I thought I’d be using Notepad++ or TextPad, both fine in their own right, but instead found PowerGUI. This PowerShell editor which finds syntax errors, includes definitions and much more; all for the low, low price of free. This seems to be a community supported by Quest Software who has a bunch of fine (not so free) tools for SysAdmins.

I’m now able to work on, and run, the script off network (read: at home). It’s a helluva deal for the price, try PowerGUI for your next PowerShell outing.

Typically the simplest fix is to boot from the Vista install media and choose Repair, then System Restore. The trouble with this system was that System Restore was turned off and there weren’t any checkpoints to go back to.

Enter the endless search online. More IT troubleshooting by Bing and Google. I’m not exactly sure which search engine got me there, but one forum listed the answer (albeit two hundered or so, lines down the page).
Boot from a Vista or Windows 7 disk and choose Repair, then Recovery Console. Once you have a command line to work with, cd to C:\windows\winsxs and del pending.xml, exit to reboot again and you’ll see the “Configuring Updates…” message once more, but it will continue to the Windows login screen allowing for celebrations all around.

This was the fix that worked for me, hopefully you’ll have the same luck.

After chewing on this for quite a while, I found the issue: a checkbox on the Ports tab “SNMP Status Enabled”, which when checked (along with SNMP turned off on the print device) will result in the printer being listed as Offline. Once the box was unchecked, it was back online and the customer was back to printing once again.

This is really a pretty simple hack:

Create a New Folder, rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

You can actually name it whatever you want before the dot, i.e. LinusMode, Dave, Matrix, etc. The icon will change to the one used for the Control Panel, and when opened it will list a plethora of settings.

Have fun, and be careful.

I thought I was in for some laptop disassembly to remove the CMOS battery or change a jumper; perhaps even worse, to send it back to a repair depot for reset; but it was amazingly easy. 

All that had to be done was hold down the insert key while the system was booting to reset the BIOS back to default. Okay, I had to do this three times before it worked, but it worked.

Although I was relieved to be done with this in just a minute or two, making it this easy to do a reset completely invalidates the security afforded by having a BIOS password in the first place.

Anyhow, it is now happily running Fedora 11; which BTW required 515 updates for 1.6GB (and people complain about Windows updates).

One of my clients has a Linux Certificate Authority and none of the Windows systems would give an invalid or unknown certificate authority error when visiting a company website that used a cert created by the CA.

Get your root certificate ready, then fire up the Group Policy Management Console (or gpmc.msc). Either create a new group policy or use the Default Domain Policy to deploy it to every system.

Right-click the policy of your chosing and select Edit… go to Computer Configuration > (Policies, if you are using Windows 2008 ) > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Public Key Policies > Trusted Root Certification Authorities, right-click and choose Import… and using the import wizard browse over to your root certificate and you are done.

Within a few days most computers on the domain should have the certificate, aside from the stragglers who never seem to be on the network.

You can grab the 120 day trial here. And this time there is no 32-bit version, as with the Exchange 2007 trial.

And if you are a TechNet or MSDN subscriber, the full (non-expiring) version is available for download as well.

The “Introducing” series of MS Press books are hardly a technical treatise on whatever subject they happen to cover, but in my opinion, free information regarding their latest products is always a good thing.

And thanks again goes to Bink.nu for this post.

You can head on over to Red Gate Software’s site for a free eBook on Exchange 2010. I guess I should start reading, it’ll be here sooner than later.

Not sure how long this will last, so get’em while they’re hot.

Windows 7 has been unleashed upon the world today; enjoy!

PS. For those of us who have TechNet or MSDN, we’ve had the official release version for many weeks. Next time be one of the first with Windows 8 128-bit ;^)