Setting Up Dimensions in an RDP Window

I have a vertical monitor. It's handy because I can essentially use the top half as one area and the bottom half for another (if I'm not using the whole thing as a fantastic reading pane). This especially comes in handy when I want to have two RDP windows fit perfectly, one on top of the other, on a single window.

To ensure that every RDP window you start automatically fits into the perfect dimensions that you want:

1. - Edit Default.rdp in a text editor. It should be a hidden file in your My Documents.
2. - Change XYZ in “desktopwidth:i:XYZ” to exactly the width you want, minus 8 pixels (each window border is 4 pixels).
3. - Change XYZ in “desktopheight:i:XYZ” to exactly the height you want, minus 34 pixels (bottom window border of 4 pixels plus 30 pixels for the titlebar).
4. - Save Default.rdp and set it to Read Only so that Windows doesn’t helpfully change the dims on your RDP session to something more standard.

These instructions assume the Luna theme with the standard font size in Windows XP.

Simple Exchange 2007 Deployment Documentation (TechNet)

For anyone out there ready to deploy a simple- yes,*simple*- Exchange 2007 environment, TechNet provides this article:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?familyId=b7bad09f-6952-4e54-b482-9fcd30d6c245&displayLang=en

Apparently, "simple" deployments can be documented in no fewer than 479 pages :-)

Disk Defragment MMC does not open properly

Ran into an interesting one today with the Disk Defragmenter.  Got the following error when opening it up:

MMC could not create the snap in. The snap-in might not have been installed correctly.

Name: Disk Defragmenter

CLSID: {43668E21-2636-11D1-A1CE-0080C88593A5}

Found a couple of interesting post that helped me this was the one that solved the problem:

http://www.andreasroom.com/blog/archive/2004/01/18/defrag.aspx

In the end I did the following:

regsvr32 atl.dll

regsvr32 dfrgsnap.dll 
regsvr32 dfrgui.dll 

If that doesn't fix it for you refer to the link above which has all sorts of other solutions.  

I Think All Computer Guys Feel This Way

http://www.brightlywound.com/c111.shtml

Time to Revive Longer than 5 - DNS Records disappearing in 2008

Hello all,

Well it has been a very long time since my last post, but I decided it was time to get back on blogging bandwagon and write another post.  So here it goes.......

I ran into an issue with one of my customers the other day that had me scraching my head for quite a while.  We had a 2008 Server that was hosting seconday copy of a DNS Forward lookup zone.  The primary was on a 2003 server, and the strangest thing was happening.  One by one overtime the DNS records were vanishing.  If you reloaded the zone it would reload with no problem but one by one the records would slowly disapear.  Well after looking around for a while I found this article from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953317  It describes a slightly different situaiton, but the fix also stops the DNS records from disapearing.  This only happens between a 2003 primary and a 2008 secondary and hopefully the fix will be release soon in a patch day, but until then.....happy hotfixing! 

I Can't Believe it Still Works!!!!

This is a little off topic but I just have to stop and give Plantronics a major plug today. I have one of their BlueTooth headsets that I just got from work.....and promptly ran it through the washer....and dryer AND IT STILL WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I Can't believe it. Plantronics you are amazing.

Accessing Security Settings for your Exchange Administrative Group

So this is one that has popped up a couple of times recently. You need to access the security properties on your First Administrative Group in Exchange, but there is no security tab. Those permissions have to be inherited from somewhere right? Well yes and Microsoft is trying to protect us from ourselves (which in this case must be good). Well to do this you need to fire up your favorite registry editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\ExAdmin

Then add a DWORD value with the name ShowSecurityPage and set the value to 1. Then you can make all the security changes you want.............just don't come crying to me if you mess up your exchange permissions!!

-Andrew