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» It turns out that Windows Vista and Live Messenger don’t play well together. The culprit seems to be Adobe Flash. Even after the suggested fix, it still has the possibility of crashing. UPDATE: After searching around some more online, I came across this fix for Acer laptops. A setting in their security management software was the culprit in my case. (0) 

Event ID 1001 and 3031

A couple of weeks ago, we had an issue where the Pocket PC phones were not syncing with the exchange server. I started to peruse through the logs and noticed that event id’s 1001 and 3031 were appearing quite frequently. After searching around, I came across KB 817379 for event id 3031 and KB 832297 for event id 1001.

After checking the security settings on the directories in IIS, I noticed that the back-end exchange server’s Exchange directory in IIS had the option for Integrated Windows Authentication unchecked. How it got unchecked, we have no idea. We hadn’t made any changes at all to either the front-end or back-end exchange server that day, so we were puzzled as to how this happened.

To fix this issue, we checked the option for Integrated Windows Authentication (see image below) on the Exchange directory in IIS on the back-end server and restarted both the servers. After they came back up, everything was back to normal.

Exchange directory security

Exchange 2003 OWA and Vista’s Internet Explorer issues

We recently acquired a Microsoft Vista machine to aid us in testing its compatibility with our software. As we started to test a few things, we noticed that we had an issue with OWA; when replying to a message, we’d get what looked like a broken image in the area where you would type your message (see image below). After a little searching around, we found out that Internet Explorer in Vista strips out the Dynamic HTML Editing ActiveX control (KB 911829). Microsoft released a patch for this particular issue for Exchange.

NOTE: The patch must be applied on both the frontend and backend Exchange servers.

Below is a screenshot of the window before the patch is applied.
OWA Vista 1

And a screenshot of the window after the patch is applied.
OWA Vista 2

» Windows Server Update Services Downloads offers some good utilities to aid in deploying WSUS to your network. I used Client Diagnostic Tool quite frequently to make sure that the clients were pointing to the internal update server instead of Windows Update. (0) 

Remote refresh group policy

Over the weekend, we implemented some needed changes to the GPO that would force the clients to use the WSUS server instead of checking Windows Update. After we made the changes, we needed to refresh the policy on each of the clent machines. Being a lazy admin, I didn’t want to go to each machine to refresh the policy. After a little searching on the web, I came across a command-line utility called RGPRefresh. This tool will help you refresh the group policies remotely. I tested it on a couple of machines, and it worked flawlessly.

Below is a screen shot of the switches that you can use with the utility.

RGP Refresh

» Microsoft has released a Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor for you to see if your PC is compatible with Windows Vista. Unfortunately, mine wasn’t compatible. If I wanted to take advantage of the Aero features, I’d have to upgrade the video card on the laptop. (0) 

» A while back, I had posted a link to a site that showed you how to remotely enable remote desktop via some registry changes. Now there is a free piece of software that will get the job done for you.  (0) 

» Here are some pictures of a Dell laptop exploding at Japanese conference. The thought of mine blowing up on my lap is scary.  (0) 

» one of things that has always irked me about windows is having to select a program everytime i run across a file with no extension. i’ve always wanted to have some default program associated with those files types, but never been able to do it. now there is a way to do it.  (0) 

» if you are interested in getting yahoo mail beta, find out how here(0) 

» here is one of the better guides to help speed up your windows machine that i’ve run across in some time now. the first step involves turning off certain services, and i would be careful when turning off the ones recommended. chances are you won’t need them, but always double check first. read this guide for a definition of each service before you turn any off. there are also a couple of steps where you need to edit the registry. if you aren’t comfortable making these changes, i wouldn’t recommend doing it. if you do make any changes, make sure to backup your registry first. (0) 

» one thing that annoys me about windows is it’s auto-restart after a windows update. i would like to decide when to restart my machine, not ms. here is a registry fix to prevent windows from restarting on its own after an update. just download the file, and run it.  (0) 

» RemoteDesktopSearch BETA is a FREE service that makes it possible to remotely access all of the information indexed by Google Desktop anywhere in the world.” i haven’t tried it out myself, but it looks like it could be promising. (0) 

» if you want to add custom images to your ipod or powerbook, then etchamac.com is the place for you. they use a co2 laser to etch any image or text onto the ipod or powerbook. from their samples, their work looks really good.  (0) 

» sqlzoo.net is a site to learn how to use sql in sql server, oracle, mysql, db2, mimer sql, postgresql and access.  (0) 

» …after putting together four simple custom adapters, I now have an ethernet cable, a crossover ethernet cable, a modem cable, a null modem cable, and a Cisco console cable all by carrying around just one standard ethernet cable.click here to find out how to make one of your own. (0) 

» a nice collection of screenshots of windows from 1.0 to xp. (0)