Category Archives: Windows

Clean All Temp Folders

By | February 28, 2017

$tempfolders = @(“C:\Windows\Temp\*”, “C:\Windows\Prefetch\*”, “C:\Documents and Settings\*\Local Settings\temp\*”, “C:\Users\*\Appdata\Local\Temp\*”,”C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\*”); Remove-Item $tempfolders -force -recurse

Exporting Mailboxes

By | January 18, 2017

You can export entire mailboxes (smaller than 50GB) to PST, from the Exchange console: New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox “Amy Smith” -FilePath “\\Server\Share\AmySmith.pst” To get Status of the request: Get-MailboxExportRequest | Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics | fl These should be output to a fast drive with plenty of capacity (not a shadow copy volume). When decommissioning a user account move the file  to the… Read More »

Windows 7 Updates

By | December 21, 2016

Microsoft is limiting the performance of windows updates from their end for Windows 7. If you need to clean install a PC that will require updates to reach full functionality I would build it 24 hours in advance to allow windows updates to download and install. Set client expectations.

Bootable USB installer

By | October 11, 2016

Make sure that you use 8GB or larger USB drive. All existing data will be deleted. Diskpart list Volume select volume “X” (where X is the USB vol. number from 2) clean create partition primary format fs=ntfs label=OS_Install quick active Copy the contents of a bootable ISO to your USB.

JungleDisk & Windows 10

By | July 1, 2016

JungleDisk recommends that WebDav be turned on with Windows 10. They don’t say why however and doing so will add extra steps for the user as all windows links will take you to a web page which won’t actually work. Instructions on breaking it are here so that you can un-break it.

Workgroup & Outlook

By | March 14, 2016

It is possible to totally eliminate the outlook log on requirement when a user is on a workgroup PC. 1) set the workgroup name to match the pre2k log on domain that hosts the exchange server.  2) Set the user name on the users local account to match the user name in AD. These settings cause Outlook to… Read More »

Fully Format Disks

By | October 29, 2015

To Clear all partitions form a disk including Dell OEM run the following: DISKPART List Disk Select Disk “#” Clean From Disk Manager: Right Click the drive and Choose online Select GPT Create a New Volume with NTFS and 64K Allocation Size

Clean Install Windows

By | October 26, 2015

When installing Windows ONLY connect the drive(s) that will run the OS and the optical drive. Be sure all others are disconnected by: inspecting the internal connections in the PC, disconnecting all externals, and verifying the target drive specs in BIOS > Drives  Disable drives not connected in BIOS > Drives Set the RAID to AHCI for a single… Read More »

Move iTunes backup

By | October 25, 2015

Open current iTunes backup: %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync Move the folder” Backup” to the new destination At the original folder location, press the SHIFT key, right-click and select “Open command window here” and enter this command (ends in new location): mklink /J %APPDATA%\Apple Backup “E:\Backup\iTunes”

M-Color menu reload

By | October 21, 2015

This assumes it’s installed and you have run the executable that adds it to your apps. 1. In AutoCAD execute command CUILOAD 2. Select MCOLOR9x and Unload it (eg. MCOLOR97 for M-Color 9.7) 3. Restart AutoCAD If CUILOAD did not not restore M-Color menu: 1. Run AutoCAD commands: MCO_MCOLOR_MENU & MCO_MCOLOR_MENU2

Control Panels

By | October 18, 2015

Control Panel Item Command Accessibility Options Access.cpl Add Hardware Hdwwiz.cpl Add/Remove Programs Appwiz.cpl Automatic Updates Wuaucpl.cpl Bluetooth bthprops.cpl Date and time Timedate.cpl Display Control desktop / desk.cpl Firewall firewall.cpl Folder Options Control folders Fos Control fonts / fonts Internet Options Inetcpl.cpl iSCSI  iscsicpl.cpl Java  jpicpl32.cpl Keyboard Control keyboard Licensing Mode  liccpa.cpl Mouse main.cpl Network Connections ncpa.cpl Network Setup… Read More »

Disable Hibernation

By | October 18, 2015

Windows default has hibernation turned on. This take good piece of the hard drive in the form of the hiberfil.sys file which takes up about as much c drive space as there is RAM installed. To dispose of the file and disable hibernation instantly use this in PowerShell: powershell -Command “Start-Process ‘powercfg.exe’ -Verb runAs -ArgumentList ‘/h off'”

Win7: Explorer Crashing

By | August 24, 2015

Some time ago I ran across a situation where the windows preview would cause files to lock, particularly excel and word files. More recently I came across a situation at Pasma Group where explorer would just randomly close up when you tried to open a window. We assumed it was related to the user’s profile until another user… Read More »

Search for PSTs

By | March 18, 2015

Before removing a drive from service or when moving a user to a new system, it is important to verify no PSTs have been left behind. To find all PSTs launch ISE as admin then run: Get-ChildItem -path c:\users\ -force -Recurse -filter ‘*.pst’ -erroraction ‘silentlycontinue’ | select name, Length, LastWriteTime, directory #Run as admin  

Set Outlook permisions

By | March 9, 2015

In this example abaldwin is granted reviewer access to jjohnson’s calendar: get-mailbox -identity “jjohnson”| foreach {Add-MailboxfolderPermission $_”:\calendar” -User “abaldwin” -AccessRights Reviewer} To do this for an entire Co. use Excel and a list of all users then use Concatenate to edit the individual cmdlets which can be pasted in bulk to PowerShell.

Exchange 2013 Error “X-FEServer:”

By | January 23, 2015

This is caused after a new SSL Certificate is installed on Exchange. To resolve this go to IIS MMC find the certificate hash for the new cert then run the following PowerShell commands: Enable-ExchangeCertificate CertificateHash -Services SMTP Enable-ExchangeCertificate CertificateHash -Services IIS

Hardware migration via Sysprep

By | April 18, 2014

I was recently retiring the admin PC at HSLA and giving it to an end user for home use. At the same time I had a newer T3500 with a clean install of Windows that would make a great admin PC, however, I did not want to reinstall all the software and transfer the files. I first tried… Read More »

OST & PST Max file size

By | April 15, 2014

Microsoft Outlook 2007-2013 support American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and UNICODE personal folders (.pst) and offline folder (.ost) files. The WarnFileSize registry entry determines the maximum data that both the .pst and the .ost files can have. After this maximum data is reached, neither the .pst nor the .ost files are permitted to add any more data. These… Read More »

Uninstall Office 2010

By | March 17, 2011

Uninstall using the Program and Uninstall troubleshooter You can try running the Program Install and Uninstall Troubleshooter to uninstall Office 2010. Warning:  The troubleshooter only removes traditional MSI-based installation files. If you have a Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010 entry in Control Panel and you’re trying to uninstall it, the troubleshooter will not uninstall this type of Office 2010… Read More »