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Remote Desktop Server – Registry Key to Change RDP Listening Port

As you probably already know, by default, Microsoft Remote Desktop listens on port 3389. This is all good, but what if you are behind a firewall and wanted to allow port forwarding to be able to access multiple computers via RDP remotely but can’t because they are all running on the same port?

Well, if you’re crafty and have a decent Linux-based router like Mikrotik that will let you create packet mangling rules to change the destination port number, you can get around this, but in environments where you have little SOHO routers like Linksys or Belkin, typically this is where changing the port number that RDP listens on comes in handy. The only problem then is remembering whatever port you changed it to because then you have to specify it anytime you connect via RDP which can be a pain if you’ve got a bad memory. There are already a thousand and one articles out there to help you change the port number, this is a quick post for future reference for myself.
Continue reading “Remote Desktop Server – Registry Key to Change RDP Listening Port”

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Outlook 2010 – Only Starts in Safe Mode

What a surprise, this morning I came into the office only to find that all of my people running Outlook 2010 were now having it open in Safe Mode and I immediately thought, OK this had to have been a Windows Update issue. This seems to be the norm for old Microsuck these days, as I’ve had these sort of problems with Outlook happen twice within the last month. Perhaps they should come up with a new slogan, “Microsoft: Raising the Bar in Repudiation”. Continue reading “Outlook 2010 – Only Starts in Safe Mode”

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Outlook 2010 – Crashes Upon Opening Emails with Embedded Pictures

Today I had a user that just had this problem pop up seemingly out of nowhere. I tried repairing Outlook, starting it in Safe Mode, disabling all Add-Ons, finding and deleting out Outlook’s temp files, and the problem still persisted.

After a brief web search, it appears the latest batch up Windows Updates, specifically KB3097877 that had installed automatically last night, was the culprit. Uninstall it, reboot and hopefully you’re good to go. Here are my references: Continue reading “Outlook 2010 – Crashes Upon Opening Emails with Embedded Pictures”

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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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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”

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VMware vSphere Client – Remove Cached Entries on Connection Screen

For a long time, I’ve just dealt with having a massively long list of old VM servers in my vSphere client but today I finally decided to take a minute to do something about it as it was just getting too ridiculous to navigate to find the servers I wanted to use. A quick scour of the web led me to the following registry key, all you need to do is edit the comma separated list, delete out the entries you no longer want, and be on your merry way.

HKCU\Software\VMware\VMware Infrastructure Client\Preferences\RecentConnections
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Batch Script – Ribbon UI Customization: Take Ownership and Change Permissions of the CommandStore Subkeys in the Registry

This is just a follow up to my experiences customizing the Ribbon UI icons in Server 2012 and where the path has taken me thus far. After many hours of research and development and a lot of head scratching, I’ve written several posts on how to disable the different icons in the Ribbon UI which requires the adding or editing of keys in the CommandStore section of the registry for Windows Explorer. For more information on how to disable the icons, see this post.

My whole goal as of late was to be able to add these registry items to the RDS server’s GPO to be able to deploy these settings to all 7 of my RDS servers but then I found out you can’t take ownership of the CommandStore subkeys with the local “SYSTEM” account. Yet another deliberate Microsoft setback meant to discourage people from editing the Ribbon UI, oh well, fuck ’em. I’ve encountered so many problems with this RDS server project it is unreal and this was just icing on the proverbial cake. Continue reading “Batch Script – Ribbon UI Customization: Take Ownership and Change Permissions of the CommandStore Subkeys in the Registry”