Easy Windows 7 Kiosk
Following on from my previous post, here is another bit of software that we have recommended to a client. The client wanted to set up a couple of PCs that members of the public could use to access the internet…
Classic ASP error on IIS7
If you're getting an ASP error in your event logs reading "Error: The Template Persistent Cache initialization failed for Application Pool 'AppPoolName' because of the following error: Could not create a Disk Cache Sub-directory for the Application Pool. The data…
FotoSlate – saved our client time and money
From time-to-time our clients ask us to recommend software that will solve a particular problem. This post will detail one such recommendation required by a chartered surveyor who needed to regularly print off large numbers of photographs in a uniform…
Black Screen of Death when restoring SBS 2011
Here at Focused IT we regularly test our clients backup by performing a bare metal restore to dedicated hardware every three months to ensure it's going to be okay in the event of a disaster. Whilst this was working for…
Port Query Tool (portqry.exe) in Windows 7
One of the great new tools included in Windows 7 is the port query command line tool known as portqry.exe It allows you to query a specific TCP/IP port on a remote computer or server to see if it is…
Rollout CutePDF 2.8 without the Ask Toolbar
We've always liked CutePDF as a quick way to create PDFs from any application but v2.8 by default installed the Ask Toolbar, urgh, a bit of research indicated that /no3d got rid of it. So we updated our installation routine…
Keeping Adobe Flash Player up to date via Group Policy
Flash Player updates seem to come out all the time and we certainly don't advocate local administrative rights to users so we use a couple of batch files and Group Policy to keep machines up to date. Download WGET from…
SBS 2011 Encrypted Backups to USB
It's important that your backups are stored offsite, which means it's important that they are encrypted. We used an article (How to encrypt backups and optionally the system disks on Windows Server 2008 and SBS 2008 and Windows Vista too)…
Wake-On-Lan (WOL) in Windows 7
Trying to configure Wake-on-Lan on a batch of new HP Windows 7 PCs wasn't as straight forward as expected. There were 3 things that I needed to do in order for a scheduled batch file to wake them up in…
Can’t complete SBS Connect Wizard
If you're having issues with the SBS Connect Computer Wizard (http://connect) where it doesn't complete the wizard and perpetually logs the _sbs_netsetup user in then follow these steps to complete the wizard... Run %SystemRoot%System32compmgmt.msc as an administrative user either locally…