Luke's questions

We have a group of contractors that need to have limited access to source control under TFS. I added the contractors to an Active Directory group and explicitly denied all permissions to Source Control for that group on the root folder $/ and can see that the permissions are being inherited by the project folders, but when logged in as one of the contractors the folder/file structure of source control is still visible.

The contractor accounts can't actually download files from source control, but I need to completely hide the folder structure as well. I've verified with Attrice TFS sidekicks that the effective permissions for one of the contractors is as desired but no luck. What would cause the folder structure to be viewable when the Read permission is explicitly denied for a user?

I'm doing some forensics to try to figure out which noob updated and rebooted a critical server at the most inopportune moment. Is there any way to determine the user account that launched Windows Update? Specifically on Windows Server 2003.

I would like to determine whether a server has TFS 2005 or TFS 2008 and whether any service pack has been installed. What is the best way to do this?

I can only find the Windows XP version. I don't have the Windows Server 2003 cd handy.

I've got a website that is exhibiting slow performance on the first load and would like to attempt to load it every 5 minutes or so to keep the cache fresh. Are there any simple tools to accomplish this? Scheduled tasks doesn't have quite the time resolution I need. The tricky thing is that this site uses Windows authentication so a wget script won't work. I'm also worried about instantiating a bunch of copies of internet explorer or attempting to kill iexplore.exe tasks blindly.

Does anyone else experience really slow startup time the first time TSWA is accessed after an idle period? I'm considering running a task to get the page every minute or so just to keep things cached.. But this doesn't seem right. I know TSWA is an ASP.Net app but from what I understand it is also pre-compiled so that shouldn't be slowing it down. Any ideas?

I'm testing a failover procedure using a mirrored data tier for TFS 2008 with WSS 3.0 on top of SQL Server 2008. I have been following the instructions at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa980627.aspx but when I got to the "Redirect Web Sites for Team Projects" step I could not connect to Sharepoint Central Administration.

I first got the error "Cannot connect to the configuration database" then after a restart just got 404 errors. I checked the Event Viewer on the app tier and discovered that Windows Sharepoint Services is still pointed to the old database server. It looks like I could use stsadm to change the mapping, but I'm encountering errors I think because I am using named instances.

I'm trying to use this command:

stsadm -o renameserver -oldservername SERVER1 -newservername SERVER2\TFS

And have tried different combinations of specifying the instance name or not without success. I'm still trying to figure out why the TFS guide doesn't mention any of this -- how is Sharepoint supposed to find the new database instance or even run Central Administration if all of the databases have been moved?

I just discovered that IIS builds up logs indefinitely and there don't appear to be any IIS settings that will automatically clean out old log files. What is the best way to keep my IIS logs under control so that they don't fill the entire hard drive?

I have local administrator access on my machine but somehow still can't change the screensaver setting. I believe it is being disabled by group policy somehow, is there a way to override this?

Is there any way to basically do traffic shaping based on process ID or name within a Windows instance?

I want to keep antivirus software from affecting performance on a TFS installation -- what should be excluded from antivirus scanning? IIS? MSSQL? Am I opening myself up for possible attacks by excluding these? I've seen some recommendations that say antivirus software can interfere with the ability of MSSQL Server to open its database files.

I've seen some documentation discussing the use of an unmanaged switch. What is the difference in functionality/performance/etc. between an unmanaged and managed switch?

I'd rather not go through the process of getting more domain accounts created, is it possible to install a new TFS instance using the same service/report accounts as another TFS instance on the same domain? Are there any drawbacks with doing so?

Is there any way (short of getting an active directory browser) to view my OU while logged in to the domain?

I'd like to allow directory browsing for users logged in via HTTP Basic authentication but prevent it for anonymous users. Is there a way to do this using .htaccess?

I would like a tool to help with ensuring our TFS (Microsoft Team Foundation Server) instance is running and accessible and monitor the appropriate parties if something goes wrong. Does something like this exist? If not it shouldn't be too hard to write since the TFS object model is pretty well exposed in .Net. Is this a task that is better handled by generic server monitoring software? Do people normally worry about monitoring specific apps within a server?

I am working on bringing TFS (Microsoft Team Foundation Server) into our organization and I was wondering if anyone had been through administrator level training on TFS that they felt was particularly valuable, or whether people just are learning these things "in the trenches" so to speak. Ideally looking for something in California but not completely opposed to travel.

Interested in the information presented for this question: Turn on Home Computer Remotely but I'm wondering if I absolutely need to use a motherboard integrated adapter in order to accomplish it. Have you had success employing WOL using a PCI adapter?

I'm trying to edit my BOOT.INI file but I'm unsure what ARC path I need to use to reference a particular drive letter. There is a kb article that almost seems like it tells you how to do this but instead is useless at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155222

I remember seeing a video a long while ago (before Vista was released) showing a method of remoting a single app rather than your entire desktop (allowing you to run remote and local apps side by side). Did this make it into Vista? Or do you need Server 2008 to do this? Or was I hallucinating?