Windows Power Essentials Tips & Tricks
January 16, 2012 12 Comments
I have never been able to understand coding. It has always been a bit of a mystery, or black art to me, left for the likes of Slytherin house to enter their Parseltounge into Visual Studio or your developer tool of choice.
I mean, it literally makes no sense at all does it. Read more of this post
December 20, 2011 3 Comments
Right now i am dealing with an SBS 2008 Server that was missing the Terminal Services Gateway service. This meant that RWA was not working. Users could login to the RWA, choose which computer to connect to, but then they got an error saying that the Terminal Services Gateway service was not running and to call and shout at their Administrator Read more of this post
December 13, 2011 Leave a comment
Some time ago Microsoft released an Add-in for SBS Essentials that allowed you to control your SBS Essentials Server (as well as a corresponding Add-in for Windows Home Server 2011) by using your Windows Phone 7.
At the time i was not lucky enough to have a WP7 handset, but recently i managed to pick up an HTC Trophy and have a play with the Add-in.
There are two parts to set this up, Read more of this post
December 9, 2011 2 Comments
A lot of people deploying SBS 2011 Essentials seem to have developed a special affection for the Launchpad app. That is to say they seek to disable it at the earliest opportunity.
Personally on my deployments i have only disabled it on the users request, Read more of this post
November 30, 2011 17 Comments
As you may be aware Microsoft have released the Office 365 Integration Module for SBS Essentials to public beta.
If you want to take part in the beta, you can download the software from here.
On December 22nd Microsoft released the module for public download. A finished product. At last. Read the Official SBS Blog post here and Download from here and see what you think!
You can get an overview of what the module will do for you from the above blog post, and i imagine you already have an idea of what the module is designed to do already.
As i have been chronicling the other major (ish) releases for SBS Essentials, i decided to install the module and see exactly what the almost finished article looks like.
Before you continue i think it only fair to warn you this is a long, long post.
I have split the post into the following sections.
November 23, 2011 2 Comments
The SBS 2011 Essentials Log Collector tool has finished its beta test and is now available as an RTM Download.
The download is available as an MSI, or as an Add-in for SBS Essentials in WSSX format. The cool thing about using the Add-in on the server is it will automatically push out the Log Collector out to any client machine you have connected on the network.
The Log Collector is really simple to use, and will take a lot of the Read more of this post
November 3, 2011 3 Comments
I currently have a number of books on my desk that i use for reference, you may have heard of them, read them, bought them, stolen them, sorry, borrowed them etc, Anyway they wont be a new idea to you, i don’t mean books in general i mean these particular books. I am of course referring to the Administrators Pocket Consultant series from Microsoft Press.
All of them unnervingly seem to be written by the same person, Mr William R Stanek. Anyway there is a point to this.
I have been answering questions in the forum recently and i find myself asking the OP, hey do you have XYZ update installed?
They usually reply, how do i check?
Of course i refer them to their Administration journal, which clearly shows the date and time any update had passed testing and was approved for installation, the name of the tech who logged onto the server, the colour of his socks he had on whilst he installed it. Of course it could have been a her.
Knowing many of you don’t keep such a journal only saddens me, i like to know what colour socks i had on, on a given day and i frequently go back and check.
I turned of course to my PowerShell Administrators Companion, and found the following command.
Never again shall you be left red faced by the question, do you have XYZ update installed? Not only will you be able to answer with confidence, you will be able to give all sorts of other detail that will really impress me.
Loading up PowerShell, you can simply type…
Get-Hotfix
This will list all of the Updates, Hotfixes and Service Packs that have been installed onto the system, it will also list the date, and who installed them.
But how does that help you find a specific update? Simply add the KB number you are looking for.
Get-Hotfix –id <KB Number>
For example if i want to know if i have installed SBS Essentials Update Rollup 1, i can type..
Get-Hotfix –id KB2554629
If the hotfix is not installed you will get an error.
As easy as that.
By the way, I’m not selling these books nor do i earn commission out of their sale, but i have one of these books for pretty much every Microsoft Server/Client OS i support. They are cheap and are just full of brilliant tips such like the one i just ripped off and turned into a blog post.
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