IT Expert Voice

Much of performance improvement, security, and troubleshooting work is reactive. While there’s no avoiding this fact, implementing a Daily Log Review policy puts IT staff in a more pro-active position, using each day to build a set of rules that alert you to potential problems before they become serious.

How often does your team find, while troubleshooting an issue, that were small warning signs leading up to the incident but no one had noticed, or there had been no context to make it clear that they were seeing a real problem? Hopefully you don’t encounter such situations very often, but it happens. A daily log review policy can help to catch some of these issues earlier before they bog down or, worse, break your servers.

One advantage to allocating time for daily log review into your staff’s routines is that they become more familiar with the day to day workings of your systems. This knowledge in turn makes unusual occurrences stand out even more than they would have before. READ MORE

If your Windows 7 systems need half an eternity to boot up, there’s clearly something odd going on. Dealing with slow boot problems is annoying and – let’s face it – is mostly guesswork. Guesswork that costs money and time. We have got you covered: Learn how to analyze the startup process, find the cause in no time, and get rid of bottlenecks once and for all!

Windows 7 is a fast beast, especially when it comes to its startup process which was optimized dramatically compared to Windows Vista. No wonder, as Microsoft has a dedicated team focusing strictly on startup performance. And it shows: On one- to two-year-old hardware, Windows 7 usually takes only 20 to 40 seconds to boot up. Even the performance-wise challenged netbooks rarely need more than a minute to be ready for work!

Certainly, boot times vary significantly from one computer to another. This is nothing new. But if Windows 7 clients need way longer – and we’re talking way over one or two minutes – then you’re looking at a resource hog. So what could be causing the problem?

• You just installed a new driver, which hasn’t been WHQL-certified and delays the boot up process. It could be a simple driver bug!
• You installed a piece of resource-intense software that initializes a process or a service during startup.
• You updated existing software or Windows 7 itself. Yes, it’s not unheard of that some updates cause a significant boot delay.

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No longer an optional extra, but a built-in part of Windows 7, PowerShell 2 enables administrators to manage the computers in the enterprise from both the command line and from scripts.

No matter how we try to get away from the command line, for many administrative and maintenance jobs for both individual PCs and for an office full of Windows 7 computers, when push comes to shove you can’t beat individual shell commands or reusable batch or script files. That’s why I was very happy to see Microsoft’s new PowerShell 2 baked into Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The single most important change in PowerShell 2 is that it is not just for individual computers, retro-fitted for administering multiple PCs. No, this version of PowerShell was designed from the beginning to manage networked PCs. In short, PowerShell is just as much for network administrators as it is for system administrators or PC technicians. READ MORE

For years, remote desktop software has remained under IT’s watchful eye and iron-fisted control. These incredibly useful tools allowed employees on the move to remotely access their office desktops with little or no threat to the enterprise. But the surge of client-side apps, particularly on smartphones, has wrested control from IT.

“These apps, although convenient, are potentially dangerous to organizations,” says Rob Fitzgerald, president of Lorenzi Group, a digital forensic firm. “They immediately give employees control of company data.”

Fitzgerald cites the recent case of a City of San Francisco administrator who refused to hand over administrative control to the city’s FiberWAN as an example of how things can go badly when the employee, rather than the organization, controls the database. It cost the city $900,000 to regain control. The motive, said the district attorney, was job security. “This is nothing more than his attempt to become an indispensable employee,” Assistant DA Del Rosario said in the closing arguments. “You suspend me; the FiberWan goes down.”

Several state regulations hold CIOs personally responsible for data security. Imagine the hundreds of possible scenarios your department might face, and the potential risk of additional access via remote desktop software becomes even scarier. READ MORE

Though Windows 7 is still pretty much a newcomer to the desktop operating system scene, it’s been around long enough that IT pros will encounter the occasional circumstance that demands — or at least calls out loudly for — a complete reinstall of this much-touted OS. In the sections that follow, I lead you through some cases where a reinstall is highly recommended (if not absolutely required) to make a PC work properly.

Windows 7 has been around in full commercial use for several months, depending on how you count: since August 2009 (MSDN release) or October 2009 (commercial release). Though it may seem that reinstalling Windows is unnecessary, in some cases such a maneuver makes good sense. These include a switch from 32- to 64-bit environments, changing your BIOS hard disk access mode, and for classic Windows degunking maneuvers. READ MORE

You want your clients to automatically clean themselves up? You need a program to start at a specific time? You want the PC to automatically send you an e-mail message in case a crash occurs? Windows 7’s built in “Task Scheduler” can automate almost everything you want (except automatically get you coffee). Here’s how it works. READ MORE

Minimalists beware: Having a solid-color background on your Windows 7 client PCs causes an extremely slow logon of up to 30 seconds. Read all about the problem and get three helpful solutions.
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Running Windows 7 doesn’t lock you into XP mode if you really need Windows XP. There are lots of alternatives. READ MORE

Kbox is used to manage and control desktop system images that contain user files and applications and — with its Systems Management Appliance, sold separately — to do PC inventory and audits. It also works with both virtual and physical machines. READ MORE

Switching operating systems can be an adventure at the best of times. Hardware requirements, user training, and training of support staff are usually top-of-mind during planning. Switching to Windows 7 from Windows XP introduces still more twists, including a new license activation process and new decisions for administrators. READ MORE