Entries by ktrang

You, your network and the Locky virus

Last Monday, a new particularly clever (and nasty) piece ransomware appeared on the internet called Locky. The malicious file went undetected by most anti-virus software for a number of days and even now a couple weeks since it appeared, antivirus products are still struggling to keep up, often taking upto 24 hours to include detection in their […]

Wireless Myths

Myth #1: “The only interference problems are from other 802.11 networks.” Summary: The unlicensed band is an experiment by the FCC in unregulated spectrum sharing. The experiment has been a great success so far, but there are significant challenges posed by RF interference that need to be given proper attention.   Myth #2: “My network […]

Windows 10 Major Update Highlights

Windows Update for Business enables control over the deployment of updates within organizations while ensuring devices are kept current and security needs are met, at reduced management cost. Features include setting up device groups with staggered deployments and scaling deployments with network optimizations. Windows Store for Business provides a flexible way to find, acquire, manage […]

Windows 10 Upgrade Path

Now that Windows 10 Version 1511 (first major patch) is out, we can look at potential upgrade paths for the OS.  For those of you that didn’t know, this version allows for the use of keys from Windows 7/8 during the installation of Windows 10.  

Veeam v9 New Features

From: http://blog.mwpreston.net/2015/11/09/veeam-v9-what-we-know-so-far/ Unlimited Scale-out Backup Repository This is perhaps one the biggest features included within v9 – all to often we see environments over provision the storage for their backup repositories – you never know when we might get a large delta or incremental and the last thing we want to have to do is go […]

Another layer of protection: Cryptolocker and other malware

Preventative Workstation protection: This virus launches from a specific location on the workstation, thus it’s recommended to add a group policy setting to block it from Windows Vista/7/8 and from XP. Use software restriction policies as follows: Windows 7: You can use Software Restriction Policies to block executables from running when they are located in […]

Office 2013 Activation error of death solved!

O365 Office 2013 Activation error code 0x8004FC12 This is something that has been annoying me for a while.  It only happens on my home computer and will not go away.  I’ve tried reinstalling setting up new profiles, un-associating my personal O365 account, repairing Office.  I even gave up and started using Office 2010. The problem doesn’t occur […]

Where To Start With Infrastructure Monitoring

Recently I spent time revisiting our monitoring system. It needed a little bit of TLC and some of the staff wasn’t clear on exactly how it works and does its magic. As a follow-up, I thought it might be useful to write a little about monitoring. I mean, so what’s the point anyway? Monitoring has […]

Remote Desktop Services

With businesses attaining more WAN bandwidth and businesses trust with hosted services increasing, Microsoft is investing heavily in Remote Desktop Services.  Renamed from Terminal Services to Remote Desktop Services, it encompasses multiple ways to deliver application access from any location.  Below, you will find information on some of the features and requirements in an RDS […]