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Tech Tips for the Field

by John Roller

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Windows Server Core

A new option in Windows Server 2008 is Server Core.  It provides a minimal environment for running a subset of the server roles, AD, DNS, DHCP, File & Print.  It can reduce the servicing requirements and the attack surface for those server roles.  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/servercore.mspx

Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:02 PM by jroller | 1 Comments

Vista Command Prompt in Admin Mode

If you go down to Start and type CMD in the search box (not from the RUN line) and hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER, it will open the command prompt in Admin mode.  Thanks Randy Rands for that one… 

Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:01 PM by jroller | 0 Comments

Tabbed IE Shortcuts

When you have multiple tabs open in Internet Explorer, type CTRL+1, CTRL+2, etc.  This will move that tab to the front.

Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:01 PM by jroller | 0 Comments

Solid State Hard Drives are coming

With sizes reaching 160GB, SATA II “no spinnie” hard drives will start showing up this fall in new computers and devices.  http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/solid_state-drives/

Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:00 PM by jroller | 1 Comments

Vista CPU performance

Get more performance out of Vista.  The default power plan in Vista is set to Balanced.  Changing it to High Performance will increase the CPU utilization up to 50%.  That’s in Control Panel, Power Options.

Posted Friday, July 13, 2007 11:53 AM by jroller | 0 Comments

Network open cancellation

Do you remember way back when you could hit CTRL+C to cancel an operation?  Well, it’s back with Vista – sort of.  Try to open a document on a network resource that it can’t find.  In Windows XP, you were stuck until the OS decided it couldn’t connect.  Vista allows you to hit cancel and it returns control back to you.  If you’re at the command prompt, CTRL+C works again.  Play around with it and discover the power.        

Posted Friday, July 13, 2007 11:52 AM by jroller | 0 Comments

Google Search

If I’m looking for something Microsoft related, I use www.google.com/microsoft.  This will filter my results to Microsoft type answers.  If I search for SMS, I’ll get Systems Management Server instead of Short Messaging Services.  They also have a filtered search for the U.S. Government at www.google.com/ig/usgov as well as others.  If you want your answers to come from a specific website like Microsoft.com or you only want to search military websites, after your search criteria enter site:microsoft.com or site:mil.

Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 10:53 AM by jroller | 1 Comments

Shared Comptuer Toolkit

This locks down the computer and discards changes at logoff.  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:31 AM by jroller | (Comments Off)

Port Query Tool
Ever tried to troubleshoot application communications?  This free utility will tell you if a computer is listening on a specified port.  http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310099

Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:30 AM by jroller | (Comments Off)

Outlook PST Compaction
Delete lots of e-mails from your pst lately?  You should compact it as well.  In Outlook, go to File, Data File Management, double-click on your pst, then choose Compact Now.

Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:13 AM by jroller | (Comments Off)

Account Lockouts

Wish you could find all the domain controllers that are involved in user lockouts?  Visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=35607 for details.

Posted Monday, November 07, 2005 1:51 PM by jroller | 1 Comments

Word autocorrect

Do you often misspell the same words the same way?  Some words are automatically corrected while others are not.  Next time you get the red squiggly, instead of right-clicking and choosing the right word, right-click and go to AutoCorrect then choose the right word.   This way you’ll never have to do it again. 

Posted Monday, November 07, 2005 1:51 PM by jroller | 1 Comments

Outlook is protecting your privacy

Do you get e-mails that you can’t read and you have to right-click to download the pictures?  I finally decided that even though I didn’t really want to receive e-mails from Delta promotions, I also knew they wouldn’t send me smut or viruses.  So, the next time I received that e-mail, I chose to add the sender’s domain to the safe list.  Now, when I get those messages, at-least I can see what I’m deleting.

Posted Monday, November 07, 2005 1:50 PM by jroller | 1 Comments

SMT 5600 Cell Phone Antenna

I just went to a truck stop and bought an antenna for my SMT 5600.  It increases my reception from 1 to 5 bars!!!  It works great.  The antenna is about 4” long with an 8’ cord.  Since they don’t sell one for the SMT 5600, I had to try all of them until one fit.  It’s the same as the CDM 100.  When I called Wilson Electronics, they said that’s how they do it too.

 Here are the part numbers:

Cellular Antenna, Dual-band Mini Magnet            W-301113          $29.99
http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/antennas/wcminimagnet.htm  

Cellular Antenna, Adapter for Audiovox                  359910              $9.99
http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/adapterlist/wcadapterlist-audiovox.htm

 

 

Posted Friday, September 30, 2005 7:22 PM by jroller | 0 Comments

Outlook 2003 Server Status

To see server status in Outlook 2003, hold the CTRL, then right-click on the Outlook Icon in the system tray.  Go up to Connection Status.

Posted Friday, September 23, 2005 5:22 PM by jroller | 0 Comments

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