Tools Forget telnet for testing ports, use portqry I keep coming across situations where techs use telnet to see if a remote port is open or not. Please stop using telnet for this especially as the results it gives back can
Security Why website security matters - a practical example. This happens all too often, someone will contact me and try to sell me something, an IT service, a new way of doing things, it doesn't matter. The thing is, if I'm contacted
Tips Getting the most out of Netapps Filer Simulator As part of my home Test lab I have an older pc running linux that hosts several copies of netapps filersim v7.3.6 - this is purely for functional and svenario style
Technical Some DNS Tips Several times in just the past week I've had to deal with DNS entries that have made things a touch more painful than they should have been so I thought it might be
War Stories Legacy Systems and a very handy SQL comparrison Tool On Friday, I had the "pleasure" of having to get a legacy system up and running. This system was originally introduced to allow users in the business to manage group membership
Technical Issues upgrading Domain Schema to 2003 So I'm probably a little behind in upgrading my home networks domain schema to support Windows 2003 but better late than never! The process itself was smooth enough once I'd corrected some problems
Technical FSMO Confusion in multiple domains When I teach classes on Active Directory I will cover various domain models including the empty root domain model, this model has several security,delegation and political based benefits that I will cover
Technical Creating a Default User Profile One of the things that annoys me about windows is the Default User profile. This is the profile that a new user who logs onto a machine (or server will get). The way
Tips The power of the human mind........ to fail. The human brain is an amazing computer. It can store almost infinite quantities of data, it has near instant recollection to enable you to recognise people, places and perform the essential day to
Tips 3,000 test users Do you ever have need of a few hundred to a few thousand random names to populate your Active Directory in order to test something? This is the requirement I had a few
Tips Display FSMO role holders Imagine the scene - You are consultant and have been asked to fix an Active Directory issue - One of the first things you need to find out is where all the FSMO
Tips Migration of DHCP database On my home 'production' network I have a single Active Directory server that runs DNS and DHCP. Whilst not fault tolerant it does the job and for a network that can afford the
Technical VMWare offer free P2V conversion tool I have a windows 2000 domain controller that I want to clone and put into my test network so I can rehearse an upgrade from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2007 and to test
Tips Common Question - How do I move the hibernation file? Simple answer - You can't. Longer answer - When the PC boots NTLDR knows where it's boot volume is. On that boot volume resides hiberfil.sys - The operating system will take a
Tips Working with TCP/IP Networks In my previous blog article I gave a couple of troubleshooting tips on DHCP. I also mentioned that I would show a trick for working out TCP/IP subnets. There are MANY subnet