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
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
