Author: David Vielmetter
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A review of LastPass
My memory isn’t what it used to be and there seems to be an ever increasing number of passwords to remember. Also due to an identity theft scare a few years ago I’ve made it a habit to change my passwords for sensitive accounts every 6 months to a year, but I always ended up…
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Deploying the Java JRE to workstations using a GPO
Java updates the JRE about once a month and it’s a good idea to keep java up-to-date. But what if you want to deploy Java to workstations in your active directory domain? And what if you want to disable java update/download notifications that cause users install the ask toolbar or McAfee Security scanner? Then you’ll…
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Managing multiple office 365 instances with powershell scripts
I’ve migrated a lot of customers to Office 365. The web-based partner administration for Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync works well, but some things are just easier with with powershell. Here’s how I administer Office 365 instances with custom powershell scripts. I basically create a separate PS1 file for each office365 instance pre-configured with the admin…
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Bulk-create external email contacts in Exchange/Office 365
Say someone asked you to create an exchange distribution group with a thousand new external email addresses. Well, back in the day, you’d download some shady utility off the web and cross your fingers hoping not to spend the rest of your day cleaning up a failed bulk import with ADSIedit. Well, with Exchange 2007…
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Outlook 2013 and Lync 2013 suddenly cannot run at the same time
If you’ve made the switch to Office 365 you may have had a relatively smooth ride since the they’ve moved things to Exchange 2013 and Office 2013. That said, nothing’s ever all roses all the time, am I right? Today a customer experienced an issue where suddenly Lync 2013 is no longer able to launch…
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Shoretel is keeping Outlook from launching
If you’re running the Shoretel Communicator and Outlook 2010/2013, you may have seen a situation where Outlook doesn’t launch and hangs at the splash screen stating “loading profile…”. This is actually caused by a small program named agent.exe that is part of Shoretel Communicator. This agent.exe program is designed to download contacts from your email…
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Public folder 2gb limit in office365
Office 365 has an undocumented issue with storage quotas on public folders. Office365 subscriptions offer 50GB of mailbox storage for public folders, but if you copy more than 2GB of data into a freshly created public folder within office365, you’ll get an error about the folder being full. Here’s how to resolve this issue: [step…
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Four ways to remotely reboot a Windows machine
As a sysadmin you will eventually have to deal with a system that has become unresponsive at the GUI. Fortunately, there are several ways to reboot a Windows PC from another windows PC or server on the network. Here are four of my favorite methods to do this: 1. The shutdown command. This is a…