I’ve been waiting a bit too long to update here and missed a few things…
First, Joseph Davies (aka “The Cable Guy” on Technet) has released the entire TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows in PDF format.
Click here for the ebook
More to come later today or early tomorrow…
I posted an entry over on my personal blog that has described the turmoil, loss, and grief that I have been going through recently and thought that it would be ideal to post here. The following is an excerpt:
As you may or may not have noticed, all of my old content here has been removed. Just over a month ago, a traumatic event happened in my life – the passing away of my mother due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). As some of you know, I was her caregiver for the past six years since the first diagnosis of COPD. This has caused many ups-and-downs in my life. This loss has left a gaping hole in by existence – one that I am still in the process of recovering from….
See the full article for more information. Thank you for your understanding, thoughts, and prayers through these difficult times.
After spending the past two months wading through the Vista Networking public newsgroup over at msnews.microsoft.com, I have come up with the following tips that will save the users from many problems:
1. If you are having network access/connectivity issues AND you have a Norton or McAfee network security (not AV, but I won’t go there on that one) product, your issue is more than likely the Norton or McAfee product. I haven’t been answering these questions as I made a conscious decision years ago to never let either of these software manufacturers near any computer system I own/manage. However, there have been countless posts in which Norton/McAfee security products are either blocking communications altogether, or have otherwise made networking the PC’s virtually impossible.
2. Make sure you disable network autotuning to get faster file copying/network access to other workgroup/domain computers.
This is easy, though. Run the following command from a Command Prompt as an administrator:
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disablednetsh int tcp set global rss=disabled
3. If you can’t enable sharing, make sure that you have identified your network as Private. If it is unidentified or Public, you will not be able to enable sharing (without hacking).
I would hazard to guess that these three issues probably represent about 50% of the issues on an average day.
This is from a mailing list that I am on:
So, without further adieu, we are proud to present you with our “ExtraOutlook” tool that allows you to launch as many Outlook instances as you want. All you have to do is configure the profiles you want, and then type: ExtraOutlook.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE” (after you download it, of course).
Attendees of past Microsoft Ninjitsu classes have been using it for some time now (as all attendees get special access to the Hammer of God Member’s Site) and we’ve not heard of any catastrophic failures (you know, like having all mailbox data destroyed without any hope of recovery).
I’ve wanted this for a while now and have bugged it in Office 10 and Office 11. I have both a personal exchange account and a work exchange account and have not liked having both. Thusfar, I have coped by using my smartphone for my personal account (as the office does not provide me with cellphone service) and use Outlook for work email.
Click here for more information.
I want to post a quick update. As some of you noticed, the site had a bit of downtime late last week. I’m sorry that I was unable to post a notice before hand, but I had to undergo emergency server maintenance and I needed to recreate all of my websites from scratch. In the process, I optimized everything and I hope that the site will run much faster for you.
Besides that, I want to wish all of you a happy new year and may this year shower with good fortune (and no server crashes).
I have been spending the past few weeks playing with Windows Home Server, Hyper-V virtualization, and finalizing my Windows Server 2008 beta testing. I also have deployed a CentOS based Voice-over-IP system, created a website for work, and a whole host of fun and not-so-fun activities. I’ve also resumed being active in the newsgroups, primarily around Vista networking and DFS-Replication.
Whats on tap in the near future? I want to review two Linksys router firmware packages – my new all-time favorite Tomato and a new public access point firmware known as Coova. I’m implementing Tomato at home and have used Coova as our new wireless guest portal at the office. Second, I need to update my pfSense review – actually give a 1 year overview. Finally, I want to discuss some of the issues with Samba and Windows Vista.
Again, I would like to thank you for visiting the site. If you have comments, questions, etc, feel free to contact me via any of the mechanisms listed at the top of the site.
As I said in my first weekend roundup, I was going to install a copy of Windows Home Server this past week. Well, I ended up doing so, using VMWare Server on my “real” home server that runs Windows Server 2008 RC0 beta (and I will reserve the future rant of VMWare NOT SIGNING the kernel drivers for VMWare Server, thus causing me nothing but pain) and dedicated two physical drives to the virtual machine. Everything is up and running after I got the setup driver issues figured out (VMWare SCSI support).
My first thoughts:
I’m still playing with it, but it is a good product, even with these limitations….
This week, I’m a day late, but I have some new links to some interesting software products, a virus warning, and more news:
New Applications:
This appears to be an ideal solution for documenting network data centers, racks, patch panels, routers, etc. – especially for those of us who have to maintain a frugal IT environment (like my office).
Exploit / Virus Warning:
More News:
That’s it for today. Have a great week if I don’t post again this week. I’ll try to be more active than that.. And feel free to send comments. I’m open to criticism… 
This is the first of (hopefully) a continual series of what is new in the Networking and IT World for the past week:
Weekly Wishlist:
Task List for the week:
Last week, I attended the “Winstock 07″ tour/seminar held on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. Although we weren’t allowed to take any pictures during the event due to our non-disclosure agreements, I did take some pictures of campus, Seattle fall colors, and some nice views of Mt. Rainier. If you are so interested, these are posted on my personal blog photo gallery here.
While there, we learned much, shared much, and everyone mutually benefited from the experience. Thank you to Wendy and Jessep for getting everything setup for us and to the presenters for sharing information with us and for listening to us for our suggestions and constructive criticism. My highlight sessions? The NAP and the PNRP/IPV6 presentations. Jeff Sigman is an “energetic presenter” and the IPV6 presentation reinforced some of the things I am currently using/deploying with Vista and Windows Server 2008. Thank you to the Windows Home Server team for the awesome reception.
While at Winstock, I started to think about communication. I’m not very good at it. I’m trying to improve on it, though. I will set that as my “Halloween” resolution (since New Years resolutions never seem to stick past January 4). So in that vein, I do want to mention that you can communicate with me via any of the following methods:
I won’t always be available to talk, but I’ll try to be accommodating when possible.
Also, please pass on any suggestions, tips, or leads. Thanks for reading!
Jeffrey
I have upgraded this site to the last development version of Wordpress. This is in preparation for the (hopefully) simple upgrade to 2.3 on Monday (if I had to update during the week, it would never happen…)
This is a sanity test posting.