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.

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.

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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

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.

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

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