Wednesday 18 August 2010

Fix missing PCs in WSUS Console

Fix missing PCs in WSUS Console


I (like most admins) use ghost to prep new or repaired workstations. I don't do a sysprep after the image is built.

This can lead to these new machines not showing up in the WSUS console even after a "wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow" : although they do pick up the updates anyway.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Make VMware Virtual NICs part of an "identified network" to avoid firewall issues on running VMs

When you install VMware Workstation or Player on a Windows 7 machine you will notice that if you hover your mouse over the network icon in the system tray your network is mentioned in the popup: plus "unidentified network". This can cause you serious bother if you are running virtual machines and want to connect them to the internet as the virtual network cards (NIC) for the NAT or bridged networks are no longer within the parameters set by the operating system's firewall.

To get round this:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

Click the follwoing subkey:HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Browse through the 00xx subkeys until you find the REG_SZ VMNet subkey with a value of either “\DosDevices\VMnet8” or “\DosDevices\VMnet1” (default values) (13 & 15?)

On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type *NdisDeviceType, and then press Enter.

On the Edit menu, click Modify.

Type 1, and then click OK.

Exit Registry Editor.

Disable & re-enable the VMWare NICs

DoneNote: In case simply disabling and re-enabling the virtual NICs doesn’t fix the problem immediately reboot your computer.

God Mode

God Mode

 Here is how you get access to it:


Banish UAC

Banish UAC


For Windows 7 Ultimate, Business or Enterprise edition which has Local Group Policy, or computer joined to domain and has Active Directory-based GPO, the group policy can be used to disable UAC for local computer or many computer across large networks at once.

A better view of Explorer

When you click on your Windows explorer link in your taskbar Windows 7 will default to showing you the "libraries" view.

This may not be what you want: especially since many do not use the libraries feature much as yet.

Monday 16 August 2010

Issues with the Lotus Notes Client

I've always tried to stay up to date with the many updates to the Lotus Notes client. We are now running 8.5.1 fixpack 4, but I have found some shortcomings that are annoying.

On 64 bit windows 7 machines the notes single logon does not work, we can move to their new "preferred" method (shared login) via a policy file, but this does not update the password for web access, and the shared login feature has to be manually removed first.

Also on 64 bit: when you try to drag the notes icon from the desktop onto the task bar: it does not stick. A minor point granted: but how come it always seems to be this client that is the last to conform to accepted standards?