Irish_Pirate: 2009

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Save mapped drive password in WinXP

How to save a mapped drive password in XP
The manage network passwords utility in XP doesnt have an add password function so you have to go to the command prompt and use the following :

NET USE U: \\NETHOME\USERID /PERSISTENT:YES /SAVECRED

Friday, June 26, 2009

Windows Server 2008 as a primary desktop environment

Okay, so the Linux experiment is over... Next time I will stick to a VM when making such a drastic change!

I am beginning to study for my MCITP Server 2K8 and so I thought it would be a great idea to install it as my primary OS on my laptop.
I researched a couple of websites before taking the plunge:
http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2008/02/11/using-windows-server-2008-as-a-super-desktop-os.aspx
http://msmvps.com/blogs/paulomorgado/archive/2008/05/14/using-windows-server-2008-as-a-desktop-operating-system.aspx

The install was a piece of cake and adding the features was simple enough. The main gotchas are drivers. drivers drivers drivers..
My laptop is fairly new, a Dell Latitude E6400 w/ P8400 2.26GHz Core 2Duo and 4GB of RAM so I knew I had enough horsepower but finding the correct chipset and graphics drivers turned into a bit of a struggle.
Dell didn't help so you have to go to the manufacturer.
This site helped A TON! http://www.ma-config.com/accueil_en.html
It allows you to see the actual Manufacturer part number, then you can search on their site for pre-release and beta drivers.
I finally found that I needed a graphics driver and a graphics accelerator driver for everything to be happy.
Ok so initial take,
Pros: quick boot, I was able to pick the 'features' i wanted and none I didn't, really fast install, and instant access to all enterprise level administration tools.
Cons: mainly just the driver support.

I was able to install all my applications Office2k7, dameware, firefox, chrome, wireshark, etc with no problems.

So far this laptop is solid.. Next task will be setting up VMWare and testing performance..

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Switching Laptop to Linux as primary OS

I started the process to move my base OS to linux last weekend. After screwing around with Fedora 10 & 11 for most of the time I am now happily running Ubuntu Hardy with VMWare Server 2.0 running a copy of Windows Server 2008 which I'm using for testing and Administration.
Pros: the goodness of a linux based OS, access to 100's if not 1000's of open source packages, The coolest Graphical Environment (compiz fusion).
Cons: it took 6 hours to get dual monitors working and it's still not perfect. Can't connect to Exchange 2007 with Evolution except through IMAP which doesn't allow me to use calendar functionality.

Overall, I'd say I was a very entrenched Windows user who is having the normal growing pains from being in a new environment.

I look forward to working a bit more on the graphics support and learning my shell commands as well as I did before.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Active Directory Search for accounts expire time

dsquery user | dsget user -samid -acctexpires

Cisco MWI (message waiting indicator)

MWI light in cisco admin go to feature-> MWI-> look for the number s and see if they work

typically 540, 541

Windows stop services remotely through script

Network administrators can run this commend just fine on their local machines: SC \\Servername Stop Spooler

Exchange 2007 OAB Replication Check

check your OAB replication by:

get-offlineaddressbook |fl

Write down the Guid of the address book that needs to replicate then navigate to

c:\program files\microsoft\exchange server\client access\OAB

Check to make sure the only folder is the one with your guid you wrote down earlier.

Exchange 2007 Set Autodiscover URL

set-clientaccessserver -identity servername -autodiscoverserviceinternaluri "http://server.domain.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml"

WinSock Reset

Worked on researching the RRAS problem.
solution is to make sure that the Network Connections, Windows
Management Instrumentation, and Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services are
running, and if they are, reset Winsock by running the following command
from a command prompt: "netsh winsock reset" (without quotation mark).

Exchange 2007 Add Permission scripts (powershell)

Get-Mailbox -identity "SERVERNAME\First Storage Group\Mailbox Database" | Add-ADPermission -user administrator -AccessRights GenericAll

Thursday, June 18, 2009

DHCP enable conflict detection

To enable conflict detection on your DHCP server, perform these steps:
1. Start the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) DHCP snap-in (Start, Programs, Administrative Tools, DHCP).
2. Right-click the DHCP server and select Properties.
3. Select the Advanced tab.
4. By default, "Conflict detection attempts" is set to 0. Increase the value to 1 or 2, as the figure shows. Setting it higher than 2 isn't recommended because each attempt takes as long as 1 second.
5. Click OK.

Exchange 2007 Transport Hub Issues

Disable all antivirus
Restart All exchange services
Get-transport agent
Get-transportagent | disabletransportagent/enabletransportagent
Restarted transport service/Mail Submission service

Cisco VLAN Info

Sh spanning-tree sum
Sh spanning –tree vlan ?
Native vlan is the vlan number that packets get tagged with when no other place is found for them to go. Default is 1.

Cisco Switch Password Reset

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps628/products_password_recovery09186a0080094184.shtml

Cisco trunking config.

s3(config)#int gi0/23
s3(config-if)#switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
s3(config-if)#switchport trunk allowed vlan all
s3(config-if)#switchport mode trunk
s3(config-if)#switchport trunk native vlan

Partial AdminPak Install

partial install of the adminpack.msi
msiexec /i adminpak.msi ADDLOCAL=FeADMgmtConsole /qb

for taskpad installs

Test SMTP functionality

# Start a command prompt.
# Type telnet ServerName 25
Type EHLO, and then press ENTER
MAIL FROM:UserName@DomainName.tld
RCPT TO:RecipientName@DomainName.tld
type data
then type test or something and end with a '.' period.