your cart, but decide not to buy it after all. Later on, you notice that you are getting targeted ads for the exact same product on totally unrelated sites – or so you think. There is, however, a common […]

Browser Video: Codecs, Formats & Hardware Acceleration

Web video is ubiquitous. We take it for granted that browsers play video in high resolution, over any connection, on any device. Behind the scenes, a complex machinery of video formats, codecs, and GPU acceleration techniques is at work to make it all happen. This post explains what is what.

Troubleshooting Splunk Error “Search Process Did Not Exit Cleanly”

When Splunk displays an orange warning triangle instead of a chart or table it is time to investigate. Start by clicking the triangle to bring up a dialog with the error message. In my case that looked like this: Finding the Root Cause In many cases, the best resource for troubleshooting Splunk searches is Search […]

Recurring Checklists from Templates the Podio Way

Podio is a superb tool for team collaboration, structured information handling and even business process management. However, it is not perfect. There are some astonishing gaps in functionality. One of those is the lack of support for checklists and recurring processes. Here is how to work around that.

Leaked Token Handles Preventing RDS Session ID Reuse

A recent article on Microsoft’s Ask the Directory Services Team blog piqued my interest. It talks about how leaked access tokens prevent logon sessions to be freed when the user logs off. This wastes system resources that can only be reclaimed by rebooting. A symptom of this happening is that RDS session IDs are not […]

Streamed Video Audio Sync Problems on Windows 10 / Realtek Sound

I have been watching streaming video for a very long time. It always worked beautifully, in high resolutions and from any site: YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, you name it. Then suddenly I started to notice lip sync issues, probably around autumn/winter 2016. The longer a video played, the more the audio would get out […]

Upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 & PHP 5.6 to 7 for WordPress

This post describes how I upgraded our webserver running WordPress on Apache from Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS to 16.04.1 LTS. Please see this article for more information on the server’s installation and configuration.

Windows 10: Black Lock Screen with Citrix Receiver

Update: KB4022723 seems to fix the black lock screen issue described in this article. The Spotlight feature of Windows 10 shows beautiful images on the lock screen. Annoyingly, it appears to be broken on many machines, showing a black screen instead of a pretty photograph. Read on for the cause and a workaround.

Universal Windows App Data Storage for Admins

Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is the current name for a new type of application platform originally introduced with Windows 8 as “Metro” and later renamed to “Modern”. UWP apps can run on desktop, phone and console versions of Windows. They may only use a subset of the Windows API and run in a sandboxed environment. […]

Disabling Azure Active Directory Password Expiration

User accounts created in Azure AD are subject to Azure AD’s password policies and restrictions, whose defaults are far from optimal. Unfortunately, the most severe shortcomings cannot currently be changed.

Delprof2 & SetACL Studio Free for Commercial Use

I am happy to announce that my tools Delprof2 and SetACL Studio are now free to use, both for individuals and corporations. Previously, Delprof2 was only free to use commercially if an organization allowed us to use their name in our marketing. SetACL Studio was not available for free at all. If you like either […]

The Perfect Workstation: Fujitsu Celsius J550

When it comes to selecting a general-purpose workstation I tend to be looking for the impossible: high performance, superb reliability, quiet operation, moderate price. Amazingly, there exists at least one device with all those qualities: the Fujitsu Celsius J550. The Perfect Workstation The perfect workstation should be: reliable fast silent well-supported energy-efficient user-upgradeable small …and […]

Faster Trimming & Compacting of Hyper-V Ubuntu VMs

A while ago I described how to compact an Ubuntu VHDX running on Hyper-V using the sfill command. Running sfill, however, can take hours. Luckily, there is a much faster alternative. Ubuntu Trim and Hyper-V Ubuntu running in a Hyper-V virtual machine has been supporting the trim command since version 14.04 (details). The OS issues […]

Keyboard Shortcuts You’ll Never Want to Miss Again

Keyboard shortcuts are the key to productivity and efficiency. This is true for any machine, any OS and any application. This article lists shortcuts I personally find very helpful and use often. In selecting what to include I focused on shortcuts that might be less well known. Many shortcuts work in other than the described […]

Comparison: CPU & GPU Usage of 4 Browsers

How do popular browsers differ in compute footprint when running animations? In this article I am comparing the CPU as well as the GPU utilization of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. To make things more interesting I tested GPU performance on Nvdia and Intel.

What’s Wrong with Group Policy

Over the years I have worked with Group Policy in many different ways. My experience ranges from helping an enterprise client establish a brand new set of policies for physical PCs and VDI machines to authoring ADM/ADMX/ADML files. Last year I presented and wrote a very detailed analysis of the impact of Group Policy on […]

Lenovo Yoga 900: SSD Upgrade & Clean Windows Installation

The Lenovo Yoga 900 packs some amazing hardware in an ultraportable 1.29 kg 13″ chassis: high-resolution 3200×1800 screen, Intel Core i7-6500U CPU, 16 GB RAM. The only downsides I found so far: glossy display, maximum SSD size is 512 GB, OS is Windows Home, not Pro. There is not much we can do about the […]

Windows 10 Roaming Profile: Sharing Violation Every 2nd Logon

I came across this problem while preparing my sessions for this year’s conferences. The setup is boringly simple: a user with a roaming profile logging on to a Windows 10 machine. The interesting part: every second time, loading the roaming profile would fail – causing a 35 second logon delay. Every other time, it would […]

Hyper-V on Hetzner’s EX51 Hosted Dedicated Servers

Your low-cost high-performance cloud data center building block. This guide explains how to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on Hetzner’s EX51-SSD dedicated servers. That line of servers is very attractive for virtualization as it combines a fast CPU with a good amount of RAM and SSD storage – at a price point of less than […]

How Group Policy Impacts Logon Performance #4: Citrix Policies

This article is based on my Citrix Synergy 2015 session and is the fourth in a mini-series on Group Policy performance. All measurements by uberAgent on Windows Server 2012 R2 with Citrix XenApp 7.6 in a steady state. Please start reading with the first article.

VMware Horizon in a Lab: Getting Rid of SSL Errors

This is a description of a quick and dirty way to get SSL to work correctly in a VMware Horizon View installation in a lab environment. Do not do this in production!

Microsoft Windows Enterprise State Roaming – First Thoughts

Microsoft just announced a new service called Enterprise State Roaming. The broader goal seems to be to replace roaming user profiles. That, however, is not going to happen any time soon. What We Know Here is the link to the announcement. Requirements An Azure Active Directory Premium subscription is required. In addition to that Enterprise […]

Why Sizing for Averages is a Bad Idea

How Group Policy Impacts Logon Performance #3: WMI Filters & ILT

This article is based on my Citrix Synergy 2015 session and is the third in a mini-series on Group Policy performance. All measurements by uberAgent on Windows Server 2012 R2 with Citrix XenApp 7.6 in a steady state. Please start reading with the first article.

Compacting Hyper-V VHDX Files of Ubuntu Linux VMs

Note: if your guest OS supports the trim command you can use the faster method described in this article. If you configured your Hyper-V virtual machines with dynamically expanding virtual disks you will find that the VHDX files backing the virtual disks always grow in size, they never shrink. Eventually this becomes a problem either […]

How Group Policy Impacts Logon Performance #2: Internals

This article is based on my Citrix Synergy 2015 session and is the second in a mini-series on Group Policy performance. All measurements by uberAgent on Windows Server 2012 R2 with Citrix XenApp 7.6 in a steady state. Please start reading with the first article.

How Group Policy Impacts Logon Performance #1: CSEs

This article is based on my Citrix Synergy 2015 session and is the first in a mini-series on Group Policy performance. All measurements by uberAgent on Windows Server 2012 R2 with Citrix XenApp 7.6 in a steady state.

Splunk Accelerated Data Models – Part 3

This article is based on my Splunk .conf 2015 session and is the second in a mini-series on Splunk data model acceleration. Make sure to read parts 1 and 2 first. Searching Accelerated Data Models Which Searches are Accelerated? The high-performance analytics store (HPAS) is used only with Pivot (UI and the pivot command) and […]

Splunk Accelerated Data Models – Part 2

This article is based on my Splunk .conf 2015 session and is the second in a mini-series on Splunk data model acceleration. Make sure to read part 1 first. Under the Hood HPAS Population The high-performance analytics store (HPAS) is populated by scheduled searches that run every 5 minutes. The HPAS spans a user-defined time […]

Splunk Accelerated Data Models – Part 1

This article is based on my Splunk .conf 2015 session and is the first in a mini-series on Splunk data model acceleration. Why Accelerate? Have you ever seen this? Splunk is great and very fast with needle in a haystack searches, e.g. find a specific keyword in millions of events. It is not so fast […]

Citrix Synergy 2016 Call for Topics: Get Rid of the Video Requirement (Open Letter)

It smacks of lazy reviewers looking for eye-candy. Simon Crosby, former Citrix CTO Citrix Synergy Team, I am writing to you as a guy who has presented many times at Synergy. This year alone I had three sessions, one in cooperation with my community peers Aaron Parker and Shawn Bass, the other two on my […]

Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop API Hooking Explained

What is API Hooking? API hooking is all about making others do things they never even knew they could do. More precisely: tricking other processes into doing things differently from what their developers programmed.

Performance Footprint of PowerShell Logon Scripts

PowerShell is a popular and extremely versatile tool, but is it a good idea to use PowerShell in logon scripts? Let’s try to find out!

FileIOTest – Times the Duration of File IO Operations

FileIOTest is a command line tool that tests the speed of local or remote (SMB) storage by performing some common file IO operations repeatedly and measuring the duration.

Converting Mercurial Repositories to Git on Windows

If you work with text, you need version control. That rule applies regardless of whether you write code or poetry (some might argue that those two are the same, anyway). Ignoring the CVS and SVN dinosaurs two distributed version control systems are being regarded as state of the art: Git and Mercurial. Functionality-wise they are […]

Recursively Setting Directory Attributes in PowerShell

As I found out the (excellent) Egnyte Desktop Sync client for Windows ignores directories that have the system attribute set. For some reason some of the directories I wanted to sync did have this attribute set. Getting rid of the system attribute on (many) directories is harder than it seems.

All You (N)ever Wanted to Know about Logon & Group Policy Performance

Citrix Synergy, E2EVC and BriForum are just around the corner. I will be presenting at each of these conferences. Here are a few tidbits to whet your appetite.

Citrix Desktop Viewer Screen Resolution and Window Size

As far as I know there is no “official” way to set the width, height and screen position of Citrix Desktop Viewer in window mode. It can be done easily by changing a few registry values, though.

Citrix XenApp 7.6 Logon Slow – Long Black Screen Phase

Update 2015-04-28: Citrix provides the limited release hotfix ICATS760WX64009 that fixes this issue. More information below. During the research for my session about the XenApp 7.6 logon process, to be presented at Citrix Synergy and BriForum London, I noticed that the logon to my XenApp 7.6 lab server was taking a bit long. Longer, in […]

What’s New in uberAgent 3.0

One of the (many) great things about Splunk is that data, once indexed, is not being tampered with. Of course, you can choose for how long you want to retain your data, but Splunk won’t go and average multiple older events into one, because that would flatten peaks and remove potentially important detail. This means […]

Splunk Scripted Input Secrets

Splunk’s Universal Forward has the neat capability of executing arbitrary scripts while capturing their output and sending that to Splunk. This feature allows you to turn any executable, batch file or PowerShell script into a Splunk data source, making the data collection options basically limitless. This post explains a few tricks that are difficult to […]

Manual Folder Redirection with Symbolic Links

This is a guest post by Bryan Chriscoli, who implemented an innovative alternative to folder redirection with the help of symbolic links, AppSense products and PowerShell scripting. All credit goes to him. Motivation Whilst I was still working for AppSense as a Solutions Architect assigned to implement Environment Manager at UnitedHealth Group, it became apparent […]

Extracting all Email Addresses from a Gmail Label

As with any other product, when working with Gmail you sometimes get to a point where you want something the product simply does not provide. When that happens, a scripting interface can be a lifesaver. Let’s see how we can put Google Apps Script to use.

VMware vExpert Award

VMware recognized my contributions to the virtualization community by awarding me their vExpert title. Many thanks to everybody who made that possible, the readers of this blog, the attendees of my presentations, the users of my tools and all the great people of the virtualization community! I am very happy to be one of the […]

Creating Realistic Test User Accounts in Active Directory

When you need to simulate a real Active Directory with thousands of users you quickly find that creating realistic test accounts is not trivial. Sure enough, you can whip up a quick PowerShell one-liner that creates any number of accounts, but what if you need real first and last names? Real (existing) addresses? Postal codes […]

Thoughts on Cloud File Synchronization Security

As the Box IPO shows enterprise cloud file synchronization & sharing (EFSS) is a hot topic. Yet the hottest vendors do not “get” security.

Upcoming uberAgent Webinars in English and German

uberAgent is the perfect monitoring and analysis tool for virtualized and physical Windows workloads. In a nutshell, it tells you what is going on and why things are slow. Seeing is Believing There are a number of easy ways to see what uberAgent can do in practice: You could watch one of our videos. Or […]

Windows Keyboard Mapping with SharpKeys

Or: Getting rid of Caps Lock & creating the missing context menu key I like my current laptop, a Lenovo W540, but details of the keyboard layout really deteriorate the user experience (not to mention the horrible trackpad – I can only recommend you carry a mouse or buy the successor which is rumored to […]

Turning Splunk into a Systems Management Tool

Despite its great power, Splunk is relatively static with regards to the data it processes. You cannot instruct it to simply run a script on all endpoints and index the results. The app HK Systems Management changes that. It turns Splunk into a kind of PsExec on steroids.

Switching a WordPress Site From HTTP to HTTPS

Using SSL for the entire website should be the norm these days. If you have a decent server it does not significantly reduce page speed and it allegedly even helps your Google ranking. I covered enabling SSL and configuring it so that you get an A ranking in the Qualys test in another post. This […]

How to Enable BitLocker Hardware Encryption with SSDs

2019-10-01: with the 2019 September update KB4516045 BitLocker uses software instead of hardware encryption by default. Likely reason: the security of software encryption can be controlled by Microsoft. Hardware encryption in the drive may be buggy. Beginning with Windows 8 BitLocker can offload the encryption from the CPU to the disk drive. But enabling that […]

WordPress Blog Comment Handling

I have always found my blog’s comments a great source of feedback. In many cases, readers have contributed valuable additions to the article content or pointed out errors which I subsequently fixed. However, there is a dark side to enabling others to add content to your side: spam. Here is how I am (successfully) dealing […]

What’s New in uberAgent 2.1

In version 2.1 uberAgent collects detailed ICA, PCoIP, and RDP remoting client properties. Yes, that is right, we have added support for VMware Horizon View to our user experience and application performance monitoring product. Read on for more goodness!

Impact of GPU Acceleration on Browser CPU Usage

GPU acceleration is en vogue. After slowly but steadily moving out of the 3D niche it has arrived in the mainstream. Today, applications like Microsoft Office leverage the GPU, but even more so do web browsers. Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all have hardware acceleration turned on by default. People generally seem to be happy […]

Measuring the Impact of Folder Redirection – Application Launch & SMB Version

This is the fifth in a series of articles on folder redirection by Aaron Parker, Helge Klein and Shawn Bass. Part one: How Folder Redirection Impacts UX & Breaks Applications Part two: Visualizing the Impact of Folder Redirection – Logon and Application Launch Part three: Visualizing the Impact of Folder Redirection – Start Menu Search […]

Visualizing the Impact of Folder Redirection – Start Menu Search

This is the third in a series of articles on folder redirection by Aaron Parker, Helge Klein and Shawn Bass. Part one: How Folder Redirection Impacts UX & Breaks Applications Part two: Visualizing the Impact of Folder Redirection – Logon and Application Launch Part three: this article Part four: Measuring the Impact of Folder Redirection […]

Vendors: Why We Do Not Need Your PowerShell SDKs

My recent post about things I dislike about PowerShell provoked some interesting reactions (see the comments). Several readers argued that PowerShell is not supposed to be a full-blown programming language but a kind of super-advanced shell scripting tool.

What I Hate About PowerShell

With all the love PowerShell is getting these days one might think that the golden age of (Windows) scripting has finally begun. Maybe it has. But one man’s nirvana can be another man’s hell.

How Folder Redirection Impacts UX & Breaks Applications

This is the first in a series of articles on folder redirection by Aaron Parker, Helge Klein and Shawn Bass. Part one: this article Part two: Visualizing the Impact of Folder Redirection – Logon and Application Launch Part three: Visualizing the Impact of Folder Redirection – Start Menu Search Part four: Measuring the Impact of […]

XenDesktop 7.6 VDA CPU & Memory Footprint

If you install the Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 Virtual Desktop Agent (VDA) on a small Windows 7 VM, you may be in for a big surprise, and not a good one. This article documents issues I have experienced and how to work around them.

Which Version of Citrix GoToMeeting Are You Running?

Last updated: 2017-01-21. This article still applies to the latest versions of GoToMeeting. The high disk space usage has not been solved yet. Am I running the latest version of GoToMeeting? Which is the latest version, anyway? Those trivial questions might not be easy to answer.

Splunk Revolution Award

I am more than happy to announce that I won a Splunk’s Revolution Award in the category developers. The winners were presented on the big screen during the keynote. My slide reads: Helge showed thought leadership with a series of blog posts and ecosystem participation with the availability of the uberAgent for Splunk app. Happy […]

Compacting Client Hyper-V VHDX Files

Virtual hard disks have the same tendency to grow in size as regular disks have to fill up. Deduplication is a great way to battle this, but unfortunately it is not available for Windows 8 Client Hyper-V. I know that hacks are available describing how to transfer the relevant DLLs from Server 2012 but I […]

VCNRW – Your Friendly Local Virtualization Community

In the past years I have attended many different conferences and user group meetings. Apart from the fact that every single one of them was great and definitely worth the while they all had another thing in common: getting there involved a significant amount of travel, in most cases to other countries or even continents. […]

What’s New in uberAgent 2.0

The most important change in version 2.0 of uberAgent is the new architecture. In addition to that we have made many other improvements, significantly reducing the agent’s footprint while increasing the quality of the collected data. Architecture Most Splunk apps that collect data on monitored endpoints are implemented as so-called Scripted or Modular Inputs. uberAgent […]

Real-World Example: WiX/MSI Application Installer

Creating an installer that does not suck is hard. The tools available are expensive, inadequate, overly complicated and/or poorly documented (pick any combination). WiX is one of the better choices. It is free and it is used for some Microsoft products. But WiX is just a wrapper around MSI and as such is unnecessarily difficult […]

What Is Splunk and How Does It Work?

You have probably heard of Splunk, but can you describe what it does to a colleague in a few sentences? That is not easy. Splunk does not belong in any traditional category but stands apart from the crowd. That makes it interesting, but also the explaining harder. Here is my attempt.

My Beautifully Fast WordPress Webserver

Note: The installation described in this article worked very well for me. However, nine years after publishing this post I replaced this setup with a more modern dockerized installation that is easier to maintain. PHP upgrades, especially, are a lot simpler. A step-by-step guide explaining how to install, securely configure and performance-tune WordPress on Apache […]

My Hyper-V Server in the Cloud

There are many possible reasons for wanting a fast server well connected to the internet. Some may want to move their lab from their powerful but heavy laptop to the cloud so they only need to carry around a lightweight ultrabook. Others may want to set up a demonstration system for their software or solutions […]

Conferences and Community Meetings I Attend(ed) 2014

I love to learn, teach and network. Conferences and community meetings are the perfect events for that. As in previous years I try to attend as many events as I can. Here is a list of where I have been this year and where I plan to be. I hope you can make it to […]

Is my App Running on Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp?

How do you programmatically determine if an application is running in a session accessed over a remoting protocol (i.e. ICA aka HDX or RDP)? It may be Citrix’ strategy to completely hide the fact that a session is remoted – which makes sense in many ways – but in some cases developers simply need to […]

Windows 8 Client Hyper-V: Internet Access Without 2nd NIC

Having a hypervisor built right into the client operating system is a great thing, especially if it is as fast and stable as Client Hyper-V found in Windows 8. The functionality is very good, too, but a single feature is sorely missing: the ability to share the host’s (internet) network connection.

Splunk App Development Tips – Working with Splunk

This is a collection of useful tips and resources for developing Splunk apps. For an explanation of the available app types please see my earlier article on the topic.

Splunk App Development Tips – Which App Type to Choose

When you start with developing apps for Splunk the first big question you hit is a bit unexpected: which technology do you work with, which app type do you choose?

Citrix ShareFile Sync on a New Computer with Existing Data

Switching over to a new computer is certainly fun for a geek, but getting back to a perfectly tuned configuration can be a lot of work, whether you synchronize (part of) your data to the cloud or not.

Customizing and Installing the Lenovo W540

Having made the switch from my trusty Lenovo T520 to the W540 here is my account of what works well and what does not. If you wonder what made me choose the W540: read this. Hardware M.2 SSD The W540 has two M.2 slots. One hosts the WiFi adapter, the other the WWAN adapter if […]

What DNS Pointer Records and Tweetups Have in Common

Tools that monitor network traffic typically work with IP addresses, not server names. Humans, on the other hand, seem to prefer names over cryptic numbers. Most tools deal with that by doing reverse lookups of the IP addresses, i.e. they are looking for DNS PTR records. The result of such a lookup, however, is not […]

Now you can PROVE that it’s not Citrix but the backend!

You have been there: end-users are complaining and your boss demands an explanation why “Citrix is slow” – again. You, the XenApp/XenDesktop admin, desperately look at Task Manager and Perfmon, but you cannot find a thing. Your servers are humming along quite nicely, but still: applications are slow, the system feels sluggish and logons are […]

Finding the Perfect Laptop, 2014 Edition

My current laptop is nearly three years old. That is a pretty long time, and I have contemplated getting a new machine more than once in the last years. I even went so far as to buy a more fancy replacement, but that attempt failed miserably. After using the new device for only a few […]

Determining the Size of a Folder without Access or Permissions

Imagine you need to determine the size of a directory, but you do not have access to it and cannot change the permissions, either. Such a situation is common with Windows user profiles. This article shows how to deal with it.

Error Connecting to C$: Device Attached to the System is not Functioning

When I tried to connect to the administrative file share C$ on my wife’s computer I got the error A device attached to the system is not functioning. The other way round worked without a hitch, i.e. I could access my laptop’s C$ share from my wife’s computer. When I tried to connect to her […]

Migrating from Citrix UPM back to Roaming Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. As you may be aware Citrix Profile Management (aka UPM) automatically migrates existing roaming or local user profiles to its user store. A very nice feature, certainly, but what about the way […]

Some of the Best Splunk Marketing Slogans Extracted from Splunk.exe

If you have ever been to a conference with a Splunk booth you will have noticed their t-shirts. They are all black with a cool slogan printed in white. When you have been working with Splunk for some time you will notice that it has a very powerful commandline tool, splunk.exe. You can use that […]

Solved: Citrix Desktop Service Fails to Start, Logs Event 1006

I am sure you all love XenDesktop VDAs that just won’t register. Although this is becoming less and less of a problem I had another case recently.

Workaround for Unexpected Error in PowerCfg -SleepStudy

PowerCfg is a nifty little tool for analyzing and configuring all kinds of things related to battery usage and power plans. In Windows 8.1 PowerCfg learned how to analyze the effectiveness of connected standby, a new low-power mode introduced in Windows 8 that enables applications to stay connected while the device (mostly) sleeps. All the […]

Race Condition – a Troubleshooting Tale

The most obscure effects often have the simplest explanations – once you know where to go looking for them. Luckily uberAgent tells you exactly what is going on.

Block-Based Encrypted Cloud Backup with Duplicati 2.0

I am an infrastructure guy (by heart – and a developer by nature). As such, topics like maintaining my own webserver (which I don’t – yet) or configuring backup deeply fascinate me. I am also mildly paranoid with regards to the safety and, especially as of late, the privacy of my data. That makes finding […]

GPU Acceleration and Battery Life During Video Playback on Windows 8.1

This is what I have been doing for the past few days: draining the battery of my new Dell Venue Pro 11, a Windows 8.1 tablet (the real deal, not RT). I wanted to find out how good Windows has become at battery-efficient video playback and how that is affected by GPU acceleration.

How to Send Data from C# to Splunk via the REST API

Splunk has a very extensive REST API – which is just a fancy way of saying that many of its capabilities are accessible via standard HTTP(S) requests. While much of the API is well documented, submitting data from C# to Splunk is kept a bit vague. Since I had to do that recently in order […]

Configuring Citrix ShareFile Sync from PowerShell

When you have a cloud-based file sharing service it makes a lot of sense to synchronize part or all of the data with your desktop computer. Citrix ShareFile offers the Sync for Windows tool for that purpose. However, once you open its configuration screen you notice that has a severe restriction: it can only synchronize […]

Remote Management of Windows PCs in an Isolated Security Zone

With the advent of BYO it has become fashionable to regard PCs as untrusted devices that should be isolated in a dedicated security zone.

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Sizing

This is the third article in a multi-part series about building and maintaining an inexpensive scalable platform for VDI in enterprise environments. Previously in this Series In the last article I explained that shared storage should be avoided, for two reasons: it is (very) expensive, and you, the VDI guy, are not in control. The […]

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Storage

This is the second article in a multi-part series about building and maintaining an inexpensive scalable platform for VDI in enterprise environments. Previously in this Series I started this series by defining requirements. Without proper requirements, everything else is moot. Remember that we are looking at running typical enterprise desktop workloads, we are trying to […]

Monitoring any Application’s Startup Duration with uberAgent 1.6

Application startup duration is an essential component of user experience. If you want to make sure that UX on your Windows machines is acceptable you need to monitor the time it takes for applications to start up. That, however, is not exactly easy – without uberAgent for Splunk.

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Architecture

This is the first article in a multi-part series about building and maintaining an inexpensive scalable platform for VDI in enterprise environments. Requirements Before we can even start to think about a possible architecture, we need requirements. Only requirements enable us to make choices that benefit the customer. Without proper requirements we are not building […]

Workaround: “554 rejected due to spam content” sending e-mail

It sometimes happens when I reply to an e-mail from somebody who is asking about my products that the receiving mail server rejects my message with the code “554 rejected due to spam content”.

Shutting Down Unused Persistent XenDesktop VMs

When you use XenDesktop the only way it makes sense you may find that Citrix has not really put much effort into making that a smooth experience.

How to Process Terabytes – per Day (or: my account of Splunk .conf 2013)

Processing several terabytes of data per day is not too uncommon and easily possible with Splunk – that is one of the many things I learned at .conf 2013 in Las Vegas.

The Unofficial Atlantis Ilio FAQ

This is a collection of answers to questions around Atlantis Ilio you are likely to have when using the appliance in production.

uberAgent Now Monitors RES Workspace Manager Logon Times, Too

Whether user profiles are loading slowly or group policy processing is taking too long – uberAgent for Splunk tells you exactly what is causing slow logons. uberAgent always supported a broad range of platforms, from physical PCs through virtual desktops to Citrix XenApp. Today we add RES Workspace Manager to that list!

Error Message Explained: User Profile Service Failed the Logon

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Many errors related to user profiles result in the user getting a temporary profile instead of the regular local or roaming profile. I have written about possible causes for that here. In […]

Script: Gracefully Shut Down all VMs on a Given Set of Hosts (VMware/XenDesktop)

Cleanly shutting down all virtual machines on a given set of hosts is not as trivial as it might seem – especially if you want to be able to restore the original state once the planned maintenance you are doing this for is completed.

Software Installation Very Slow without Internet Access

I have been using Windows 8 Client Hyper-V for a while now and must say it works like a treat – except for one thing: it is practically impossible to give VMs at the same time NATted internet access and connect them to other VMs and to the host. Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) just […]

How WinPE 4.0 Breaks ICA Connections

I had to troubleshoot a case where it suddenly was not possible any more to connect via ICA/HDX to freshly installed Windows 7 VDI machines. As it turned out, the root cause was a combination of Microsoft disabling legacy technologies and Citrix relying on them.

Boot IO Analysis with uberAgent for Splunk 1.5

Analyzing slow boots is a difficult task. You need to install software like XPerf and master its far-from-intuitive command-line options to generate a trace file that you can then analyze. Once you find a possible cause for the long startup duration you never know if it is specific to the machine you analyzed or if […]

Contest: Why Is This Desktop Empty?

I just had a situation where I was facing an empty desktop with no way to logoff, start a program or do anything else. The only thing left to do was to log the session off from an admin session. This got me thinking: how many ways are there to create such a situation? I […]

Script: Add all Virtual Machines in the Data Store to the Inventory (VMware)

There are situations when you have VMs on disk, but vCenter does not know about them – i.e. they are not in the inventory. While it is fairly easy to add a single machine to the inventory, doing so for dozens or hundreds or VMs is too tedious to do manually. This script automates the […]

How-to: XenApp/RDS Sizing and Capacity Planning with uberAgent for Splunk

Do you know the maximum number of users each of your terminal servers can host with acceptable performance? You may have found out the hard way how many are too many – but how many are just right? Farm sizing and server capacity planning are typical tasks for consultants who often have a hard time […]

Comparing the CPU Performance of Physical and Virtual PCs (VDI)

When you move users from a physical PC to a VDI environment you may find that they are not too happy with their new machine’s performance – it happened to me. To quantify things I took a series of measurements comparing the old PCs we migrated away from with both VDI machines and the new […]

Remarks on Windows Disk and File IO During System Boot

Let use take a look at some graphs I created with Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA), showing a typical corporate laptop boot Windows 7. Detailed information on creating such a trace can be found in my earlier article Analyzing a Slow Boot with Windows Performance Recorder & Analyzer.

Analyzing a Slow Boot with Windows Performance Recorder & Analyzer

In the last five years Xperf has gained popularity as an administrator’s secret weapon for battling all kinds of performance issues. But just when it was on the brink of becoming as mainstream as such a tool can be, Microsoft superseded it by something else: Windows Performance Recorder.

Monitor Boot Performance and Find the Cause for Delays with uberAgent for Splunk

Today it is still as common as it was in the 90s to go for a coffee after switching on the PC in the morning, only to find it still booting when coming back several minutes later. SSDs have not arrived in the average office yet, and even they can only cure some of the […]

The Effects of HP’s Power Profile on vCPU Performance

When you buy a new HP server it comes with the BIOS setting HP Power Profile set to Balanced Power and Performance. That sounds good but is bad – at least for CPU performance in a VDI environment.

Monitoring Browser Performance per Site with uberAgent for Splunk

The days are long gone when a browser was just another application. Modern websites are applications of their own, and the browser is their operating system. That has consequences for monitoring. It is no longer sufficient to gather performance data for the browser as a whole. When, for example, Internet Explorer’s CPU usage is high, […]

Why Every Self-Respecting Administrator Should Ditch Explorer For Good

Windows Explorer is an end user, a consumer product. It creates a reality distortion field that hides part of what is really there and makes you see things that do not exist. That is OK for its intended customer base, but as an administrator you cannot afford to live in a dream world.

What are Slow Logons and Where Do They Come From?

Considering the importance of fast logons for a good user experience there is surprisingly little information on the subject. Windows does not even record the total logon time, let alone where it is spent. Administrators wishing to analyze their users’ logons are left in the dark. But that can be changed.

Getting USB Smart Card Readers to Work with Citrix XenDesktop

Even if you only have a moderately sized VDI deployment chances are high you will face the problem of getting USB smart card readers to work on the virtual desktops. Given that this is such a basic requirement it is astonishingly hard to implement correctly. To save you the pain of having to start from […]

Windows Offline Files: Problems and Solutions

This is a collection of bugs, errors and problems I encountered working with Offline Files, along with possible solutions or at least workarounds. For more information about Offline Files see also my other articles about this topic.

Application Usage Metering with uberAgent for Splunk

uberAgent has been pretty good at monitoring applications for some time. It is capable of auto-grouping processes to applications and showing IOPS and other stats per application in addition to per process. All this gets even better today: beta 2, available now, adds application usage metering to the feature list.

The Impossibility of Measuring IOPS (Correctly)

If you have ever used Sysinternals’ Process Monitor, chances are high you were a little intimidated when you looked at your first capture: it probably contained hundreds of thousands of registry and file system events, generated in a minute or less. That amount of activity must surely indicate high system load – but strangely, very […]

XenDesktop Logon Failure: Desktop Viewer Pops up and Closes

Know this problem? You try to start a XenDesktop session, Desktop Viewer opens … and closes. Then nothing.

uberAgent for Splunk is Here

The beta version of uberAgent for Splunk is available. Official news release uberAgent’s website Download

Login VSI: Custom Command Line with CSV File for RDP Connections

Getting Login VSI to launch sessions on multiple RD session hosts is possible with the connection type Custom command line with CSV, but it is more difficult than it should be – especially if you want to launch the RDP sessions in windowed rather than full screen mode.

uberAgent for Splunk: User Experience

Who said that end users get all the pretty UIs? Administrators are as happy as anyone to replace ugly consoles with good-looking HTML5 that runs on a smartphone just as well as on a PC.

Performance Impact of Windows Offline Files

A little known fact about the Windows Offline Files functionality is it slows down network operations considerably. Here is how and why.

uberAgent for Splunk: Dynamic Application Identification

uberAgent for Splunk monitors Windows machines. It does not try to display as much data as possible but focuses on visualizing what is actually going on instead. In the last post we gave you a glimpse of the information it can display about user sessions and logon times. Today we are going to talk about […]

Windows Update Error 80072EFE in Client Hyper-V Guest

Client Hyper-V was one of the things I was most looking forward to when I upgraded to Windows 8. I immediately added the Hyper-V feature and went to installing Server 2008 R2 in the first virtual machine. That went well enough and nothing extraordinary happened until I tried to run Windows Update in the new […]

Introducing uberAgent for Splunk

uberAgent for Splunk takes Windows monitoring a step further. uberAgent does not just collect data – it gives you the information that matters. Other monitoring products rely on the performance counters built into Windows. uberAgent has its own metrics, covering key aspects of user experience and system performance.

How to Determine the Size of the System Volume Information Directory

Due to the strict permissions on the System Volume Information directory finding out its true size is not easy.

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 4 – Calculating the New Farm’s Capacity

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. In the previous articles in this series we saw how to calculate a farm’s capacity and then how to determine its load. With that information and knowledge of our methodology we can go about calculating the capacity of the new farm, […]

Conferences 2012 and Beyond

What do I do for a living? I travel to community conferences, of course. In 2012 I spent 44 days going to 10 different conferences – err, wait, that is I would love to earn a living that way, but of course I have to work like everybody else. Nevertheless, having my own company I […]

Clean Install of Windows 8 on Sony Vaio S15

Sony Vaio laptops are rumored to suffer from two defects: the preloaded OS image being full of crapware, and being extremely difficult to clean install. The former is true for nearly every laptop vendor. I do not care about it because I reinstall anyway – I know from first-hand experience how much can go wrong […]

Batch Delete Issued Citrix User/Device Licenses with Udadmin

Udamin.exe is a handy tool for managing Citrix user/device licenses. To get a list of currently issued licenses run it like this: C:\Program Files\Citrix\Licensing\LS>udadmin.exe -list Usage data is 15 minutes old. Next update in 1 minutes. Users: username1 XDT_PLT_UD 2013.0815 username2 XDT_PLT_UD 2013.0815 Devices: computername1 XDT_PLT_UD 2013.0815 computername2 XDT_PLT_UD 2013.0815 You can delete individual license […]

Lenovo T520 Maximum Memory: Not 8, But 16 GB!

Contrary to what Lenovo wants to make you believe, the T520 laptop is not limited to 8 GB of RAM. I own this reliable workhorse and made the mistake of buying another laptop because I wanted something more elegant, but mainly because I need more than 8 GB of RAM. As it turned out, the […]

Citrix Profile Management Architecture – Why it is Not Based on a Mandatory Profile Any More

Ron Kuper asked in a comment why the architecture of Citrix Profile Management was changed from being based on mandatory profiles to capturing the entire profile content by default. This change happened between versions 1 and 2. A Bit of History Citrix Profile Management is based on the product sepagoPROFILE, which I architected and co-developed. […]

Installing ESXi 4.1 on HP DL380 G8: No NICs Found

This kept us occupied quite a bit: after having worked with HP’s G7 line of servers for a long time, we ordered our first DL380 G8 for use with VDI. According to HP’s documentation the same custom image can (and must be) used when installing ESXi as with the G7. With that information, setting up […]

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 3 – Determining Farm Load

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. In the previous part of this series we saw how to determine the capacity of a server farm. This time we will look at how that capacity is utilized, in other words at farm load. As before we will do that […]

Solution to “Windows Cannot be Installed to this Disk”

I encountered a strange error when I moved my laptop’s hard drive to another computer to make room for an SSD. When I tried to install Windows 8 on the repurposed drive I could not see any partitions. Neither could I install Windows on the drive. I kept getting the error Windows cannot be installed […]

The Sad State of Web Forums – and some Alternatives

The software industry in general is a very fast moving business, but even in this sector there are niches that allow species to survive that should, by normal means, have been dead a very long time ago. One such species is the web forum.

Choosing a Laptop, 2012 Edition

I have been using Lenovo laptops for more than seven years. They never failed me – not a single hardware fault or software instability in all those years. OK, not everything was great – I distinctly remember the R60 which had an atrociously bad screen – but apart from a few glitches here and there […]

Show Me Your Start Menu and I’ll Tell You Who You Are

A Windows 7 start menu tells a lot about the user that, indirectly, created it. This is what mine looks like: So what does that say about me? Background This is the SetACL lettering with characters consisting of actual source code I am offering on t-shirts, too. Aero? You might notice that I am not […]

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 2 – Determining Farm Capacity

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. As we have seen in part 1 of this series, when sizing a new farm the first thing we need to know is the capacity of the existing farm. Armed with data on capacity and additionally load, we can easily calculate […]

Knowledge Base Gems

While I am generally satisfied with the quality of Microsoft Knowledge Base articles (many other vendors’ KBs are far worse), from time to time I encounter articles that either lack even the tiniest bits of information or are unintentionally funny. Today I found one that fits into both categories: Unexpectedly slow startup or logon process […]

XenApp and RDS Sizing Part 1 – Methodology

This article is part of a mini-series. You can find the other articles here. One of the first things you need to do after starting a XenApp farm upgrade project is to answer the obvious question from management: how much will it cost? In order to be able to answer, you need to have a […]

The SetACL Shirt Shop Has Opened

What could be geekier than a t-shirt imprinted with actual source code from a tool that helps administrators around the world tame one of the most dreaded beasts in IT: permissions? Our SetACL shirt is available in several shapes. Hop on over to the t-shirt shop and get your own!

What’s Missing in PowerShell 3 ISE

On my quest for a decent PowerShell development tool I first tried out PowerGUI, but was not very happy with it. When the RTM version of PowerShell 3.0 along with a revamped ISE was released a few days ago, I decided to give it a try. Here is what I found. Editor Tab size is […]

Windows 7 Default HKCU Registry Permissions

This is a complete listing of all Windows 7 HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry permissions. The list was generated on a 32-bit installation with SetACL. More default permission listings can be found here.

AppLocker – Solutions to Common Problems

This article is part of my small series about AppLocker, a technology built into Windows that enables administrators to audit and optionally block application execution.

Windows 7 Default File System Permissions Listing

This is a complete listing of all Windows 7 file system permissions. The list was generated on a 32-bit installation with SetACL. More default permission listings can be found here.

AppLocker – Security Problems

This article is part of my small series about AppLocker, a technology built into Windows that enables administrators to audit and optionally block application execution.

Finding and Removing Orphaned SIDs in File Permissions, or: Busting the Ghosts Built Into Windows 7

Due to a lack of visibility permission cleanup is performed far less frequently than it could, and probably should. As a result, ghost ACEs (permissions from deleted accounts) linger in the dark corners of the file system, threatening the unsuspecting admin with the horrors of unresolvable SIDs.

AppLocker – Fact Sheet

This is the first in a small series of articles about AppLocker, a technology built into Windows that enables administrators to audit and optionally block application execution.

HowTo: ReACLing a File Server in a Domain Migration with SetACL 3.0

When you are planning a migration of user accounts between domains one task always pops up pretty quickly: reassigning the permissions of the users in the source domain to the corresponding users in the target domain, in other words reACLing the file server.

Benchmarking Windows 7 Offline Files Transparent Caching

Windows 7 comes with several features that promise to greatly improve file access over a WAN. One of them is version 2 of the SMB protocol, another transparent caching. This article describes how I measured their effectiveness.

Recommendation for a USB 3.0 JBOD Enclosure

A drive enclosure for 4 SATA drives, connected to the host via USB 3.0 and presented as JOBDs is a great and inexpensive method of adding a lot of hard drive capacity to your computer, e.g. for backup purposes. The enclosure model I have bought is the Fantec QB-35US3. It is compact, the fan not […]

Benchmarking a $11,699 HP Enterprise Performance SSD

[Update on 29/06/2012: added tests 5 and 6 with RAID controller cache and Atlantis Ilio] When a 400 GB SSD comes nearly at the price of a small car, you expect a lot, performance-wise. At least I did when I got my hands on two drives from HP’s enterprise performance series. Read on to find […]

Solved: Deleting Copied Executable Files Fails – Temporarily

I had a very interesting case recently where copied EXE files could not be deleted. They would simply remain in the folder like zombies, only to disappear a few minutes later.

Setting up Mobile Broadband (WWAN) on HP Elitebook 8560p

Configuring an HP Elitebook with integrated HS2340 mobile broadband module to use the 3G connection can be a little tricky. Here is how it works – without third-party dialer software!

Authentication Fails Trying to Send Mail via Google Apps SMTP from PHP

As you may know helgeklein.com also hosts a forum where I help people who have questions related to my software. The forum is configured to send out e-mails when new posts are added or when newly registered users need to confirm their e-mail addresses. Since I use Google Apps for helgeklein.com I configured Google’s SMTP […]

Removing “Eject VMware Virtual disk SCSI Disk Device”

The HotPlug functionality of VMware ESX(i) 4 and 5 has the negative side effect that it is easily possible to “eject” hardware devices from inside the virtual machine, completely removing the respective device from the VM configuration. This is especially bad if it happens to the network card, and others have already described how to […]

Solved: Disabling the BitLocker Service via GPP Fails

If you want to disable the BitLocker service via Group Policy Preferences, you will find that you cannot. The service’s startup mode stays at “manual” and the following event is logged to the application event log: Type: Warning Source: Group Policy Services Event ID: 4098 User: SYSTEM Text: ... error code 0x80070005 access denied ... […]

Walkthrough: Creating a UE-V Settings Location Template

In this article I explain how to create a template for Microsoft User Experience Virtualization. For details on how UE-V works please see my earlier article Microsoft User Experience Virtualization (UE-V): Facts and Review. As a sample application I used my permission management tool SetACL Studio. Generator Installation As explained in my review, a UE-V […]

Microsoft User Experience Virtualization (UE-V): Facts and Review

16 years after roaming profiles made their debut in Windows NT 4.0 Microsoft takes another stab at synchronizing user settings across devices – a very different one. As we will see, UE-V is radically different from roaming profiles, but so similar to some other user environment management products that it seems like a best-practices implementation.

Windows Offline Files Survival Guide

Windows Offline Files have a bad reputation. Many an administrator can tell a story where Offline Files caused issues that sometimes even required a reinstallation of the affected PC. But Microsoft has gradually improved the functionality and ironed out many of the bugs. Today – in Windows 7 SP1 with all post-SP1 fixes – Offline […]

Windows 8 Storage Spaces: Bugs and Design Flaws

When I first read about Storage Spaces in the Windows 8 blog, I was enthusiastic. Finally a replacement for the drive extender technology Microsoft let die so cruelly. Having used Storage Spaces for several weeks now, I am not so sure any more.

Dead Simple Wake-on-LAN for Your Windows Server at Home

Having a server at home is a great luxury, but having a computer running 24×7 is an extreme waste of energy. Turning it on and off manually is not very appealing, either. Luckily we have to do neither. Windows can easily be configured to put the computer into sleep mode (where modern PCs consume approx. […]

Do Shadow Keys Still Work in Server 2008 R2?

Shadow keys have been around forever, since way before Terminal Services were renamed to Remote Desktop Services (does anybody use that name?). It seemed they would stay in the OS forever, too. Yet, when installing applications on Server 2008 R2 many people notice that the shadow key area does not get populated. Let us find […]

Windows 8 Storage Spaces – a First(-Hand) Look at Performance

Did I mention I love the new Task Manager in Windows 8? It is brilliantly designed, conveying tons of meaningful information while looking very good. This article is not about Task Manager, though, but about Windows 8 – its Storage Spaces functionality, to be exact. But I will be using Task Manager to analyze the […]

Building a Low Power, High Capacity Home File Server

I have wanted an energy-efficient multi-terabyte home file server for a long time, but until recently such a system was too expensive for my taste, in terms of both energy consumption and purchase price. But now with affordable 3 TB drives and low power Sandy Bridge CPUs the time has come to build the system […]

You’ve Got a New Verisign Authenticode Certificate – Now What?

The good news first: You can get a Verisign Authenticode code signing certificate for $99. Just check out https://sysdev.microsoft.com/ for details. This price even applies to the renewal when the original certificate expires after a year. The bad news: Actually getting the certificate and using it is not so easy. Here are some tips.

Speaking Engagements 2012

As in previous years I will be speaking at several conferences this year.

Get Rid of Active Setup

Are you still using Active Setup to distribute per-user files or registry values? If so, stop! There are better ways to manage initial user settings.

Solved: “Other” Eating Up Gigabytes of iPad Storage

In preparation for next week’s MVP summit I wanted to fill my iPad with movies for in-flight entertainment when I noticed that a large part of my iPad’s storage capacity was taken up by stuff from some unexplained “other” category. Here is my account of what I did to get rid of it and reclaim […]

Half a Million Downloads of SetACL

Last month SetACL reached the magic number of 500,000 downloads. That is a lot, especially for a command-line tool which is focused on a very specific aspect of system administration. It took roughly nine years to get from 0 to 500,000. During that time people from 194 different countries visited SetACL’s web site. Those are […]

How to Troubleshoot Failed MSI Installs

I was given the Aventail VPN client software to install on a customer’s Windows 7 x64 computer. That failed miserably. Here is what I did to find the root cause of the problem.

What Remains of Magic Speed Improvements

Doesn’t every IT pro dream of finding a secret switch, a switch that increases clock speed, doubles the amount of RAM or makes the PC boot faster? Some do, and I admit I was fascinated when I heard that changing a simple boot option would significantly speed up startup time. I made some tests which […]

How to Speed Up Your Windows 7 Boot Time by 20%

[What I wrote here is wrong. Please read this follow-up article.] Here is a very simple way to reduce the time it takes to boot Windows 7 by around 20% (the exact number depends on the hardware).

Access Based Enumeration on Windows 7

Access Based Enumeration (ABE) is a well-hidden feature even in Windows Server, where it can be configured per share, but only in the Share and Storage Management MMC and not when right-clicking a folder in Explorer. Thanks to the shared code base ABE is available in Windows 7, too, although hidden even better. Let’s find […]

How to Make Google Chrome Search via SSL/HTTPS by Default

A while ago I wrote about the dangers of using unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Right now I am connected to such a network and trying hard not to give away authentication cookies or passwords – information that would make it trivial even for amateurs to take over one or several of my accounts. Some of my […]

Geek Fashion

This is what I’ll be wearing at next week’s WINone: And yes, the letters are made up of actual source code ;-)

Analysis: Require Domain Controller Authentication to Unlock Workstation

Among the many security options that are configurable via Group Policy, there is a setting Interactive logon: Require Domain Controller authentication to unlock workstation. For security reasons, this is often enabled. Let’s have a closer look at the implications. Those are different from what one might think because the name is a little misleading.

ShMgrate – An Analysis

ShMgrate.exe is an executable file in Windows XP and Server 2003 and one of those files that are documented nowhere. I will try to shed a little light on this tool in this article.

Permissions Windows Does Not Show You

Sometimes it is good not to know the truth, but as an administrator you better know what is going on! Most IT pros know that Explorer lies a lot (on a German system C:\Users magically becomes C:\Benutzer), but few are aware that Windows’ permission handling dialog ACL Editor also tends to “pretty up” things. Example […]

New File System ReFS in Windows 8: Quick Facts

The introduction of a new file system is a big step even for Microsoft. According to this article in the Building Windows 8 blog ReFS will ship with the server version of Windows 8 only, but will be brought to the client at a later time, too. ReFS was built for resiliency and complements Storage […]

Windows 7 IPv6 in Enterprise Environments

If you roll out Windows 7 in an enterprise environment you may need to decide what to do with IPv6. As you probably know, Windows 7 comes with IPv6 enabled by default. That is certainly nice, but what if your network does not “do” IPv6 yet? Should you disable IPv6 in Windows 7?

WLAN Security – Beware of (Unknown) Wi-Fi Hotspots

In its issue 1/2012 German c’t magazine published an article about security in Wi-Fi networks. The authors describe how very easy it is to gain access to other people’s accounts and passwords in a world where travelers happily connect to any wireless network they can get hold of. This is a short summary of the […]

How to Configure a File Server for Hosting User Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Setting up a network share on a file server for hosting user profiles is not too difficult if you follow the steps outlined in this article. The recommendations I give here apply […]

Customizing the Default Profile

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Administrators frequently have the requirement to adapt newly created user profiles to corporate standards. This is typically done by modifying the default profile, the profile Windows uses as a template when creating […]

Temporary User Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Nobody wants a temporary profile. So why do I get one? Here are the most common reasons for Windows to only issue a profile that is deleted at logoff instead of the […]

XenApp Reading List

This is a very personal recommendation of what to read to become and stay an expert in Citrix XenApp. Learning the Basics Terminal Services for Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Advanced Technical Design Guide Brian Madden and Ron Oglesby Available online free of charge By far the best resource to learn about Terminal Services. This should […]

Gründung eines (Software-) Unternehmens – Einzelunternehmen, UG oder GmbH?

How I Do Off-Site Cloud Backup

In my ongoing quest for the perfect way to back up my personal data I have tweaked the setup yet again. Most of what I wrote nearly three years ago (How to Build a State of the Art Backup System for Your Personal Data) still stands, so I will focus on off-site cloud backup in […]

Folder Redirection – Denial of Service Waiting to Happen

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. One of the problems inherent to roaming user profiles is that they are copied to the local computer during logon. That takes time. Hence the motivation to limit the size of user […]

Pictures from an Exhibition

I just returned from Citrix’ bi-annual Synergy event in Barcelona. I am not going to summarize the event here (others have done that better than I could, e.g. Gabe Knuth or Nico Lüdemann). Instead I have a few pictures to share. I would like to mention, though, that Synergy is the best way to connect […]

How to Build a Software Company

Which values do I build my newly founded company on? There are many things I value highly – fairness, professionalism, quality, innovation, honesty – but one thing stands out: sharing. The IT community as I have come to know it is centered around the wish to help others by sharing information and software. I want […]

Does a Self-Respecting IT Pro Need Antivirus?

Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report confirms a feeling I have had for a long time: I do not need antivirus. Let me explain why.

Starting Up

After many years of employment I felt the need to reduce the number of people who can order me around. I managed to get it down to two: my wife and my daughter.

How User Profiles Will Help Make Windows 8 a Success

Competition in the tablet market is fierce because the profits are potentially enormous (check Apple’s financial statements as proof). No wonder everybody is desperate to get their way in, some giving up before they really started (HP), others with dubious concepts (RIM). Apple obviously is fighting tooth and nail to keep up their dominance which […]

Tuning the Lenovo T520 – Upgrading Memory and Installing an mSATA SSD

Disassembling the Lenovo Thinkpad T520 is easy, which makes upgrading the device a simple procedure. As described in my previous article I bought a T520 with only 2 GB RAM in order to replace the shipped memory with two 4 GB modules from Kingston. I also bought Intel’s mSATA SSD 310. This is a short […]

Finding the Perfect Laptop Computer

For a geek, one of the most fun things is choosing a new toy. I experienced this once again when I needed to buy a new laptop computer. The selection process was a lengthy one, during which I looked at and considered practically every model on the market. The benefits of that are twofold: I […]

Shortcut Magic

Windows shortcuts aka LNK files have interesting capabilities. The shortcut target can be stored not only as a fixed-path string, but also as an item ID list. If a shortcut is equipped with such a list, it is – to a certain extent – platform-independent.

Dissecting a Shortcut

Ever wondered about the layout of shortcut files? Those tiny little buggers with the extension LNK you have probably dozens of on your desktop? For years the format was subject to reverse engineering and speculation. Last year Microsoft finally released an official format specification, documenting this surprisingly complex format. This article is the result of […]

SetACL Studio Raffle: Results and Quotes

The popular German administrator website faq-o-matic raffled five licenses of SetACL Studio. These are the lucky winners: Frank Fester Kurt Rode Michael Kramer Stefan Döhring Ulrike Streich Congratulations! Your personal serial numbers are already on their way. What the Participants Had to Say About SetACL Studio Each of the participants was asked what he or […]

Working with the Amazon CloudFront CDN

This is a compilation of things learned while setting up Amazon CloudFront as a CDN for my WordPress site as well as using it as software distribution network.

How to Reduce Bandwidth Usage and Optimize Website Performance with W3 Total Cache and Amazon CloudFront

My website is hosted by Rochen, a company whose services I am very happy with. For reasons I understand they do not offer unlimited data transfer. My account, for example, comes with 50 GB per month. That is a lot and enough for most sites, including mine at this point in time. But I am […]

Officially Announced New Features in Windows 8 (Client and Server)

This is an attempt to list officially announced new and changed features in Windows 8. I will update this list as new announcements are made.

Locking Down Internet Explorer 8 with Group Policy

Managing Internet Explorer via group policy is a daunting task. Hundreds of policies are available to control the browser’s user interface, security settings and much more. This article lists strategies and scripts I have found helpful.

Quickest Way to Create Text File of Specific Length

In order to perform a specific test of my new application SetACL Studio I needed a string with a length of exactly 32,739 bytes.

Access Denied Trying to Connect to Administrative Shares C$, D$ etc.

Under certain circumstances, you cannot connect to administrative shares (e.g. C$) on remote computers, even though you use the right credentials. Accessing a normal (i.e. non-administrative) share works flawlessly, though.

Missing Sharing Tab in Folder Properties on Windows 7

Sometimes the “Sharing” tab in the folder properties goes missing. If that is the case and you right-click a folder and select “Properties”, it looks like this:

SetACL Studio – The Beta is Here

SetACL Studio is a management tool for nearly every aspect of Windows permissions. It works with the file system, the registry, printers, services, shares and WMI objects. It supports very long paths (the kind Explorer cannot handle) and shows you every corner of the system, regardless of current permissions. About all that I have written […]

Dinosaurs on Your Hard Disk: Historical Files in Windows 7 Everybody Seems to Have Forgotten About

Everybody knows that Windows installations become bigger with every version. But Windows’ hard disk footprint grows not only because Microsoft adds new files, but also because some files seem to be delete-proof and are not removed, even though they have been obsolete for ages. This is a compilation of some of these files along with […]

Script Deletes Orphaned Printer Ports

The script published in this article was kindly contributed by Bo Riis, a sysadmin working at Danish hosting company dandomain. Here is what he writes about it:

DsGetDcName Timeout

Today I was looking for the source of frequent delays when setting permissions from my new application SetACL Studio. I sprinkled the code with timestamped debug statements like these…

PowerShell Script Switches Printer Configurations Between Sites

Attending the community conference PubForum E2E Conference has many benefits, the biggest is in my opinion getting to know many very talented and very nice people. One of them, Ton de Vreede, recently sent me a PowerShell script he had written which I am happy to publish here.

Announcing SetACL Studio – The Power of SetACL in a Great UI

SetACL is well-known as a powerful and versatile tool for managing permissions in nearly all corners of the Windows operating system. In fact it is so powerful that the command-line options may be overwhelming at first. But, hey, power comes at a price, right?

FastCopy – Free File Copy Tool Runs Circles Around Explorer

When it comes to copying files, Windows Explorer may probably be called reliable, but fast it is not. After the rewrite of the copy routines in Vista had caused much customer dissatisfaction, Microsoft rewrote the copy dialog again for Windows 7. But still, especially copying many small files takes ages.

How to Avoid Data Roaming in the US with Prepaid Data SIM

When travelling to the US with a smartphone, Europeans have a problem: either pay horrendous data roaming fees or use the device as a simple 1990’s style phone without any network connectivity. Neither option is particularly attractive. Luckily there is a third way. A Local SIM If you want to use data services without paying […]

Helge’s Profile Toolkit

Helge’s Profile Toolkit is a collection of tips, tricks and tools for working with user profiles.

The Unmanageable File Server

I had an interesting little case to solve at home recently when my headless file server suddenly would not accept RDP connections any more. It still worked flawlessly as a file server, so I ignored the problem for a while.

Differences Between Citrix Profile Management and Immidio Flex Profiles

From time to time I get asked about the differences between Citrix’s and Immidio’s profile management products. Here are some common questions along with my answers.

Why User Profiles Always Get Bigger, Never Smaller: Installers

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. One of the constants in the Windows universe is the knowledge that user profiles increase in size over time. They tend to accumulate all kinds of junk and become bloated which is […]

I Did Not Expect the Wilderness to be so … Wild

I was reminded of this movie quote when I stumbled across the following cry for help in a developer’s forum:

Parsing Dates in Batch Files & Regional Settings / Locale

Determining day, month and year on the command line is surprisingly difficult if the solution is to work across locales, i.e. on international systems with different regional settings. Although we can use the variables %DATE% and %TIME% their contents is specific to the locale. If set to German, the date is displayed in the format […]

Solved: Firefox Freezes Every 10 Seconds, Scrolling is Jumpy

Problem Firefox (3.6.13) intermittently freezes. This happens during scrolling, text input, basically everywhere in the user interface, rendering the browser nearly useless.

Mandatory Profiles – Insecure by Default?

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Mandatory profiles are generally considered fast and secure because they usually are small in size and cannot be modified by the user. While that is true – mandatory profiles stay pristine indefinitely […]

Q&A: How to Modify Permissions on Administrative Shares

Question by reader Kendra: I stumbled upon your blog/profile while I was looking for options to lockdown my administrative shares. Maybe you can help me. I’m a Network Administrator for an aerospace / engineering firm where users need administrative access to their PCs. The engineers work on very high-level OS and hardware development and need […]

USMT and Beyond – Practical Tips for Your Migration

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. This article presents a collection of tips and tricks around user state migration with and without Microsoft’s USMT. I originally compiled this material for my presentation at the 2010 TechDay Online.

How to Get Back Windows XP’s Fast Event Viewer in Windows 7

One of the first things I noticed about Windows Vista and immediately disliked was the new event viewer. The user interface is too cluttered, but more importantly, it is just so very sloooow. It is so slow that I think twice before starting it. And when I do, I almost feel physical pain watching it […]

WordPress Author Page Not Found (Error 404) if Space in URL?

I had a strange error on this WordPress installation: The author page would not display, instead, I got a 404 (not found). This is the description of how I fixed it.

The Making of HelgeKlein.com, SetACL’s New Home

Until yesterday, SetACL’s web presence consisted of six static HTML pages. That was great for speed, but it sucked in almost every other aspect. And the design … better not speak about that. The old website was hosted on Sourceforge, on the subdomain setacl.sourceforge.net, to be exact. High time for a radical change. I wanted […]

Can I Use the Same User Profile on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows?

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. More and more people are upgrading to a 64-bit version of Windows. Many of them would probably like to keep their existing configuration. The question is: can you use the 32-bit profile […]

User Profiles Inside Out – Slides from my Presentation at PubForum

Here is the slide deck for my presentation User profiles inside out from PubForum Berlin 2010. Enjoy.

How to Map Generic Rights to Standard and Specific Rights

There are two equivalent ways trustees can be assigned a specific set of permissions on Windows: via generic rights and via a combination of standard and specific rights. Generic rights are identical for all object types. There are only four of them: GENERIC_READ (0x80000000) GENERIC_WRITE (0x40000000) GENERIC_EXECUTE (0x20000000) GENERIC_ALL (0x10000000) As the name implies, generic […]

How the App Paths Registry Key Makes Windows Both Faster and Safer

Why can you start Mozilla Firefox by typing “firefox” in the Run dialog and press enter? Firefox.exe is not located in any directory in the path. The same with Outlook (type “outlook”), PowerShell (“powershell”), VMware Workstation (“vmware”) or Adobe Reader (“acrord32”). This “magic application starting thingy” works because of a little-known Windows feature based on […]

What is the SYNCHRONIZE File Access Right?

When dealing with Windows NTFS file system permissions, one quickly encounters the SYNCHRONIZE access right, the purpose of which may not be obvious. SYNCHRONIZE belongs to the standard access rights, just like DELETE, READ_CONTROL, WRITE_DAC and WRITE_OWNER. Here is the definition of SYNCHRONIZE from MSDN (2010): The SYNCHRONIZE access right is defined within the standard […]

Free Script: User Profile Domain Migration with SetACL

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. When administrators migrate user accounts between domains, they typically re-ACL those server resources users have access to. In plain English: they copy or move the permissions from the accounts of the old […]

How to Generate Directory Listing with Full Path from Batch

Sometimes you need a list of all the files and/or folders in a directory with their full path, without any additional information. “DIR /B” would be the right command, if it only printed out the full path (it does that only if combined with the recursion parameter /S). Here is a way to print a […]

Taking Ownership Fails With UNC Path, Works Locally!?! Why?

Here is an interesting tidbit related to Windows security: Create a test file share, e.g. C:\temp\test, and share it with full permissions for everyone (share, not NTFS permissions) as “test” Create the following directory hierarchy below the share: C:\temp\test\1\2\3\4 Assign ownership of the four folders 1, 2, 3 and 4 to any user (but do […]

How to Modify Default Share Permissions and Other Tweaks

NTFS permissions are stored in the file system, that is well known. But where are share permissions stored? As so often with Windows: in the registry. Network shares are defined by only a handful of relatively simple registry entries stored in the server service’s key which is, for historical reasons that go back way beyond […]

EFS Encryption and CopyFile(Ex): Why DIY is Better

Generally I am not the type to recommend re-implementing functionality present in some API. But with the Windows function CopyFile(Ex) there may be no alternative, because of the less than sub-optimal way Windows copies EFS-encrypted files: If the source encryption key can be used on the target (i.e. if the target computer can access the […]

Will We Use Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops in 2020?

A desktop delivered from the cloud, accessible from everywhere, providing just the right amount of computing power for the task at hand, maintained by the cloud provider and paid for only when used – a dream? Or a commodity in ten years’ time? Time will tell, but in the meantime let us find out if […]

Registry Tricks

Here are some pretty cool ways to work with the Windows registry. Regedit Multiple Instances Start multiple instances of Regedit by appending the command-line parameter -m, e.g.: regedit -m.

Migrating from Blogger to Custom Domain on WordPress Without Losing PageRank

Migrating a blog can be a very painful process, part of which stems from the fact that, if not done correctly, search engine valuation (aka PageRank) that took years to gain may be lost in days. Redirecting from the old blog to the new URL alleviates this problem at least, but not the way it […]

64 Bit: The Final Frontier – Slides From my Presentation at PubForum

Only a few days ago I attended PubForum in Frankfurt – a weekend well spent! I had an altogether good time and very much enjoyed meeting so many great people. I also presented on the topic of migrating to 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 and XenApp 6, a task not to be taken lightly. For […]

Should AppData be Redirected or Left in the User Profile?

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Redirecting AppData from the user profile to a folder on the network may significantly improve logon speed. Is enabling AppData redirection a no-brainer, then? Not really, because it often comes at a […]

New OS = New Profile = User State Lost. True or False?

Going to Windows 7 or Server 2008 (R2) means trouble. Let me use an analogy to explain why. You are in charge of moving people from their old houses to shiny new buildings. You have planned everything perfectly. The new homes are beautiful and located in a great neighborhood. But still, after moving house, people […]

Active Setup Explained

New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Office 2010, RDS/XenApp, Windows, Web

As before this is mainly a condensed and beautified version of my twitter postings. You can get them unfiltered and without delay by following me.

Where is the App Store for Windows? Why Microsoft Should Fear Developer Drain.

Selling little apps for little money is next to impossible – on Windows. It works great on another platform, though: the iPhone. Such an imbalance has consequences: Apple making it easy for developers to actually sell their programs creates a pressure that might well cause a “developer drain” on the Windows platform.

How to Enable Drag and Drop for an Elevated MFC Application on Windows

Finding good information on how to enable drag and drop for MFC applications is hard enough (why?). But just when you think you should have it working, you hit a very solid wall: UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation, a variant of UAC, User Account Control). Because of “security” reasons, UIPI disables drag and drop from […]

Poll: Do Companies Use Local or Roaming Profiles for Desktop PCs?

Would it shock you if 35% of all enterprises used roaming profiles on their desktop PCs? Well, that was the average I got when I asked via Twitter. But is that number correct? It might or might not be. It is based on the answers of only ten people, making it hardly statistically relevant. In […]

Deploying Visual C++ Runtime Files as Private Assemblies

If you create a C++ project in Visual Studio and configure it to “Use MFC in a Shared DLL” (the default) you need to make sure the C runtime (CRT) and the MFC libraries are installed in the correct versions on the end user’s computer. That can be difficult. There are three ways to install […]

.NET Applications on Windows x64 – Easy? Yes and No

When migrating to 64-bit Windows, traditional “unmanaged” applications can pose challenges. That is because unmanaged binaries contain hardware-dependent CPU instructions – and the view on the hardware differs between 32- and 64-bit mode. But .NET? It should be unaffected of a system’s bitness since “managed” binaries contain instructions in a so-called intermediate language that is […]

Citrix User Profile Manager 5 Years Ago: Birth

Citrix User Profile Manager is pretty well-known in the SBC space today. Five years ago, things were quite different. Citrix did not have a user profile solution, and neither did sepago. But we had an idea spinning in our heads we soon came to call Smooth Profiles. Slowly that idea became code, then was renamed […]

Visual Studio: Adding DLL References Whose Version Changes Frequently

Let’s assume you have a C# project in Visual Studio. In that project, you reference an assembly (DLL) created by another of your projects. Because both projects are in active development, the version number of the referenced assembly changes frequently. There is one easy way to solve this: Add a reference to the project by […]

Which Software Installed That Driver – And When?

Installing a software that includes a driver may leave your system in an inconsistent state. If the install fails, parts may remain on the system. And if the remaining part is a driver, I get nervous – drivers are not the kind of stuff I want to have lingering around my system’s memory. Here is […]

New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Windows (7 and 2008 R2), PowerShell and Citrix

Windows General Good info for troubleshooting DFS-Namespaces in the MS KB: Storage locations, inconsistencies and how to deal with them. Complex passwords and security guidelines for end users? No, thank you, says MS researcher. I agree.

Are Mandatory User Profiles Deleted at Logoff – or Cached?

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. A popular misconception about mandatory user profiles is that they are deleted at logoff. I freely admit that I thought so, too, until I made some tests that proved I was wrong.

Visual Studio: Fixing Broken $(WindowsSdkDir) Variable

If you get weird errors in Visual Studio that basically state files like Windows.h cannot be found, the reason may be a missing or incorrect WindowsSdkDir variable. In my case, working with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (32 bit) on Windows 7 x64 (64 bit) everything was fine until I installed the Windows 7 SDK. After […]

Syntax Highlighting PowerShell Code in HTML – With a PowerShell Script

When you are publishing PowerShell code on the web, you soon discover that it looks much nicer with syntax highlighting – as did I. There are several ways to add syntax highlighting to your blog or web site, most of which rely on external (WordPress) plugins or JavaScript on the page. I do not like […]

How to List All Installed Applications From the Command Line

This article describes how to list all installed MSI packages. A more comprehensive listing of all applications displayed in Programs and Features can be obtained through our monitoring and analytics product uberAgent. How to easily create a list of all programs and (MSI) packages installed on a system for later processing? That sounds like a […]

PowerShell Script Lists App-V Package Dependencies (Dynamic Suite Composition, DSC)

Update 2010-04-20: Thanks to Stefan Henseler the script now works correctly with multiple dependencies in a single file. Be sure to download the current version below. App-V’s Dynamic Suite Composition is a powerful feature in that it allows multiple “bubbles” to share the same virtual environment. In other words, package A can be made dependent […]

How to Analyze Kernel Performance Bottlenecks (and Find that ATI’s Catalyst Drivers Cause 50% CPU Utilization)

Normally, finding the cause for high CPU utilization is easy – just start Task Manager. But what if the component consuming CPU cycles is a driver that runs in the kernel? In that case, there is no regular process Task Manager could attribute the usage to. You will see the “System Idle Process” at around […]

The 30 Second File Copy Bug, or: EFS = Bad Performance?

This article describes a bug that dramatically reduces file copy performance on Windows systems. I cannot provide a fix (not having access to the Windows source code), but I have found a workaround.

VXI: How a Customer With Real Scalability Problems Uses Virtualization

I wish all my friends and readers a merry christmas and happy new year! I hope you like sepago’s annual Christmas comic.

Fixing Office 2007’s Quick Access Toolbars With Citrix User Profile Manager

Not sure where user profile management might be useful? Here is an example that should apply to almost everyone.

Should Roaming User Profiles Be Backed Up?

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. This may seem like a silly question, but whether or not to include roaming user profiles in your enterprise backup solution may greatly affect both the performance and the cost of that […]

New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Windows, Hyper-V, Citrix, PowerShell and Application Streaming / App-V

Windows Beginning with Vista, when formatting a drive the entire disk is overwritten with zeroes. While this is good for end users who like to wipe all data prior to selling or throwing away a disk drive, SAN-based volumes should not be formatted like this. Perform a quick format instead. But if you want to […]

My Take on ChromeOS? It will be Successful when End Users can Manage their Photos and Music in the Cloud

ChromeOS seems to be the talk of the day. Why not? It is an interesting concept. But will it be successful? That is the wrong question, actually. It should be rephrased to: When will it be successful?

How to Easily Monitor System Performance with the new DiskLED 1.1

DiskLED is a small tool that displays performance counter data using an animated system tray icon. The new version 1.1 comes with a graphical configuration dialog that lets you choose from all performance counters available on the local system – you can monitor network throughput just as easily as hard disk activity or memory usage. […]

Citrix Products 2010: A Wish List

What would Joe, a Citrix admin, put on his Christmas wish list? Here are some guesses in no special order.

What is a CTP Meeting all about?

I just returned from my first CTP (Citrix Technology Professional) meeting and thought I might share a few experiences. The meeting took place in one of Citrix’s headquarter buildings in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The meeting itself ran over two days, which means that most attendees were away from home and work for four. While that […]

Virtualization – Old Hat?

Although humans in general and members of its subspecies “marketing manager” in particular tend to treat currently “hot” topics as new and revolutionary, they only rarely are. In fact, “new” should be considered as in “new wine in old bottles” rather than in “did not exist before”. Take virtualization. Although the topic of the day […]

Found my first bug in Windows 7 APIs: PdhBrowseCounters requires Elevation

I just found out the following, which does not seem to be documented anywhere: The Windows API has a function for displaying a dialog that lets the user select a specific performance counter from all counters available on the local or a remote computer. The dialog is used by perfmon.exe, for example, and looks like […]

Radio Buttons in MFC (Visual Studio 2008 / C++)

This is a quick and dirty description of how to use radio buttons in MFC, written because I could not find this information in a single place on the web. In the dialog editor: Create a new group with the group box control and set a meaningful caption Add radio button controls inside the group […]

On the Usefulness of self-extracting Archives

I just found out that the new firmware version 2.1 for my digital camera Panasonic Lumix LX3 has been published. Very nice, especially the speed improvements. So I downloaded the firmware, a self-extracting archive, started the executable and had it uncompress the actual firmware file (a .bin file). Interestingly, the “compressed” .exe file is larger […]

New XenDesktop 4 Licensing Model: Flexibility? Yes, but at what Cost?

It seems the Citrix community had only had one topic recently, albeit one discussed hotly: licensing. Now that Citrix has given in and practically allowed all conceivable license types, everybody is happy?! It seems so, although CCU licenses have doubled in price, as Shawn Bass points out. But is this really the happy ending of […]

DiskLED – A Flexible Hard Disk and General System Activity Indicator System Tray Applet

What do you do when your computer reacts sluggishly to even the simplest commands? You probably look at its hard disk LED to determine if the disk is busy, because if it is, the only thing that really helps is waiting (apart from buying a faster disk or SSD). Problem solved – if you are […]

Profile Hell – The Reality of Windows User Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. A user calls the help desk to report a strange malfunction of an application. What does the help desk technician do? Analyze the root cause of the problem? Probably not. Most likely, […]

How to Determine the Windows Installation Date with and without PowerShell

There are many ways to determine when Windows was installed. Here are some of them.

New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Bugs, Annoyances, PowerShell and some other Stuff

Bugs and Annoyances ICA connections initiated over the ICA client object (ICO) SDK fail because 128-bit encryption cannot be enabled. Apparently, setting EncryptionLevelSession does not work. Annoyingly, this bug is more than a year old, was fixed in the ICA client 10.2 and reappeared in the current version 11.0. Bugs like this one are bad […]

Useful PowerShell Scriptlets for Files and Folders

What is the best way to learn PowerShell? Never use cmd.exe again! With PowerShell 2.0 on my Windows 7 machine I decided it finally is time to polish my rusty knowledge of the language dating back to the days when PowerShell was still called Monad. In my attempt to re-familiarize myself with PoSh I consciously […]

How to Convert Videos from Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TZ7 from MOV to MPEG-2

This is an update to my post on how to convert Quicktime videos in MOV format to MPEG-2. Recently a friend of mine asked me how my conversion script could be used for a slightly different camera model. While I use it for the videos from my Lumix LX3, he owns a TZ7, which uses […]

Virtualization? Nothing But Lies!

With virtualization, lying has become respectable. Processors lie to user mode processes about memory addresses. Computers lie to operating systems about installed hardware. Storage systems lie to everybody about the location of data. The virtualization hype transforms honest down-to-earth systems into lying medusas.

Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM) and the Broken Rootdrive

Terminal server application compatibility scripts have been around for a long time – so long in fact, that I considered them a legacy and stowed away any knowledge of them in a very remote area of my brain. When a Citrix customer brought up a problem with the mapping of ROOTDRIVE in the User Profile […]

Which Image File Format (GIF/PNG/JPG) to Choose – a Consultant's Answer

Which answer does a good consultant give to most general questions? “It depends.” Computer networks are complex systems, and usually there is no single option that fits all scenarios equally well. I was reminded of this when my wife, who is a professional photographer, told me she stores images in PNG format. At first, I […]

Moving the Firefox Cache Directory and Profile Separately

On my computers I try to keep my data on its own partition, well away from program files and other stuff that gets (re-) created anyway when I install a new OS. Separation of data from all the other stuff is an old principle and makes it possible to just delete the OS partition whenever […]

New Web Content Actually Worth Reading (August 2009)

Why does Windows 7 feel faster than Vista, although really it is not? Improvements to the graphics driver model (WDDM got upgraded to version 1.1) certainly add to this feeling and reduce the memory footprint of the desktop windows manager (DWM) process. Microsoft describes the changes in its Graphics Guide for Windows 7.

Programming Sins Regarding the Registry (Using the Example of Microsoft Excel)

While browsing through the registry I found the following “gem”. It illustrates nicely how programmers are not supposed to store settings in the registry: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt\Nach Microsoft E&xcel exportieren] @="res://C:\\PROGRA~2\\MICROS~1\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE/3000" "Contexts"=dword:00000001

Registry Fun (Working With Hive Files)

Sometimes it is necessary to export/import data from or into the registry for some sort of additional processing. To this end, often regedit is used to create .REG files, which store a human-readable text interpretation of the registry content. .REG files can be edited easily with any capable text editor (even Notepad), and thus are […]

I Was Interviewed – Twice

In the past few days I have been interviewed twice: in the German O’Reilly blog and in sepago’s marketing/HR blog. You can find the two (different) interviews here: Das Making-of der “Windowsbefehle kurz & gut” und der Admin-Alltag Einfach Helge Klein

Puzzle: Delete Directory Content Without Deleting the Directory Itself (on the Command Line)

The Windows command line is a powerful beast. It can be made to do things one would never have thought possible, but it can be very tricky indeed to find out just how to make it jump through a particular hoop. Here is a real problem I had to solve for those who like puzzles: […]

How to Easily Fix Wrong Timestamps on Files from your Digital Camera

Ever had the situation where by some mishap the file times on your digital images got changed and there seemingly was no way of knowing when a picture was taken any more? In most cases that can be remedied easily. Most digital cameras write an astounding number of things directly into the image file, into […]

Canon EOS 350D and Windows 7 x64 – Where are the Drivers, Canon?

After neglecting my good old Canon EOS 350D for some time, I took some pictures with it yesterday, which I wanted to transfer to my laptop, of course. And there the trouble started. My instinctive action (remove the memory card and insert it into the laptop’s card reader) did not work. I remembered that Canon […]

Replicating User Profiles Between Sites (With or Without DFS) – Why it Should be Avoided

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Roaming user profiles seems like such a good idea at first, but it causes a myriad of problems in practice. One of these problems stems from the fact that the master copy […]

x64 Divided by Two is NOT x32!

At the verge of the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows it is interesting to observe how people interpret and misuse acronyms for the definition of “their” platform. Looking at the acronyms in use out there one might consider oneself back in the eighties, with dozens of different incompatible computer systems. Unfortunately it is more […]

How Much Memory Does a Database/File/Print/Terminal/Web Server Need?

Here are some very simple guidelines that help determine how much memory a particular server actually needs in order to perform well. Of course, these are just rules of thumb, but nevertheless they might come in handy.

How Forcing Password Changes Actually Weakens Security

When was the last time you got that not too friendly message stating that your password has expired and asking you to change it? Probably only a few weeks ago, and just as sure as day follows night, it is going to appear again only too soon. At least that is the typical user’s point […]

Four Ways to Increase the Capacity of Your Citrix XenApp Farm

Even with the most meticulous design, the day will come when your farm’s capacity is not sufficient any more. User numbers increase, applications become more resource-hungry and the amount of data to be handled increases steadily. So what do you do? Simply more of the same, i.e. buy more servers and add them to the […]

New Web Content Actually Worth Reading (June 2009)

Jim Moyle recently started a blog on desktop and application delivery. While reading his first two posts I thought “yes, that’s so right“. Regretfully, people like him, who disregard the current hype and cut through the marketing BS, are scarce. More of the same, please!

Hear Me Speak and Talk to Me

Do you like what you read in this blog but have questions I did not answer (yet)? Or do you prefer listening and talking to live human beings instead of sitting alone in front of your screen? Well, come hear me speak and tell me what you think! This summer I will be speaking at […]

Where is the Hosts File on Windows x64?

[A German translation of this article is available at faq-o-matic.net.] The subtle differences between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows present so many intricacies and pitfalls that even Microsoft employees seem to have trouble getting it right. I just stumbled upon a KB article that describes how to reset the hosts file to its original state. The […]

New KB Articles on User Profiles (April to May 2009)

This is a collection of new knowledge base articles related to Windows user profiles. As you can see, the last two months were pretty quiet. So quiet, that you may have missed the release of the first update to Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM). The new version comes as an MSI file that either installs […]

Folder De-Localization with Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM)

Windows user profiles prior to Vista / Server 2008 contain localized folder names. End users expect that, of course, but admins tend to hate it because automated management becomes much more difficult. How can this dilemma be resolved? End users only see the local copy of the profile, while admins mostly have to deal with […]

File Copy Performance to USB Drive Oscillating Between Fast and Slow

I just had the “pleasure” of having to copy the contents of a terabyte USB disk to another similar USB drive. At first, I did not give this simple task much thought. I plugged the USB cables in and made my faithful Total Commander do the work. It did not take me long, though, to […]

Hard Links and Permissions / ACLs

Commenter Lee asked how ACLs are evaluated when an object has multiple hard links. I replied with comments of my own, which turned out to be wrong after I did some experiments. Here is what I found out about hard link permissions and believe to be true.

Cleaning up the Mess Left Behind by Multiple EFS Certificates

In case you have (un?)wittingly been juggling around with multiple EFS certificates like me, you may feel a strong urge to clean up the mess. Which mess? It can happen quite easily that different files are encrypted with different keys. In addition to that, directories that are marked for encryption have EFS certificates associated with […]

Tales from the Crypt – EFS and the Upgrade to Windows 7 RC

How can you mess up a simple OS upgrade by using encryption? Simple. Here is what happened to me when I upgraded my Windows 7 beta system to the RC version.

How to Find and List Unsigned Executable Files

Executable files can (and should be!) digitally signed. Without a digital signature you can never be sure the files on your hard disk have not been tampered with. There is really no exception to this rule, except maybe smaller open source projects that lack the budget to buy the digital certificate required for signing. Digitally […]

Is VMware Clustering / VMotion Complex Compared to Microsoft Failover Clustering?

My last post on VMware VMotion urged several readers to protest, maybe because of its provocative title. What I did was to compare VMware clustering with Microsoft failover clustering. I got to the conclusion that both significantly add to the complexity of the environment. Interestingly, most commenters said, yes, Microsoft clustering is complex, but no, […]

You’ll Know Me by My Shirt at Citrix iForum / Synergy / Summit 2009

I will be attending the combined Citrix events iForum, Synergy and Summit 2009 in Las Vegas, which start in just a few days. As always, I hope to meet great people and have interesting conversations there. In case you want to talk to me, you need to locate me first. That should not be too […]

VMotion Is Hyped by Consultants, But Do Admins Even Use It?

Some time ago I attended a presentation by a former VMware, now Microsoft employee who claimed that Hyper-V’s lack of Live Migration aka VMotion is not relevant at all. According to him, the only people vigorously demanding such a feature are consultants, never customers. At the time I thought: “What a silly marketing number this […]

Hard Links, Soft (Symbolic) Links and Junctions in NTFS: What Are They (For)?

This is an attempt at demystification. In the Windows world, links in the file system are often regarded as obscure, except for the infamous .LNK files, of course. But file system links are neither freaky UNIX/Linux command line stuff, nor are they new: Microsoft’s OS offers two types of links since Windows 2000 and a […]

User Profile and Home Directory Storage: Distributing the Load Across Multiple File Servers

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. The easiest way to assign user profile and home directories is via group policy. But that can only be done per computer. There is no (simple) way to point different users’ directories […]

Printer Driver Isolation in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

If you are not tired of print spooler crashes then this article is not for you. If you are, you may find a new feature of the upcoming next version of Windows interesting: printer driver isolation.

Microsoft Tackles the "Last Writer Wins" Problem of Roaming Profiles in Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2

Among the more annoying deficiencies of roaming user profiles in terminal server farms is what came to be known as “last writer wins”. It looks like Microsoft is trying to address the issue in the upcoming next version of its operating systems. Although this is a step in the right direction, I have doubts about […]

New Articles on User Profiles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (March 2009)

This is a collection of new MS KB articles related to Windows user profiles.

Eating Microsoft's Dog Food – A Self-Experiment With Windows 7, Part 3: Usage

In the previous article of this mini-series I described how to install Windows 7 x64 beta 1 into a virtual hard disk (VHD) file. In this post I will share some thoughts on what using Windows 7 x64 actually feels like.

Eating Microsoft's Dog Food – A Self-Experiment With Windows 7, Part 2: Installation

In the first article of this mini-series I described how I prepared my work laptop for the installation of Windows 7 x64 beta 1 into a virtual hard disk (VHD) file. This post covers the installation itself. At this point you may (rightly) ask: “Why yet another description of this process?” The answer is that […]

Eating Microsoft's Dog Food – A Self-Experiment With Windows 7, Part 1: Preparation

After reading a lot about the speed and stability of Windows 7 (beta 1), I decided it was time for me not only to use it for real work, but also to move from 32-bit Windows to a 64-bit installation. This mini-series serves as a documentation of the steps I took and the lessons I […]

New sepago blog on SCCM (German!)

My colleague Thorsten Christoffers has started blogging, mainly on topics related to Microsoft System Center. If you can read German, check out his first article on the Key Management Service (KMS) for Windows. Thorsten, welcome to the small but growing community of bloggers at sepago!

Itanium (IA-64), an Obituary

Back in the old days, when 64-bit computing was still a novel concept and RISC vs. CISC wars were still fought, HP and Intel joined forces to develop the next-generation CPU. It would be 64-bit only and it would have a new type of architecture called EPIC. That was in 1994. As the new partners […]

Why Apple’s Shares Are Still Going Strong

All the hype around Apple must have something to do with the quality of their products, it cannot be clever marketing and cool design alone. Example: Power Consumption This weekend I saw some interesting figures in the computer magazine. The new Mac Mini consumes only 11.7 Watts when idle. That is extraordinary! I did not […]

Permissions: A Primer, or: DACL, SACL, Owner, SID and ACE Explained

Updated: 2021-06-22 Every object that can have a security descriptor (SD) is a securable object that may be protected by permissions. All named and several unnamed Windows objects are securable and can have SDs, although this is not widely known. There does not even exist a GUI for manipulating the SDs of many object types! […]

Registry Reflection in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 x64? Gone for Good!

Although the architecture of Windows x64 is still relatively young, Microsoft already changes it in Windows 7 by removing registry reflection. Just in case you wonder what I might be talking about: read up on 64-bit Windows in my detailed 7-part series whose last article explains registry reflection.

Do You Still Hide Your Share$?

Fighting Another Legacy of the NT Era Hiding network shares by appending a dollar sign is a common practice among administrators. While by itself that is neither good nor bad, it is a perfect example of how customs establish themselves in the IT industry in exactly the same way they do in other subcultures. Putting […]

Citrix User Profile Manager: How Registry Exclusion Lists Can Mess Up Group Policy Processing

The documentation of Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM, for short) recommends excluding the following registry keys from processing: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies The net effect of this is that the Citrix profiles managed by UPM do not contain any policy settings. The reasoning behind this being: Policies are reapplied anyway during the next logon, so there is […]

How to Build a State of the Art Backup System for Your Personal Data

Like most people, I have been accumulating personal data over the decades. While some of it is not too important, other pieces are priceless, especially my pictures and videos. Losing those files would be a nightmare. That kept me searching for the ideal backup mechanism for several years. Although I would not dare say I […]

Mozy – Computer Upgrade / Data Migration – Lessons Learned

My familiy and me generate data all the time, mostly pictures and videos. I store it all on a PC in my small home network. That PC acts as a file server and, as all servers, needs to be backed up. The mere thought of losing all that information gives me the creeps. After initially […]

Mandatory Profiles – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. A mandatory profile is a special type of roaming profile. As with a roaming profile, a mandatory profile is copied from its network location to the local machine during logon. But during […]

Citrix User Profile Manager: User Store Design Recommendations

Citrix User Profile Manager, co-developed by sepago and Citrix, has been released. This is the first in a loose series of articles about UPM I intend to write. I will start by giving recommendations on how to set up the central profile storage called “user store”. Notes on the release: UPM is available on “My […]

User Profile Design: A Primer

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. This article tries list the dos and don’ts that need to be considered when creating a user profile design. It focuses on functionality built into Windows. Third-party solutions that replace or complement […]

MEncode.cmd Now Supports Wildcards

My simple yet effective batch file-based solution for converting digital videos in Quicktime MOV format from Panasonic Lumix and other cameras to MPEG-2, MEncode.cmd, now supports wildcards, too. Now you can run the following command to create MPEG-2 versions of all MOV files copied over from your camera: MEncode.cmd "C:\Some Folder\*.mov" MEncode will then take […]

How to Prevent Users from Changing Permissions on File Servers

On file servers in corporate environments one typically does not want users to change permissions, even on their own files. It might seem that it would be sufficient to simply grant change permissions instead of full control, but unfortunately that is not the case. The problem is that whenever a new file gets created, the […]

Internet Explorer in Protected Mode – How the Low Integrity Environment Gets Created

Ever wondered what lies beneath the covers of Protected Mode Internet Explorer? Short answer, long explanation: mandatory integrity control (MIC).

Enter ProfileNurse – Your Skilled Profile Care Professional

User profiles can be bitchy. A single misbehaving profile is bad enough, but what if you have hundreds or thousands of them? Most admins have a boatload of profiles strewn across file servers, and no way of knowing anything about them because they are lacking the management tools. That’s where ProfileNurse comes in, a free […]

Deleting User Profiles – Correctly

Commenter Steven asked in response to my article on how not to delete local user profiles for the correct way to script the deletion of user profiles. Here is how.

How to Reduce the Size of Roaming Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Roaming user profiles tend to grow over time, which is sometimes referred to as profile bloat. In and by itself, profile growth is not a problem. Users of desktop PCs who log […]

How to Convert Quicktime MOV Video Files to MPEG-2

[Update 1: Fixed bugs in the batch file and made it available for download] [Update 2: Wildcards are now supported] [Update 3: Timestamps are now copied from source to destination files. For this, touch.exe is needed.] [Update 4: File names with spaces in them are now handled correctly] I recently bought a new compact digital […]

Troubleshooting User Profile Problems on Vista and Server 2008 – But How?

User profile problems are among the most common support issues. It is only appropriate that Microsoft simplified the troubleshooting process over time – but forgot to port it over to Vista.

Deleting a Local User Profile – Not as easy as one Might Assume

In many environments it is a common practice to delete user profiles prior to conducting tests in order to start with a clean slate. However, this may prove more difficult than anticipated. Most people think that a local user profile only consists of the directory %USERPROFILE% typically located below C:\Users on Vista and Server 2008 […]

VMware vs. Microsoft: Why Memory Overcommitment is Useful in Production and Why Microsoft Denies it

In the ongoing virtualization war much has been written (pro and con) about the value of memory overcommitment, a feature VMware ESX has and Microsoft Hyper-V is lacking (XenServer, too, for that matter). But only few people take a look at what the term overcommitment actually means. In this article I will explain how overcommitment […]

Why Disabling the Creation of 8.3 DOS File Names Will Not Improve Performance. Or Will It?

It is a common practice amongst administrators to disable the creation of short filenames on NTFS. I freely admit to have recommended this in the past. Was I wrong? Background NTFS is relatively relaxed about file names. They can be quite long (255 characters) and may contain “strange” characters (nearly all UNICODE characters are allowed).

Choosing a Future-Proof Internal DNS Domain Name: Mission Impossible?

Choosing a domain name that will only be visible from an internal network may look simple. Unfortunately, it is not. The basic problem: How to avoid collisions between the internal namespace and the internet? I ran into this question when I recently installed a domain controller for a new test domain. Up till then I […]

My New Book is Out: Windows Server 2008 Command Line Reference

The command line is a powerful tool. Many a tedious task can be offloaded to a cleverly written script. Scripts and batch files, however, are like tool boxes without too many tools (which relates more to batch files than scripts). To become truly powerful, the boxes must be filled. That is what my reference book […]

How to Run Console Programs Without a Console Window

From time to time the question gets asked how a batch file or console program can be executed silently or hidden, i.e. without a console window popping up. If you do not know what I am talking about: press Win+R, type “help” and press ENTER. A black console window will open, execute the HELP command […]

ParseCitrixLicense Now Supports XenDesktop Licenses, Too

A few weeks ago I published the tool ParseCitrixLicense which displays the contents of Citrix license files in a human-readable form. The original version 1.0 did not support XenDesktop licenses, for the simple reason that I had none to test my program with. Recently my colleague Nicholas Dille provided me with a XenDesktop eval license […]

How to Configure Font Smoothing on Presentation Server and XenApp

With the release of the hotfixes KB946633 and PSE450R02W2K3037 ClearType font smoothing is finally available on both the current and the upcoming Citrix flagship products Presentation Server 4.5 and XenApp 5.0. Remains the question of how to configure it.

Finally! Font Smoothing Over RDP/ICA on Server 2003

It took five years and probably lots of customer complaints, but finally one of the most important technologies introduced with XP/Server 2003 is available over the remoting protocols RDP and ICA: font smoothing aka ClearType. If you have read other articles on this blog you know that I deem font smoothing indispensable on today’s LCD […]

Corrupt User Profiles – Do They Even Exist?

I will make a bold statement here: corrupt user profiles are a myth. That may seem very bold indeed, with 331,000 hits on Google for “corrupt user profile” and countless admins complaining about having to deal with corrupt profiles on a daily basis.

Free Tool to Help You Better Understand What is Inside a Citrix License File

Update: Version 1.1 supports XenDesktop Licenses in Addition to XenApp Licenses Most Citrix products rely heavily on license files. While the basic format of a license file is somewhat documented, most fields used in license files are not. This makes understanding their contents difficult. It does not help that the license files can hardly be […]

Undocumented Changes to the Cluster.exe Command Line Tool in Server 2008

While working on the next edition of my book I found several documentation errors on Microsoft’s Technet pages describing the command line tools of Windows Server 2008. One of the graver errors relates to clustering. Windows Server 2008 brings many improvements with regards to clustering. However, the new syntax of the command line-based cluster management […]

x64? My Terminal Servers Run Just Fine With 32 Bits and 8/12/16 GB RAM!

A recent discussion with a colleague brought this topic to my attention which I have not discussed in detail in my series on Windows x64: Memory scalability of 32-bit Terminal Servers Many people seem to think that on 32-bit Windows only specially adapted applications can access memory above 4 GB. Since such applications are rare […]

The Most Interesting New Feature of Server 2008 Terminal Services / XenApp 5.0? Why, Font Smoothing!

Much has been written about the many new features of Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Now, with the upcoming release of Citrix XenApp 5.0 (Project Delaware), Citrix updates its best-selling product and ports it to the new platform. Brian Madden analyzes whether it is still worth buying Citrix XenApp / Presentation Server on top of […]

Free Tool – List Registry Links (REG_LINK)

Recently I got into a very interesting discussion with my colleague Nicholas Dille on various aspects of Windows x64. One question he brought up was especially intriguing: knowing about registry redirection, it is not astonishing to find that the 32-bit version of the registry key HKLM\Software\Classes (aka HKCR) gets to be HKLM\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node. But there is […]

Windows x64 Part 7: File System & Registry Redirection, Registry Reflection

This is the seventh part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I explained that mixed 32-/64-bit processes are not allowed and how that rule affects both administrators and script-writers. In this context I mentioned the strangely named directory SysWOW64. Today I […]

Windows x64 Part 6: COM, DLLs and Processes

This is the sixth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I discussed how 32-bit applications are wrapped up in the WoW64 subsystem. Today we will take a deeper look at some limitations of 64-bit Windows and what they mean in […]

Windows x64 Part 5: NTVDM, Services, WoW64

This is the fifth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I explained that the 64-bit OS can only load 64-bit drivers. Today we will turn our attention to user-mode code and analyze how the move to x64 affects downlevel applications.

Windows x64 Part 4: Code Trees, Drivers

This is the fourth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I wrote about the changes to the x86 processor architecture that make x64 possible. But there is of course more to a new platform than just updated hardware.

Windows x64 Part 3: CPUs, AMD64, Intel 64, EM64T, Itanium

This is the third part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the first two articles (here and here) I explained key concepts and limitations of the x86 platform: every 32-bit process can use 2 GB of address space, which is by far enough for […]

Windows x64 Part 2: Kernel Memory, /3GB, PTEs, (Non-) Paged Pool

This is the second part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the first article I explained key concepts of the x86 platform, namely that user-mode processes each get 4 GB of virtual address space, but can use only half of it, because 2 GB […]

Windows x64 Part 1: Virtual Memory

I will start the new year with a small series on Windows x64 in which I will explain why 64-bit computing is not only necessary but inevitable. I will then go on to explain in detail where Windows x64 differs from the 32-bit versions and what that means for all those who are responsible for […]

Why Vista's System Restore is Dangerous and What to do About it

Recently a colleague of mine had a problem: by mistake he had deleted part of the software registry hive (HKLM\Software) of his Vista machine while trying out some code. When he asked me for help my first thought was to go back to the last System Restore point. But that seemed a bit harsh. It […]

Another IT Legend

Some time ago I wrote about a misconception so common that it might pass as an IT legend – the confusion of HKU\.Default with the default user’s registry hive. Recently I came across another interesting misapprehension. As you know, the profiles base directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings) contains not only one special sub-folder, Default User, […]

Group Policy Preferences: Why Windows Server 2008 Will Change the Way You Work

I confess: I like group policies. They are and have always been a great way of managing computer and user settings ever since their conception and introduction with Windows 2000. Of course, at the beginning management tools were nonexistent. But we were so happy not to have to rely on NT4’s system policies any more […]

Free Tool: Refresh the Desktop Programmatically

I recently had the requirement to refresh the Windows desktop after certain changes had been made to Explorer’s registry entries. This seems simple at first: klick on any item on the desktop and then press F5. It wasn’t, though. The registry changes would be made upon logon by a software installation agent. It was expected […]

New Blog in Town

My colleague Nicholas Dille has started his own blog. Nicholas is a very clever guy whose opinion I value very much. I have often worked and laughed with him in the past couple of years. It has always been both fun and technically challenging. Expect interesting, little-known and well-researched technical content from him.

Why is (Almost) Everybody Wrong About HKU\.Default?

Most technical folks have stumbled across the registry hive HKEY_USERS\.Default at some point. Many of them think they know what it is used for. Interestingly, most who do are wrong. The misconception about what HKU\.Default is used for dates back to the good old days when Windows NT 4.0 was still considered “new technology”. This […]

Soup Up Your Terminal Server: Optimizing Explorer’s Network Performance

Update: The ADM file can now be downloaded here. I recently came across a post in the Windows Server Performance Team’s blog that lists several registry values which can be used to tune Explorer’s SMB performance by modifying the following: Searches for Desktop.ini files used for folder customization Periodic refreshes of folder contents Searches for […]

Dirquota – Automagically Manage File System Quotas

Did you know that Windows Server contains a file system quota component? “Of course”, you will say. It was introduced with Windows 2000 and is completely useless since it only allows for volume-level quotas. That is true, but at the same time, it is nowadays quite irrelevant. With the R2 update to Windows Server 2003 […]

Undocumented Program Neighborhood Command Line Switches

Nearly every professional working with Citrix Presentation Server knows about Program Neighborhood (PN), and some may even use it frequently. It was first introduced in MetaFrame 1.8 and is used to start published applications from one or more server farms. In PN you can either configure individual applications or define application groups. The latter are […]

Taming Black Holes: Parallel Session Creation

Have you ever tried to log on to a terminal server and, after entering your credentials, been forced to stare at a grey screen for a lengthy period of time wondering what the machine might actually be doing? Of course you have, along with a few million other terminal server users. Being a technical guy […]

ClearType Bandwidth Revisited – Testing 32 Bit Color Depth

In an earlier post I wrote about how bandwidth requirements of the RDP protocol are affected by enabling font smoothing (ClearType over RDP version 6) on Windows Server 2008. Jan, a reader of that article, posted an interesting comment: he had heard that RDP version 6 was optimized for a color depth of 32 bits […]

Programmatically Determining Terminal Server Mode on Windows Server 2008

A question on the terminal services newsgroup brought this topic to my attention: how can be determined programmatically if a Windows Server 2008 system is a terminal server and whether it runs in application server or remote administration mode?

Bandwidth Requirements for ClearType over RDP

In an earlier post I wrote about a great technology that finally makes it into terminal services with Windows Server 2008: ClearType or Font Smoothing, as it is sometimes called. I will stick to the term ClearType for the time being. ClearType greatly enhances the display of fonts on the nowadays prevalent LCD screens. By […]

Windows Server 2008 (R2) Component Posters

[Updated 2009-12-11 for Server 2008 R2] Microsoft has published two visually very appealing posters which depict in great detail important components of its upcoming OS Server 2008. The poster on Active Directory Components details Lightweight Directory Services (formerly ADAM), Federation Services (ADFS), Rights Management Services, Group Policy, Management and Read-Only Domain Controller.

Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #2

This post covers a technology developed by Microsoft Research in the late 90s that finally made it into terminal services: ClearType. ClearType As is sometimes the case with technology, it is difficult to explain how it works, yet easy to see the benefits. Let us start with the easy part.

Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #1

I will start this blog with a small series of posts that describe changes to the architecture of Windows Server 2008 that are relevant to Terminal Services.