Brian Reid – Microsoft 365 Subject Matter Expert

Brian Reid – Microsoft MVP and Microsoft Certified Master

  • Unable to Delete Active Directory Object

    Whilst doing some tests on an Active Directory to do with permissions I removed all the permissions apart from SYSTEM. This proved what I wanted to prove, but I then could not delete the object or reset its permissions etc. to tidy up my test environment. A search on the web for the problem returned…

  • Dell Notebook System Software (NSS) Failure to Install

    I recently had to rebuild a Dell Latitude D610 as it was not working properly on purchase. The reinstall instructions for Windows XP SP2 included installing the relevant Dell drivers from the Dell CD (or internet download if they were later versions). The Notebook System Software (NSS) always failed to install – it would crash…

  • Vonage Installation with NTL as Your Broadband Provider

    Connecting the router was easy, just followed the instructions, the only thing that I had to do (as I did not turn off my NTL cable modem) was clone the mac address of the current firewall onto the Linksys VoIP router (this is a setting in the Linksys admin pages). Voice quality over a 2Mb…

  • ntl Netguard Installation with Roaming Profile

    I installed ntl Netguard yesterday, the free antivirus software provided by this broadband provider. The comments on various forums where that it was easy to install but I found this to be incorrect advice. The main issue, and the one I blog about here is the creation of the required product folders when you have…

  • Windows Vista on Virtual PC’s

    As I do not have any spare PC hardware I decided to install a copy of Windows Vista (Beta 1) on virtualization software. I have a choice of both VMWare Workstation 5.0 and Microsoft Virtual PC. And the winner is – Microsoft Virtual PC The reason is simple – I can see what I am…

  • Connecting a Windows SmartPhone to Exchange Server Protected with a Private Certification Authority Digital Certificate

    Having recently obtained my first Windows Mobile powered SmartPhone, I needed to connect to my Exchange Server over the internet using ActiveSync. For those of you unfamiliar with Windows Mobile SmartPhones, they let you connect, using the phones internet connection (typically over a GPRS network), to your Exchange 2003 Servers to download your email at…

  • Start Menu and Multiple Monitors

    When you enable multiple monitor on Windows XP, which I did by installing an ATI Radeon card in addition to my existing Nvidia card I found that after changing some of the settings (like which is the primary display), the Start Menu and Task Bar appears on the secondard display. What seemed to happen was…

  • Improving the Performance of IIS 6.0 Applications

    Whilst working at a client doing some performance testing of an intranet, web-based, application we came across a little documented way to improve the network performance of the application if the web server is running IIS 6.0 on the Windows Server 2003 platform. When the IIS 6.0 web server uses Windows Integrated authentication to log…

  • Enabling ASP.NET Session State without Installing IIS

    At a client site, I needed to enable within a web cluster the ASP.NET session state service (ASP.NET State Service) and initially this was going to go on one server within the web cluster. The only problem though, as this configuration is easy, was what happens if the one server in the cluster that this…

  • Hotfix Files

    When an update to Windows is installed, if that update is a GDR (general distribution release) update, the possibility exists that a hotfix exists for the same files but in an earlier version. This hotfix would have been developed separatly within Microsoft for the specific customer problem that the hotfix fixes, but as it is…

  • Exchange 2003 Resource Kit

    The Exchange Server 2003 Resource Kit is almost ready for the shops. It should be available by the end of March 2005 and coming soon to the C7 Solutions web site is a book givaway. I have some copies to distribute as I am one of the authors of the book.

  • Enabling Remote Desktop Remotely

    Run the following from a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 PC: WMIC /NODE:”client” /USER:”nwtraders\administrator” RDTOGGLE WHERE ServerName=”client” CALL SetAllowTSConnections 1

  • Two Logins To Install Software

    With Windows XP you sometimes see that your Group Policy settings take two reboots or two logins to work. This is because Windows XP operates (by default) in a mode called Fast Logon Optimization. This means that the computer boots and logs in quicker, but it does mean that events that should occur during the…

  • Setting Remote Desktop to an Alternate Port

    The default port for Remote Desktop is 3389, but there are cases where it is useful to change this port, for example on the external interface of a firewall should you be providing remote support of said firewall. These steps are known to work on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. They have not been…

  • Enabling Remote Desktop During Installation

    If you are installing a number of servers and you want to ensure that Remote Desktop is enabled on each then add the following lines to the unattend file that you are using to build the Windows servers (or XP client) [TerminalServices] AllowConnections=1

  • How to enable remote desktop remotely

    Lots of sites on the internet discuss how to enable remote desktop in Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, but the majority of them require you to have physical access to the computer first. So how do you enable remote desktop when you do not have physical access to the computer. It is all to…