There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
Published on July 10, 2010
Microsoft recently rolled out a new tier of Technet called Technet Standard and what was Technet Plus is now Technet Professional.
Microsoft has also released a nifty spreadsheet showing the difference between Standard and Professional.
Standard seems to have most of what Professional has, sans the Enterprise versions for $100 less.
- Soli Deo Gloria
Published on July 3, 2010
You probably heard of “DLL Hell”, but I recently experienced “monitor hell”. We had a 30inch Dell WFP3007 attached to a Dell Precision T3400. We shipped the PC offsite and attached the monitor to another Dell T3400. A few weeks went by when the user who has this monitor noted that he could not set the resolution above 1280×800. I went over and tried setting the resolution to 1900×1200. Upon doing this, the monitor scaled down to 1/4 of the screen. In order to see the whole screen, I had to scroll the mouse around. I thought it was a video card problem. The PC had a NVS 290 video card within it and the working system had a Quadro FX 570. I did not have any Quadro’s laying around, so I tried an ATI FireGL V7200. Upon installing this card and booting, all I got was a screen with a bunch of bars across the screen, going in and out: the PC wouldn’t even POST.
I tried another FireGL video card with the same results. At this point, I was completely baffled, so I called Dell and actually had them connect into the PC in question. Try as he may, the tech support guy who was A+ and DCSE certified could not fix the problem either. This PC was only a few months old and had recently been imaged within the last 3 months.
I tried another DVI cable with the same results. I then (for completeness sake), tried a NVS 295 video card since it had DisplayPort inputs on it and again, I got the same results with the display scaling. At this point, I was pretty convinced it was the monitor itself, so I brought over a Dell T3500 and attached the monitor this PC. Again, I got the bars across the screen.
I called Dell again, this time requesting a RMA on the monitor. By this time I had gone through 5 video cards, 2 cables, and 2 computers. After firing off all this information at the tech support person, I expected a prompt replacement of the monitor. However, she came back after talking with the engineering lab and stated that I needed a DVI dual-link cable. I never knew there was a difference in DVI cables, much less single-link and dual-link DVI cables.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface, the dual-link has 6 extra pins and has a higher bandwidth (resolution) capability. We ordered this cable from Dell for around $9. Upon getting the cable and trying it on a Dell 390, it worked! I happily wheeled the monitor over to the user’s workstation. And guess what? SAME PROBLEM!
At this point he had a Quadro FX1400 installed, after the many video card attempts I had tried. I ran back and took the Quadro FX 570 out of the Dell 390. Finally, the monitor worked!
I don’t know if there is a moral to the story, other than to say that if you have a 30inch LCD screen, you better have the best video card and best DVI cable you can.
- Soli Deo Gloria
Published on June 29, 2010
Francisco Martin, a Microsoft Enthusiast, posted several (now offline, wonder why 
)confidential pieces of information to his blog on Monday revealing improvements that Microsoft is aiming for with Windows 8. Read more at Neowin.
- Soli Deo Gloria
Published on May 21, 2010
Free until May 24th: http://dottech.org/freebies/16479
These are the major features as per the developer:
Edit (5/27/10): After installing this program, it just seems simliar to Sysinternals’ Disk2VHD program.
- Soli Deo Gloria
Published on May 15, 2010
Want to lock down Adobe Reader 9 in your environment? Prevent updates, get rid of the splash screen and the option to buy Adobe Acrobat with the following script. Just place the following commands in a .BAT file and then run it after you install or upgrade Adobe Reader on a user’s computer (stolen from appdeploy.com). The REG ADD lines should be all on one line. They are broken over 2 lines below due to the length.
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bUpdater /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bShowEbookMenu /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bPurchaseAcro /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bCreatePDFOnline /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bBrowserIntegration /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\AdobeViewer” /v EULA /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\AdobeViewer” /v Launched /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\Downtown” /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\Downtown” /v bDontShowAtLaunch /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\Downtown” /v bGoOnline /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
- Soli Deo Gloria
Published on April 1, 2010
Saw this ad on Microsoft Technet a few days ago, thought it was pretty funny and decided to post it on April fools:
Hey Joe, there’s this command called dcpromo…
- Soli Deo Gloria
Published on March 26, 2010
For 24 hours only: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/siw/
I went to look where it hides the license, but it appears to be embedded within the EXE itself. I copied the EXE to another box and it was still registered to Giveawayoftheday. There is an update check feature in the program, so you might be able to continually keep it update with the Giveawayoftheday license. I’ll update this posting with whatever I find. Until then, enjoy!
Update: You can’t update the Giveawayoftheday version. The license is programmed directly into the EXE itself.
- Soli Deo Gloria
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