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 […] Read more
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 […] Read 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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
Speaking Engagements 2012 As in previous years I will be speaking at several conferences this year. Read more
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. Read more
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 […] Read more
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. […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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% […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 ;-) Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
