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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.