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Situation: You need to setup a site to site VPN tunnel between two SonicWall routers running SonicOS Enhanced. Background: The first thing you need to decide about your VPN tunnel is whether to use Main Mode or Aggressive Mode. Main Mode is the most secure mode but requires that both endpoints have static IP addresses.  The only …

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Sent in by MF: I have had this problem happen quite a few times with Microsoft security essentials . Basically after installing MSSE upon reboot the program either doesn’t start up or MSMPENG.EXE just spikes the CPU. The fix is this: In MSSE Settings go to Excluded Files & Locations and Add the following to …

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Symptom: Upon launching Microsoft Word 2010 for the first time after installation you are greeted with the following message: Solution: Reboot the computer.  This is a known issue. -n

Symptom:  When a user clicks a hyperlink to any internet content from within Outlook, they receive the following message:  “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer.” Problem:  The registry entries responsible for handling hyperlinks are either missing or corrupted.  This can be caused by several things.  Recently it seems that most …

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Symptom: When a user tries to open/print or re-print a specific W2 form from QuickBooks Payroll, the Internet Explorer “Download Warning” bar appears at the top of the window.  If the user clears the warning and attempts to download the file, the wrong W2 is printed. Problem: QuickBooks uses Internet Explorer for payroll (and lots …

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Problem: You need to restructure Active Directory to accommodate changes to your organization,  changes in IT needs, to correct errors that occurred when planning your Active Directory schema. Solution: Use the Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT).  The tool can be found here and documentation can be downloaded here: ADMT Documentation -n

Symptom: Microsoft Outlook 2003 hangs on the splash screen and will not open. OUTLOOK.EXE is observed in task manager consuming 50% or 100% of the CPU. Disabling add-ons and/or removing anti-virus software has no effect. Solution: Uninstall “Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update”. -n

Problem: You have a computer with several user accounts and several profiles, but they don’t all match up.  You need a quick way to determine where the currently logged on user’s profile lives. Solution: Open a command prompt and type the following: echo %userprofile% The command will return a single line that is the current …

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The SQL Agent for Symantec Backup Exec does a pretty good job of performing full backups of SQL servers.  One strange behavior is that transaction logs are not backed up (or truncated) as part of a “full” backup. If your transaction logs are growing to unacceptable levels, check and see if they have ever been …

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Prerequisites Hyper-V is installed and you have a new VM set up.  For help with this, see the post:  Walk-through: Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2. Install the Legacy Network Adapter for your VM instead of the default.  To do this:  In the “Settings” page of the VM, click “Add Hardware”.  Select “Legacy Network Adapter” …

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