I recently added a printer connection to a Windows Server 2003 R2 machine. In the past, this has meant re-training each user on how to connect to a network printer. Surely this connection can be defined centrally for all users and/or computers?

It didn't take me long to find Mitch Tulloch's excellent article, Deploying Printers With Group Policy in Windows Server 2003 R2. Everything you need to know is in that article or in his previous article, Managing Printers with Windows Server 2003 R2. I followed his procedure and everything worked like a charm. Thanks Mitch!

One of my misconceptions about the Microsoft virtualization options was that if I wanted to have access to server management tools, I would need to run "regular" (paid) Window Server 2008 so I could install those tools, then enable the Hyper-V role for the virtual clients. It turns out that that is not the case.

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Part of my testing of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 will be the built-in backup solution. But although Windows Server Backup it is a built-in feature, it is not enabled by default. Here's how to activate it and to register the VSS writer so it will tell your virtual machines to do a snapshot for the backup.

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I'm testing Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 as a virtualization platform. This is the free version that only includes the Hyper-V role and a command-line interface.

Here are a few notes I made on setting things up so I can manage the server from Windows 7 (Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise only):

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I've been thinking about virtualizing a couple of desktops at a small non-profit customer site. The desktops are five years old, due and budgeted for replacement. There's an under-utilized server available. Why not run Windows XP or Windows 7 as virtual desktops on the server, and replace the desktops with thin clients?

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I've been running Windows 7 with BitLocker for a couple months and am quite pleased with it. BitLocker encrypts the hard drive so that if my laptop is lost or stolen, it should not be possible to access the data on the drive even if you remove the drive and attach it as a second drive to another system.

Recently though I read about a password "bypass" program called Kon-Boot that dynamically replaces the Windows kernel during bootup and allows logging in with any password. I wondered if BitLocker was vulnerable to this kind of program. If a thief could simply log on to my BitLocker-protected system, the encryption would be useless.

So I decided to give it a try.

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I'm running ESET Remote Administrator (ERA) 3.0.105 as an update mirror on a Win2003 R2 server. There are six NOD32 3.0.684.0 clients that connect to that server (including one client on the server itself). The setup has been working fine for months.

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Feeling proud of myself today in a McGiver-ish kind of way ;).

You know those semi-fun, semi-annoying Hallmark birthday cards with sound? The ones that make you wonder whether it's worth spending five bucks on a birthday card?

Well I was about to toss one today when I thought, hmm, I live in California, I'm not supposed to toss batteries in the trash. So I ripped open the card to pull out the battery and lo and behold, it's a Newsun CR2032 3V Lithium battery. CR2032 is the size of the CMOS battery in all the Dell computers I've checked. Sure enough, it's working fine as a replacement in an old Dimension desktop.

Woo-hoo! Free CMOS battery! Now, I wonder what I should to with the miniature speaker that was in the card...

Occasionally on my Windows XP Pro SP3 machine, Outlook 2007 SP2 will tell me that it has had an error receiving POP mail from my SBS 2003 server, which resides on the same network.

I started a command prompt and typed "ping myserver.mydomain.local". Sure enough, I get back the message "Ping request could not find host myserver.mydomain.local. Please check the name and try again."

An nslookup works fine, so I know the SBS server is there and is responding to DNS requests.

In fact, I can "ping myserver" without problems. But for some reason, pinging the fully-qualified internal name doesn't work.

Sometimes, I can just type "ipconfig /flushdns" to clear this up. Today that didn't work. However once I actually stopped and started the DNS cache, ping started working and so did email:

net stop DNScache
net start DNScache

Years ago, I learned to follow a simple procedure for creating secure passwords:

1. Think of a sentence with at least eight words. Include capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation.

2. Use the fist character from each word, along with the numbers and punctuation, as the password.

For example, "More people are driving Toyota hybrids 2 work!" becomes "MpadTh2w!". "Mom spent $20 on groceries @ Vons" becomes "Ms$20og@V".

How Secure Is That?

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