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Lenovo System Update UNCServer.exe
I had a moment of panic this morning when I discovered UNCServer.exe running on my Windows 7 workstation. I thought it was a VNC server, which could allow external control of my PC. Do I have a virus?...
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Office 365 SMTP Relay: What KB2600912 Doesn’t Tell You
Yesterday I was trying to set up Office 365 to relay email messages from Line-of-Business applications. I was following the smart-host method described in Microsoft KB2600912: How to set up an SMTP...
View ArticleWrite Cache Warnings on Hyper-V Guest after KB2853952
Starting in September 2013, Windows Server 2012 R2 machines running as Hyper-V guests started issuing these warnings on reboot: Log Name: System Source: Disk Event ID: 32 Level:...
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Block User Folder Executables
One suggestion for blocking the Cryptolocker ransomware virus is to prevent execution of *.exe files in the %AppData% folder and its subfolders. I wanted to make the restriction a little more generic...
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Windows Update High CPU
I’ve had a couple of Windows XP virtual machines get hung trying to do Windows Updates this month. CPU usage approaches 100% and if I do a manual update check through Internet Explorer, the green bar...
View ArticleServer 2012 R2 Post-Upgrade Tasks
A couple days ago, I upgraded my Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V host to Server 2012 R2. I had to remove an old eSATA card that doesn’t have 2012 drivers, but other than that, the upgrade went pretty...
View ArticleReset the Windows 7 System Tray Icons
Every so often, my system tray icons lose their pictures, usually because the server that they point to was offline for a while. Then I have to go hunting for the solution, even the one I posted on...
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Thousands of WMI Event ID 10 Errors after Server 2012 R2 Upgrade
I recently upgraded my Hyper-V host from Server 2008 R2 to 2012 R2. It’s not domain-joined, and I did an in-place upgrade. Every 11 seconds, I was getting the following error in the Application event...
View ArticleServer 2012 R2 not Replicating SYSVOL from Server 2012
I recently added a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine to my domain and moved the FSMO roles to it from the old Server 2012 machine. However, when I opened Group Policy Management on the destination, it...
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Run a .NET 2.0 App under IIS 8 on Server 2012 R2
When you first set up Server Essentials 2012 R2 with Anywhere Access, IIS 8 is configured with .NET v4.5 only. If you try to run a .NET 2.0 application, you may get a message like this: Compilation...
View ArticleRemote Desktop Gateway Causes ESENT 490 Errors on Server 2012 R2 Essentials
On every restart of a new Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials machine, I get several instances of the following errors in the Application event log: Log Name: Application Source: ESENT Event...
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Temporary Internet Files Missing Under IE 11
This was a strange one. Symptoms: In Word 2010 and Publisher 2010, clip art does not show preview images. Cutting and pasting an image from a web page fails. IE 11 keeps no browsing history, not even...
View ArticleHP MediaSmart LX195 Server Recovery
I’m preparing to sell a LX195 that is no longer needed. I put in a blank hard drive and tried to do a server recovery so I could get to the Factory Reset option. But it kept failing during step 3 of 4....
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Restore Server 2012 R2 to a ThinkCentre M93p Desktop
There are several differences since the last time I did a disaster recovery restore test. The server is now a Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials on “bare metal,” i.e. no...
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Set Up Client Restore on Server 2012 R2 Essentials
A few months back, I migrated to Server 2012 R2 Essentials. I read how the client restore service works: just start the service on the server and boot the client from the network—no restore DVD...
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BitLocker on Windows 8.1 Standard
My new Asus Transformer Book T100 running Windows 8.1 (Standard, not Pro), authenticating with my Microsoft account, has Device Encryption (BitLocker) enabled. Nice! Check out these articles on...
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Using Google Apps for E-mail Filtering Only
I have a small client with an in-house mail server. Their cloud-based spam filter just wasn’t keeping up—too much spam was making it through. I wanted to try Google Apps Gmail as a spam filter but let...
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Connect to Postgres on EC2 using pgAdmin
A few quick notes on connecting to a Postgres database running on an Amazon EC2 instance using pgAdmin with its built-in SSH tunneling option. 1. If you want to connect as the postgres admin user, add...
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Care and Feeding of your RapidSSL Certificate on AWS
I purchased a GeoTrust RapidSSL certificate from Namecheap to install on an Amazon Web Services Elastic Load Balancer. I won’t go into all the details of deploying SSL on AWS here, but I do want to...
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Find and Block a Rogue WiFi Device
I manage a small network that uses a router running Tomato firmware to host a guest wireless network on separate VLAN (setup guide). The modest 3000/512 DSL connection is easy to overload but after a...
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