17/01/2007 by Paul.

The official SBS Blog lists this potential issue for receiving faxes to a mail recipient.

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2007/01/15/fax-fails-because-of-orbs.aspx

Posted in Server Tips | Print | No Comments »

17/01/2007 by Paul.

I’m not sure how useful anyone will find this however…

This free (and unsupported) microsoft tool will allow you to send SMS messages from outlook through a connected mobile phone (USB, Ir or Bluetooth).

The site doesn’t make clear if there are particular models of phone it supports and claims you need no 3rd Party software.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=240080b4-986e-4afb-ab21-3af2be63508b&displaylang=en&tm

Posted in Apps and Tools, Outlook | Print | No Comments »

16/01/2007 by Paul.

After looking at the AD script earlier someone has pointed out a Free IT management suite.

You can get it from here - http://www.spiceworks.com/

There are sponsored links within the app however if it does the job.

-Update-

The software looks very professional and collects some excellent information about my office network.

I asked it to product an excel report however and it stuck at 100% CPU for an hour and managed to use 2gb of ram before I stopped the process.

It may be time to run a smaller report

Posted in IT Management | Print | No Comments »

16/01/2007 by Paul.

This shows how you can ease client’s home connection experience by some cleaver DNS settings.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/javier/archive/2005/06/03/50410.aspx

Posted in Remote & Mobile Working, Server Tips | Print | No Comments »

16/01/2007 by Paul.

If you need to book out shared resourses and keep track of requests and time tabling why not use Exchange 2003 to look after this for you.

Click here for the full article

Posted in Outlook, Exchange | Print | No Comments »

16/01/2007 by Paul.

A great video presentation showing the advanced functions availalbe in Process Explorer and how they can be used to hunt down and remove spyware.

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=359

Posted in Malware | Print | No Comments »

16/01/2007 by Paul.

This script helps capture network information for those documenting their networks.

I have run it on a couple of networks and the detail is useful however it reports into a long text document, which would be time consuming to import into our sharepoint.

If I can I may look to modify the script to output the required details to a CSV file.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2007/01/15/do-you-inventory-your-network.aspx

Posted in IT Management, Server Tips | Print | No Comments »

13/01/2007 by Paul.

The MAPS EULA apparently doesn’t grant users downgrade rights - which until the start of this year has never been an issue as I have an action pack to see what the latest Microsoft Software adds to our business and expand our knowlege and understanding of the software (especially SBS 2003 R2)

Once Vista is released Windows XP will be removed from the action pack and once your renewal date comes round it will no longer be licenced for your use. The same is true for SBS 2003 - you will have to be upgrading to 2003 R2 or you are in breach of you EULA and technically not licenced!

Susan Bradley has this blog post for the description and this blog post as an open letter to Steve Ballmer.

My oppinion is that you can’t expect a company no mater how technically focused to upgrade all of their desktops to a new and potentially incompatible with LOB Apps Opporating System within potentially a few months from its release.

With the server software I am lucky to have just gone through a migration as R2 became available however I hope this server install will last me another 3 years, and any further migration work will require months of preperation and planning. I would never do it to conform to a EULA change!

Posted in News | Print | No Comments »

13/01/2007 by Paul.

Here is a look at a fantastic add on to the RWW.

If your PC supports wake on lan you can take advantage of this to allow you to help save the enviroment and your electricity bill by allowing your work PC to enter standby and still been able to login from home

http://msmvps.com/blogs/thenakedmvp/archive/2006/06/30/103330.aspx

Posted in Remote & Mobile Working, Server Tips | Print | No Comments »

12/01/2007 by Paul.

There is an unofficial fault which can cause WSUS to use 100% CPU usage and have a memory leak.

This blog has posted the patches which you would otherwise have to call MS to request -

http://msmvps.com/blogs/thenakedmvp/archive/2007/01/11/so-shoot-me-the-downloads-for-the-wsus-patch-for-the-100-cpu-use-and-memory-leak.aspx

Posted in Server Tips | Print | No Comments »