I've been thinking about reducing the power consumption of pc's for clients and have also had some questions directed to me about these settings. Doing a bit of research I've come across these useful links. I'll write a post about my findings when I get around to deploying this in production....
If you can't wait 12 days for it to be released on Windows update, and lets face it, if you are running Windows 2008 you are likely to be an early adopter and keen to get your hands on the final product - you can download it from the Microsoft's Hyper-v download page. I'd also recommend reading the description of Hyper-V release version- kb950050
When I installed it I shut down all my virtual machines and then ran the install program. You will need to reboot your host windows2008 server. Upon reboot your saved states will have been removed (this is in the readme). When the virtual machines are fired up they will be running the RTM version. Windows will detect new hardware, and as before you just cancel this routine and then go to Action, Insert Integration Services Setup Disk, let the installation proceed and then reboot the virtual machine (again). After this reboot the screen gets reset to 640*480 so this needs to be reset again.
One of the nice things for me is the support of XPsp2 as a guest OS. Previously this worked but there wasn't an integration service disk available which meant that the keyboard/mouse integration wasn't as good and I had to keep pressing ctrl alt and the left arrow to release the mouse which gets a pain as it didn't work on my synergy kvm (I had to use the real keyboard).
The xp upgrade was a bit harder for me. I'd recommend copying the Integration disk to the desktop and then capturing your xpcd - I didn't and had several disk swaps required - I had to unblock add/remove programs (I'm not sure why it was blocked - but delete HKLM \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies \Uninstall \NoAddRemovePrograms fixed that. I was then able to remove the virtual machine additions and reboot.Then I had to upgrade the HAL which meant putting the xp disk in the drive and rebooting, then inserting the Integration Services disk (switching back to xp disk mid way for hidusb.sys for the mouse) and then a final reboot.
Phew - after all that I'm up and running with Hyper-V RTM, 1 client XPsp2, 1 W2k3 DC and 1 w2k3 SSE server. My next project is probably going to be Windows Deployment Services
5 if you include the couple of Dell partitions! The Dell pc comes with two hidden partitions - one is the diagnostics partition and the other is the system restore partition so you can get back to factory image if you ever need to. After I had installed Vista on the machine I then attempted to install Windows2008 but the installation process wouldn't let me proceed as it couldn't make a new partition due to the limit of 4 primary partitions on a hard disk. I therefore booted back into XP, blew away the Vista partition, created a new extended partition and within that created two drives - one for Vista and one for 2008. A quick reboot off the dvd and Vista was soon installed, then a repeat of the process, this time with Windows2008 and that was installed quickly too - I think Windows 2008 took about 20 minutes.
This evening I was preparing for an adminstrator password change that I need to do tomorrow on a Windows 2000 box so to check everything worked ok I created a new virtual machine in 2008, loaded the Windows 2000 cd and 26 minutes later I had installed Windows 2000 in a vm, rebooted, changed the password using the Offline NT Password cd and rebooted back into Windows 2000 and was able to log back in again. I suspect on old hardware it will take that long just to boot the machine up and change the password and log back in again!
I also really wanted the ability to select the Operating System that the machine would boot into after it was rebooted. The default installation of any OS is going to prompt you for the installation but that isn't much use when the reboot is happening remotely. I remember some software I used back in the NT4/2000 days that would do this but couldn't remember what it was called. That wouldn't actually help though as the boot structure in Vista and Windows2008 is radically different requiring the use of BCDEdit...... Alternatively EasyBCD could be used to edit the boot configuration. This is well worth downloading as it makes editing the boot configuration much nicer. I was able to use this utility to remove the extra Vista configuration as a result of the dual installations of Vista. What is even better is their iReboot software. Install this on all the OS's and then you can select which OS to boot with from a Task Notifier icon and restart the machine - just what I needed. (Note this does require .net framework so I had to install this on the new xp installation as it didn't have it already! Also note that the first result for .net framework 2 comes up with a page can't be found on Microsoft's site and the second hit is for the beta version! Use this link instead and don't forget to check Windows Updates afterwards)
One of my clients had a dvd rom drive suddenly start to fail in Windows XP. Device Manager had the error message "information in the registry is incomplete or damaged (Code 19)" Acer's website didn't even have a driver for the cdrom so it was off to google. A lot of results for code 19 and cdrom drivers, but the results at Toshiba's forums provided the answer - delete (or rename) HKLM \ system \ currentcontrolset \ control \ class \ {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} \ UpperFilters and LowerFilters and then reboot.
Ironic that I had to use Toshiba's support for an Acer problem!
An upgrade to XP wasn't working this morning with the pc giving various error messages - Setup was unable to verify drive C, Setup cannot copy the file: driver.cab. At this point it had damaged the w2k installation enough that the previous installation would not boot. A chkdsk from the recovery console would just reboot the pc. Booting to BartCD I was able to run defrag and a chkdsk with no problems found. I tried different installation media and still got the same problem. I searched for a BIOS upgrade but couldn't find anything useful so I then swapped the cd drive itself and it is now working (or at least it is most of the way through the upgrade).
Not a beer (but you may need one after using this tool), but LUABuglight will help you to track down the issues with needing admin rights on a pc to run the application - my most recent example being Timeslips from Sage Software that needed power user rights
I knew there was a problem with using folder redirection and customizing internet explorer via group policy but I didn't realise there was a hotfix available for it (it's been around for quite some time looking at the date of the hotfix)
For some reason, one of my xcopy's did not copy the data but just the directory structure so I've lost 35gb worth of downloads and cd images. VERY annoying. I think i've got them on another hard disk somewhere but I'll have to find it. It also wiped out my music but I know I have that safe on my mp3 player - all 35 gb of that!
I'm really thinking that the moral of the story is not to be cheap when upgrading a hard disk and get a really big one so you don't have to keep shuffling data around when doing upgrades!
I was hoping that it would be easy to offer remote assistance from the command line - just type in something like remassistance.exe. Unfortunately the command line is so long I'm not posting it here as it will break the formatting. Instead, see JSI Tip 8047. How can I start Remote Assistance and Offer Remote Assistance from the command-line?
I had a very peculiar issue at a customer site this afternoon. They are attempting to use webdav to a remote server on the internet but was unable to connect. Each time they put their username and password in they ended up with the message "Internet Explorer could not open http://WebSiteName as a Web Folder. Would you like to see its default view instead?" as documented at Kb220930. The solution in this article didn't help but did point me towards the error log %temp%\Wecerr.txt. This contained the text "The Local Security Authority cannot be contacted" which didn't help in a google search either.
The weird thing was that logging on as an administrator worked, but giving the user local admin rights didn't work. However, at least this ruled out the firewall as the domain admin user could use it.
After about an hour I stumbled across the solution in kb269681 which isn't clear enough to provide the exact solution - but it is straightforward.
Due to a bug in folder redirection it is possible to redirect %appdata% and somehow not have the %appdata%\microsoft\Msdaipp folder exist.
I created the folder and webdav started working.
Hopefully this post will help someone else with this rare and obscure problem.
Microsoft released 2 more patches yesterday - the day after I manage to schedule a lot of reboots for my customers for the wmf patch. Thankfully it looks like the machines may not need rebooting judging on my xp desktop experience. Hopefully the same will hold true for the server.
I had one customer box not reboot overnight because the boot.ini had been mysteriously changed to boot to a (non-existent) windows 2000 installation. Fortunately the customer mentioned (when I rang them early this morning) that the problem of not finding ntkernel.exe is solved by selecting the other option in the boot sequence....I'm glad they told me this but it would have been better if they had mentioned the problem before so I wouldn't have had to get up early this morning in case I needed to make an emergency stop at their site.....so instead I'm catching up on some blogging.
I must be the only person in the world who wasn't pleased that Microsoft released the wmf patch early on Thursday last week. Everyone else seems to be so grateful that this happened but it was a nightmare for me. Thursday night I was doing a software audit on a lan and I left it scanning the machines overnight. I came in the next morning expecting to sit down and start analyzing only to find that the machine had downloaded the new patch and automatically rebooted - loosing all the scanning results so I had to start again - not so happy. Before you tell me that you can set automatic updates to not do the reboot - I know - this was on a machine outside of my control AND Microsoft had also previously announced that the patch would not be ready until Tuesday.
I've successfully passed the 70-270 exam this morning so I can now return the books to the library and uninstall the training guides from the pc. I didn't get 100% this time unlike my previous exam so that was a bit of a let down. I thought the exam was a bit hard with loads of questions on RIS and Remote Assistance and even had one question twice (which was either really nice if I got it correct twice or horrible if I got it wrong twice). This exam is one of the electives for my MCSE and It helps the company keep its accreditation and I now have to start work on the next set of exams. I've booked a free 2 day course on Small Business Server which comes with some good tuition for the Small Business exam - more details can be found at the USA Partner website. I think you may need to be a MS Partner though to gain access.
Had an interesting problem today with a user who suddenly couldn't connect to one of the servers on the network. It turns out they had recently changed their password and had previously managed to save the password in XP. Following the instructions I was able to remove the stored passwords from the machine and when they next logged on all the network drives were connected ok. I managed to get to this point by following the trail from eventid 14 in the system logs with a source id of kerberos and looking this up at eventid.net and then following the link to the stored passwords page.
I must say this is the first time I've ever seen this problem and it had me baffled for a while.
"rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr" will allow you to delete the obsolete entry.
kb article 909444 has how to fix the issues that may arise when you install Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-051: Vulnerabilities in MSDTC and COM+ Could Allow Remote Code Execution (902400). Although I've not had any of these issues - yet - this will be good reference for me.
Several people have blogged about the new addon to msconfig that enables you to run extra tools from within msconfig. This thing should really be part of windows update to make life easier for everyone (or rather the techies amongst us who support other people's machines). Incidentally I was asked to validate my copy of Windows XP AGAIN - I don't know how many times I've had to do this - thought it was meant to be a one off thing.
I'm getting the message "library not registered" when attempting to open a navigator in quickbooks with errors on the various qpg files that it tries to open. On speaking to their tech support who had me remove the software, install it, install in safe mode, remove, reinstall in normal mode, then download the updates again (thankfully I had saved the 80mb patch file to disk so I didn't have to download it again) he then recommended that I repair Internet Explorer as this was the problem. Unfortunately you can't repair IE in xpsp2 (see KB318378 so I reinstalled xpsp2 again.
At this point, he admitted, several times, that NOONE in support can tell me what ocx's or dll's are required by the various pages used in the Navigator pages. I asked who could tell me which files are needed, but he kept telling me to repair internet explorer instead.
I've heard Intuit's support is notoriously bad and I now believe it. I would have expected him to check my internet explorer security settings, popupblocker settings and it was only after about 40 minutes on the phone that he checked what version of quickbooks I was using (pressing F2 gives that information)
He was not interested in the fact that there was an incompatibility issue with Quickbooks Premier 2002 and Windows NT and that I am getting the same type of message. Unfortunately in this case, the pc that has a working copy of quickbooks and the faulty pc have the same version of comcat.dll
From the sounds of it, there is a permission problem in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\ but whereabouts I am not sure. It's time to use regmon from sysinternals again to monitor for access denied messages when launching quickbook navigators.
Solution in the extended entry
On some new machines that I've been building I've had major issues with SYSTEM dsn's not working properly and getting the "DSNNAMEis not an existing data source name" when trying to configure a dsn.... Eventually I found an answer.....
Following on from my previous post about offline files and client side caching , I can confirm that the newer version of csccmd1.1 works a treat and solved our problems. It took me about 50 minutes on the phone to Microsoft (which was nice as it was a sunny day in the park in the middle of Columbus) before I got through to someone who wouldn't try to tell me to download the file off the website which is the old version that I already had with limited capabilities. As the kb article 884739 mentions you have to speak to PSS and as the file is not a hotfix you can't get it from the hotfix team. I ended up speaking to the Enterprise support networking team to get the file (after the personal support and the business support were unable to release the file to me).
Not everyone is at ease in a computes and software shop. This is why the majority prefer to download software. In rare cases do they bother making a trip e.g. for purchasing microsoft office software edition 2007. Other software tools are preferably taken from freeware sites. The same is the case with mobile phone software.
It turns out that if Windows XPSP2 is not compatible with cstext32.ocx and cscmd32.ocx (bundled with Great Plains software and others) and that you will often get a message saying that cstext32.ocx and cscmd32.ocx could not be registered quoting an error number 0x80040200. The official solution is to obtain a patch from the vendor and some vendors, such as hy-tek are more forthcoming than others.
I doubt it will be long before I start to get hits from Google on this as there are not a lot of solution pages out ther but a lot of problem pages!
I've had this problem before and I don't think I had blogged about it, but when you delete a server that has shares that are set up to allow client side caching (offline) use then you run into major problems when clients can't see it anymore.
This blog post has *all* the details you need to know about the csccmd utility but do the following:-
csccmd.exe /MOVESHARE:\\oldserver\share \\newserver\share
csccmd.exe /RESID
The csccmd.exe file is available from the resource kit and a newer version from pss
Now hopefully when this happens again in the future I'll be able to find it in the blog. For the first time in a long time I searched for a solution that I know I had come across but for some reason I had not blogged it. Bad brownie points for me this afternoon (but good ones tomorrow if this solution works :-)
I'm not sure why, but a couple of times this week I've been unable to ftp files to any of my remote hosts from a command prompt (or within leechftp - my client of choice). When it failed, I would just get a connection refused error message before the username/password handshake takes place. As I'm running service pack2 and have the windows firewall enabled, I looked in the c:\windows\pfirewall.log file (something that I learnt about whilst doing the MCSDT exam - I didn't know it did a log or that is where it put it!) and I was getting some dropped packets but no reason why. After a bit of digging on google I came across the How Windows Firewall Works document and it mentions that the Application Layer Gateway Service is required if you enable Windows Firewall on a computer that is an FTP client that does not use PASV ftp. The ALG service was running on the computer but a quick restart of the service and I could start ftp'ing again. I don't see any obvious errors in the event logs as to why this service was not working properly but restarting the service is a lot more convenient than having to reboot the entire machine.
Well not only did I pass the 70-272 test, I got 100% on it too :-) Apparently its the first time the receptionist has ever seen a 100% pass mark.
There were 9 questions that I had to double check my answers to but most of those answers I could make a reasonable guess as to what the Microsoft answer was (as some of the questions are so ambiguous) so I'm pretty chuffed. That now makes me an MCDST - watch this space for the logo to proudly appear on the website. Next stop is MCSA but that will have to wait until I have a job to pay the exam fees!
Although the exam was fairly taxing in the usual Microsoft way where you think "What on earth are they on about" and "How many do I pick when it says select all that may apply", I passed the exam with flying colours. The password was 700 (70% I guess) with 61 questions to be answered in 155 minutes. I got 899 - which works out at about 6 questions wrong - more than I would have liked but I'm sure that at least one of the questions was missing a 't when the question was "What must you do so that Andrew can do ....." and yet all the answers were talking about what he can't do.
Now I have to work out if I can afford to do the second exam to get the MCDST qualification......
I've seen things like this before, but a list of WindowsXP services is handy.thanks Download squad
I've never had my display driver blue screen and not respond, but this morning it happened for the first time. Using Google Earth I was exploring Australia when all of a sudden the mouse and keyboard stopped working and the computer beeped. About 20 seconds later I got a fault in the display and it went back to a 640*480, 16 colours resolution, told me to reboot and then send the error report to Microsoft. Immediately after sending the error report I get sent to their analysis page which tells me that a Microsoft analyst has investigated this problem and they don't have a solution and that I should contact Intel for a solution.....hmmmmm I wonder how much of that is true. Apparently you can track this problem and get notified when/if they update a solution - apart from the fact that the wizard fails saying the page can't be found.
Microsoft have released a beta of Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP that is suitable for computers in shared access such as libraries etc. It has features such as resetting the boot partition back to the administrator saved configuration each time the machine is rebooted (unless the administrator specifies that changes should be saved), Windows restrictions, policies etc. Looks like it could be handy (although I'd need another machine to try this out on). The local library had a copy of limewire installed on their desktop machine the other day that managed to persist after a reboot. Seeing as though this machine is *meant* to be locked down I'd like to know how that managed to get installed on the machine.
After I rebooted the pc this afternoon I got an error with svchost.exe. On reporting it to microsoft with a click of the button I got a message "The error "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services Error" occurs after you start or restart your computer.
The error appears in computers with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and security update 873333 (MS05-012) installed. We do not expect this experience to harm your data or the performance of your computer."
Oops! FIX: Generic Host Process for Win32 Services Error
From Add or Remove - White Space This is generally due to the DisplayIcon having a negative number. From here you can either remove the negative number or remove the last application listed: Start/Run/Regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{}
MS have a partner pack which includes a couple of games, a link to a photo publishing site (photosite.com, a subscription to etrust, the google deskbar, onfolio, post it notes and a usb flash drive manager and more. Looks like its worth the download (enhanced capabilities for xp but can also be used on w2k)
Had a bit of a scare this morning when the home machine refused to boot. Basically the computer froze after displaying the Bios version and CPU speed and refused to go any further. After taking everything out this evening it booted up so I then tried to remember what I had changed, and then remembered the (non powered) USB2 hub I got last week. Unplugged it and the machine booted up ok. Plugged it back in again, with nothing attached to the hub and the same thing happened. Therefore the hub is now sitting on my desk. Not sure whether I can be bothered going through the hassle of getting it replaced...the weird thing is that the hub works when the machine is booted up. Having said all that I'm wondering if the PSU is being maxed out as the machine also refuses to boot if I have a usb thumbdrive plugged into it when I boot up.
Seeing as though its been a long time since i've done much work with Group Policies, it took me a long time to work out why the policy for disabling Windows Updates within IE and the start menu would not work, yet the settings for telling where the client should go to get its updates did work.
Eventually I read a website which tipped me off and is actually obvious when you think about it. I had created an OU and moved computers into it, but I hadn't added the users to the OU. Therefore only the computer configs were amended but not the users.
Now that I've done it correctly, WUS seems to be working pretty well (apart from one machine that thinks it needs to download .net framework 1.0 patches when in actual fact it needs to download 1.1 patches.
I've seen something similar to this, but this should prevent you having to relicence xp on a reformat (and triggering Microsofts suspicions if you keep doing this). thanks to techrepublic for the info.
Alex has posted the new (beta) build of ISO recorder, the utility that allows you to burn iso images onto a cd. This version works on servicepack2 (and w2k3)- his older one didn't. Thanks to Thomas Lee for pointing this out.
Although its not a good idea to do this, we have a requirement to set the passwords for users on a telnet application so that they never expire. This is because the telnet interface is the only interface they have with the server and therefore they don't have any way of changing their passwords. Security is controlled by another layer of usernames and passwords within the app so its not that much of an issue.
Anyway, I have a script that creates all the users for me - saves me having to enter all the fields correctly and also ensures that all the fields are entered in a uniform manner.
Until this morning, I'd not been able to set the password never expires option. However using netuser.exe, available from JSI Tip 570 you can do this with netuser username /pwdnexp:y
Had a bit of a scare tonight when booting up the xp machine tonight - it got as far as the boot screen and then froze - no countdown of the 5 seconds before an os option was chosen. Took me a while checking the fact that the disk was still intact, the keyboard/mouse was working until I spotted my pendrive in the usb port. Removed it and up the machine came - phew! I was REALLY hoping that it had nothing to do with the new psu I had installed on Friday night, hoping it hadn't blown the motherboard or something vicious.
The new batch of critical updates came out overnight and there is one for Windows XP that enables you to install ServicePack2 if you also have the adware TV Media (TvMedia.tvmbho) software on your machine (otherwise it can repeatedly bluescreen). I think its interesting that Microsoft have labelled some software as adware and have taken the unusual step of providing a removal tool for it. It will be interesting to see whether they get into the spyware removal business and whether there are going to be more spyware programs that actually break the os (as opposed to just run hidden within it)
Finally got around to researching and fixing a problem that our users have, Files that you add to the Offline Files folder on a Windows XP-based computer are synchronized when another person uses the computer. I requested the hotfix from Microsoft (it's free and actually included in sp2 but I can't install sp2 because of software incompatabilities) and then wrote a script to create the required entries to prevent the storing of offline files on the pc apart from the required user.....
A useful security checklist for installing WindowsXP on new pc's courtesy of the SANS institute. Hopefully people reading this blog know all that information, but its a useful reference to point people to.
Tried to watch Independence Day on the XP laptop via the projector screen tonight and failed dismally. At first it wasn't showing any of the video on the external monitor - just the panel of WMP9. I tried the preview for shrek2 and that did the same thing until I downgraded the hardware acceleration to medium and that worked. Back to ID and that still failed. Did the same thing in WinVideo too.
Then I found a patch for WMP9 that sounded like it would do the trick. Except the patch told me I wasn't running version 9 or the patch was already installed. GRRRR. Now its too late to do any more digging so its off to bed for an early night. (The weird thing is that its worked before although it might have been on another projector.....)
The problem I have with offline files synchronising whenever *anyone* logs off the computer is documented at kbAlertz which although doesn't reference the site, can be found at KB article 811660). Annoyingly it looks like a call needs to be placed with Microsoft to get this hotfix - or wait until service pack 2 (I guess). Although it doesn't bother me too much it does annoy the other people in the office when I log onto their computer :-)
I like this Remote assistance in XP. I was able to connect to the parents-in-law PC on Sunday and troubleshoot an anti-virus update problem they had. The performance was stunning and it was as if they were connected on my lan. I don't know what sort of speed cable is in the states but its certainly faster than UK asdl connections. A 3mb patch from symantec came down extremely quickly. I had to use the same software to troubleshoot a colleagues pc at work this morning. Didn't work quite as well, the performance was slower and for some reason I couldn't take control of the mouse and keyboard which it said I had control over, but the screen refresh was good enough for me to talk the end user through the troubleshooting process whilst I watched the output. The end user was happy when they got the problem solved and saved me a 3 hour journey up the motorway to their house.
Tried to migrate data using the File And Settings Transfer Wizard (FAST) on 98 machine but the software kept failing when it came to import the data saying that it could not find the required data necessary. After running Windows Update on the machine (which had *loads* of updates necessary) the same settings worked ok after a new wizard disk was created and run on the machine. Apparently one of the patches to XP solves certain bugs and issues including FAST ones.
The langa list pointed to the following text from Microsoft:- The following tool for Windows XP allows image files to be mounted virtually as CD-ROM devices. Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP. For those using RSS readers, the I subscribed the langalist to be an rss feed at mailbucket
Needed to burn some software onto CD for a server that I'm rebuilding that will not let me install the network card for. I downloaded a 22mb file onto the laptop and then somehow had to get it onto the server. XP would let me go through the motions of burning the file onto cd but then kept telling me to put a blank disk in (it was a brand new (expensive) one I had purchased from Tesco). Booted into Mandrake and ran through the k3 burn wizard in Gnome. This detected the cd drive and all looked hunkydory until I tried to burn the cd when it decided that I didn't actually have a cd device available. Logged into KDE and same result. However right clicking on the cdrom icon on the desktop gave me the option to burn to cd - lo and behold that worked. So I've now got the Raid software on the server....now to get the network card working. Anyone know how to get round a "parameter not correct" problem when installing an AMD PCnet card into an IBM X-Series 230 and upgrading the box from nt4 to w2k?
Useful tip for backing up to CD in XP courtesy of WinntMag.
Back up to a CD-ROM—A major limitation of XP's Ntbackup utility is its inability to select a CD-RW drive as a backup destination. To work around this hurdle, open Ntbackup, select the files to back up, then select C:\documents and settings\username\local settings\application data\microsoft\cd burning\backup.bkf as the backup destination. When the backup finishes, XP will prompt you to write the files to the CD-ROM
Pieter mentioned UltraVNC which is his preferred method of remote control, even over xp's Remote Desktop. Now if that is the case then UltraVNC must be very souped up performance wise. We already use VNC (in different guises) for control of remote client desktops and sometimes the performance of the desktop refresh is awful - especially over a dialup connection where we can never get higher than 28.8 out of the office! Remote desktop/Terminal Services has always given us better performance, unfortunately its just limited to xp and W2k machines. I'll be checking out Ultravnc later today.It certainly looks good with work done on the bandwidth,file transfer ability and integration with nt usernames to control who has access.
PS - Hope your wife (I presume its not the cat) gets better soon Pieter and your comments have disappeared from the site overnight.
One utility in the PowerToys is TaskSwitch utility. This is a replacement for what happens when you press Alt-Tab. With this installed you get a nice blue gradient background window and a thumbnail picture of the window that is selected with alt-tab so you know which window you are actually going to open. This is really useful when you have five word or mozilla windows open as you can see which one you have actually selected before selecting it. I've attached a screenshot of task switcher in action for you to have a look at. (BloggedToDeath is the screenshotted application)
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP and Windows2000 has been updated with at least a new version of tweakui although this needs XP Service Pack1 or Windows 2003. I'm not sure what else has been updated as the web site doesn't say. CmdHere hasn't changed. Tweakui has gone on a diet as its now 147kb instead of the previous 577Kb
Just realised that whenever I boot up the XP laptop at home using the wireless lan it tries to synchronise to the server in the office - likewise when I log off. Thats great when I am in the office and synchronising via the cat5 cable but annoying when I am using the pc at home. The funny thing is that when you go into the settings option on the synchronise dialog you can change the settings for any of the dialup connections and THE lan connection - you can't select which of the lan connections though :-( I've found someone else who has the same problem on google groups but there wasn't an answer posted.