Month: May 2008

The Microsoft error code lookup tool (which no Windows admin should be without) got updated today: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=be596899-7bb8-4208-b7fc-09e02a13696c&displaylang=en&tm. While it says it’s for Exchange, it really covers Exchange, Windows and a number of other Microsoft products. You can plug an error code in and this tool will give you whatever definitions it finds in the headers compiled into it. If you’ve ever seen an event that says “the error code is in the data”, or you get a message that “unknown error 0x80045500” has occurred and you have no idea what to do, this is where to start. I keep the … Continue reading Updated Error Code Lookup Tool

Getting the amount of memory installed in a machine with WMI is a bit confusing particuarly if you only read the docs partially. I was initially using Win32_ComputerSystem::TotalPhysicalMemory, but the documentation warns  “Be aware that, under some circumstances, this property may not return an accurate value for the physical memory. For example, it is not accurate if the BIOS is using some of the physical memory.” The suggested alternative is Win32_PhysicalMemory::Capacity. This was an easy switch in my script, but, I was getting numbers I knew were wrong for the machines I was querying. The part I didn’t read was … Continue reading Getting Total Installed Memory with WMI

I fix other people’s computers and IT problems all day, so the last thing I really feel like doing is fixing my own computer problems at home. My personal workstation decided to blue screen earlier in the evening which was nice. It was one of those blue screens you can’t really do anything about without having driver verifier enabled and since I didn’t there was nothing I could really do. I did take a SWAG based on the contents of the dump and decide to update my nVidia drivers for my apparently now practically ice age video card. When I … Continue reading Impromptu Hard Drive Refresh – Thanks Acronis

I came across these shortcuts today for navigating the group policy editor and thought they’d be worth sharing. They’re holdovers from Windows Explorer that also work in the GPO editor. If you press * while targeting a folder in the console, the folder and all of its’ children will be expanded If you press + while targeting a folder in the console, the folder will be expanded one level If you press – while targeting a folder in the console, the folder will be collapsed When you double click on a policy setting, that dialog that comes up is non-modal. … Continue reading Group Policy Editor Shortcuts

I had to load Quicktime on my PC for one reason or another in the past few months. It’s not generally a package I load, but, apparently I needed it for some reason. I of course did the extra legwork to find the Quicktime installer that didn’t include iTunes, as I also don’t have any use for iTunes. In the past few weeks this really annoying dialog started popping up periodically hawking not only some new QuickTime build, but also iTunes. I have been clicking Quit for weeks now and it’s been getting old. I hadn’t really invested the time … Continue reading Getting Rid of Apple Software Update