Category: IT-howtos

  On-premise IT environments often require an internal SMTP server to relay mail notifications to selected recipients. Especially in hybrid clouds where the primary email services are outsourced you don’t want every single computer to communicate directly with the cloud, effectively implementing firewall restrictions to SMTP traffic. In such case IIS 6.0 SMTP Virtual Server… Continue reading Domain based restriction of SMTP relay

  Symptoms: Your device is stuck with a rotating circle of CyanogenMod (CM) during boot. Cause: Ambiguous: Full flash drive, corrupt file(s) or setting(s), etc. can generate such behavior. See below. Resolutions: Note: the resolutions are ordered from least to complete data loss. Use with caution. All operations are executed in TeamWin (TWRP) environment. To… Continue reading CyanogenMod rotating circles – Fix

  Preconditions: You have installed Internet Explorer 11 on a Windows 7 computer. Symptoms: When you run gpmc.msc or rsop.msc the following error appears: (in German) Bei der Analyse ist ein Fehler aufgetreten. Tags: $(string.NoReportSiteProblems) C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\inetres.admx Cause: This behavior may be caused by different language settings on the policy server and the client computer. Resolution:… Continue reading Error inetrex admx

  Symptoms: Bitdefender RescueCD versions 2011 to 2014 randomly require username and password to login to rescuecd.unknown_domain computer console, as described in this blog.   Cause: Unknown to the author. The same CD or USB thumb drive start automatically on other computer systems.   Resolution: Type for username livecd and leave the password empty. After… Continue reading Bitdefender RescueCD requires username password

Symptoms: Critical: Your Hyper-V licensed as Essentials R2 Server shuts down weekly. You observe the log "The process C:\Windows\system32\silsvc.exe [computername] has initiated the power off of computer [computername] on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" or similar, as described here. Non-critical: You receive an error message "The SILSVC should be started automatically but it is stopped"… Continue reading How to disable Server Infrastructure Licensing Service

  As I was implementing some Group Policy Preferences recently I stumbled upon a couple of strange behaviors that are everything else but intuitive. Here they go. Action Types Behavior The first topic includes the so called CRUD action types Create, Replace, Update or Delete and especially the difference between Replace and Update. Remember: there… Continue reading Understand Group Policy Preferences Action Types

  If you search internet for "2012 R2 Essentials" and "Hyper-V" you will see thousands of posts about this new added role, but hardly any describing how to really enable or install it. Even the TechNet article is somewhat vague when stipulating under Virtualize Your Environment that "depending on your system provider’s configuration, the Before… Continue reading Server 2012 R2 Essentials Hyper-V How-to

Symptoms: You are receiving a message “checking incoming server settings” on an Android device when adding an account for an Exchange Mail server. The event times out and no connection is established. Quick fix of last resort: If you are sure all other prerequisites are met (see below) make sure that you are connecting from… Continue reading checking incoming server settings last resort

  Recently I was dealing with a Domain Controller and a WSUS Server on a Windows Server 2003 R2 OS at a customer site that had lot of error messages under the applications event log: This "red battle field" included Message ID 1 from SQLVDI concerning MICROSOFT##SSEE (the SSEE being the Microsoft internal SQL Engine… Continue reading SQLVDI and SQLWRITER Errors with Acronis

If you are thinking about a deployment of 10GbE connectivity in the rack and in the datacenter you will be probably comparing fiber with copper and then even within the latter there are some alternatives. In internet a strong tendency of using SFP+ (or even the somewhat older CX4) using mostly passive twinax cables can be… Continue reading SFP+ vs RJ45 10GbE, aka 10GBASE-CR on twinax vs 10GBASE-T on cat6