The Danger of Machine Account Password Changes

Every so often I am asked to help analyze weird issues when assigning group memberships or permissions - accounts are not found and the Event Log shows unsettling messages. Many of these situations can be traced back to the operating system using a different machine account password than the domain is aware of.

WebInterface User Roaming

With the release of WebInterface 5.2, Citrix has implemented a new feature called user roaming. A video was posted on the Citrix community site presenting the new features which - unfortunately - does not suffice to describe the power of the latest versions of WebInterface.

This article explains this exciting new feature in WebInterface and shows how it benefits XenApp environments.

My Next Speaker Slots

I thought I’d let you know when and where I’ll be speaking this year. Note that all events are held in German. Sorry for the multilanguage post!

R2FeatureTalk (German): WMI SNMP-Anbieter (#63)

Watch me explain “WMI SNMP-Anbieter” in Video #63.

Watch all videos here.

R2FeatureTalk (German): Message Queuing DCOM Proxy (#24)

Watch me explain the Message Queuing DCOM Proxy in Video #24.

Watch all videos here.

Microsoft Sync Framework and the Pains with EFS

I have been using SyncToy since the days of good old Windows XP ;-) I has been a reliable companion for swiftly backing up my data. With the update to SyncToy 2.1 on Windows 7 the situation has changed dramatically. As the source directory is EFS-encrypted and the destination directory is a network share, SyncToy fails to create new files at the destination. Unfortunately, the situation is even worse as SyncToy seems to be the victim - like myself.

EdgeSight 5.3 Monitors License Servers

On the 11th of March, Citrix quietly released EdgeSight 5.3. Apart from endpoints and XenApp servers, EdgeSight now monitors license servers presents in the environment. No agent is required for this new feature. This version is not affected by the timebomb present in earlier versions ;-)

How Many Will Be Affected By The EdgeSight Timebomb?

I hope it is commonly known by now that EdgeSight 5.0 and 5.1 will stop working on 25th of March 2010. That’s merely two weeks away! In my opinion, the warning Citrix has published does not suffice for an issue of such effect.

Microsoft Word Image Compression and the Loss of Quality

My girlfriend is currently writing the thesis for her PhD. This involves creating several graphical representations of the results of her work. All of them are vector-based to scale to the appropriate size without loosing quality in the process. I have offered to help by inserting these graphics in Microsoft Word 2007 - a repetitious task which can be performed without insight of the content of the actual work ;-)

In the course of this article, I will outline the problem of creating high quality, scalable images and inserting them into documents using Microsoft Word. Some of the issues are caused by the inherent differences between vector-based and pixel-based images as well as the image compression in Word. Fortunately, I am able to offer a solution to these obstacles.

Performance Monitoring Round-Up

In the course of the last six months, I have published nine articles about performance monitoring, why it is a crucial task and how the different subsystems of the operating system. To wrap up this series, this article offers an overview of the topics covered in the individual articles as well as a summary of my recommendations.