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After we started testing with Windows 7 we found that it had an issue connecting to an Exchange 2003 server when using Outlook over RPC. We could still connect using Outlook over RPC to the server on our Windows XP machines. While troubleshooting the connection I noticed that on the Windows XP when opening Outlook using the /rpcdiag switch that it had the name of the server with its netbios name (i.e. server1), but on Windows 7 it showed the server with its fully qualified domain name (i.e. server1.office.local)

This triggered an idea and I checked the server registry key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\RpcProxy) where you have to configure the ports and found that it was configured to use the netbios name and not the longer fully qualified domain name. A few seconds after I made this registry change the Windows 7 machine connected to Outlook and started syncing email! I tested my Windows XP machines, restarted the server, and everything was still connected.

Registry entry before change: server1:6001-6002;mail.domain.com:6001-6002;server1:6004;mail.domain.com:6004

Registry entry after: server1.office.local:6001-6002;mail.domain.com:6001-6002;server1.office.local:6004;mail.domain.com:6004

Installing a new Windows 7 computer for a client and found for some reason that even though the HP Color Laserjet 3500 worked in Vista HP did not have a supported driver for Windows 7. We found that you can load the Windows Vista drivers, but if you try to edit any of the properties on the printer (paper tray, color options, etc) it gives an error. Otherwise it prints beautifully

I know that I have been tempted to press that button and squeeze a little more disk space out of my computer instead or archiving off music or pictures, but our experience with file compression on a Windows machine has not been good. It makes recovering deleted files much more difficult, but the real problem that we see with most computers that have done this has been poor performance.

Going back and unchecking the box to compress files on your hard drive stops windows from doing this with new files, but it doesn’t seem to go back and clear out the compression that it has already done on your existing files.

Fortunately there is a command that you can run on your computer to undo this. Depending on how many files you have and the speed of your computer this can take a few hours.

compact /u/s/a/i/q

This command uncompresses, subfolders, hidden and system files, continues proccessing if it runs into an error, and only reports the most essential information.

Received the following error today on a new server that I promoted to a domain controller that would trigger every time the server was started.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    NtFrs
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    13571
Date:        8/4/2009
Time:        3:14:10 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    servername
Description:
The File Replication Service has detected that one or more volumes on this computer have the same Volume Serial Number. File Replication  Service does not support this configuration. Files may not replicate  until this conflict is resolved.

Volume Serial Number : 1234-5678
List of volumes that have this Volume Serial Number: c:, c:

The output of “dir” command displays the Volume Serial Number before listing the contents of the folder.

The server was a RAID 5 configuration with a single volume setup for the disks and no external disks attached. The one thing that I noticed is that the servers C: drive was not configured with a volume label.

To fix the error all I had to do was open up Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management and select properties on the disk and give the C: drive a label. Restarting the server no longer gives the error.

Installing Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition into an existing SBS environment today. After joining the machine to the domain and promoting it to a domain controller I was ready to continue with the SBS install. When I went to start the install it does a health check and gave me an error that “Windows small business server does not support internet connection sharing” and instructions on how to disable it. Unfortunately those intructions did not was as I did not have the sharing tab in my network connections that it was referring to.

Fixing the problem was pretty easy so that I could resume my setup. I stopped the “Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)” service, set it to manual, and I was able to get my install going.

During the install of AVG it gives a conflicting anti-spyware product detected error message and will not install. The message then goes on to say: “Setup had detected ewido anti-spyware or ewido anti-malware installed on your computer. Anti-spyware protection is now included in AVG. In order to proceed with installation, you will have to uninstall the previous anti-spyware product first”

I checked add/remove programs and I did not see any reference in there to ewido anti-virus / anti-malware, but I did find a key for it in the registry. Once I deleted the the “HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\ewido anti-spyware” registry entry I was able to install AVG with out any further problems.

Anyone else have the bug when you try to open a new tab using ctrl-t in Firefox that it sometimes won’t open a new tab? I seem to have the this issue and have figured out that only happens on pages where there is an Adobe Flash movie. I am running Firefox 3.07, Flash Player version 10,0,22,87 (find out what version here), and AdBlock Plus 1.0.1.

I have this issue on both my PC and Macintosh computers for a few months.