Jason Yoder, MCT

As I continue in this line of work, I’m constantly faced with the same issue. How do I preserve all the data that I have accumulated? I’m beginning to think that I have the MCT download site sitting in these little USB powered boxes in front of me. I like to add a little value to the classes that I teach. Don’t get me wrong. The people at Microsoft do good work in developing these classes. As the instructor on the front lines though, I know that my students expect more. As a result I have extra labs, handouts, downloads and then some. Well how do you keep all this organized? Imaging. I know, what are you talking about? Am I supposed to image my computer for each class? Of course not. You can image your files and restore them later. Let me just tell you a big advantage. My 5115A class with all the VMs, books, and my notes comes in at over 8 gigs. After I ran the imagex command with the /compress maximum switch the total file size is 1.8 GB. At that size, I was able to easily fit 5115 ...

There are some days that we feel like parents. Our kids come back with something expensive that we gave them and it is broke. They have no idea what happened to it. All they know is that they want you to either fix it or get them a new one. Being the superior support personnel we all are, we ask our usual round of questions only to get vague answers in return. What if I could tell you that you could eliminate the “What did you install/uninstall” question? How about even getting rid of the “Did anything crash” question? With the Reliability Monitor, you can. Your start the reliability monitor by opening it as an MMC Snap-in. You can also click Start and type rel. At the top of the search results, right mouse click Reliability and Performance Monitor and select Run as Administrator. If you right mouse click Reliability and Performance, you can connect to that other user’s computer. Using the Reliability monitor, you can see when things went south on that client. You can see wh...

Question for class: 5118A Class Date: October 6, 2008 Location: Lantech Training – Indianapolis, IN Below are the questions that we had to place in the “Question Parking Lot.” We answered them in class but I want to share with my readers what our up and coming MCPs are thinking about. Question: Where can we get a copy of Standard User Analyzer? Answer: The Standard User Analyzer can no longer be downloaded on its own. Microsoft has moved it into the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0. You will also have to install the Application Verifier to get it to work. This move makes sense since its purpose was for developers to determine if their creations will work in Vista. As part of a migration team, we can use it to make sure our legacy applications can function in the Vista environment and to also help us find a way to make it work. Downloads: ACT 5.0: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=24da89e9-b581-47b0-b45e-492dd6da2971&DisplayLang=en Application Verif...

Can you disable the Vista Public folder in a GPO? · No. · You can do a registry hack. This is not advisable. · http://www.msfn.org/board/Public-Folder-in-Vista-t92701.html PIN requirements for Bitlocker. · The must be between 4 and 20 numerals long. · It is created when Bitlocker is enabled. · http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/d8d3bcb4-6575-4b85-8bc7-2e77b185d6291033.mspx What ports do Windows Meeting Place use? Protocol Port TCP 801 TCP 3587 UDP 1900 UDP 3540 UDP 3702 http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsvista/it/library/c509f0d4-f742-4abe-b997-af369eb9a18a1040.mspx?mfr=true

One of the strong points of what Microsoft has been doing over the years has been to maintain compatibility with software for previous versions of its operating systems. This has worked well for a long time. After all, why would you go through the expense of upgrading all your clients to a new OS if it meant buying completely new software packages. The cost would be to prohibitive. As with all old technology, sometimes the old has to give away completely to the new. Case in point, take a look at what the telegraph did to the Pony Express. The Web Enrollment on Windows Server 2008 has changed. On a Vista machine, it will look as it always has. On XP, it simply will not work. The Server 2003 enrollment control, XEnroll.dll has been replaced by CertEnroll.dll in Server 2008. The enrollment agent has been moved from the server to the client (Vista). Since XP and 2000 relied on the enrollment agent being available on the server, this legacy Oss are not able to request a certificate. So, how...