This is a follow up to my Time Synchronizzation in Windows 2000 Active Directory Domains post. In that post, I should have mentioned that net time commands have been deprecated and you should now be using w32tm.exe instead when using Windows 2003 and 2008 AD domains with Windows Server 2003/2008 and XP, Vista, or Windows [...]

This is old news but the problem surfaces whenever deploying new IIS servers so I run into it repeatedly. Ever since Windows Server 2003 SP1, browsing a local server’s IIS site under the following conditions… From the server itself Using the server’s FQDN or a designated host header To an IIS site which uses integrated [...]

It looks like the  Microsoft Tuesday Security patch “MS10-015: Vulnerabilities in Windows kernel could allow elevation of privilege” not only fixes an old vulnerability in the NT Virtual DOS Machine on all platforms, but may also have a potential side effect for Windows XP. Apparently, there is a large number of people complaining that 10-105 [...]

Most company’s  have specific requirements for reliability and availability of server systems, especially systems hosting crucial company operations such as email and web commerce sites. A systems administrator is usually required to provide regular reporting on system uptime (and downtime).  Although this may seem like a rather straight forward and quantifiable proposition, it can actually [...]

… and learning to sleep easier This is largely common sense but I wanted to lay out some ideas for increasing uptime because too often, I see even well seasoned systems administrators knocking themselves out (working really late hours and around the clock) due to outages caused by poor planning. So here are a couple [...]