Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Microsoft Problem Steps Recorder for Windows 7

If you are a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 user, this utility might be useful to you.  Problem steps recorder allows you record the activities leading up to a problem, then save that to a mht file that you can send to support.  If you have an error on an IIS application (yellow screen) then it will even copy all that information out as text and put it as part of the capture.  I like this utility because it’s easy for the user and useful for support…in fact I’m not only a fan, I’m a user of it!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320286.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/appv/archive/2010/04/12/document-sequencing-on-windows-7-with-the-problem-sequencing-steps-recorder.aspx

For more information contact us at www.webactivedirectory.com, or call us at (+1) 800-747-3565

Certificate error using Citrix Receiver on the iPad

If you’re like me and you use Citrix products and have been looking forward to trying the Citrix Receiver for the iPad then you might have the same issue I did.  I have always used a Windows client when using the Receiver or Online Plug-in.  Well…it turns out that the Receiver on the iPad doesn’t like it when you are using a GoDaddy certificate and don’t have the intermediate certificate on the Access Gateway.  So…if you’re getting an error “you have not chosen to trust go daddy secure certification authority” what you need to do is link the intermediate certificate to the certificate you’re handing out.  Follow the link below, it will work for Netscaler and Access Gateway.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX114146

Windows Active Directory update solutions for the small-medium sized enterprises: Top 5

At Web Active Directory, we get a good number of prospects that visit our website and ask for evaluations for our products. One category of prospects includes small- to medium-sized businesses looking for ways to automate and delegate Windows Active Directory updates to end-users. Companies sized from 100 – 1,000 employees typically have this need. Our PeopleUpdate solution provides an extremely robust set of features that often overwhelm enterprises like this, but once you peel back the covers and really understand the power of PeopleUpdate with regard to time savings, there can be a HUGE ROI from a productivity perspective.

One objection we often hear about our solutions is that “we don’t need all of the bells and whistles, just the minimum to get by.” This totally makes sense as we are a small business as well and are always giving this type of objection to vendors that we are looking at to help us run our business. However, we find that Active Directory admins in smaller enterprises typically wear more hats than just being an AD admin. Having a solution that can help automate multiple AD tasks that these admins currently have to accomplish allows time to focus on more pressing issues rather than making Active Directory updates.  And Active Directory self-service updates are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to delegation. I would like to give you the top five reasons why many smaller enterprises benefit from a more robust solution and the top feedback we get from them when you do invest in PeopleUpdate:

  1. Delegating distribution group management is a huge time saver for almost all prospects we talk to. Automating the process for adding/deleting members in groups is powerful when you look at how often this occurs in even the smallest organizations.
  2. Delegate user management functions such as password resets, Windows user account unlocks and enablements to the help desk, office administrators or managers. Once you get past your first thought of not doing this because of the security issues and deploy this functionality, you will see how beneficial this is and how easy it is to securely deploy this feature.
  3. Allow different AD updates to departments that own the information. For example, HR should have the ability to update a person’s title, location, department, distribution groups, managed by, and other attributes. Extremely powerful functionality when you get into who can see and update what information about a user as the possibilities are endless and can really be customized to meet about every scenario out there.
  4. Run reports against your Active Directory that can show information about users, computers, groups, network shares, or other objects in Active Directory. The sky is the limit on how you can use Active Directory information. Want to know how many disabled users, or Windows XP computers, or employees in your Pittsburg office? Or better yet, have the business owner that actually owns that information pull it herself.
  5. Target who sees what information about a person or group. While searching for employees in Active Directory, there are times when you would like the user to see certain information about the user for which they are searching, and sometimes not. For example, IT and HR users should be viewing different information about your employees than regular end-users so they can act on that information more quickly.

These are only the top five reasons. Typically, once prospects see our PeopleUpdate tool in their environment and everything it can do to eliminate repetitive and monotonous AD tasks that you currently complete on a daily and weekly basis, folks get on board. And once I give you the price, you will be even more impressed.

Please contact us today to get your free 30-day evaluation of PeopleUpdate so you can see for yourself that self-service Active Directory updates are only the beginning to how you can save time and money!

For more information contact us at www.webactivedirectory.com, or call us at (+1) 800-747-3565.

For Windows admins with Mac OSX not able to reconnect to an Active Directory domain

Some great resources for Windows Admins with Mac OS X v10.6 users:

The issue is: If network access is interrupted, a Mac OS X v10.6 client may not be able to reconnect to an Active Directory domain whose name ends in “.local”.The blog is written by mostofmymac.com and provides several resource links to help resolve any issues.

http://bit.ly/9n8KbJ

For more information contact us at www.webactivedirectory.com, or call us at (+1) 800-747-3565

Don’t forget to cast you vote for either Active Directory or eDirectory

See the poll in the right navigation right here on our blog.  Poll will be closing soon!  Please post some comments too as we will be posting the results along with your comment when the poll ends!

www.webactivedirectory.com

How To Use an Internal Email Address But Forward Externally

When I worked in a large organization this question came up from time to time with our Microsoft Exchange email system, especially when working with external contractors.  How can I give our xzy.com company address to a contractor and forward their email to the contractors external email address?  Why would one want to do this?

  • Consistency
  • Impression that the contractor works for the company
  • Journaling will keep a copy of the message for compliance
  • Ease of use for internal employees to find contractor in Global Address List or Active Directory

Here’s your how-to link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff381469.aspx

Now maybe someone wants to send me the powershell commands for doing this with scripts?

Contact Web Active Directory LLC and let us know how we can help.

www.webactivedirectory.com

My new Intel x-25 SSD drive

I woke up earlier this week to a Lenovo Thinkpad application I wasn’t even aware of that ran and does diagnostic tests periodically to my T61 laptop…the results were not good: S.M.A.R.T. was reporting an error and impending failure of my drive.  Now I live on my laptop and I knew this day would come and I knew what I would buy next – An Intel x25 G2 (34nm) SSD drive.  A few hundred dollars later and my laptop SCREAMS, got a 7.2 on the Disk data transfer rate that the Windows Experience Index runs…not bad!  Long live SSD!

Have questions? Contact us at www.webactivedirectory.com

VMware Thinapp Buildcache

If you’ve spent any time building large Thinapp packages then perhaps you’ve run into the problem of running out of hard drive space on the C:\ partition.  For me it was when I was trying to build an Office 2007 SP2 package on Windows XP SP3 and the template I used had only 8GB of local disk space.  First I added a new virtual disk to the virtual machine and did my builds on that drive but I was still running out of space on the C:\ drive.  After a minute of looking I found this folder C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Thinstall\BuildCache.  I first tried a couple of VMware articles that said you could change the location of this cache by using environment variables, which I did but did not have any effect.  I then found a forum post that said this buildcache could not be moved: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1224058

After a couple minutes of thought I said the heck with this and created a mount path to my newly added drive and now my package is off to the races.  In case you don’t know how to do a mountpath on Windows here’s a link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

In the future, I would recommend making VERY large c:\ partitions for your Windows XP VMware Thinapp build VM’s or be ready for lots of failures.

Feel free to contact us at www.webactivedirectory.com

Microsoft Active Directory vs. Novell eDirectory

As I mentioned in my last post, we are at the TCEA conference in Austin, Texas and are having amazing success showing how our Active Directory update and self-service password reset tool can really help School Districts and their IT admins save enormous amounts of time and energy.

What I was not ready for was the number of school districts that are still running Novell eDirectory and either trying to migrate to Active Directory, or dead set against it based on past experience, or simplyh not wanting to change.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that eDirectory is a subpar or inadequate directory service, I am just unfamiliar with its advantages, or disadvantages.

So – What I would like to here from you is some pros and cons for both Novell eDirectory and Microsoft Active Direcory.  What product do you prefer and why?

Terminal Server CALs for your MSDN license

If you are the proud subscriber to MSDN and you’re wondering where your Terminal Server or Remote Desktop Services CALs are, then this article is for you.  I’m personally very big on the Desktop Virtualization movement, of which Remote Desktop Services (RDS) / Terminal Services (TS) plays a part.  At Web Active Directory I’m just experimenting with some ways to help our sales and support team be more efficient and looking at some Citrix and Microsoft Virtual Desktop options to do so.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa948876.aspx

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