Recently I had to add several URL’s as trusted sites to Internet Explorer (IE) for a doctor’s office for a new software application they were implementing. I had two options: (1) go to every workstation and add the URL’s, or (2) add the URL’s once via Group Policy from the server (SBS 2008), and let the server do the work! I chose option #2.

WARNING: It is advisable to warn you that modifying Group Policies is similar to modifying Windows Registry settings — you can quickly take down the system you are working on if you don’t know what you are doing. There are several great articles and books on working with Group Policy. Most will recommend creating a Test OU first, and use a set of selected users/computers to test your group policy changes first.

If you are not comfortable with Group Policies (and I will admit that I fall into that category!), here are the specific steps I followed to deploy (with thanks to a Spicework forum post on this topic):

Step 1: From the SBS console, click Start > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management (GPM)

Step 2: Drill down Forest > Domain > your domain > My Business > Users > SBS Users

Step 3: Right click on SBS Users, then click on ‘Create a GPO in this domain, and link it here..’

Step 4: Give your new group policy object (GPO) a name, such as ‘IE Trusted Sites’

Step 5: Right click on your new GPO to edit it, and drill down User Configuration > Windows Settings > Internet Explorer Maintenance > Security

Step 6: In the right hand pane, right click on ‘Security Zones and Content Rating’ and then click Properties

Step 7: Click on the radio button to select ‘Import the current security zones and privacy settings’, then click ‘Modify Settings’

Step 8: The Internet Properties window displays. Click Security tab > Trusted Sites and then click the Sites button.

Step 9. Add your URL(s) to be trusted, and then close

WSUS (Microsoft’s Windows Server Update Services) allows you to manage and release updates to your servers and workstations on YOUR schedule. This is an important step in managing your customers’ systems. I prefer to test new Microsoft updates on my own test & in-house servers and workstations before introducing them into customer’s production systems. Over time, however, you may find that your WSUS database and files are taking up more and more disk space.

WSUS provides an easy to use management tool in SBS 2008 and SBS 2011 that reduces this disk space by deleting outdated or superseeded updates that WSUS has collected. The tool is called the WSUS Server Cleanup Wizard. It’s recommended to run this tool at least monthly. Many MVP’s run it weekly via a scheduled script task.

To access and run the wizard, go to Start > Administrative Tools > Windows Server Update Services, then click on Option, then the Server Cleanup Wizard. You will then be presented a list of 5 choices of items to be cleaned up. 

Fair warning: if you are running the WSUS Cleanup Wizard for the first time on a server that has been in production for months or years, the wizard may run for a VERY LONG TIME!

If so, my advice is to run each cleanup option separately, starting with the last choice first (superseeded updates), and finishing up with unused updates/revisions last, Why? Because the unused updates/revision item takes the longest to run, and you may in fact thing that the cleanup wizard is broken, and try to abort it.

I’m sorry, Microsoft, but the build in Search utility (especially in Windows XP) just doesn’t always work. I’m not one to just look for a third party app, but in this particular case, I had a customer needing to search for the proverbial “needle in a haystack” against a large folder of generated data files.

I happily came across Mythicsoft FileLocator Lite and it was the right solution for the right problem at the right price (free!).

Unlike most file locator programs, it does NOT create and maintain an indexing file, but you would be surprised at how fast it is!

If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, this post is not for you.

However, if you are running Windows XP, when you run Disk Cleanup (My Computer, right click on a disk drive, then click Properties), you may see a message “Scanning: compress old files”. Back in the day so very small disak drives, this may have been a somewhat useful option. More importantly, it takes a long time for this scanning process to complete.

My recommendation is not to compress old files. And with a quick registery edit, you can disable this option so it does not run when you do a disk clean up, and no reboot of your workstation is required.

1. From a command propmpt, type  regedit and press enter.
2. Drill down HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > VolumeCaches > Compress old files
3. In the right pane double click the {Default} key and the Edit String window will display. The Value Data field will contain a long 32 character string, similar to:  {B50F5260-0C21-11D2-AB56-00A0C9082678}  (see screenshot).
4. Delete the entire 32 character string in the Value Data field, then click OK, and close the Regedit window.

That’s it! Now, when you run disk cleanup, you will no longer get the  ‘Scanning: compress old files’.

You may still have some SanDisk Cruzer USB thumb drives around that have a pre-configured U3 partition.

When you insert these thumb drives, it mounts not one, but two removable drives: a U3 CD-Drive and the removable disk. For some reason that seems to annoy or bother some people.

Getting rid of the U3 partition is not hard, but you cannot do it simply by trying to delete or reformat the USB stick. Simply go to the SanDisk web site and download the Laun chPad Removal file containing their U3 Uninstaller Tool, unzip the file and run it.

It will automatically locate your Cruzer thumb drive, give you the option to backup/restore any data on the thumb drive, and then delete the U3 partition. You may want to reformat the thumb drive, especially if you want it to be an NTFS file system.

A hidden gem in Microsoft’s solution set is the Microsoft Web Platform. It’s quite amazing. With a click of your mouse button, it can install a complete Wordoress setup (or Drupal, or DotNetNuke, or Sharepoint Foundation, or SugarCrm) – along with whatever additional system software is necessary to make that product run, such as IIS, SQL, MySQL, PHP, ASP, etc.

In the past two weeks alone, I installed a complete SugarCRM solution and a Sharepoint Foundation 2010 solution on HP Microservers for customer evaluation and testing.

I recently encountered an infected computer that was so bad that ComboFix, MalwareBytes and SuperAntySpyware could not clean it.

So I decided to try the free Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10. It’s a downloadable, bootable ISO image. Burn it to a CD and then go to the infected PC and boot from the CD.

Give it a try!

SMB Nation 2010 is just around the corner … Oct 22-24, 2010, in Las Vegas. Every year, Harry Brelsford puts together a really great conference for the SMB (Small/Medium Business) marketplace. Whether you are looking for technical training, business ideas, or simply mingle with your peers, this is “the” conference to attend.

Click here for more information!

HP brought it’s SBS/WHS Roadshow to Tampa FL on Sept 15, 2010. Kevin Royalty, an SBS MVP from Cincinatti OH, was the guest presenter. We had over 30 people in attendance. Thanks to all who helped get things set up for this event. The session went from 6:30p to 9:30p. After that, about a dozen of us headed over to WingHouse for more technical conversations!

http://blogs.technet.com/b/blainbar/archive/2010/08/30/hewlett-packard-new-datavault-vail-and-sbs-mvp-kevin-royalty-roadshow-coming-to-a-city-near-you.aspx

The August 2010 meeting of the Tampa Bay SBS User Group featured a presentation from Kevin Brown on version 2.0 of Symform, the unique decentralized cloud-based backup solution.