christianlinnell's questions

Simple sounding question. When the wifi is turned on, our small office DSL speeds drop to 0.3 Mbps, with ping up around 1.4 seconds, for both wired and wireless clients. Turning the wifi off instantly picks the speed back up to decent DSL sync rates.

I've tried the changing wifi password to check for leechers. Didn't make a difference. The router doesn't show any unknown devices.

The problem started the day after we picked up a new ADSL modem. But on the same day 20 people moved into the office below us, so it's hard to pinpoint the issue.

I'm seriously stumped.

Our network:

Internet - Linksys X3000 DSL modem [wifi always off] - Netgear JGS516 Gigabit switch - Apple Airport Extreme Base Station

There are 3 Macs and a printer plugged into the switch (via a patch panel). On the Airport Extreme's wifi there are 2 PCs and 2 Macs, plus a handful of iOS devices, but it doesn't matter, because even if the wifi devices are off, the speed is still slow.

The problem continues if I plug the Airport directly into the modem.

Windows domain environment here. We're looking at putting in a self-service password reset system (using Citrix Single Sign-on), and I'm trying to figure out if we can limit the number of password resets a user can initiate down to 2 per day.

I'm not sure that this can be done with Citrix Single Sign-on (correct me if I'm wrong), but is it possible to restrict this with an AD password policy, without preventing Administrators from being able to reset the password if the user calls?

I've developed a tool that does a simple retrieval of registered services and installed applications from remote Windows Server 2003 servers via WMI.

My problem is, the tool needs to be run on an ad hoc basis by a user who is not an administrator of those servers.

I've created a domain user (which the tool will use to run the query) that I'd like to grant remote WMI permission on each server, but given there are about 200 servers, I can't do it manually. Is there a way to grant access to that domain user via WMI, or by distributing a registry change via SMS or Group Policy?

Is there a good guide to setting up database servers, specifically MSSQL 2008 on Windows Server 2008, in a large organisation?

I'm sure I'm able to collect all the information I need myself, but if there's a well known guide, it would be nice to have it listed here.

We recently rolled out IE8 to our organisation (2,500 people).

Given we had several legacy internal web apps that did not support IE8 (but worked fine in Compatibility Mode), we decided to put our internal domain into the Group Policy "policy list" of sites to be rendered automatically in Compatibility View.

This worked for almost everybody - compatibility mode turns on, and the compatibility button vanishes.

But there were seemingly about 100 users who did not get the policy setting (though they did get other IE8 policies).

I checked the registry, and the users are getting the policy list entries

[KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\BrowserEmulation\PolicyList]

But they are not getting the "switch on" flag for compatibility view:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\BrowserEmulation]    
"MSCompatibilityMode"=dword:00000001

Setting the registry flag, followed by a reboot, fixes the problem. I can bulk distribute this fix. But there must be a reason for this issue.

I'm trying to run a script to move users page files from C: to D: (if they don't have enough space)

I've figured out how to do it by modifying HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles

It works fine - a new page file is created on D:

But, the old page file isn't removed from C: on reboot (although it works fine if I make the change manually). After reboot I can actually delete it though, so it's no still in use - just hasn't been removed.

Is there a way to make that happen?

A few of our support guys (who have XP Service Pack 3) have noticed that when they Remote Assist to certain computers, instead of Remote Assist sending an assistance request, the RA window opens a 'normal' Remote Desktop session inside it, presenting a login window.

It doesn't happen with all remote machines, but if we find one, it happens for every techie who has SP3, every time. The remote machine does not have to have SP3.

Copying the mstsc.exe and mstscax.dll from an SP2 machine to the SP3 machine fixes the problem...

We currently run IE6. Our helpdesk people routinely start admin sessions of Windows Explorer by

1. Right-clicking the IE6 shortcut on the quicklaunch bar,
2. Selecting "Run as...",
3. Entering admin account details
4. Browsing to C:\
5. Bingo - admin session to the file system

Now, we're planning an upgrade to IE8. On our test machines, if we try to repeat the above process, everything works until we browse to C:. The Explorer session pops up in a second window, but it's not running under an admin session! It's running as the logged on user.

Do our guys just have to learn the cmd runas command and get used to it, or is there a way around this?

I rolled out IE8 to a group of test users in our organisation overnight, and after logging in in the morning, several of the users reported the error

Userinit.exe error and explorer.exe error  - iertutil.dll not found

After clicking OK, the PC just hangs with the background visible.

A few people are reporting this error in various forums, but "do a system restore" is not a good solution. We can easily roll back to IE6 by replacing the DLL, or by uninstalling IE8. We just need a flawless rollout!

We're on Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Edit: We deploy via SMS. Initially we had 2 machines with the error, but somebody made a mistake with the test package and it rolled out five nights in a row. By the end of the five nights, 4 more machines had developed the same issue.

We're prepping to roll out IE8 to our organisation. I'm trying to figure out how to install the policy template to the W2K3 DC so I can configure the policy options.

I get the feeling that installing IE8 on the DC would do what I need, but I'd prefer not to at this stage. Is there an alternative that also allows me to retain my current policy configurations?

In my org, we have a central shared network drive, mapped on startup to G:. People generally edit their Word documents directly on this network drive.

The problem is, when the drive becomes unavailable (network issues/ server issues etc.), Word reports the error, closes, and deletes the auto-recovery files. This obviously means users can lose a lot of data!

Is there any way to stop this from happening?

We're considering offering Safari (windows), Chrome, Firefox and Opera as optional browsers in our 2500 person organisation.

I'm just testing them out now and where IE auto-authenticates with our proxy server, all the other browsers (though I haven't tried Opera yet) won't do it. They give a logon box with the option to save passwords. This box pops up every time the browser is first loaded, and occasionally after that for some internal sites.

This is kind of annoying, but it really becomes an issue when a user resets their password. They end up opening their browser, hitting 'enter' like they're used to to log on, but the box reappears. So they hit enter again a couple of times, and hey presto, their account is locked out.

Is there any way around this?

I run up 'netsh' on my Windows XP box, and type

help

One of the options is wins (to change to the 'netsh wins' context).

From the netsh context I can type "wins" and I get into the wins context just fine.

Problem is, from another machine on the same domain, I can list netsh options, but wins is missing.

Why would this be?