Some Notes on the Machines

I have trusted this one to work for my sweet wife Lori!

http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth#download

Yahoo!

https://gsmartcontrol.sourceforge.io/home/index.php/Downloads

Another from Matt the Quick:

By default, WSUS does not have .NET 3.5 available to install. This creates issues when .NET 3.5 is needed after a machine has joined the domain. Below is the workaround steps to install .NET 3.5 using the operating system ISO and not Windows Update or WSUS.

• Mount the ISO of the operating system. The Server 2016 ISO is known to work for this.
• Open an Administrative Command Prompt and run the following command:
  
  dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:netfx3 /all /source:D:\sources\sxs /limitaccess
  
  NOTE: The Source flag will have to be changed to reflect the Sources\sxs folder on your installation media. This is likely going to be the D drive (as in the example above), but it’s possible your results may differ slightly.
• Reboot machine.

Something new:

https://diagnostics.outlook.com/#/?env=ExRCA

This can help a lot:

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SearchUI.exe Telemetry" dir=out action=block program="%SystemRoot%\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe" description="This rule prevents the Cortana telemetry. (This will also disable Cortana voice recognition.)"

Outlook has many command line options. Several of them do various forms of cleanup, and this can help Outlook performance a lot. To do them all (as of Outlook 2013 and 2016):

1. Create C:\CLEANOUTLOOK.CMD containing the below:

"outlook.exe" ^ 
/cleanconvongoingactions ^
/cleandmrecords ^
/cleanips ^
/cleanmailtipcache ^
/cleanreminders ^
/cleanroamedprefs ^
/cleansniff

2. Find a working Outlook shortcut, do a Shift-Rightclick on it, and choose “Open file location”
3. Copy that path (e.g., C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16), paste it into a non-administrative CMD after CD, to get the CMD into that folder
4. Enter C:\CLEANOUTLOOK.CMD

Done!

If one has a Contact Group within Outlook which contains any in-company contacts, and you try to forward it outside the company, you will find that the receiver doesn’t get much. There is a way to do this:

Sender

1. First open the contact group into its own window.
2. Open Forward Group, and choose In Internet Format (vCard).
3. Send the result to your recipient. This does not generate or send a standard vCard, but it does do something we need.

Receiver

1. Receive the email. It will have a .txt file attached which looks something like the below.

Contact Group Name:	Test Contact group

Members:	

Firstname1 Lastname1	emailaddy1@company1.com
Firstname2 Lastname2	emailaddy2@company2.com
Firstname3 Lastname3	emailaddy3@company3.com

2. Copy to clipboard, the lines of the txt file which contain names and email addresses.
3. Create a blank Contact Group of appropriate name.
4. Click Add Members, From Outlook Contacts. A box named Select Members: Contacts will come up.
5. Paste the copied lines, directly into the white box to the right of the word “Members” in the Select Members: Contacts box.
6. Click OK, and the new Contact Group will be created appropriately.

Condensed from here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/2589954?hl=en:

• google.com
• googledrive.com
• google-analytics.com
• googleapis.com
• googleusercontent.com
• ytimg.com
• gstatic.com

The above are all on port 443, HTTPS, only. There is a legacy product which uses talk.google.com on port 5222, XMPP.

From the profound Mike Crayton. We do this:

1. Create an admin role group named “Manage Distribution Groups”, with the admin role of “Distribution Groups”, setting as members the user(s) to be given this ability
2. Give them this URL for getting to the management console:
   https://outlook.office.com/ecp/

Definitions and items:

• VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. A true VPN connects two different networks, using an encrypted “tunnel” through Internet or other non-private connectivity.
• SSL VPN as defined by OpenVPN (and its wrappers like Watchguard SSL VPN), is not a true VPN. It is an SSL-encryption agreement between devices, building either a TCP tunnel or a UDP dataflow, over which tightly controlled network redirection traffic is distributed.
• This means that the source and destination subnets, though not IPs, can be the same.

So let’s say that we need to give a PC which is sitting on someone else’s 192.168.1.0/24 network, an encryption-protected connection for RDP and file sharing, to the office Windows machine at 192.168.1.20. If SSL VPN were true VPN, this would require a subnet change at either the remote side or the home LAN, no further option. But it’s not, so we can do this:

1. Restrict the SSL VPN capability on the office side, to just the domain controller (e.g., 192.168.1.250) and the RDP destination (192.168.1.20).
2. Make sure that the IP of the device on the remote side, is not a duplicate of either the domain controller or the RDP destination on the office side. So it can’t be either 192.168.1.250 or 192.168.1.20.
3. We can do this by setting a static IP on the remote device; alternatively, we can change the DHCP subnet of the remote site. Either of these are vastly easier than changing subnets!
4. The only loose end left, may be network printing on the remote side. Just make sure that the printer’s IP is not any of the vitals at the office, and is IPv4, and it will work just fine. Some printers (generally consumer-grade) are defaulting to semi-proprietary IPv6 modes in their Windows configurations, and at least some SSL VPN configurations will not play ball; in this scenario you’ll want to convert the PC setup(s) to use v4.