When you have a duplex mismatch between a server and a switch or a workstation and a switch you will only see problems in either the upload or the download, but not both. This table shows where you will see the extreme network latency when there is a duplex mismatch.
| PC | Switch-PC | Switch-Server | Server | Upload | Download | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Fast | Fast | |
| Full | Full | Half | Full | Slow | Fast | |
| Full | Full | Full | Half | Fast | Slow | |
| Full | Half | Full | Full | Fast | Slow | |
| Half | Full | Full | Full | Slow | Fast | |
| Full | Full | Half | Half | Fast | Fast |
I was trying to copy a VMware folder to the server's VMware share and I went offline. After I finally rebooted to get things straightened out, I couldn't determine why my synchronization was taking a long time - well over 30 minutes. I finally paid enough attention to see that it was trying to sync an offline copy of the main VMware disk image (about 4GB in size). The problem is offline files was trying to keep a temporary copy of the file synched up until I deleted the temporary offline files. When I deleted temporary offline files, it told me it deleted one file of 167MB but it freed up about 4GB on my C drive.
To clean out SMTP queues in Exchange, set the SMTP connector (or create one) with a non-existent smarthost (use brackets around the IP address to prevent DNS lookups). Then restart the SMTP Virtual Server and all messages will get put into a single queue. This may take a while. Then you can delete them all (at least 10000) at a time.
When working with HP Ultrium tape drives, it is sometimes a challenge to get them to run at speeds even close to the advertised maximum. Sometimes there are questions as to how to troubleshoot and how know you are getting the most out of the drive. Here are some tips: [more]
Writing scripts in Visual Basis for Applications (VBA) is convenient for automating tasks within Word, Excel, etc. However, if you then want to be able to run any of those scripts as VBScript there are functions of VBA that are not supported in VBScript that you will have to modify before the script will compile. A list of VBA functions that are not supported in VBScript can be found here. The Control Flow functions (e.g. GoTo command) got me recently.
Shared folders can be used in a VMware Virtual Machine (VM) to map a VM folder to a Host folder. However, this capability is a "special feature" and not installed by default. If you try to use it and it is NOT installed, it just doesn’t work… no error and there is no reason given for not working.
There is an order of operations to defragment the disks of a (VMware Workstation) VM.
I guess this is annoying to some and not a big deal to others. (“this” being the fact that Windows Vista IE/WE and file browser dialogs do not have an “up directory” button). Besides just being weird it can be a hassle when you still work a lot on WinXP/Win2003 and are use to the convention of having an up button. Of course MS allows you to use the “directory tree buttons” to easily navigate to a higher directory – which is pretty good, but not a complete solution in some cases. If you click in the location area and start to type a new directory, there’s not an obvious way to restore the buttons (because now it’s just a text box containing the file path). By the way, pressing Esc twice with focus on this text box does restore the buttons. However, the thing I was interested in sharing was the ability to press Alt-Up Arrow and just go up a directory like normal. So, the next time you notice the up button is missing just remember that Alt-Up Arrow in Vista does the same thing.
If you are running out of space on the "C" drive on a system, one way to avoid the hassles of rebuilding the system just to gain space is to use the junction point feature of Windows. This will allow you to move entire folders from the C drive to another drive, thus freeing physical space.
There is a Microsoft KB article on how to create and manipulate NTFS junction points and another article with the best practices for Sysvol maintenance.
Windows does not come with a tool for creating junctions. The Win2K Resource kit includes the linkd program for creating junctions, but if you don't want to purchase that there is a free Sysinternals tool called Junction that can be used to create junction points in Windows.
I recently ran into an issue whre I connected to an XP machine with remote desktop and the background would not repaint when windows were closed or moved. I found that the Windows Security Center and the system tray notification about the Antivirus not working were running (wscpui.cpl and wscntfy.exe) under another user's account. When I stopped those processes, then the background would repaint again. So, if you see this behavior, you might check for processes running under another user's session.