Some Notes on the Machines

This post is not for all or even most, certainly :-) But if you want suspenders which snap onto belt loops, rather than the usual variations on alligator clips or buttons, they really exist and work very well, from here:

https://www.suspendease.com/snap-on-beltloope-suspenders.html

Here’s a pic:

Here is a tool for this purpose:

https://iperf.fr/iperf-download.php

By default Microsoft SQL instances are all over the place, sometimes you’ll see them take 1.5G on a 32G server, sometimes they’re trying to eat everything alive and the servers slow to a crawl. To control them, try the following. Performance gains are likely.

1. Make sure SQL Management Studio is installed of the correct version.
2. Right-click the SQL Management Studio icon, and Run as Administrator. This is a great workaround for many SQL authentication issues. If you still can’t move forward after this, you’ll have to create a new SQL sysadmin user in SQL single user mode, which is a different set of steps!
3. Connect to the database.
4. Right-click on the server name. Choose Properties.
5. Look at Memory, and start your tweaking. Also go to Processors if you like, and choose “Boost SQL Server priority”.
6. You can also do this by SQL. Create a new query, containing the below if you want 10G max and 2G min, and execute the query. See results in Task Manager. Amazing!

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO
sp_configure 'max server memory', 10240;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO
sp_configure 'min server memory', 2048;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

At least one reason this can do a lot of good, is the default is 2147483647 megabytes (2,147 terabytes) for “Maximum server memory”. Which means (a) SQL is going to try to take all of the RAM that there is if it imagines it might need it, and (b) even if it doesn’t, it’s going to calculate memory sometimes in terms far larger than necessary. Thus far, leaving 4 or 8 gigabytes for the OS and giving SQL the rest for a maximum has worked very well in many cases, though if you have other applications running on the server you’ll want to divvy up carefully.

‘paexec’. Highly functional and recommendable.

https://www.poweradmin.com/paexec/

There is an alternative activation logon screen.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_account-mso_win10/unable-to-sign-in-to-office-2016-desktop-apps-sign/b32738c8-1b17-43d1-839b-cb97c8ae3c29

From the indefatigable Mike Crayton:

https://www.thecloudjournal.net/2016/08/reset-microsoft-office-product-activation-status/

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/How-To-Reset-Office-01cf9c07

This can help a lot when Office will not activate.

This Powershell command does a lot of good:

Get-WMIObject Win32_Product | Sort-Object -Property Name | Format-Table Name, IdentifyingNumber -Wrap

It gets the names, and the long unique install codes (GUIDs), which look something like this:

{90160000-008C-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}

Usually one can then run this:

MsiExec.exe /x {90160000-008C-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE} /q /qn /norestart

to remove quietly. When this doesn’t work, there is a plan B:

Get-WMIObject Win32_Product | Sort-Object -Property Name | Format-Table Name, LocalPackage -Wrap

which gets the names and the locations of the system-local copies of the MSIs. One should be able to do the same MsiExec command on those too, though this does not always work either.

There is a way:

https://rakhesh.com/windows/enabling-disabled-office-add-ins-automatically/

The command is CONTIG (also available in 64-bit as CONTIG64), and it is a Sysinternals:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/contig

You’ll want to put the appropriate binary in C:\Windows. Run it like this, in administrative CMD, it will get all of the hiddens it can for C drive (this is 64-bit):

contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$Mft
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$LogFile
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$Volume
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$AttrDef
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$Bitmap
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$Boot
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$BadClus
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$Secure
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$UpCase
contig64 -nobanner -accepteula C:$Extend

Notice the distinct lack of slashes in the above!

My current favorite way:

[string]$PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major + '.' + [string]$PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Minor

If it’s 1.0, you’ll get an error, otherwise you will have what you need.