ITExperience.NET

After the installation of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), you might face some trouble with the Automatic Updates feature in Windows XP. In my case, I wasn’t able to install new updates.

An example of the error I got was:

Security Update for Windows XP with Windows Media Format Runtime 9.5 and 11 (KB941569) failed

When you’re in a Windows 2003 network with Windows XP clients, Internet Explorer settings defined in your Group Policy may not be applied. Misconfiguration is often the cause of your Internet Explorer settings not being applied to your Windows XP clients.
In this article i will sum up the reasons why your Internet Explorer settings are not applied. I assume you’re running Windows 2003 SP2 on your domain controller (although SP0 or SP1 should be no problem), Windows XP SP2 on your clients,  and Internet Explorer 6 (at least Internet Explorer 6 SP1). I also assume you do NOT use the Internet Explorer Maintenance Mode. If you do, my advice would be to stop using it. Setting every option in the Group Policy separately gives you much more control.

When running a Windows 2003 server with .NET Framework 2 installed, you might find the following error in the event log:

Lost your Office 2007 license key, Windows XP license key or Office 2003 license key? As long as you have installed the software on your computer, you can retrieve the license key from your existing installation!

Defragmenting servers can be quite a time-consuming task if you have plenty of servers and plenty of disks. Most system administrators will have scheduled tasks on every server to defragment every month or so. A disadvantage of this way of working is the lack of overview what servers need to be defragmented. Microsoft’s Scriptcenter has a solution for this ‘problem’: Defragment all servers from one location with WMI. When running the script, it gives you return codes so you know the result of each defragmentation.