DFS Fileshare and Microsoft Office Protected Mode

We recently switched to using DFS for our Fileshares, but quickly ran into a problem with Microsoft Office Documents opening up in "Protected Mode". The reason given was that Word and Excel believed the files originated from the Internet, and therefore was warning users each time they opened a document from the DFS Share. I …

SAGE 200: Adding a Custom Menu Item

Each Sage 2010 User is associated with one or more "Roles". Users with multiple roles can use "Switch Configuration" from the Sage 200 File Menu to choose the most appropriate one. It is the "Role" (set within Sage System Administration) that determines the Menu Items they are presented with. In Order to add a New …

Re-cycling an SBS 2008 SSL Certificate on a WatchGuard Firewall

I recently rolled out the SSL VPN feature on my WatchGuard M200 Firebox. This will replace the SBS 2008 PPTP VPN for Mobile Users. PPTP is no longer regarded as secure. The SSL VPN itself works fine, but the SSL Certificate is "self generated" by the Firebox, so users receive a security warning when they …

Decommission WSUS 3 on Small Business Server

I am slowly but surely moving all of the services from Windows SBS 2008 onto our brand new Windows 2016 Server. This article covers the steps I took to decommission WSUS 3 after switching to WSUS 4. Firstly, I checked that none of my clients were still connecting to WSUS 3. Once I established this, …

Windows 10 Update 1709 woes

I tried many different methods of attack, but on every occasion, Windows 10 Update 1709 continued to fail. The Error Message was a follows: 0x8007001F - 0x3000D The installation failed in the FIRST_BOOT phase with an error during MIGRATE_DATE operation - - Now, I need to point out that my Workstation is connected to a Domain, …

Office 365: Your Automatic Reply Settings Cannot Be Displayed

We recently decommissioned our aging Exchange 2007 Server and switched to using Office 365 for Email. One quirk of the new system was that some users were having difficulty accessing their Out Of Office (Automatic Reply) Settings when using Outlook 2010 or 2013. Your automatic reply settings cannot be displayed because the server is currently …

Watchguard Firebox M200: Unblocking WeTransfer

If you are blocking "Personal Network Storage and Backup" at your Watchguard Firewall, users won't be able to access wetransfer.com. In their own support documentation here, WeTransfer suggested creating the following firewall exceptions: *.wetransfer.com *.we.tl *.amazonaws.com *.wetransfer.net However, this still doesn't prevent the Firebox from dropping the traffic. Below is a table of exceptions I …

T-SQL: Using the HAVING clause

Here is a quick differentiation between the "WHERE" clause and the "HAVING" clause within an SQL Query. Below is a basic query that will generate a list of the Customers based upon the number of orders they have placed. select count(order_no) as Orders, slcust_no from windows_enquiry where order_no >0 group by slcust_no order by orders …

T-SQL: Aggregate Functions; Date Functions; and Group By Statement Woes

When combining Aggregate Functions with Date / Time functions within an SQL Query, you may run into errors relating to the "Group By" statement, such as: "Column is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause" "Invalid Column Name" "Each GROUP BY expression must …

SQL Server File Locations for Default Instances

Each Instance of SQL Server has its own set of executable files (sqlservr.exe) and data files. The file locations for the default instance are different depending upon the version installed. Essentially, this is to allow multiple versions of SQL Server to happily co-existing on the same server. The table below lists the default file locations …