Allow PING requests to reach Windows Vista

In Windows XP SP2 it was a pretty simple case of configuring the security/firewall rules for a selected network interface so that ICMP Echo (PING) requests would be allowed to pass through the firewall. ICMP Echo requests are a pretty standard way of seeing if a machine is up and running … depending on your configuration of course. In Windows Vista the way to allow PING requests is a bit different....

Why won’t my USB/portable drives get ejected properly?

Have you ever connected a USB or portable device, used it then tried and eject and had Windows say the device can’t be ejected? You’d expect Windows to give a nice message saying it’s now safe to unplug the device but instead you receive a message saying “The device ‘Portable Drive’ cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later.”...

Stop Skype hijacking phone numbers in IE!

HEAPS of people use Skype. If you’re one of the people that don’t use it to make calls directly from your machine you might want to turn off the feature that highlights phone numbers in IE so they’re clickable. If you’re one of those people, read on …...

Calculating Active Directory Site Replication Cost

Calculating the cost of your Active Directory site links can be a tricky process. If you get it wrong you can easily cause un-necessary load on your inter-network links....

Using Microsoft Visio to diagram Active Directory

ATDT ScreenshotThere seem to be a few people about asking how they can document their Active Directory or Exchange topology. There are 2 main ways and both are pretty obvious – either use your knowledge of the AD or Exchange topology to draw the diagram manually or use a plugin, utility or application to do it for you....