Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant
Daniel Oxley is an Infrastucture Consultant working for Microsoft Consulting Services in Madrid, Spain. He specialises, amongst other things, in large-scale deployments of Microsoft Windows using technologies such as BDD2007 and the Microsoft Deployment
GPS, but without GPS
Most modern laptops still don't have GPS receivers built into them. My HTC Snap Windows Mobile 6.5...
Date: 04/30/2010
Virtual PC Just Became More Accessible
If you have tried to use XP Mode in Windows 7 in the past, then you may have seen the below error...
Date: 03/25/2010
Smartcard Needing Drivers In Order To Be Smart
My company laptop dual-boots between Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This is for the...
Date: 02/18/2010
Family IT Nirvana
Working in I.T. also means fixing the computers of family members, friends and neighbours. Trying to...
Date: 01/25/2010
Incorrectly speculating about my friend 0xc000000f
Back in April I blogged about how to get around the 0xc000000f error when trying to install programs...
Date: 01/18/2010
Wasted Space, Begone!
A few months ago I won an 8Gb Zune in an internal Microsoft competition. I really like the device...
Date: 01/14/2010
Slimming Down Office Documents
Being a consultant means that I always have to write bucket-loads of documentation, and the...
Date: 11/30/2009
Converting Windows Error Codes To Something More Friendly
I can never remember how to do this, so I always end up looking it up. Therefore, I am posting...
Date: 11/05/2009
Ooops, that’s not right…
I have been asked twice this week if this is possible and if so how to do it, so I guess either the...
Date: 10/29/2009
Anti-Virus Software, That's Free!
I am probably the last Microsoft blogger to actually get round to writing something about this… but...
Date: 10/20/2009
Best Practices for Windows 7 Migrations Using Microsoft Application Virtualization
There is a webcast this month that should be of interest to anyone interested in using application...
Date: 10/16/2009
Putting iexplore.exe on a diet
I have gotten very used, very quickly, to the excellent tabbed browsing feature that was introduced...
Date: 10/14/2009
Benchmarking Windows 7
A very common request that clients make when starting a Windows deployment project is that we must...
Date: 10/06/2009
Application Compatibility List for Windows 7
A very common misconception that I am hearing regarding Windows 7 is that Microsoft has removed all...
Date: 09/21/2009
Creating Your Own Search Provider in Internet Explorer
For me, this is possibly one of the most overlooked, but invaluable, features of Internet Explorer 7...
Date: 09/02/2009
Laptop Hunters and Apple
I have to confess that I never got to see any of the advertisements that Microsoft has been running...
Date: 08/12/2009
Quicker Access to Windows 7 Virtual PC settings
To edit the settings of a virtual computer using Virtual PC in Windows 7 requires the opening of the...
Date: 08/09/2009
Saving The World, Printer Ink First
Saving something seems to to be the big thing in I.T. at moment, which is never a bad thing. The...
Date: 08/05/2009
PowerShell Script ExecutionPolicy
Seeing as PowerShell is included by default in Windows 7, and also because you get the PowerShell...
Date: 08/05/2009
He-Man on YouTube
This has absolutely nothing to do with IT, nor Microsoft, but I thought I’d post it anyway seeing as...
Date: 06/26/2009
Application Installs, be gone!
As a follow up to my earlier post about modularising my computer, I wanted to add a couple of points...
Date: 06/17/2009
Green IT (with a difference)
My rotund brother (not Mr Anti-Microsoft, another one) works in IT at a bank in the City of London...
Date: 06/09/2009
IKEA-fying my computer
I have had this blog post in the pipeline for a while now, but I have been waiting until all the...
Date: 06/08/2009
Yes, I am still alive...!
I know posts here have been sparse recently but I haven't neglected the blog, honest! Firstly, I was...
Date: 05/19/2009
Safely setting autologon for Windows
When configuring Microsoft Windows to auto-logon, most people just modify the following keys in the...
Date: 04/22/2009
Getting inside information about Hyper-V
A new book has gone to press recently covering Hyper-V. The “Insider’s Guide to Microsoft's...
Date: 04/21/2009
Windows Server 2008 doesn’t have to ignore the MBSA if you don’t want it to
The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyser (MBSA) is an excellent free tool by Microsoft that provides...
Date: 04/20/2009
Office 2003 being put to bed
Just a quick reminder to everyone that mainstream support for Microsoft Office 2003 ended on April...
Date: 04/16/2009
VBS Functions
The lack of a decent GUI for VBS development has always been a problem for most people. The...
Date: 04/13/2009
Faster Creation of Virtual Machines
I recently noticed a blog post on TechNet about a new tool that was released on CodePlex. ...
Date: 04/08/2009
Yet Another Core Configurator
In the true spirit of Linux, it seems that everybody is re-inventing the wheel – because they...
Date: 04/06/2009
Network Issues prevent certain Installations (otherwise known as 0xc000000f)
I have recently been setting up a Hyper-V laboratory for a Windows 7 project. I had all the...
Date: 04/02/2009
Kicking the tyres
Want to try out Windows Server 2008? Or perhaps Exchange Server 2007? You can download complete...
Date: 03/30/2009
Free Gears of War 2 Maps
As I have mentioned before, a good friend of mine got me addicted (much to the chagrin of my wife)...
Date: 03/09/2009
Telefonica España vs XBOX LIVE
A good friend of mine has gotten me addicted to the XBOX 360. He had been on and on at me to...
Date: 02/23/2009
Pink computing
Last weekend I bought my wife one of those handbag sized netbook computers, an Acer Aspire 1 – 150,...
Date: 02/18/2009
Not quite a perfect install of Win2K8 R2
The beta releases of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (WIN2K8R2) have really been the hot...
Date: 02/10/2009
Just fix it for me please…
Articles on the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) sometimes contain pretty straightforward solutions,...
Date: 01/13/2009
Restarting the Microsoft File Transfer Manager
Unless you have been hiding under a rock this week you’ll no doubt be aware that the beta versions...
Date: 01/08/2009
Translating TechNet instantly
Here’s a little something I discovered the other day which I have found to be super useful. As...
Date: 12/18/2008
Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008
I came across the following document the other day that contains plenty of useful tuning parameters...
Date: 12/15/2008
Project Highlander
Having better ‘green credentials’ than your competitor seems to be the in thing at the moment....
Date: 12/01/2008
Windows Vista Service Pack 2
Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista (SP2) has been a hot topic recently. While Microsoft has not...
Date: 11/27/2008
Self-writing code
If you do a lot of scripting for Windows, then you probably use VBScript (VBS) to do it. With...
Date: 11/18/2008
A bigger Sky
Out of the blue the SkyDrive team have announced that they are extended the storage limit that we'll...
Date: 11/14/2008