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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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. Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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" […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read 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, […] Read more
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, […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
