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Server 2012 – Enable/Disable Spellcheck Highlighting and Auto-Correct with Group Policy

Courtesy of this fancy post where they use big words and pictographs here, you can use this info to enable or disable the built-in global spell checking/highlighting and auto-correct features of Windows 8/Server 2012 to deploy these settings as a group policy preference.

One can only hope that this feature is any better than the auto-correct on Android phones which makes me want to smash my spy phone into tiny little pieces with a claw hammer or test it’s aerial durability/impact resistance with the closest nearby wall at times, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Continue reading “Server 2012 – Enable/Disable Spellcheck Highlighting and Auto-Correct with Group Policy”

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WinSCP – Import/Export Your Saved Sessions List and Settings from a Computer that is Offline

If you want to backup your saved sessions from WinSCP, that is easy enough, as long as the computer is still in a working state, you can use the backup and restore feature from within the software. But what if the computer doesn’t boot or you swapped the drive into a different machine? So long as you can still access the drive and have access to that user’s registry file, you can easily extract the data you need. Continue reading “WinSCP – Import/Export Your Saved Sessions List and Settings from a Computer that is Offline”

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Windows – Play a WAV file with PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class

At work, they wanted to ability to play a soundbyte on a schedule as a reminder to our sales employees. I think I may have found this on stackexchange but I can’t quite remember at this point to give the full creds. A lot of the solutions I found tried to use Windows Media Player to play sound files or MP3’s, but unfortunately, there was no way to close the program after the file had played. This way uses Windows PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class to play the file. Continue reading “Windows – Play a WAV file with PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class”

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Windows – How to Run Elevated Scripts as a Regular User with Task Scheduler -OR- How to Restart Services as a Standard User

Here is a neat workaround you can use in Windows to run a batch script or any other command that would regularly require elevated administrator credentials. Using this method, you can essentially bypass UAC and allow a script to be ran as a standard user without them having to enter in an admin password. In theory, you could probably even use this same approach to install software as a regular user if you wanted to. For my example below, I was able to allow a standard user to kill processes and then restart the services.

The problem that I had to overcome was that one of my VPN users who used Shrewsoft VPN client would occasionally get disconnected and then never be able to fully connect again. Oddly enough, the client would show connected on the user’s end and immediately disconnect but it never made a connection on the server side. The problem was that the “iked” process would get hung up and then the VPN client would subsequently never fully connect all the way. Continue reading “Windows – How to Run Elevated Scripts as a Regular User with Task Scheduler -OR- How to Restart Services as a Standard User”

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Firefox – Version 33 Update Causes Certificate Error in Webmin

Copied this highly useful info straight from this website. Very strange that I didn’t have this problem until I hit Firefox version 39 but it is possible that I just hadn’t administered that particular server for a long time in Webmin.

Recent browser versions (e.g. Firefox 33) refuse to work with older Webmin installs.

They give a sec_error_invalid_key error, offer a ‘Try again’ button, but do not offer an option to add an exception.

Firefox 33 no longer supports certificates with private keys smaller than 1024 bits.

You can replace your webmin certificate with a new one by running this command: Continue reading “Firefox – Version 33 Update Causes Certificate Error in Webmin”

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CryptoWall 3.0 Ransomware – Ouch, It Hurts So Good…Get Out the Backup Tapes. You’ve Got Those Right?

Being the badass network admin that you are, you try to keep your servers up to date with all the latest Windows updates, you run antivirus on all your machines on your network and scan daily, you have made sure that none of your users have local admin rights to their machines so they can’t install any software, and so you think you are fairly well covered when it comes to viruses and spyware, well think again.

My company just got hit pretty hard with this new CryptoWall 3.0 virus. If you are unfamiliar with it, basically it encrypts any user accessible data on local and network shares that it has permissions to and holds it ransom for BitCoin payments. Continue reading “CryptoWall 3.0 Ransomware – Ouch, It Hurts So Good…Get Out the Backup Tapes. You’ve Got Those Right?”

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VBScript – Get a Folder/File Size or Verify That a Folder/File Exists

Here are some snippets of VBScript I pieced together from various sources out on the web to be able to find the size of a folder or file or check that a folder or file exists. This is pretty handy because it also works for UNC path names or files and folders out on network shares, as long as your user has permission to access that path. Continue reading “VBScript – Get a Folder/File Size or Verify That a Folder/File Exists”