It happens every time I venture down the hallway to take care of something - someone flags me down - "Mike, I've been meaning to ask you....." We talk, I say that it's no problem, I'll take care of it. Then I keep walking. Someone else flags me down. After two more stops, I finally reach my original destination and work on that issue. Thirty minutes after I talked to the first person to stop me, I've completely forgotten that we talked.
When I got my Android phone last year, I had hoped that I'd find a good solution for task management and reminders on the go. It's taken a while to get there, but I think I've finally found something that will make sure I get these things done. And it's really simpler than I've been trying to make it all along.
I've tried a bunch of different apps to try and solve this problem. First were a number of "sticky note" applications that attach a note to my home screen on the phone. They always seemed sort of clunky, and the main issue I had with most of these came up - unless I remembered to look at the note when I got back to my desk, then put it on my task list, the item was destined to be left there until the next time I went into it for another task.
Finally I found an app that is doing the trick - Email Me. It's pretty simple - after setting up some defaults, a simple tap of a shortcut brings up a message with a pre-populated subject (Note to Self in my case). I type in a body and hit send.
Back at my desk, an Outlook filter sees this subject, creates a task based of the e-mail body, and it's ready for me to resolve when I get back.
The RSAT (Remote Server Administration Toolkit) for Windows 7 is a great tool for managing all of the services running on our network. One thing that's bugged me for a while, however, is the inability to add a new computer account to the server using a GUID for imaging. By default, the remote install tab is missing when you look at a computer object, and when creating a new object you don't get the opportunity to type one in. So instead of doing my management from my custom mmc, I have to remote connect to the server, fire up the AD mmc there, and add the account - not a huge deal, but just annoying.
I decided to root around for a solution today and found one. I'm assuming you've already installed the RSAT on your machine and have enabled the Deployment Services tools in the Windows Features dialog.
1. Copy the following file from the server to the exact same spot on your machine (the server must have the same architecture (32 or 64 bit) as your machine):
%systemroot%\system32\imadmui.dll
2. From an elevated command prompt on your machine, run the following:
regsvr32 imadmui.dll
That's it! You'll now see the remote install tab in your mmc and be able to create computer accounts with a GUID.
Our school website uses Joomla 1.5, a great free CMS platform. We recently had a student use the contact form on the site to send a fake e-mail to a teacher. To my surprise, none of the e-mail information was logged on the site. Joomla relays the mail using our exchange server, so the message tracking there showed nothing but a message sent by the web server. After some searching, I found a little change that can be made that adds the sender's IP address directly into the body of the e-mail.
At line 157 of joomla\components\com_contact\controller.php, change the subject line from
$body = $prefix."\n".$name.' <'.$email.'>'."\r\n\r\n".stripslashes($body);
to
$body = $prefix."\n".$name.' ('.getenv('REMOTE_ADDR').' - '.gethostbyaddr(getenv('REMOTE_ADDR')).')' ."\r\n\r\n".stripslashes($body);
We can then track them down if they are a user in the school.
I've begun testing Windows 7 deployment on our network and came across a new setting which effects deploying printers using Group Policy Preferences. The setting is under Computer Configuration --> Policies --> Administrative Templates --> Printers. It is named "Extend Point and Print connection to search Windows update."
If for some reason you don't have a Windows 7 driver on your server or in the image, you can enable this setting to allow the client machine to pull a driver down from Windows Update. This combined with disabling the security prompts under the "Point and Print Restrictions" will allow seamless installation of deployed printers for all users on the network.
In Windows Vista and 7 when doing an unattended installation, there is a bug in the process in which the network location specified in the unattended xml file does not get applied. Here's how to supress that dialog.
The easiest way to do this is by adding a RunSynchronousCommand to RunSynchronous section in the x86_Microsoft-Windows-Deployment_neutral block in the specialize phase of your unattend.xml file.
To stop the Network Locator Prompt from appearing add a fourth RunSynchronous command to RunSynchronous block (specialize) with the following details:
- In the Description field, enter something to identify the task - like "DisableNetworkLocationPrompt".
- In the Order field enter 4 (if you are editing the BDD 2007 created unattend.xml file) or 1 if it is your first RunSynchronous command.
- In the Path field enter the command line (as one complete line) - reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Signatures\FirstNetwork" /v Category /t REG_DWORD /d 00000001 /f
- In the WillReboot field enter Never
Edit: After trying a few things on Windows 7, I found that the above didn't work. It may work on Vista, but not 7. Here's the fix that worked for 7:
In the Path field enter this command line instead: reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\NewNetworkWindowOff /f"
A nice tip from the recently released WAIK for Windows 7 RC documentation:
(I used workaround 1)
Help update: Suppressing the user accounts–creation page in Windows Welcome.
The user accounts–creation page in Windows Welcome is suppressed if a user or a group is added to a local security group. Add a user or a group to a local security group by doing one of the following:
* Create a local user.
* Add a domain user to a local security group with the Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup | UserAccounts unattended installation setting.
To suppress the user accounts–creation page in Windows Welcome, without creating a local user, use one of the following workarounds:
Workaround 1
If the computer is already joined to a domain, use the following XML example to add the Domain Users security group to the Local Users security group.
<DomainAccounts>
<DomainAccountList wcm:action="add">
<DomainAccount wcm:action="add">
<Group>Users</Group>
<Name>Domain Users</Name>
</DomainAccount>
<Domain>FabrikamDomain</Domain>
</DomainAccountList>
</DomainAccounts>
Because joining a domain automatically adds the Domain Users security group to the Local Users security group, the DomainAccounts command does not affect the membership of the Local Users group. However, using this XML example to join a domain will also suppress the user accounts–creation page in Windows Welcome.
Workaround 2
Use the sysprep /quit command to set the following registry value to 1:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\UnattendCreatedUser
Add the following reg entries to Group Policy under User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\U ser Settings\Product code]
"Count"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\C ommon\General]
"Authorized"=dword:00009904
"ShownOptIn"=dword:00000001
