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… Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
Helge’s Profile Toolkit Helge’s Profile Toolkit is a collection of tips, tricks and tools for working with user profiles. Read more
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 […] Read more
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. Read more
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 […] Read more
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: Read more
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 […] Read more
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. Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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. Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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, […] Read more
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, […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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” […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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. Read more
