Blog

A GUI interface is great for novice administrators but is cumbersome if you have to perform the same task over and over again. Command line tools can be more efficient than GUI tools. Dnscmd.exe is one of the support tools from Support.cab, which is located in the support’tools directory on the Windows 2000 CD. Dnscmd…

After you run Dcpromo.exe and Windows 2000 automatically installs and configures the Domain Name System (DNS), the primary DNS server is left as the current DNS server. This causes Netlogon error messages that are related to DNS registration not working. For example: Event Source: NETLOGON Event Category: None Event ID: 5781 Date: Time: User: Computer:…

If you also have NAT installed on the same server that hosts the DNS server, you will get these errors. NAT has a DNS Proxy setting that enables DHCP clients to direct DNS queries to the NAT server. The client DNS queries are then forwarded to the NAT server’s configured DNS server. The DNS Proxy…

Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter is a product developed by Microsoft to help companies reduce the amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), or spam, received by users. You can read more about IMF on the Block Spam with Exchange 2003 Intelligent Message Filter page. When an external user sends e-mail messages to an Exchange server with…

Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter is a product developed by Microsoft to help companies reduce the amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), or spam, received by users. You can read more about IMF on the  page. When an external user sends e-mail messages to an Exchange server with Intelligent Message Filter enabled, IMF evaluates the…

How can I display hidden (phantom) drivers in Windows 2000/XP/2003? There are times when you’ll need to manually remove old, obsolete, hidden (phantom) drivers from your system. Looking in Device Manager does not show all the installed drivers, just the ones that are configurable by the GUI. (Before) (After) To force your system to display…

USB removable disks (also known as flash drives or “Disk on Key” and other variations) are quickly becoming an integral part of our electronic life, and now nearly everybody owns one device or another, in forms of small disks, external hard drives that come enclosed in cases, card readers, cameras, mobile phones, portable media players…

USB removable disks (also known as flash drives or “Disk on Key” and other variations) are quickly becoming an integral part of our electronic life, and now nearly everybody owns one device or another, in forms of small disks, external hard drives that come enclosed in cases, card readers, cameras, mobile phones, portable media players…

Can I stop Windows XP from bugging me about creating an MSN Passport? Windows XP can drive you nuts with the idiotic Passport reminder balloon. You can do what it wants you to do – register with MSN, or, if you don’t want to, you can easily disable it: Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe). Locate the…

Can I disable the Windows Mail splash screen in Windows Vista? Windows Mail is the Windows Vista equivalent of Outlook Express. Although it’s got a fast search feature, good junk mail filtering and it’s got Microsoft Help and Support Newsgroups installed by default, loading it seems to be a bit slow because of the lame…

Daniel Petri shows you how to block the use of USB drives on client machines by using Group Policy Objects (GPO).

Disable USB disk drives without having to also disable USB devices with this simple trick from Daniel Petri.