Windows Server 2003 Error when trying to login via RDP: The RPC server is unavailable.

Got it today (Friday 13, huh!) after scheduled patches installation and restart.
Solution - connect to the box via remote registry and create the following registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
IgnoreRegUserConfigErrors = Dword:1

Devotion to Duty

Happy Sysadmin's day!

by xkcd.com

How to create a "/dev/null"-like stub e-mail address in MS Exchange

Via Active Directory, create a mail enabled distribution group with no members and assign it donotreply@somewhere.com e-mail address (and add any other e-mail addresses as aliases).

Exchange 2003 SP2: Resolve error 1023

You can try a very useful piece of software for that - MFCMAPI
Download it: http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/

BES: How to separate company's and personal mailboxes on Blackberry.

By default, all mails for BES mailbox go to Messages folder. If you have an additional mailbox (like gmail or something else), you probably will be confused, because all messages from this additional mailbox go to Messages folder too. To separate it (create another separate folder for BES mailbox), we have to update a database and resend service books to a device.

BBDBUpdate.exe -n localhost\BLACKBERRY -db BESMgmt -input EnableBESOnlyMessageApplication.sql

Create tar.gz on Windows box

I've tried to use GnuWin package, but got an error while packing a file with very long filename, so I have to find something else. Fortunately, I found that free 7Zip can do that without errors.

You need to download a free command line version (see URL in the header).
7za a -r -ttar -so dummy [what to archive] | 7za a -tgzip -si [archivename].tar.gz

How to run x64 code under ESX on Dell OptiPlex 755

If you're getting the "0xc000035a" error when trying to install a x64 guest OS under VMWare ESX(i), you can try to to set Trusted Execution (under "Performance" settings in the BIOS) to OFF.

LINUX: How to edit /etc/fstab in the single user mode

mount -o remount,rw /

Make Windows 7 map your network drives properly

We're use small vbs file to map network drives when user logging on. Windows System Log shows that script works ok under Windows 7, but network drives doesn't mapped properly. Finally I've found that Registry trick below resolve this.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

EnableLinkedConnections = 1 (DWord)

Linux: Set the "x" permissions for folders only (Thanks David W)

find . -type d -print0 | xargs --null chmod 755

IIS Connection Limits (XP Pro)

XP Pro allows 10 connections. This limit is installed by default by the metabase key MaxConnections for W3SVC, and there is no user interface method for modifying the setting. You can change this setting to any number less than 40 and it works, but that is not widely advertised.

Windows Media Player (Vista/Windows 7) stuttering while playing MP3 files

Solution:

Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Sound -> Speakers / Headphones -> Enhancements - Check "Disable all enhancements" and Ok

Application popup: : \SystemRoot\System32\RDPDD.dll failed to load

The problem is with the size of the session image space. The session image space is shared by the display drivers and printer drivers. If the sum of the drivers (rdpdd is an additional display driver) gets too big then there is no room left to load.

If you increase the size of the session image space then you can run remote desktop.

Add the following registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]

"SessionImageSize"=dword:00000020

Get a DELL Service Tag on the remote Linux system

dmidecode -s system-serial-number

Remove an access list from ASA(PIX)

To clear an access list from the running configuration, use the clear configure access list command in global configuration mode.
clear configure access-list [id]

umount NFS filesystem fails in Linux

there is a good example how to umount dead NFS share (let's assume that umount -f / doesn't work.

Quick fix to this problem is editing /etc/mtab file and removing the nfs filesystem mount point . In Linux /etc/mtab file contains all local and nfs mounted filesystems.By editing /etc/mtab i was able to umount hanged nfs filesystem on my Linux machine without doing a reboot.

Finally to resolve
failing nfs mount issue i commented the entry in /etc/mtab file :
#sun:/export /mnt/nfs nfs rw,addr=192.168.0.135 0 0.

How to find the user / entity an email address is associated with in Exchange 2003

• Open the Acive Directory Users and Computers Management Console
• Right Click on the domain > Select Find
• Select Custom Search in the Find field
• Select the Advanced tab
• To find the entity with the email address spamtrap@danlance.co.uk for example, enter the following in the LDAP query field: (proxyAddresses=smtp:user@somain.com)
• This will list the entity containing the email address entered.
  
  Wild cards can be entered within the email address (*) to return multiple matches.
  If you want to view all the email addresses within the results list, select View -> Choose Columns... and select Proxy Address - doing this in assoication with the query (proxyAddresses=smtp:*@somain.com) will give you a list of all entities within the organisation that have an email address, together with all the email addresses they have.

How to turn on an automatic logon in Windows XP

Use "control userpasswords2" from command prompt to open related Control Panel applet.

Issue: Home Server Storage can’t calculate the size for a shared folder

• In the console below the pie chart, chart size calculation for certain folders never stops.
• Within the Shared Folders tab in the console, some folders appear with size unknown.

Resolution: Reset security owner permissions on the shared folder.

PowerShell: How to list the object properties and methods

New-Object -com | get-Member