MTU

There was an issue when some PCs could not perform a specific (mmbe,f8) operation in SAP and produced error "connection reset by peer".

The problem was fixed by addding MTU parameter (1300) into WXP registry, it was missing for some reason. Refer to the SAP note 155147

Feel lost in different power plugs standards?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_AC_power_plugs_and_sockets

UserDump Tool

For the issues described here

Userdump tool from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241215/en-us

Users complain that they can not open TIF after Office 2003 SP3

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938813

Disable services you do not need in Windows XP

http://www.techgalaxy.net/docs/winxp/tweaking_winxp_services.htm

Windows XP virtual PC SID change

As you know it's easy to clone Virtual machines, but two clones must have different SID to work correctly simultaneously in the network, such as Active Directory. There is a MS tool called "newsid" that allows to change SID and PC name. The tool can assign random or predefined SID to the system. Clones also need different MAC address.

Cisco Secure Desktop and Vista

Cisco Secure Desktop release. 3.2 does not support Secure Session in Vista. It will perform only cache clean.

 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/csd/csd32/release/notes/CSDRn32.html#wp39068

 

Table 1 Operating Systems Supported by Cisco Secure Desktop
Operating Systems1	Prelogin Assessment	Host Scan	Secure Session	Cache Cleaner2
Microsoft Windows Vista	Y	Y	-	Y
Microsoft Windows XP	Y	Y	Y	Y
Microsoft Windows 2000	Y	Y	Y	Y
Apple Macintosh OS X 10.4 (PowerPC or Intel)	-	-	-	Y
Linux	-	-	-	Y

 

1 Includes both English and non-English support for 32-bit Microsoft operating systems. Cisco Secure Desktop does not support the 64-bit versions. 2 Cache Cleaner also supports WebLaunch of Cisco AnyConnect on a PC running Windows 2000 or XP.

 

Exchange cluster error id 1146

The error described earlier is back again:

0000130c.00001324::2007/10/04-02:47:25.190 ERR [RM] SymInitialize failed, GLE=-1073741819.
0000130c.00001324::2007/10/04-02:47:25.190 ERR [RM] Failed to initialize Dbghelp.dll.
0000130c.00001324::2007/10/04-02:47:25.190 ERR [RM] Active Resource = 000A4778
0000130c.00001324::2007/10/04-02:47:25.190 ERR [RM] Resource State is 12, "ResourceTypeControl"
0000130c.00001324::2007/10/04-02:47:25.190 ERR [RM] Resource name is TR_Mailbox
0000130c.00001324::2007/10/04-02:47:25.190 ERR [RM] Resource type is Volume Manager Disk Group
00000af4.00001320::2007/10/04-02:47:25.299 ERR [FM] NotifyChanges got an RPC failure, 1726.
00000af4.00001320::2007/10/04-02:47:25.299 WARN [FM] Resource monitor 130c NotifyChanges returned failure.
00000af4.00001320::2007/10/04-02:47:25.299 WARN [FM] Last resource monitor state: 12, resource 673656.

The error definitely is in Disk resource. We use Veritas Software Foundation, so this error might needs to be escalated to Symantec.

HP DL360G4 HDtach

I'm trying to measure the disk performance of the HP DL360G4,G5, DL380G4 servers.
I have configuration with two disks 72GB 15K in mirror (RAID 1+0 in ACU settings)

HDtach 3.0 gives me burst speed 145 MB/s, which is twice lower than shown SCSI Ultra320. Is it normal? Is it possible to improve the performance without changing from mirror to stripe?

MXtreme borderware reporting error

MXtreme 6.5 update 4 (we use it as SMTP gateway for Exchange)- in the monthly reports the calculations gone really bad. It shows negative! number of clean messages. Then obviously in the pie chart you can not see them.

I had the same issue a year ago, but no solution was provided by Borderware at that time. Now it seems that new version 7.1 has improved reporting engine.

Green address bar in Vista IE7 - Extended Validation Certificate

Some https sites now have this new type of certificates - EV

IE7 in Vista will highlight EV site with green colour and will show the Certification Authority who certified the site. Example: https://sourceforge.net

Read about EV:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ev/default.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Validation_Certificate

Vista roaming user profiles

Roaming profiles have different structure in Vista and XP. If you have profiles defined as
\\fileserver\profiles$\%username% in the ADUC for a user, then XP will use this path for roaming profile, but Vista will be looking for the same folder but with .V2 extention. So, add second folder with the samename.V2 for those who use both XP and Vista

Desktop wallpaper for servers

Microsoft has a nice free tool - backinfo (and bginfo). It allows to show tech info about the server in the Desktop background. Very useful for the servers that you access with Remote Desktop Connection (RDP).