PaulWaldman's questions

How well does Chrome work on RDS hosts? I'm looking for feedback on replacing Internet Explorer 11 with Chrome in an RDS environment.

I have a system that uses Internet Explorer 11 in a terminal services environment. There are two RDS hosts and about 50 shared thin clients. Departments are rolling out new web apps that users will need access to that only support Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. Internet Explorer's GPO polices have been great in limiting access to unauthorized sites. Does Chrome work just as well with their templates? Does Chrome seamlessly auto update itself or do all instances need to be closed first?

On Windows Server 2003 standard is there a way to determine when a domain controller was promoted?

This is for an Active Directory 2000 functional domain.

The event logs don't go back far enough.

We have a database server running SQL 2000 and two web servers hosting ASP.net applications. All three servers are running Windows Server 2003 SP2.

Our issue is repeatable after about 2 weeks, IIS on one web server is no longer able to establish SQL connections. Static content loads fine. Other non-IIS applications are still able to contact the SQL database server. ODBC functionality also still works.

While running SQL profiler a connection is never established from IIS when it is in this state.

The only way to fix this situation is to restart the web server.

There are no firewalls installed on any machines.

I need to find a solution for developers using virtual environments with VMWare Workstation 7.

We develop in different and incompatible environments. Presently almost a week is lost when modifying a developers PC for a particular environment. We need a method for creating a virtual machine then leaving it on a server. When a developer needs a particular environment they can just grab it off of the server and launch the virtual machine.

We use MSDN Premium licensees for developers. With Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 and Windows Virtual PC I was able to build an environment, sysprep, and leave it on the server. Developers were able to grab the virtual machine and on the first boot up sysprep would run. After the next reboot the VM was ready for development.

Now with VMWare Workstation 7 and Windows XP SP3 after syspreping a message is displayed that says the hardware has changed significantly since the first activation and Windows needs to be reactivated. Calling Microsoft each time we need to use a virtual machine would be a hassle.

NOTE: All users are using the same revision of VMWare Workstation.

How can we get this method to work for VMWare Workstation 7 in a similar manner that it does for Microsoft Virtual PC and Windows Virtual PC?

I saw these two questions:

Vista VMWare Release SysPrep/Activation Best Practice?

Windows Vista activation in VMWare

They did not have a suitable answer. The traditional trial time limit is not an option. Our development cycles are significantly longer than the trial periods. Because there are a lot of changes to base VMs forcing developers to restart after a certain time period is not an option.

Our developers travel frequently and are many times without an internet connection. An ESX server is unfortunately not an option.

Does anyone have any suggestions for avoiding reactivation when moving a VM between two machines?

Presently rolling out VPN to access to a small office. I am using a SonicWALL TZ-170 running SonicOS Enhanced 3.4.1.0-2e. I've created an encrypted RCF file for the clients to import into the SonicWALL Global VPN Client.

Is there a way to provide friendly names for the "Connection Name" and "HostName" in the RCF file? If I create an unencrypted RFC file I can easily modify these values. Is there anyway to modify them in an encrypted RCF file?

Thanks.

I am running Windows 7 Professional x64. Presently I am using Windows Virtual PC. I'd like to try VirtualBox. Can both virtualization platforms be installed and run on the same instance of Windows? Does anyone have an experience in this?