Making a USB flash drive letter persistent

Mitch Tulloch, ITworld.com

If you're like me, you've accumulated an astounding number of flash drives. And, if you're like me, you've found that when you plug two flash drives your workstation, you don't know which window belongs to which drive. Wouldn't it be great if you could assign a flash drive a persistent drive letter? Well, you're in luck. ...continue reading 'Making a USB flash drive letter persistent'

Windows Tip: Tools for testing for bad memory

Mitch Tulloch, ITworld.com

I recently upgraded memory in half a dozen of our office systems, and of course I had problems: two of the machines wouldn't boot afterward. I ran some memory tests on them but without results. So I ended up following the Monte Carlo approach, which in my case involved randomly swapping memory between the two machines to see what happens. Eventually I got both of them working, but it got me wondering if there are better tools available for testing memory integrity. ...continue reading 'Tools for testing for bad memory'

Managing Remote Desktop settings on a remote computer

By Mitch Tulloch, ITworld.com

An article I wrote almost four years ago about remotely enabling Remote Desktop on a Windows Server 2003 machine is still generating a lot of discussion. One reader recently shared a script he wrote that takes the ideas in my article one step further. His company has a corporate policy in place that says remote desktop should be disabled by default on all Windows computers. So he wrote a simple script that he could use to remotely enable Remote Desktop, perform his work on the remote machine, and then disable Remote Desktop again easily. ...continue reading 'Managing Remote Desktop settings on a remote computer'

Windows Tip: Sizing your event logs

By Mitch Tulloch, MVP

The Windows Event Logs are a good thing -- they're a primary source you can mine when troubleshooting server problems or monitoring server security. Because of this, it's a good idea to collect as much information as possible in these logs in order to provide you with a historical baseline of your server's operations to help you troubleshoot difficult issues, and also to create an audit trail for security purposes. But can you have too much of a good thing? ...continue reading 'Windows Tip: Sizing your event logs'

Use WMIC to track down all services running on a Windows server

Mitch Tulloch, MTIT Enterprises

In one of my recent tips I showed how the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) is a powerful tool that enables you to query WMI information directly from the command line instead of using a script. This week, I'll show you how to use WMIC to get detailed information concerning all the services currently running on a Windows server. ...continue reading 'Use WMIC to track down all services running on a Windows server'

Windows Tip: Migrating Office documents

By Mitch Tulloch, Microsoft MVP

Companies that have tons of documents, spreadsheets, and other filessaved in Microsoft Office 2003 and earlier formats face a couple of interesting issues when considering whether to upgrade to the 2007 Office family of products. Here are a couple of places to get help. ...continue reading 'Windows Tip: Migrating Office documents'

Windows Tip: Five ways to expand a virtual hard drive

By Mitch Tulloch, Microsoft MVP

When I created my virtual machine I had foolishly set the maximum size of the dynamically expanding virtual hard drive (VHD) too small and now I was running out of space, yikes! What to do? Find some way of expanding my VHD to make some more room. Here are five possible ways I found of doing this, in order from most geeky to least.

Reboot Mystery Solved

By Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld

If you remember a column that I wrote back in November when I was baffled by a periodic reboot of a Windows box that I manage and trying my hand at various DOS commands to determine when and why the system was rebooting, you might be interested in knowing the cause of the problem. ...continue reading 'Reboot Mystery Solved'

Printing privacy - A problem or a feature?

Mitch Tulloch, MTIT Enterprises

If multiple users share the same shared printer attached to a print server, then each user will be able to see all the documents queued up for printing from all other users. The question arises, is this a "problem" or a "feature"?

Windows: Five tips from Santa

By Mitch Tulloch, Microsoft MVP

Troubleshoot Group Policy issues using this cool tool. Find out more about the hardware on your box than Device Manager or Msinfo32.exe can display. Print labels or do a mail merge from Excel. And so on. ...continue reading 'Windows: Five tips from Santa'

Ensuring software compatibility in XP

Simon Williams, PC Advisor

Compatibility issues have been a major concern since Vista's launch in early 2007. But XP isn't innocent in all this. It, too, has it's own fair share of conflicts and, equally, tricks to get around them. ...continue reading 'Ensuring software compatibility in XP'

Making programs work with Vista

Simon Williams, PC Advisor

Windows Vista hasn't changed the world after all, and compatibility issues have been a major concern. Here are six simple things you can do to get around the conflicts. ...continue reading 'Making programs work with Vista'