Thursday, December 18, 2008

FIX: Trouble with Macintosh MS Entourage email client calendar does sync correctly or does not match up correct to Microsoft Exchange server calendar

PROBLEM:

Trouble with Macintosh MS Entourage email client calendar does sync correctly or does not match up correct to Microsoft Exchange server calendar display from Outlook.

SOLUTION:

Launch Entourage and select your calendar on the left hand bar and control+click it. A sub menu should appear, select the option to "Empty Cache". For some reason Entourage seems to do this every now and then. This will purge your local copy of the calendar and resynchronize a fresh copy down from the server.

NOTE: This will dump/delete the LOCAL copy of the calendar, if you have made recent updates to this LOCAL Entourage calendar some change MAY be lost.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Convert any swf flash movie into a screensaver for free with Creamshavers

Creamshavers is a totally free web service to create windows screensavers from Shockwave Flash files. Just upload your swf flash file and Creamshavers will produce a windows installer .exe with a totally nag-free fullscreen windows screensaver.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

How to change the Volume Licensing product key on a computer that is running Windows XP

How to change the Volume Licensing product key on a computer that is running Windows XP

This link will be helpful if you may be trying to image some machines but don't want to give out your license key or if someone has "leaked" you VLK to the world.

The page walks you through how to modify the registry to allow you to put in a valid license key to reactivate your version of XP legally.

Monday, August 11, 2008

DynDNS.org Dynamic DNS

Just setup a DynDNS.org Dynamic DNS domain, was pretty straight forward except my D-LINK DI-524 router couldn't support it. DynDNS suggests NOT to use hardware to keep the DDNS link updated, as they say software update is much more reliable. I didn't like the idea of needing a computer on to have the DDNS updated and also would not update by itself after a power outage since no PC would be on.

I did have a hard time finding the settings for it so I'll post here for my own reference that DynDNS' server address should be www.dyndns.com

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Automatically configure printers using Print Management in Windows Server 2003

Automatically configure printers using Print Management in Windows Server 2003

This video from TechRepublic looks like something useful I'll try to implement in the near future.

Adding new printers to your network isn’t rocket science, but it can take time out of your already busy schedule. Luckily, there is a feature in Windows Server 2003 R2 that automatically detects and sets up printers on the same subnet. In this IT Dojo video, I show you how the Print Management Console can shave a little time off a common network administration task.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

TrueCrypt 6.0 Improves Data Security Performance

TrueCrypt 6.0 Improves Data Security Performance

The latest version of the free drive-encryption tool can shield sensitive data from prying eyes at home and abroad, now faster than ever.

This looks like a interesting free solution, I'd like to try this out on mobile thumb drives first and then see how easily this could be setup for XP laptop users.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Reset Windows passwords with the Offline NT Password and Registry Editor

Employees leave, IT workers quit, IT consultants fail to properly document deployments. Regardless of the cause, you’re left with a locked account and perhaps a locked system.

The Offline NT Password and Registry Editor is a Linux-based utility that can reset passwords on Windows-NT based systems that use NTFS, including Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. The tool creates a boot environment through which you can reset passwords via a series of text menus. The Offline NT Password and Registry Editor isn’t the most polished utility, but it is effective.

You can watch a video from techRepublic on this tool here.

The related download for a bootable iso is located here

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Take control of any Windows PC on the Internet with CrossLoop

Take control of any Windows PC on the Internet with CrossLoop, this seems like a great support tool and another alternative to Logmein.com's solution. See the video in this link from TechRepublic.

AMT subsystem Failure in Adobe CS3

I'm getting AMT subsystem Failure in Adobe CS3, turns out the issue was FlexNet was disabled. The solution could be very simple: Go to Services (Administrative Tools -> Services) and check service "FLEXnet Licensing Service" — it should not be disabled! Put it to manual mode at least. This fixed the issue on my XP box.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

So I had a machine suffer from hardware failure during the MS XP SP3 installation process.

So I had a machine suffer from hardware failure during the MS XP SP3 installation process. So the machine basically did a hard shutdown while installing. This happened twice and surprisingly the system still restarted into SP2. Now I'm not a complete idiot and just kept restarting the machine, I was actually using the same drive in different hardware. But apparently both boxes had similar hardware issues. Is was not until one reboot that was actually trying to back out of the SP3 install and in the process, suffered another hardware failure and shutdown. Upon reboot, I got the message:

"\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:
Please re-install a copy of the above file."

I used the fix below to remedy the issue and it worked like a charm!


Use the Bootcfg utility in the Recovery Console to correct the Boot.ini file:
1.Use the Windows XP CD-ROM to start your computer.
2.When you receive the message to press R to repair Windows by using the Recovery Console, press the R key.
3.Select the Windows installation that you want, and then type the administrator password when prompted.
4.Type bootcfg /rebuild, and then press ENTER.
5.When the Windows installation is located, the following instructions are displayed:
Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All)
[Type Y in response to this message.]

Enter Load Identifier:
[This is the name of the operating system. Type Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home Edition.]

Enter OS Load options:
[Leave this field blank, and then press ENTER].
After you perform the preceding steps, restart the computer, and then select the first item on the boot menu. This should allow Windows XP to start normally.

After Windows XP has successfully loaded, the Boot.ini can be modified to remove the incorrect entry.
For more information about how to edit the Boot.ini file, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

This fix was one of 4 possible methods to repair the issue, the others are described at the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

How to change Outlook to be able to select multiple signatures from within a composed message

To change Outlook to be able to handle multiple signatures, you need to do the following.

Go to Tools-->Options and go to the Mail Format tab and UNCHECK the "Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages"


To have the option to switch between email formats in Outlook, you will NOT be able to use MS Word as the email editor anymore.


After you change the default email editor, your email messages will have the option to select signatures within the message by going to Insert-->Signature-->Your desired Signature. From here you can select the signatures you've already setup.

Video: Disable USB storage under OS X or Windows

Video: Disable USB storage under OS X or Windows

Great how to video on how to secure Windows XP and Mac OSX hardware to remove USB access. Disable USB device just like how the NSA does it.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=112&tag=nl.e138

Another PDF document that provides similar how to instructions http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/downloads/home/dl_disable_usb.pdf

Monday, May 12, 2008

Word 2003 prompts File Conversion when trying to open a document sent from a Mac.

I received a document sent from a Mac that prompted a XP's Word 2003 SP3 install to prompt the for File Conversion, to select the encoding that makes your document readable. The document isn't damaged, but removing the Outlook Security update below, appears to correct the issue. The update itself isn't the cause entirely, as I have another XP machine with the same update installed and it opens the document fine, but I'm using Outlook 2007 on that machine.

It is only an issue with so far with PC's receiving Word docs from Mac users. The issue occurs after the Outlook update KB945432. Hopefully MS is address it soon.

Here's are the steps if anyone should need them

Apply the following HotFix Description of the Outlook 2003 hotfix package: April 15, 2008, which is referenced in the following links as well: In Office Outlook 2003, you cannot open Macintosh binary attachments after you install security update MS08-15 and MS08-015: Description of the security update for Outlook 2003: March 11, 2008

The hotfix above resolved the issue for me on a fully update WinXP box running a fully update install of Office 2003 Pro. The below solution of removing the initial security fix also fixed the problem, I suppose you can still take this route if the hotfix doesn't work. I would try the hotfix first.

1. Go into add/remove program in the control panel.
2. Make sure the 'show updates' is selected on the top of the window.
3. Scroll down to the Microsoft office installation area.
4. Remove the entry listed as 'Outlook 2003 Security update KB945432'

Friday, May 2, 2008

Change the product key on Windows XP

Change the product key on Windows XP

Read a pretty useful article from TechRepublic on changing the license key on XP installs. Hopefully I won't need to do this, but its a nice write to have handy if ever needed.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

(Answer) Sysprep - Msoobe.exe - Application Error The exception unknown software exception

Found the answer at Microsoft's Site, not really a fix and I lost my only good image. but it at least explains the reason.

Operating Systems:
Windows XP Professional

Symptoms:
After running sysprep, upon reboot the operating system reports that there
is an application error with msoobe.exe and another message comes up after
that saying that the system is not fully installed, please run setup again.
The system then reboots after clicking on OK for these messages. Clicking
on Cancel does not change anything.

Other Identifying Issues:
Msoobe.exe - Application Error "The exception unknown software exception
(0xc06d007e) occured in the application at location 0x7c812a5b."
Windows Message - "The system is not fully installed. Please run setup
again"

Cause(s):
WMP 11 (Windows Media Player 11) has issues with sysprep.
Fix / Workaround:
- Windows Media Player 11 has an issue which causes the installation to
completely fail and crash if 'sysprep' is used after your installation.
Completely uninstall Windows Media Player 11 before using sysprep.

Additional Information:
The latest version of sysprep was tried when troubleshooting this error and
the incident still occured. The only thing that worked was to uninstall
Windows Media Player 11 before using sysprep.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

(Fixed) Microsoft Windows XP machine missing NTLDR file on startup.

Below are the full error messages that may be seen when the computer is booting.

NTLDR is Missing
Press any key to restart

Boot: Couldn't find NTLDR
Please insert another disk

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart
Cause:

1. Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.
2. Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.
3. Corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file.
4. Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.
5. Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32.
6. New hard disk drive being added.
7. Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.
8. Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
9. Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable.



On a Microsoft Windows XP machine do the following to restore it back to working order.

1. Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
2. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
3. Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.
4. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.
5. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.
6. Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\

7. Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.

Additional info can be found on Computer Hope's site.

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD on USB stick

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD is great for deploying and troubleshooting Windows based boxes. To learn how to create your own BartPE disc, see Bart's PE Builder site.

Additional BartPE Plugins can found here.

WindowsITPro has a nice little article/review on this application.

I've used this a few time and think its great! Lately I've been trying to get it working from a USB flash drive as the performance would be much faster loading to the PE off of a UFD vs. a CDROM. Bart has a discussion on this but my problem seems to be getting the UFD to be formatted and partitioned correctly.

From the link above, Bart provides the following instructions. and you would download the PE2USB101 from here. I had to download the trial Windows 2003 Server installer from Mircrosoft's site.
Installation of PE2USB:
You should copy the files pe2usb.cmd and pe2usb.bin to your
directory.

For successful installing BartPE to a USB flash disk you need:

1) A USB flash disk with a capacity of 256MB or more
2) Server 2003 SP1 (or a release candidate). You can download this from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=02734CEA-7A4B-4D95-B220-8E1708C3ED46
This file is large, about 350MB!!!
Unpack the files from the service pack (this is not installing) with:
sr1sp.exe -x, lets assume you extract it to c:\server2003sp1
Create the folder \srsp1
Copy the file c:\server2003sp1\i386\setupldr.bin to the \srsp1 folder
Expand the file c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ to the \srsp1 folder
expand -r c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ \srsp1
You can now remove the c:\server2003sp1 folder, not needed anymore...
3) Build BartPE using pebuilder as normal, you must set the output folder to
"BartPE", you do not need to generate an ISO image for now.
4) Run "pe2usb -f " to format and install the files to your UFD.
Formatting is only needed the first time, so next time you can run
"pe2usb " (without -f) to update the BartPE files.

For successful booting BartPE from a USB flash disk you need:
1) A PC that is capable of booting from a USB flash disk with 256MB memory
or more.

I was finally able to get the UFD BART PE bootable through the following step:

  1. Created the BART PE disc/directory with a iso ready (test on a CDR that it works properly)
  2. Using the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, V2.1.8, format the USB drive to FAT partition. It must be a FAT partition to be able to boot, this will limit the drive size to 2GB due to it being FAT.
  3. I then downloaded FlashBoot and used its wizard to convert my BART PE iso into a bootable UFD. They have a free trial you can test out first before you buy it for $35, so you know it will work for you and your flash drive. The trial software allows the created UFD to only run once and then erases its own boot records so its not bootable anymore.

    I've read on other forums of reports that the flashboot created device can be restored to be bootable again by booting to a Windows XP SP2 disc and going into the Recovery Console while the UFD is plugged in. And running the FIXBOOT {UFD drive letter}: command to repair the boot record of the UFD. I haven't tried this yet, but others reported success with it.

    More information about FIXBOOT and FIXMBR can be found here.


Just received an Tech Republic article on this very topic, I haven't read it but I think its a lot of the same stuff I filtered through up above.

Recover lost data with Disk Commander

Recover lost data with Disk Commander

Disk Commander from Winternals Software is one of the most comprehensive data recovery products available today. Read more about from TechRepublic.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Great resource site with information about installation, deployment and systems management automation.

AppDeploy is a great resource site with information about installation, deployment and systems management automation.


AppDeploy is the industry's trusted resource for products and information on installation, deployment and systems management automation. By putting all of the information surrounding this subject in one place, AppDeploySM eliminates the frustrating search for answers through vendor sites, discussion boards, Google, and technical publications. AppDeploySM offers computer administrators a free and easy way to search for answers and best practices to a range of complex issues. As a result, the AppDeploySM community has grown, and continues to grow. AppDeploySM features articles, reviews, product summaries, message boards, downloads and more.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Skype users can use an application called Call Graph to record their phone calls to mp3 now

If you are a Skype user, there is now an application called Call Graph that can record your phone calls to mp3 for you. It records SkypeIn and SkypeOut calls.

Features

  • Call Recording: record your calls in an mp3 file, automatically.
  • Full Skype Support: record Skype to Skype, SkypeIn, SkypeOut calls.
  • Completely Free: no limits or restrictions of any kind.
  • Manage Records: use tags to mark your records.
  • Integrated Search: use tags to search through your calls records.
  • Simple and Un-intrusive: minimal interface, easy to use, un-annoying.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Use Microsoft's Group Policy Management Console

Use Microsoft's Group Policy Management Console (GPMC), which was introduced in Windows Server 2003, to manipulate Group Policy Objects, GPOs, using standard management functions.

The GPMC utility is not part of the Windows Server 2003 Administrative Tools package (adminpak.msi) but the free download (gpmc.msi) is available from Microsoft's download website.

Friday, March 21, 2008

My 2 favorite FireFox hacks

These are my 2 favorite FireFox hacks. I'm not interested in any speed tweaks, these are just personal functionality and display hacks I like. I often find myself wasting time online trying to find this info again.


=========================

Type about:config in the address bar and click on the browser.tabs.closeButtons key. The value should say 1 by default. To turn off the individual Close Tab buttons, enter the value 3. A 2 disables the Close Tab button altogether.

1 -> show close button for each tab
2 -> do not show close button
3 -> show close button at right-hand most corner for closing tabs altogether

I like mine set to 3 so all tabs are closed by 1 universal close button on the right.

If you want to see all your tabs, change the tab width or turn off the scrolling feature completely. Type about:config in the address bar and choose the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth key. The default value is 100, meaning that the minimum width of a tab is 100 pixels. You can modify this number—double-click on the value—to fit more tabs in the screen before the scrolling kicks in, or just enter 0 to disable the feature entirely.

I like mine set to 0

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Royale Noir: secret XP theme uncovered (download)

Royale Noir: secret XP theme uncovered (download), cool Windows Media Center theme for your XP workstation.

During Royale’s development (the XP Media Center theme), the graphic artists also produced a black version of the skin, sans the overused “glass” effect. The result is an aesthetic black skin named “Royale Noir”, it even works with Office 2003.

Since the skin was never released (or reached final adjustments) there are a few issues with it: some of the colors don’t meet the overall “feel” (they’re too purple-ish compared to the greys of the bitmaps) and the inactive titlebars are a little too dark.

You’ll find it’s been signed by Microsoft and doesn’t require a custom UxTheme.dll in case there are any doubts as to its authenticity.

If you already have Royale installed, you’ll need to remove it as both of these skins share the same name.

This skin has not been released to anyone outside Microsoft, until now.


Tuesday, March 11, 2008

OutlookTools 2.0 mailbox cleanup, fix for crashing Entourage delegate calendar access display.

OutlookTools 2.0 mailbox cleanup, fix for crashing Entourage delegate calendar access display. the issue I experienced was a delegate's access to another user's giant Exchange calendar. Access was configured for the delegate to access from Entourage 2004. The connection worked fine for months, but the calendar is so big that it takes about 15-20 minutes for the local cached copy of the calendar to be downloaded and populated on the Intel Mac's Entourage 2004 display.

The problem now was that after the calendar appeared to be completely downloaded, it would disappear and download itself again. As if the user had selected to "Empty Cache", but the user didn't do this. This would occur over and over again, making delegate access useless since you don't know where events are to schedule new ones in open spaces.

The fix I applied was to delete a sub-calendar in the primary user's calendar and also to run the OutlookTools 2.0 utility on the primary mail/calendar account on a Windows XP machine. (Note, this is NOT on the Mac/Entourage delegate system.) The problem appears to be caused from the account itself and has nothing to do with the Mac, or Entourage.

The small tool can be downloaded from http://www.howto-outlook.com/products/outlooktools.htm , below I show the switches I used. Before using this tool I manually ran the switches below and this did NOT correct the issue.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe " /switch


/cleanfreebusy

/cleanreminders

/cleanschedplus




Tuesday, March 4, 2008

DVD Ripper for ripping clips of videos

If you need to rip a clip for a presentation, this software works great. The trial version limits you to 10 minute clips.

http://www.aoamedia.com/download.htm


AoA DVD RIPPER provides a fast and easy way to convert your DVD movies or just the parts of the movie that you want. It copies in high quality AVI (DivX, XviD...), MPEG (MPEG-1, MPEG-2), WMV, 3GP, MP4, Flash Video (*.flv), VCD and SVCD formats. It also extracts audio tracks from DVD movies (to WAV).

With AoA DVD Ripper, you can take your DVD movies on the plane, train or automobile, watch them on your computer, laptop, iPod, PSP or the following pocket devices on vacation, at work or at school, no need to take DVD discs!

Apple iPod Video / iPod Touch / iPhone / Apple TV
Microsoft Zune
Sony PSP
XBOX 360
Windows Mobile Pocket PC

Creative Zen Vision (and Vision M)
Archos Media Player
HP iPAQ Pocket PC
Windows Smartphone

Video Cell / Mobile Phone
Windows CE handheld device

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Hyena tool to pull ACL from share

Been using a tool from http://www.systemtools.com called Hyena to pull (Access Control List) ACL information from a network share. Pretty cool tool.

I browse to my network folder where I want ACL info from, select the folder and right click and go to -> More Functions->NTFS Permissions.

The folders and subfolders with their ACL is displayed in the right window, I select them all and selects the copy function from the taskbar which actually exports the info to a txt file. I then open them with Excel to work with the exported info.



Friday, February 22, 2008

Entourage Preference files and database location

I tend to forget where these files are after some time. So for future reference, Entrourage 2004 stores its preferences at the following locations.

Hard Drive/Users/User Name/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Entourage.plist

Hard Drive/Users/User Name/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Entourage Preferences

You may want to delete these preferences and run disk utility to repair permission to try to fix certain Entourage issues. Also the Entourage Identity is typically stored in the following location:

Hard Drive/Users/User Name/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities/Main Identity/


Friday, February 15, 2008

Mac OS X and Windows XP 64 bit print jobs to HP 2600n printer fails or dissappears

Mac OS X or Windows XP 64 bit print jobs to HP 2600n printer fails, disappears, or pretends to print but nothing comes out.

The Color LJ 2600n is one of the few HP printers that is not postscript, which explains why the Generic Postscript driver and all the other HP drivers we tried failed.

Here is the Mac fix:

System preference pane "Print & Fax", you add a new printer and at the bottom of the window you will find a "More printers" button. (Mac OS 10.4.X)

A new drivers detected window will pop up, click "OK".

Choose HP IP Printing (Mac OS 10.3.X - 10.4.X)

Then add the IP number assigned to your printer.

===================================

For Windows XP 64 bit printing, use the Windows Vista driver as that has also been confirmed and tested to work.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

All folders, contact, files, and emails in Entourage 2004 "Folders on My Computer" are missing!

All folders, contact, files, and emails in Entourage 2004 "Folders on My Computer" are missing!

Not sure of the reason why this occurred but most likely a new identity has been created. Check the Users->username->Documents->Microsoft User Data->Office 2004 Identities folder to see if there are multiple identities folders in there. Typically the default identity used is called, "Main Identity". Switch back to that identity if for some reason a new one was created. To switch back, open Entourage and got to Entourage->Switch Identity, and then select Main Identity. This should bring it back. Also if you've rename ANY folders in the path to the Main Identity folder, Entourage would most likely recreate a new identity since its lost its connection.

You can read more about this at this site here

The Entourage User's WebLog

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Dissappearing, then reappearing Outlook Calendar items

Had user's report mysterious dissappearing, then reappearing Outlook Calendar items

I got reports from 2 users seeing disappearing and reappearing Calendar Items reflected across different workstations running XP and Outlook 2003, and also on their BlackBerry as well. These are standing reoccurring meetings, and they appear to drop off the calendar and then come back a few minutes later. They are using the desktop Outlook2003 client and BlackBerrys. It's not a delay with new meeting getting updated as these are old reoccurring meetings that have been in their calendars, but this is causing issues with planning around these meetings.

The fix I used was to run Outlook switches. To use switches, at the Start menu, Run command type:

Outlook /switch

Occasionally you'll need to use the full path to Outlook, so the command line looks like:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Outlook.exe " /switch


/cleanfreebusy

/cleanreminders

/cleanschedplus

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Great Apple and Mac information resource site

Great Apple and Mac information resource site regarding Mac OSX, Apple iPhone and many other Apple products..

http://homepage.mac.com/driley/

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

How to re-create the Show Desktop icon on the Quick Launch toolbar

I sometimes end up losing this heavily used shortcut from the toolbar from time to time, the fix below was obtained from the following Microsoft site.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190355

Manual steps to re-create the Show Desktop icon on the Quick Launch toolbar


The Show Desktop icon is not an ordinary program shortcut. If the icon is deleted, the procedure for re-creating the icon is not obvious. To manually re-create the Show Desktop icon, follow these steps:
1.Click Start , click Run, type notepad, and then click OK.
2.In Notepad, type the following text on individual lines:
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop
3.On the File menu, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf.

Note Notepad might automatically append a .txt extension to the file name. Remove this extension if present. The file name should be Show
Desktop
3.On the File menu, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf.

Note Notepad might automatically append a .txt extension to the file name. Remove this extension if present. The file name should be Show Desktop.scf.
The file must now be moved to the correct folder in the user profile to appear in the Quick Launch toolbar. To manually do this, use one of the following methods.

Method 1

1.Use the mouse to drag the Show Desktop.scf icon to the Quick Launch toolbar or another location where you want the shortcut to appear.
2.Click Move Here.

Method 2

1.Use Windows Explorer to locate the following folders:

Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98
Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, and Microsoft Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Note Username refers to the account name where you want to put the icon.
2.Use the mouse to drag the Show Desktop.scf file to the Quick Launch folder.
3.Click Move Here.
Note By default, the Application Data folder for Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP is a hidden folder. You may have to unhide this folder by using the Advanced Settings in Internet Explorer. Click the Show hidden files and folders option.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Dell Optiplex GX755 BSOD booting to BART PE disk or very slow image copying from Ghost

Just started imaging Dell Optiplex GX755s and I'm getting a BSOD booting to a Windows XP based BART PE disk and/or very slow image copying speed from Symantec Ghost running from within Dell's ImageDirect Agent. The fix below was to disable AHCI control for the internal SATA hard drive.

FIX:

  1. Boot up Dell
  2. Hit F2 to enter setup screen
  3. Select and expand the following item:
    • Drives
      • SATA Operation
      • Then change the default selection from AHCI to ATA.

      • You may be prompted with a warning, accept the change.

      • Then hit ESC and select Save/Exit, exiting the BIOS setup and saving your changes.

  4. You're done!

The AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) enables the SATA hot plugging and NCQ (Native Command Queuing) features => but makes NO difference in the data rate between the controller and the drive. So there's most likely NO performance difference on your system. The exception is if you have an NCQ drive => and even then the difference in performance on a typical desktop is unlikely to be noticeable.
Hot-plugging serves no purpose on workstation since you will never hot swap the hard drive.

NCQ requires both controller and hard disk support, so unfortunately NCQ will not work on most SATA drives today but most disk manufacturers will support NCQ in the very near future. And this feature is really geared towards servers, so not much benefits again for the workstation users.