Techblog

By default 2008 R2 has enabled EDNS, but EDNS is not compliant with all domains as of right now.  This causes DNS failures.

Fix

To disable EDns, you can do it from the command prompt, or by editing the registry.

From the command prompt, no restart of DNS is required.  If from the registry, make sure to restart the DNS Server service.

Command prompt: 

dnscmd /config /EnableEDNSProbes 0

No restart is needed.  It takes effect immediately.

or Registry: </>

Create a DWORD called EnableEDNSProbes and set to 0 in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\DNS\Parameters

Restart the DNS Server service for it to take effect.

Here is a link to the source of the fix:

http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2009/09/15/windows-server-2008-r2-dns-issues.aspx

Here is the windows kb article on the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832223

I am still shocked when an organization tells me that they do not have a complete asset management solution.  Often the reason provided is cost and while OCS lacks “fancy pants” it is my product of choice for organizations trying to reduce software cost. 

OCS supports all the major Windows and Linux, including MacOS X, operating systems.  The OCS Inventory NG Server only works on server based OS, but the agent is compatible with workstation and server OS.  Windows agents can even be deployed thru GPO.

OCS is released under the GNU Public License.  Which means the product is 100% free to use.

You can see all of the information you need, and the download, here:

http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org

LinkedIN and Microsoft are teamed up on the new outlook 2010 feature called the “social connector”. Showing that social networking has finally main stremed enough to enter the buisness place as part of one of the standards in business software.

You can read more about the Social Connector here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/11/18/announcing-the-outlook-social-connector.aspx

For those of you who are not apart of a controlled update system you may have experienced issues with the patches. If you are you should go to:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistawu/thread/73cea559-ebbd-4274-96bc-e292b69f2fd1

It appears that only 32bit systems are effected.

Websites like bankofamerica and pandora use Flash Application Data to remmeber the system. This is why even after you clear your cookies bankofamerica will no longer ask for a computer to be approved by you as a trusted private system. It is also the same way that Pandora knows that this system has exceeded the 40 hour useage limit in a month.

Most of the time application data is good to keep around and can be used by web developers for a multitude of purposes, but every so often a problem occurs that can easily be fixed by simply removing the application data. A good example was a clientless VPN that used flash instead of java application data. The flash application data was unable to access the resources properly because of the way the application data saved information prior to a updated and was incompatible with the updated version. Clearing the flash app data fixed the issue right away.

Using the following locations you can locate and delete any websites application data for flash. You can also use these folders to recreate user’s history, but that is a totally seperate topic. Simply find the website you are having trouble with and delete the folder that matches the website. You can also just delete the entire folder and it will auto-recreate. Do remember that when you delete this data you often times will delete the personal settings you had for the website.

WINDOWS XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects

AND

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys

VISTA:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects

AND

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys

Mac OS X:
Library > Preferences > Macromedia > Flash Player > #SharedObjects

Strict replication is a registry control introduced by Microsoft to stop ‘lingering objects’.  More specifically this is a way to block replication for older DNS objects. 

HOW:

  KEY Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters

  Registry Entry: Strict Replication Consistency

  Value: 1 (enabled), 0 (disabled)

  Type: REG_DWORD

NOTE: This needs to be done to all DNS servers in the forest.

WHAT:

By doing this you will stop replication to anything that that exceeds the TSL, tomb stone life.  By default the TSL is set for 180 days in windows 2003, but can be changed.

WHY:

In older environments it is common to find objects exceeding the TSL to be replicated in DNS.  If a network is properly managed than cleaning up of DNS should be part of the process to add, remove, modify.  This is not always true and old DNS entries can create problems with performance or even be responsible for some types of outages where a resource is unavailable.  Setting strict replication will prevent replication of older objects while you clean up DNS.

NOTE:  laptops that are joined to the network  but never connect to the network, such as remote workers, are at high risk of not being replicated and if you expect a device to be out of the network for more than your TSL you may want to not run strict replication all the time.  Just enable it during maintenances to ensure proper cleanup of DNS.

Nearly everytime I ask someone to run pathping I feel like it is the 1st time they have ever ran the command.

You can find more about the command:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc958876.aspx

Pathping is a tracert that runs a ping command at every node. This isn’t a command that does anything new, but it does save a process step when troubleshooting problems. Especially problems where partial packet loss is the issue and not total packet loss.

A good thing to note is that windows has not added support for pathping on ipv6.

For a couple weeks now I have been testing Server 2008 R2(x86) and during that time I noticed that on average Server 2008 R2 is running at 40x more processor and 16x more memory than a Fedora 12 server. As a point of reference the Fedora 12 server is a lightly loaded web/email server and the 2008 R2 is a fresh install with only telnet installed.

In comparision to a 2003 x86 server usually only averages 10-15x more processor and 3-5x more memory. That is still about half of the 2008 R2 overhead.

Hopefully Server 2011 will be more like Windows 7 and reduce the overhead.

2010 Sharepoint Designer x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eeda9ab1-ac53-4870-9e1c-38940343d677&displaylang=en

Also do not forget that if you need 2007 Designer that the final release version is free:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=BAA3AD86-BFC1-4BD4-9812-D9E710D44F42&displaylang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/Office/2010/en/faqs/default.aspx

The entire 2010 Office Suite:
• Microsoft® Excel® 2010
• Microsoft® Outlook® 2010 with Business Contact Manager
• Microsoft® PowerPoint® 2010
• Microsoft® Word 2010
• Microsoft® Access® 2010
• Microsoft® InfoPath® 2010
• Microsoft® Communicator
• Microsoft® Publisher 2010
• Microsoft® OneNote® 2010
• Microsoft® SharePoint® Workspace 2010
• Microsoft® Office Web Apps

I also wanted to take a moment to remind everyone about some FREE alternatives to MS Office.

OpenOffice Writer = Word
OpenOffice Calc = Excel
OpenOffice Impress = PowerPoint
OpenOffice Base = Access
OpenOffice Draw = Visio
Scribus = Publisher

Also, if you are looking for a replacement for project you can try:
OpenWorkBench = Project

Recently I gave OpenOffice to my fience. As a means of being fair her technical level is moderate for an end user. Her first response to seeing the installed product was happy. She quickly was able to navigate the menus and perform basic actions and said she “the layout and usability was easier”.
In the past several months she has reported 2 problems to me. The first was when she tried to open a Microsoft Excel document (xls/xlsb) with Writer, the MS Word equivalent. She was not aware of the other 4 programs OpenOffice provided. Using Calc resolved her issue. The second issue was when she sent a document to a friend and the friend could not open it with Word.
NOTE: the default save format is NOT microsoft formats.
Once she was made aware that OpenOffice was compatible with more than just mirosoft products and was given instructions on how to select what to save as and how to set default save formats the issue was resolved. She resaved and resent the documents to her friend without any problems. Something to take note on is that with both of these issues she reverted to “I guess we have to install microsoft office”, but once the issue was resolved I asked her if she wanted me to install microsoft office. In both situations she said “no” and that she liked OpenOffice, but didn’t know it could do that. If OpenOffice was deployed in a real office environment I think this mentality would be common and the process should be approached expecting users who do report problems to assume that the issue is with the product and not with their knowledge. Just remember that the users not reporting problems are likely to have the same issue and need to be provided the information.

One of the best ways to do this is to have a “tip of the day/week” that gives instructions on how to perform various tasks within these products.

For those of you who want to know how to change default save formats:
1) Launch any OpenOffice.org application such as OpenOffice Writer.
2) Click on Tools and then Options.
3) Expand the Load/Save section in the left pane by clicking the + (plus sign).
4) Click on General under the Load/Save section.
5) In the area labeled as “Default file format” near the bottom of the dialog window, select the type of document you want, for example, Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP, in the Document Type drop-down list.