Supporting Technology with Technology.: Enable 24 bit color in RDP for XP or 2003 Server

Supporting Technology with Technology.: Enable 24 bit color in RDP for XP or 2003 Server

The default maximum color depth for rdp connections to windows 2003 server terminal servers or to windows XP desktops is 16 bits. Although in the drop down in the options sections of the rdp connection program there is true color 24 bit shown as one of the selection options, the connection is never made at 16 bits. That's because the remote XP desktop or windows 2003 server has a default limit of 16 bits. To connect with true color 24 bit rdp a change o nthe remote computer has to be made using group policy editor. This can be done for a whole domain by linking the the policy to a domain OU or per computer by using the local group policy editor. The images show how to change the the pre-defined default color limit on XP or windows 2003 server limits the color depth of RDP connections made to the the systems to a 16 bit maximum. How to configure the "server side" of remote desktop to accept connections at 24-bit true color. Windows 7, Vista, and server 2008 already allow higher that 24 bit color by default.

What happened to dsa.msc in 2008 windows server.

What happened to dsa.msc on windows 2008 server?

A simple yet effective tool for admins and other tech support specialists that often had to access AD users and computers on the fly. Simply running this command on a windows 2003 member server would open the domain users and computers and allow changes and addition provided the user account with which it was run had sufficient access privileges.

In windows 2008 server this handy little feature is just that, a feature, and needs to be added separately. The image in this post shows which options to select to add the functionality back into the member server. If you used the command a lot then it's worth the several minutes to add it. It could wind up saving you server and user administration time in the long run and it doesn't require a restart. Just install and go.

Dell SAS 6/iR RAID Controller

Dell SAS6/iR Integrated SAS Controller Card Storage controller (RAID)- Serial ATA-300 / SAS- 300 MBps

This RAID controller card does not support RAID 5 or RAID 10. In fact it doesn't support any RAID configuration except for RAID 1 and RAID 0, that's it. It's a Plug-in card that's PCI Express x8 with 2 CH for PC and Unix. The Dell SAS6/iR integrated SAS controller card is designed to connect internal physical hard drives in workstations and servers. It's entry level and comes standard in the dell Poweredge r610 server. The SAS6/iR utilizes high performance SAS 3 Gbps technology to connect to the all the physical internal hard drives. It supports two internal x4 SAS connectors, each containing four ports for a total bandwidth of 12 Gbps, per connector. This card also supports for RAID levels 0 and 1 but not any RAID levels that are higher. It features integrated ARM I/O processor for processing all RAID 0 and RAID 1 operations. Up to 10 physical disks are supported by the integrated striping the SAS6/iR provides. The controller is incorporated with global hot spare feature, it can support a maximum of 2 global hot spares one for each virtual disk.

Dell Storage Controllers

Desktop and server remote access support software

Consolidated HMC 4.5 Server List

Consolidated HMC 4.5 Server List

Microsoft's Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5 platform can be run in a consolidated fashion. Although there's no "official" document that outlines or details the steps involved to detract from the normal deployment. There is an unofficial guide to the HMC 4.0 deployment and that can be used as a basic deployment guide. Although there are differences between the two versions of the deployment and the references in the unofficial deployment document to the Microsoft TechNet doc are all broken, it can give you an outline of deployment.

I have to say that after using this method and indeed after taking making shortcuts to achieve a functioning hosted messaging system, it worked. The collaboration deployment I did not complete. It was required. I deployed only the exchange environment and this is working fine, including outlook anywhere and outlook web access . I'm using the sample provisioning tool and did encounter one awful message when deploying mailboxes for one of the organizations. I was able to create new accounts for the organization but cannot add mailboxes to new accounts. If a mailbox is removed for one of the existing users it cannot be re-added either. Other organization in the hosted environment are not having this problem.

Here's my consolidated server list for HMC 4.5 (10 servers,messaging only).

AD01
AD02
ExCAS01
ExCASOAB01
ExCASHUBEXT01
ExMBX01
ExMBXOAB01
ExUM01
FE01
MPSSQL01

There's no clustering of Exchange servers nor the SQL servers. Microsoft's Plan is much better than this. This is a watered down version as it is a consolidated incarnation of a well planned, thorough and developed solution from Microsoft. In addition, I am relying on the redundancy and failover achieved from the fact I am running all servers on a virtual platform.

Image below is from Microsoft's Deployement Walkthrough > Architecture

How to Uninstall Remove ePO Agent

How to remove the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Agent (EPO agent)



Uninstalling the ePO Agent v3 (Shield icon in system tray)
Open a command prompt and fo to the following product installation location:
C:\Program files\Network Associates\Common Framework\
Ten Run the followign command
FrmInst.exe /Remove=Agent



Other options include:
frminst /remove=agent
frminst /remove=updater
frminst /forceuninstall






Need to extract .rar compressed files but want the extra bells and wistles of winRAR?
Information and user opinion for using ExtractNow to Extract rar files without WinRAR can be found at this personal site.

HP Online Desktop Diagnostic Memory Test

HP On-Line Diagnostic - Model HP Compaq dc5100 SFF Memory

This is one of the things that I prefer and like that HP does that at least recently I've not seen from Dell. The fact that I could run a memory test, and not just a status test, while a computer was still in Windows XP.

With Dell, I had to take the system off-line and then run a deep memory scan. With HP's online diagnostics memory test, I was able to keep the desktop system online.


This particualr desktop however, had no memory errors. the computer was acting very erratic. It would freeze, applications would hang, and the time of these accurances was random almost like a memory problem but without blue screens or hard stop errors. The applications and computer would just hang, requiring a hard reboot. This is also a symtom of a tempurature problem. I found this nice little program very handy for checking on the system fans and the tempurature of the desktop.

A nice little freeware product that's a nice little addition to the toolbox is called SpeedFan. Besides the memory test, I installed and ran SpeedFan and it really helped with the problem. It showed the sensores installed on the motherboard and their individual RPM speeds. It also showed the current temperatures of the sensors and not surprisingly, there was an image of flames on one of them and another fan with 0 RPM - it was not spinning at all.

A Simple Program to Extract .rar Archives.

ExtractNow is a handy little program that needs to get noticed. If you hate having to install software on your computer that you really don;t use often and really don;t want because of the changes that it's going to make to your system then this is the program if for you for extracting files from rar archives quickly.

I really liked this program for it's fast and simple installation. The download from of the installation package was also very small, just 1 megabyte (1MB). It downloads fast and gets to work fast to get the files out of rar files and into a folder where you can use them.

When Microsoft added the zip technology into the windows explorer shell on every desktop, zip archives became the standard for compressing files. Every now and then I need to decompress files from a rar archive and I have always in the past installed WinRAR to do this and never really used the application again to compress anything. This time on a new Windows Vista system I didn't want to install a big program that makes all sorts of file association changes and adds stuff to the explorer context menu and add a ton of keys and strings into the registry. I wanted a simple program to just extract the files from a rar archive file.

A quick search on the web and I found this little gem, ExtractNow. It's small, it does the job I need it to do and nothing more. I'll never compress a rar file when I can easily create a zip from the explorer right-click context menu so i don;t need a feature rich program if I just want to extract files from a RAR archive. WinRAR and others do have many features built into their programs and some included features for backing up file and folders from you computer to other media or network locations. For just extracting files, those big feature rich archival programs too much for me. Addition information and user opinion for using ExtractNow to Extract rar files without WinRAR can be found at this personal site.