Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Remove Dell wallpaper during RDP sessions

Open regedit and go to:
Hkey Users
Default
Control Panel
Desktop

locate and delete the registry entry for wallpaper!!

(entry should point to dellwall.bmp)

Friday, December 3, 2010

Remotely enable RDP on workstations

By GPO:

Computer Configuration>
Administrative Templates>
Windows Components>
Terminal Services>
Allows users to connect remotely using Terminal Services

By editing the registry of said machine:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
fDenyTSConnection=0

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Windows Vista/7 users are unable to reply from within OWA

Your users open OWA fine but when they attempt to create or reply to a message they get a red x in the message body. Download this hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911829 on the server in question.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Going from Office 2007 to 2010 and need to import the NK2 file?

When moving from a PC with Office 2007 to a machine with Office 2010 you will need to import your nk2 file. To do this, first configure Outlook 2010 on the new machine, then copy the old NK2 file to the appropriate location:
Vista/7 c:\users\USERNAME\appdata\roaming\microsoft\outlook
XP c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\application data\microsoft\outlook

Then start outlook with the following command: outlook.exe /importnk2

Once Outlook opens you will notice there is a "suggested contacts" spot under contacts, this is where the NK2 information is imported.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Remove default home page of company web in SBS2008

By default Windows SBS 2008 sets all domain PC's IE home page to companyweb. To stop this edit the "Windows SBS User Policy" to change the Import URLs section.
User Config-Windows Settings-IE Maint.-URLs and uncheck Customize Home page URL.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Remotely remove symantec AV

Need to remove that horrible Symantec antivirus program from several pc's and want to do it remotely and silently. There is some leg work involved. You will need to find the uninstall string from the registry. Look for it here: HKLM>Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Uninstall. You will need to go through each string until you find the symantec string and look for the uninstall value. Next get PsExec on the server. Lastly run the command like this:
psexec file://pcname/ msiexec.exe /norestart /q /x {product uninstall string} remove=all

Run that and after a few minutes it will remove symantec for you. You may need to reset the unistall password if the software was deployed with it. To do that find the registry key under HKLM>Software>Symantec>Symantec End Point Protection>AV>AdministratorOnly>Security and look for UseVPUninstallPassword and set it to zero (0).

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Edit the default recipient policy to change email addresses

So your user account is first initial lastname but you want the email address to be just the first name, ok.

Open ESM- Recipients-Recipient Policies and edit the default policy. Then under E-Mail Addresses (policy) edit the SMTP address to be:
%g@domain.com for it to be firstname@domain.com
%g.%s@domain.com for firstname.lastname@domain.com
%1g%s@domain.com for first initiallastname@domain.com
You can create multiple addresses at the same time as well by clicking new.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Give users a bogus proxy server and remove the ability to change it

Create a group policy called No Internet or something along those lines. Create a security group and put the users that are not going to use the internet in that group.
Edit the rights of the policy so authenticated users don't have a check in the box to apply the policy but add your new group to the policy and make them apply the policy. Next edit the policy:
User Configuration:
Policies-Windows Settings-IE Maint-Connection Proxy settings and give it a bogus IP address.
Admin Template-Windows Components-Internet Explorer-IE Control Panel and Disable Connections page.

This will prevent users from getting out on the internet and prevent them from turning off the proxy settings.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Disable Windows Firewall and turn off Security Center Alerts

To turn off the windows firewall on domain pc's through gpo open group policy editor and navigate to:

Computer Configuration-Admin Templates-Network Connections-Windows Firewall-Standard Profile and select Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections and set it to disabled, do this for the domain policy as well.

Second your will need to turn off security center to stop the balloon popups.
Computer Config-Admin Templates-Windows Components and select Security Center in the right pane. Select Disabled to turn off the security center.

Disable Simple file Sharing through registry or GPO

Need to turn off the simple file sharing of an XP machine through remote registry or GPO?

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA\ForceGuest

Change it from 1 (enabled) to 0.

For GPO navigate to:
Computer Policy-Windows Settings-Security Settings-Local Policies-Security Options and locate Network Access: Sharing and Security Model for Local Accounts and set it to Classic.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Create a Mail Enabled Public Folder with auto reply and forwarding!

From Outlook create a public folder and make it for Mail and Post Items.

Open Exchange System Manager (ESM) and drill down on the left hand side through Admin Group-First Admin Group-Folders-Public Folders. Right click on the folder you have just created in the LEFT pane. When the dialog box opens after you right click, select All Tasks-Mail Enable. You will need to wait a few minutes for Exchange to make the changes.

Next right click on the folder again and choose properties and open the email address tab. Make sure the correct address is now populated. If for some reason the address is not there make sure you do not already have a group or user with the name of the folder you have just created.

Next create an email distribution group that you would like messages forwarded to.

Next in Outlook find the Public folder you have created and right click it to select the properties. In the properties of the folder select the administration tab and choose "Folder Assistant." This is where you create the rules to forward, reply or delete messages.

Select Add rule and pick the type of rule you would like to like to setup.
This example is to forward messages:

Select "Sent To" and select the mail enabled folder we have created, then click the box to forward the message and select your user or group you would like the messages forwarded to.

Adding users in SBS 2008

So you added your users the old school way using Active Directory Users and Computers, now you want to give them access to their PC remotely. Only problem is they don't show in the SBS console. No fear, you can still add a user to the console after you added them to AD.
From the SBS Console-Users and Groups click "Change User Role" and select the radio button "Add user permissions or settings" and select Next. In the next window check the box that says "Display all user accounts in the Active Directory" to show users that do not appear in the window. Select the user you want to add permissions to and click the "Change user role" button. After the process completes the user will now appear in the console, along with that, other changes have taken place. The user is now in many SBS Groups including the RWW and Link group.
You can then edit the user account properties and add a computer for the user to connect to.