IT Knowledgebase Articles

What can the REG.EXE command do in Windows XP? REG.EXE does almost everything Regedt32 can do, but it allows you to do it from a command line. This can be useful when you want to quickly make a change without opening Regedt32, and it also allows you to embed registry operations in logon scripts and…

One of the most time consuming administrative tasks is the password reset issue. Research shows that help desk calls may consist of up to 40% of password reset related issues. When I’ve learned about a new tool that was designed to help mitigate these issues I wanted to test it out. The tool is called…

Red Earth Policy Patrol 2.5 – more info Perhaps no problem plagues the Internet as deeply as that of unsolicited junk E-mail, or SPAM. While there’s no doubt that SPAM can be annoying to the end users, SPAM can cause problems for both the network administrators and for those who own or manage a company….

Why can’t I install the Recovery Console on a system that has software RAID1 (Mirroring) on it? When your system partition (containing the Ntldr, Ntdetect.com, and Boot.ini files) is part of a Windows basic or dynamic disk software mirror, you cannot pre-install the Recovery Console. If you try to pre-install the Recovery Console with the…

In the Windows XP/2003 Recovery Console I cannot access any drives or folders other than the system folder. Can I change this setting? Yes. When you use the Windows Recovery Console, you can use only the following folders: The root folder The %SystemRoot% folder and the subfolders of the Windows installation that you are currently…

What recovery and troubleshooting options do I have in Windows XP? Software and hardware issues can affect the way that your system functions. Severe problems might prevent you from starting Windows XP Professional normally. Software problems: Installing incompatible software, incorrectly changing system configuration settings, or installing faulty device drivers can cause system instability or a…

Active Directory is a hierarchical database that holds information about the network’s resources such as computers, servers, users, groups and more. The main purpose of Active Directory is to provide central authentication and authorization services. Normal administrative tasks when working with Active Directory include creating, managing, moving, editing and sometimes – deleting – various objects…

How can I open protected MS Excel files if I lost (or never knew) the password for opening them? Loosing a password for an important document could become a real problem. At best, it means that you loose some time recovering the password or retyping all the data. Current password recovery solutions offer brute-force tools…

One of the biggest nags for an IT administrator facing the need to format and reinstall a Windows-based operating system is the need to recover that system’s Product ID (or CD-Key). Normally you’d find the Product ID for the installed Windows OS either on the computer’s sticker (found on the bottom of a laptop, or…

How can I recover a deleted dynamic NTFS or FAT32 volume in Windows XP or Windows 2000? When you delete a dynamic volume, the OS erases the volume’s file-system boot sector (sector 0) and removes the volume entry from the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Disk Management snap-in private region database. However, as part of this…