Archive for General IT

What’s new and shiny in Win 7 for IT Pros?

If, like me, you’re eagerly anticipating Win 7, you could do a lot worse than check out what’s new in Win 7 for IT Pros.

If you prefer video/speech to reading, there’s a very good video available for download as well :)

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When was Windows installed?

If you want to know when Windows was installed on a PC, try this from a command prompt:

systeminfo | find /i “install date”

Picked this one up from windowsnetworking.com :)

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How to make Visual Studio 2005 automatically install SQL Server Express 2005 SP2

As standard, the Visual Studio 2005 setup installs the original SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. In most environments this is highly undesirable – particularly as Vista has “app compatability” issues with the original SQL Express 2005.

If you want to get the Visual Studio setup to install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 instead, check out these great instructions by Aaron Stebner.

Here’s what I did for reference:

  1. Went to the SQL Express 2005 SP2 download page.
  2. Downloaded both packages.
  3. Navigated to the Visual Studio install share and located the SQL Express installers (\wcu\SSE\).
  4. Renamed the existing installers to *.old
  5. Copied the new installers to the same directory.
  6. All done :)
Thanks again Aaron!

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How to enable Remote Desktop via Group Policy

This one had me stumped, but it’ll teach me to search the internet properly before blundering through. Even if you allow the Windows Firewall to accept Remote Desktop Connections you still need to enable Terminal Services elsewhere in the GP hierarchy. D’oh!

Here’s what you need to enable Remote Desktop remotely:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > Network Connections > Windows Firewall > Domain Profile > Windows Firewall: Allow Remote Desktop Exception

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Terminal Services > Allow users to connect remotely using Terminal Services

Enable both of those options and you’ll be Remote Desktop-ing into PCs by the next day :) (or rather, until your Domain clients refresh their Group Policy settings ;) )

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How to Obtain the Java MSI Installer

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/deployment/deployment-guide/install-msi.html

The info seems slighty…wrong :/

Here’s where I found mine:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Sun\Java\jre1.6.0_11

Enjoy ;)

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