Tariq Jaber.. IT Professional

Hello all,

I’ve received this “Ten secrets of success” via email today and I’d like to share it with you

1. How you think is everything: Always be positive.  Think success, not failure.  Beware of a negative environment.
2. Decide upon your true dreams and goals: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.
3.  Take action: Goals are nothing without action.  Don’t be afraid to get started.  Just do it.
4.  Never stop learning: Go back to school or read books.   Get training and acquire skills.
5.  Be persistent and work hard: Success is a marathon, not a sprint.  Never give up.
6.  Learn to analyze details: Get all the facts, all the input.  Learn from your mistakes.
7.  Focus your time and money: Don’t let other people or things distract you.
8.  Don’t be afraid to innovate; Be different: Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.
9.  Deal and communicate with people effectively: No person is an island.  Learn to understand and motivate others.
10.  Be honest and dependable; Take responsibility: Otherwise, numbers 1-9 won’t matter.

Today I was searching for a script that can tell if a user is in Active Directory or I have to create it. I found this powerful scrip “How Can I Search Active Directory for User Names Stored in an Excel Spreadsheet?”

It reads users from Excel sheet and writes “Found” or “Not found” besides the user name.

Save it, I’m sure you will need it one day

I’ve got this message on one of the Dell PowerEdge 6850 servers
SBE Log Disabled. The blue indicator stoped blinking and the amber indicator started blinking.

This is an information only indication. I went to the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator and installed it. When you open it, it will run as a web interface. Go to Logs and click on Clear logs.

This should make the indicator blinking in blue.

When you install Exchange Server in a child domain, the Outlook clients may try to communicate with the global catalog in the parent domain, this will cause a problem if the parent and the child domain is not in the same site or there is a firewall between the clients and the servers in the parent domain and cause the outlook to respond slowly.

To solve this issue you can force Outlook to communicate directly with the global catalog server in its site or with the closest catalog if the client moves between sites.
Notice that you need to edit a registry value, so make sure you take a backup of your registry before changing any value.

To force Outlook to communicate with the closest global catalog server:
-Open the Registry Editor. Click Start, click Run, type regedit.exe, and then click OK.
-Locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider
You may have to create the registry path if it does not exist.
-On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: Closest GC
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1
-Quit Registry Editor.

Or use the following command to create the key and the value:
REG ADD “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider” /v “Closest GC” /t REG_DWORD /d 1

To force Outlook to communicate with the a specific global catalog server:
-Open the Registry Editor. Click Start, click Run, type regedit.exe, and then click OK.
-Locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider
You may have to create the registry path if it does not exist.
-On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: DS Server
Data type: REG_SZ (string)
Value data: FQDN.OF.GlobalCatalog
-Quit Registry Editor.

Or use the following command to create the key and the value:
REG ADD “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider” /v “DS Server” /t REG_SZ /d GC.Child.Domain.Local

If the Num Lock key bothers you when you startup your PC, here is how to disable it.
Notice that you need to edit a registry value, so make sure you take a backup of your registry before changing any value.

Click Start –> Run > regedit :
Locate the key [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard], change the value of
[InitialKeyboardIndicators] from 2 to 0.

2 means that Num lock is turned ON at startup
1 means that Num lock is disabled
0 means that Num lock is turned OFF at startup
 

Some Secure Nat clients behind ISA server 2006 may face a problem browsing HTTPS websites and other websites that require login like http://mail.yahoo.com and http://hotmail.com. Monitoring a client facing this issue results in one or both of the following logs:
0x80074E24  FWX_E_CONNECTION_KILLED
0×0040017    FWX_E_TCP_NOT_SYN_Packet_Dropped

Such a problem can be solved by disabling “Web Proxy Filter” on the HTTPS traffic.
To do so:
Firewall Policy –> Toolbox >[Protocols] > right click the HTTPS protocol. In the Parameters tab, uncheck the Web Proxy Filter, since the HTTPS traffic is not cache.

For more information, refer to the KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944006

The following step describes how to reset the domain admin password in Windows Server 2003 Active Directory.

In order to perform this procedure you need the Directory Services Restore Mode Administrator account password to log on locally to the Domain Controller which you’ll use to reset the account password.
You also need to use two tools:
- Instsrv.exe: Service Installer
- Srvany.exe: Applications as Services Utility
Found in the “Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools”, you can download it from Microsoft website.

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If you have installed Exchange 2007 on a Single Copy Cluster (SCC) server you may have the Offline Address Book generation process failed with the event id 9334 and 9109.

EntryType : Error
EventID : 9334
Message : OALGen encountered error ffffffff while initializing the offline address list
generation process. No offline address lists have been generated.
Please check the event log for more information.
- Default Offline Address Book

Category : OAL Generator
CategoryNumber : 13
ReplacementStrings : {ffffffff, Default Offline Address Book}
Source : MSExchangeSA
TimeGenerated : 7/17/2008 3:10:31 PM
TimeWritten : 7/17/2008 3:10:31 PM

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If the menu bar and the tabs in the Task Manager doesn’t appear, simply double click the border of the Task Manager.

Some times we need to store the My Documents folder on a partition other than C:\, this may help protecting the documents in case we have to format C:\ because of some errors.
To change the default location of the My Documents folder, do the following steps:

Right-click My Documents, and then click Properties. Click the Target tab. In the Target box, you can:

• Type the path to the folder location that you want, and then click OK . For example, D:\My Documents. If the folder does not exist, the Create Message dialog box is displayed. Click Yes to create the folder, and then click OK.
• Or click Move , select the destination folder, and then click OK twice. If you need to create a new folder, click Make New Folder. Type a name for the folder, and then click OK twice.

In the Move Documents box, click Yes to move your documents to the new location, or click No to leave your documents in the original location.