The law of the 6 P's When I first started out in the IT industry I was fortunate enough to work with someone who was incredibly well versed in Windows and taught me a lot about transitiing networks from
Tools Tiddly Wiki's For a couple of projects I'm working on it's nice to have 'scratchpad' type area where information can be quickly written and accessed. A wiki is perfect for this type of information because
Security InfoSec I had the pleasure of attending this years infosec event at Olympia and it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon - even with the hard sell By some vendors!! I wasn't aware of any
Tips Display FSMO role holders Imagine the scene - You are consultant and have been asked to fix an Active Directory issue - One of the first things you need to find out is where all the FSMO
Idle Ramblings Automated phone systems Working in the IT field means I'm often on the phone to different companies and the one thing I VERY quickly learn to hate are the automated call handling systems that it seems
Security Further exploits for DNS Remote management vulnerability Last Friday Microsoft announced a new security vulnerability in DNS management, today the advisory was updated to include reports of an attack in the wild that is trying to exploit this hole. Whilst
Say goodbye to initative When I joined my first IT department a lot of things were new to me but I was expected to basically get on with it. Sure I could ask questions and I could
Security Goodbye Easter, Hello Patch Tuesday Many of us have just gotten back into the office after a nice Easter break eating to much chocolate and too many hot cross buns but thanks to Microsoft you had better not
Security Animated Cursor Vulnerbility? Not if you get your Security updates from MS via RSS! I sure that many of you are aware that later on today Microsoft will be releasing a patch for a zero-day security hole in Windows based operating systems that can be accessed by
Time Recording Time is a precious commodity for both the individual and the company. Almost every company has a requirement to record time spent on tasks or working with clients yet too few companies actually
How urgent do you want that request? "I need this done ASAP, it's urgent" Sounds familiar? How often do you hear those words or something similar? It seems to me that all too often managers and users think
Security Microsoft Release Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 Microsoft have released Windows 2003 Service Pack 2. It's worth downloading and testing to ensure that you can integrate it into your server build process as soon as possible. If this release follows
Tools Free Document Mangement System One of things that IT departments seem to be very good at is producing documentation, diagrams, PDF's and other assorted paperwork. Some of the material produced is actually very good but trying to
War Stories A Novel Idea - Let's do what the business wants. I sat in a meeting the other day where a whole new project priority scheme was unveiled based around the unique idea 'Deliver what the business needs'. The idea was greeted with thunderous
Tips Migration of DHCP database On my home 'production' network I have a single Active Directory server that runs DNS and DHCP. Whilst not fault tolerant it does the job and for a network that can afford the
Technical VMWare offer free P2V conversion tool I have a windows 2000 domain controller that I want to clone and put into my test network so I can rehearse an upgrade from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2007 and to test
Tips Common Question - How do I move the hibernation file? Simple answer - You can't. Longer answer - When the PC boots NTLDR knows where it's boot volume is. On that boot volume resides hiberfil.sys - The operating system will take a
Security Be careful with security exceptions Last weekend I had an incident with my bank card and I found out that my card had been stopped by my bank 'because of a potential compromise of secured data'. After some
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 SDK Released With the announcement of Windows Mobile 6 at the Barcelona Smartphone and despite a false start on 12th February the Mobile 6 SDK is finally available for download from .here This is the
Technical DST Patch for Windows 2000 updated Just a quick update on the DST issue, I've tweaked the MSI I put together so that it can no longer be uninstalled. This is because the MSI overwrites the timezone values in
Mmmug MM&M UG February Meeting The February Meeting of the Microsoft Mobility & Messaging User Group was the normal interesting and informative event. It's not just the content of the user group meeting that's informative but the ability
Microsoft Technet Magazine hits the UK Microsoft have been publishing technet magazine in the US for sometime now and it's finally reached the UK. Subscription is free and it covers the latest Microsoft technologies so it's well worth The
Those damned quick fixes July of 2005 was a very hot summer and I was stuck on Jury duty at Southwark crown court. I remember the great attention to detail that the legal team paid to the
Technical Setting up Email on Nokia E61 I've upgraded my personal mobile to a Nokia E61 which is based on Symbians 9.1 Operating System and it's a very nice phone especially built for it's extensive messaging capabilities which do
Automation in IS Depts These days it's all too common to walk into a 'modern' day IT department, even one within a high technology company and find that many of the things they are doing are still
