Category Archives: SysAdmin

Systems Administration Topics

Vista: “Access denied” error when attempting to map a printer

Posted on 16 July, 2010 by Daniel

Another printing-related issue I experienced this week was as follows: I set up some new printers on the print server, and shared them out I then used Ricoh’s “Default Editor” application to lock down the colour printing options When attempting … Continue reading →

Posted in Printing, SysAdmin, Windows | Leave a comment

Vista: Print spooler crashing repeatedly

Posted on 16 July, 2010 by Daniel

Had a problem today where a printer driver became corrupted on our print server. This, in turn was causing the Print Spooler service on the workstations to crash repeatedly. I was unable to delete the mapped printers through the normal … Continue reading →

Posted in Group Policy, SysAdmin | Leave a comment

Quickly test Windows-auth logon to a SQL DB as a different user

Posted on 10 June, 2010 by Daniel

If you need to make a test connection to a MS SQL DB as a different Windows user, and you’re not using SQL authentication, you can do the following: runas /user:domain\sqluser “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe” You’ll then see the following … Continue reading →

Posted in SysAdmin, Windows | Leave a comment

Self-sign your Powershell scripts

Posted on 21 April, 2010 by Daniel

Creating my first Powershell script, I came up against code execution issues. Rather than take the easy (sketchy) way out and simply enable execution of unsigned code, I went and figured out how to sign my scripts using my internal … Continue reading →

Posted in Scripting, SysAdmin | Leave a comment

Managing Local Admins using GPP

Posted on 13 November, 2009 by Daniel

This is a brain dump of something Alan Burchill and Lilia Gutnik presented at TechEd Australia 2009. It covers managing local administrators on your workstations using the power of Group Policy Preferences. Create a new GPO if necessary, link it … Continue reading →