Microsoft Outlook 2010 introduced several new features.  Unfortunately, it removed one feature that many organizations utilize: sent items & deleted items support for shared mailboxes.  By default, Outlook 2010 will place all sent items and deleted items in the user's mailbox.  The issue with this is that users of a shared mailbox cannot see what emails have been sent out or deleted.  In Outlook 2007, you could manually enable this feature by adding a registry key.  This doesn't work the same way in Outlook 2010.  There is a fix though.

Here's a quick Powershell script to eject all CD/DVD drives on a computer.  This uses the WMPlayer COM object.

$wm = New-Object -ComObject "WMPlayer.ocx"

$drives = $wm.cdromCollection

for($i = 0; $i -lt $drives.Count; $i++)

{

    $drives.Item($i).Eject()

}

Feedback is always welcome.  Enjoy!

At some point most admins will need to change a DNS server (or two) on their network.  This is an easy change for DHCP clients, but can be a real pain for statically assigned clients.  Below is a simple Powershell script that runs through a list a computer names and updates the DNS servers on the clients.

When you run the netdiag command on a Windows Server 2003 server, you may encounter the following errors:

    [FATAL] Could not open file C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\netlogon.dns for reading.
    [FATAL] Could not open file C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\netlogon.dns for reading.
    [FATAL] No DNS servers have the DNS records for this DC registered.
 

This is because the 32-bit version of netdiag, while supported by Microsoft, isn't able to locate the DNS file in a 64-bit installat

If you're like most admins out there, you've had a need to completely remove McAfee components whether it's troubleshooting or getting rid of the product.

McAfee is a stubborn product to remove.  They offer a tool to assist with removing their consumer products.  This won't work on managed installations (ePO) unfortunately.  So I've assembled a batch file to handle the dirty work.  As always, use at your own risk.

Version 2.0.7 has been released for vBulletin 3.8.x. It is mostly bug fixes.

2.0.7 - Bugfix / Feature Add
-Added support for vBulletin 3.8.x.
-Added vbulletin-style.xml file to easily import template modifications for vBulletin 3.8.x.
-Previous versions must manually edit the templates.
-Added a verification for the forum path in link.php.

Check out http://bit.ly/bAcQXD for more details.

Work has officially started on the new version of vB.Sponsors for vBulletin.  The new release should bring some much needed features and a fresh interface.

There's no release date yet for the beta.

Keep up with the status by following me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/OneCoolMofo

So you have a snazzy new SharePoint site?  It works wonderfully with Office documents.  Now you need to index all those PDF files that are floating around the office.  Fortunately, this is an easy fix.

Prerequisites

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
• Adobe IFilter 9.0 for 64-bit platforms - Download
• Adobe Acrobat Reader (to view documents)
• A GIF to use for the Acrob

A common task for I.T. people is managing updates for their Windows servers and workstations.  While WSUS is nice, free tool it does lack some advanced reporting.  Another issue is that if a workstation or server hasn't ever contacted or isn't using WSUS, you can't get a grasp on it's status.

I've been working on an application that checks for duplicate files.  One of the better ways to test whether files are identical is to hash them.  MD5 hashing is common, but it has been known to cause collisions.  I elected to use the SHA1 algorithm instead.

In my testing, I've found that I can has a ~1GB file within about 7 seconds without consuming an equal share of memory.

You will need the following namespaces:

• System.Security.Cryptography
• System.IO

SHA1 Hash Example Code: