This post examines a problem several people have reported when running Hyper-V Remote Management tools over a VPN connection  - specifically hitting an error “Access denied. Unable to establish communication between ‘SERVER’ and ‘CLIENT’”. In some variations,...

Update 14th Nov 2008 . I've just released a script which does all this configuration in one or two command lines: HVRemote   So far, I’ve covered the following Hyper-V Remote Management scenarios: Workgroup: Vista client to remote server, server configuration, full install ( Part one ) Workgroup...

Update 14th Nov 2008 . I've just released a script which does all this configuration in one or two command lines: HVRemote   Quick links to the all parts in the series: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5   So after even more feedback and questions, part 4 of this series provides the walkthrough steps necessary...

Update 14th Nov 2008 . I've just released a script which does all this configuration in one or two command lines: HVRemote   Quick links to the all parts in the series: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5   Although I thought I’d finished at part two, after even more emails and comments on part one and two...

Update 14th Nov 2008 . I've just released a script which does all this configuration in one or two command lines: HVRemote   Quick links to the all parts in the series: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5   The second part of the extra-long blog post contains the steps necessary on the client machine. Part...

Update 14th Nov 2008 . I've just released a script which does all this configuration in one or two command lines: HVRemote   Quick links to the all parts in the series: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5   After the many emails I’ve had about this, it seemed only appropriate to write up a detailed post (or...

Can't wait to get home tonight..... just saw a pointer to this download on microsoft.com which is an addin for Windows Desktop Search, supported on Windows Vista which provides indexing capability for network shares. Given I've got hundreds of GB of data sitting on network shares which I'm regularly...

Yesterday evening, I was at home and attempting to remotely connect to my XP desktop machine in the office to access an application which was installed there, but not installed on my laptop. This was over VPN. Now I’ve only had both machines for a few weeks since moving over here and was positive that...

Here's a tip I learnt a couple of months ago and meant to post up before - totally forgot. Maybe it's force of habit, but rather than opening a new instance Internet Explorer, going to the address bar and typing in a web page, it's quicker to do start/run (ie Windows+R) www.microsoft.com instead. No...

I received an email from David Solomon - author of Windows Internals this morning. By amazing coincidence, I happened to have a copy of it open and reading it just as the email came in. David & his colleage, Mark Russinovich regularly give courses to folks in the Windows Core OS Division here in...

Just seen the list of webcasts for next week - there's a couple on the list worth mentioning. All times are PST (add 8 hours for UK time) Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Windows Vista for the Enterprise (Level 200) Wednesday, April 12, 2006 - 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Pacific Time Glenn Fincher, Senior...

I'm sure this isn't going to teach a lot of people anything new, but given I just noticed it myself, I think it's worth mentioning just in case. Due to my recent change of laptop, and the fact that my new laptop doesn't run Windows Server 2003 (actually it does, just not very well - the power settings...

I was on the train a few days ago and ended up chatting to some guy (apologies, I'm terrible with names) about stuff which inevitably deviated into technology - of course we got to the bit when I mentioned I worked for Microsoft. His relatively small company continues to run Windows Professional 2000...

There's often those situations where you need to clear read-only attributes from a directory tree in bulk. In the past, having been a command line junkie and developer, I've used the attrib command with the /S parameter to include sub-directories as I've invariably had three or four command prompts open...

You've already probably heard by now the many efforts and changes which will be coming into place with the release of Windows Vista later this year regarding how "least privilege" (I use quotes as the actual term has changed a few times and I'm not sure that the latest TLA is) will be strongly enforced...

For those of you who were unable to attend IT Forum 2005 in November, a quick reminder that there are two full-day events re-running some of the most popular content. This will be held on the Microsoft Campus in Reading. The registration links are below - I know they are close to filling up, but if you...

Still jetlagged :( 2AM again. Maybe tomorrow night I'll get round to sleeping finally! So hands up everyone who's built their own MCE machine - particularly those who have MSDN, for example, and like to "test" :) And... for those MCE machines, keep your hands up if you've bought one of those multi...

One of these always useful links to have - I just changed to a new laptop a couple of weeks before Christmas, and the default LCD display was somewhat fuzzy even with ClearType turned on. If you didn't know, you can use an online tool to optimise the cleartype settings here . There's also an XP Powertoy...

I have to admit, I'd never thought of this one. Yes, I've looked into using ADS (Automated Deployment Services) for deploying Windows Server 2003 and use it as part of the Virtual Server Migration Toolkit ( VSMT ) solution but never thought of using it to deploy Windows XP. Unsupported it may be, but...

Just noticed that TweakMCE 2.0 is now available for download . My main Media Centre machine was playing up (OK, fair cop, I'd been playing with it, installing Beta software left right and centre) to the extent that I was forced to rebuild it last weekend. However, it's now far from perfect (in fact,...

Ghosts in the machine. Literally. I'm helping out at the Oracle User Group in Birmingham tomorrow and Wednesday (yes, it's also running today), and was planning on demonstrating some of the features in the latest Windows Vista build. However, on Sat morning, Halloween definitely came early - I was answering...

I received an email yesterday from a user using Internet Explorer to attempt to download Excel Spreadsheets (.xls extension). They couldn't see an obvious way of stopping Internet Explorer from automatically opening the spreadsheet embedded in the browser, rather than ("as they seemed to recall") being...

I just noticed this video posted up on Channel 9 from a number of members of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) team at Microsoft show you how to use WMI to manage Windows better. WMI isn't the easiest thing to get the hang of, so it's worth the 45 or so minutes to have a listen & watch...

I'm often sent questions by email about how to do x, how to do y, what does z do etc. This one was a common issue, so I felt it was worth sharing. During their installation, a particular company had included the standard XP games (minesweeper, solitaire and so on). It was a relatively small company ...

I was following up a couple of queries with people about desktop deployment last week, and noticed that the Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment was updated a few weeks ago to version 2.5. Rather than re-gurgitate info that other people have already been more on the ball about, take a...