In order for printers to be completely autodeleted from both the registry and Print Manager users may need Full Control over the following registry key and subkeys:-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Print

Users also need Change permissions to the following:

%systemroot%\system32\spool

These days many mailservers are requiring reverse DNS (rDNS) and SPF records to validate the sender from this domain.

How does SPF work:

SPF is easy to understand. The “Internet” uses DNS (Domain Name System) to resolve Domain Names (as an example www.msexchange.org) into IP addresses. DNS is also used to direct requests for different services like e-mail and Web Servers. For every Domain around the world an MX (Mail Exchanger) record must exist. An MX record tells the e-mail sender where the target server for receiving mail is located.

SPF is publishing “reverse MX” records in DNS which tells the mail sender which machines send mail from the domain.

The recipient of the e-mail can now check these records to ensure that e-mail is coming from a “trusted” sender from this domain.

These “reverse MX” records can be easily published in DNS. It takes only one line in DNS to fullfil all requirements.

Microsoft has come up with a good and easy wizard (webpage not downloadable tool) that asks a few questions and spits out the correct SPF.

How to add SPF file to Windows Server DNS - link

OpenSPF Website - link or old site

When troubleshooting a computer that beeps when trying to start the computer, usually referring to the motherboard manual or OEM User manual is the quickest way to find out what is causing the computer from not booting. Here is a couple of links to motherboard and OEM beep codes.

Tech Republic - Beep codes for desktops

http://www.bill-cash.com/bios_beep_codes.htm

Issue: When connecting to a Windows 2003 Terminal Server over RDP, some or all of your local printers (LPT or Parallel printers seem to always autocreate), ie USB, local TCP/IP printers don’t autocreate when logging on. Some of the multifunction devices and other USB printers use DOT4 printing which isn’t recognized by default by Windows Server.

Cause:This problem occurs because the printer port does not begin with COM, LPT, or USB. By default, printer port names that do not begin with COM, LPT, or USB are only redirected in Windows Server 2003. By default, multifunction print devices may not be redirected unless you are running Windows Server 2003 on your local computer because they use DOT4 ports.

Solution: To resolve this problem on a computer that is not running Windows Server 2003, force all ports (including DOT4) on the client computer to be filtered for redirection. To do this, open regedit and add a DWORD value named FilterQueueType to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Default\AddIns\RDPDR and set its value data to FFFFFFFF. Log on to the Terminal Server and all local printers should be redirected to the server. To make sure that printing works normally, install the same printer driver on the Terminal Server so that the printer is mapped to the right driver.

This link provides helpful registry scripts to repair windows file associations:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

A client of mine recently had 2 CDRom drives that weren’t showing in My Computer. In the device manager, they showed up with exclamation points. Double-clicking them told me that the driver was installed properly but:

“Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)”

After some research, the solution I found was to remove the LowFilter and UpperFilter entries from this registry area:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Note that you may have several identical keys like this (4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318). The one you are looking for will list DVD/CD Rom Drives as the very first entry.

Reboot after making changes.

Regedit

Find

HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Office/11.0/Registration/<only-32-bit-ID>

-Change the value of key “ProductID” to “OldProductID”
-Delete the key DigitalProductId

Now start one of the office apps - it should ask you to re-enter the key, then activate normally.

In Microsoft CRM 4.0, many of the entities arent immediately available in the Outlook address books.  An example of this is Contacts and Leads.  To synchromize the CRM Address book in the Outlook client with the contacts and leads, you need to change some of the CRM options in the Outlook client.  To do this:

1. In outlook, with the CRM 4.0 client installed, select the CRM menu from the Outlook menu bar and select “Options”
2. On the “Address Book” tab select the following options
   • Match all contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
   • Match all items in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
3. Click OK to set your personal options
4. Select “Synchronize with CRM” from the CRM menu on the Outlook menu bar to manuall sync the address books and test by trying to add a CRM contact as an email recipient.

If you want the best performance possible from a certain application (i.e. your favorite game, Photoshop, or Virtual PC) you can set the compatibility mode on that application to automatically disable Vista Aero when ran and automatically re-anable it when closed.  To do this:

1. Right-click the shortcut used to access the application and select “Properties”
2. On the Compatibility tab, check the box to “Disable desktop composition” (for even more performance, you may also want to check “Disable visual themes”)
3. Click OK on the properties window.

I recently came across an issue on a client PC where i could not set a printer to be the default.  When I right-clicked the printer and chose the “Set as Default Printer” option, absolutely nothing happened.  After researching the issue, I was able to manually make the printer the default by adding the following registry key:

Name: Device
Type: Reg_SZ (String Value)
Value: “printername, winspool, portname”
Location: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\

 In my case, the Windows key didnt exist under CurrentVersion and had to be created.