Some Notes on the Machines

Best information is now here for Windows and other software firewalls:

http://help.logmein.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/How-do-I-configure-my-firewall-to-work-with-LogMeIn-en1

There is a link in the above for “whitelisting information” which really has the skinny for hardware firewalls:

http://help.logmein.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/Whitelisting-and-LogMeIn

The amazing David Lewis recently discovered something very close to unbelievable. A user profile on a PC — not a user, not a PC — had full administrative rights to a folder on a server on the domain, where the user was explicitly denied such rights. Deletion and replacement of the user profile, eliminated the problem.

Today I found it ridiculously difficult to download IE11 on a Windows 7 box which had not seen updates in a while. If you suffer so, browse here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18520/download-internet-explorer-11-offline-installer

Offline installers in many languages.

Rather a neat tool:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

Can eliminate a lot of issues in Explorer.

There are many situations in which a recent version of Excel will report that there is not enough available memory or disk space, where there very clearly is. To knock this one out, go to File menu and Options, click Trust Center on the left, click Trust Center Settings… on the right, and then Protected View on the left. Uncheck everything in there, and OK all the way out. Close Excel and try it again. Problem eliminated.

This is a new one, both Windows and Linux. Based on Chromium, the core of Chrome. Amazingly fast and efficient. Includes recent Adobe Flash, in both 32-bit and 64-bit. This is very probably the fastest and most efficient 32-bit browser with Flash in the world right now.

http://www.slimjet.com/

There is a lot of talk about this on the wild Web. This situation occurs because some instances of Microsoft SQL default to “FULL” logging mode, and this can be very helpful because if there is a crash, the database can be restored to the very transactional instant of the crash. In “FULL” logging mode, the LDF file keeps on piling up until an SQL-aware system backup is performed, at which time the LDF is pared down automatically.

But there are many SQL databases out there where we don’t care about transaction-level restore, where the backup is system image-wide and we are very happy with that level of restoration. In this case, “FULL” logging mode is very wasteful, because since the backup is not SQL-aware, the LDF file keeps on piling and piling, taking many gigabytes of disk space.

For these we want “SIMPLE” logging mode. To set this up, log into SQL Studio using an appropriately high-privileged user, and run this query substituting database_name appropriately:

USE master;
ALTER DATABASE database_name SET RECOVERY SIMPLE ;
CHECKPOINT;

Two things are accomplished by the above. First, the LDF will quit piling. Second, a CHECKPOINT was done, which tells SQL Studio immediately that most of the space in the huge LDF is wasted. This means that you can tell SQL Studio to shrink the LDF, eliminating the wasted space, like this:

• In Databases, right-click on the database whose LDF needs shrinking
• Click Tasks —> Shrink —> Files.
• In File type, choose Log.
• Make sure “Release unused space” is selected. The other numbers will make it obvious how much space you are freeing up. If they’re not good, you have something else wrong or undone!
• Click OK. The shrinkage will begin. Depending on how much is to be done, it may take a while, but the progression will show up in free disk space recorded in CMD.

At least initially, one must:

1. Load up adsiedit.msc,
2. Find a user object,
3. Get its properties,
4. Click on anything in the list,
5. Press P on the keyboard,
6. Scroll to proxyAddresses and edit it,
7. Set the primary address as SMTP:email@domain.com (note the caps in the prefix),
8. Set all alias(es) as smtp:email2@domain.com (note the lowercase prefix!).

In some environments, a new tab appears in ADUC which means you don’t have to go back to ADSI Edit, but this is not always the case.

Some very interesting info:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/1b926c85-b866-464b-9590-70506ba9d8ce/vss-issue-event-id-22-12289-12293-error-0×8004230f-failed-to-retrieve-volumes-that-are-eligible?forum=windowsbackup

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb891959#mindiffareafilesize

Here are some steps and info:

http://www.storagecraft.com/support/kb/article/32

Here is a Fix-It from Microsoft for Server 2003, which runs quite a few steps automatically, and does not (this is new) necessarily require a reboot:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940184

And lastly, here is a patch from Microsoft which can help a lot in Server 2003, even on fully-updated machines:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;891957

This command does it for everything Sent after 9/22/2016 and before 9/27/2016. You’ll then have to export it from the temporary_storage_mailbox, and import it into original_mailbox.

This is all one command line in Exchange PowerShell, set as multiple lines for easy reading. The SearchQuery is especially arcane; there is a lot of incorrect syntax out there for it, the below worked today (2016-09-27) on Exchange 2010 fully updated.

Search-Mailbox -Identity original_mailbox@domain.com 
-TargetMailbox temporary_storage_mailbox@domain.com 
-TargetFolder "Rescued_From_Dumpster" 
-SearchQuery {Sent:>22-Sep-2016 AND Sent:<27-Sep-2016}
-SearchDumpsterOnly