It's no fun when you are told you (or a client) have ended up on a blacklist. It may be an IP address, a domain for a website or e-mail addresses, or something more general. Landing on a blacklist might mean clients running filtering software won't be able to visit your website, for example, if your domain was being marked as hosting adult content. If you land on a blacklist … [Read more...]

I was happily using my ultrabook the other day when I noticed the flag for the Action Center required attention. Upon opening it up, it told me to update my virus and spyware protection. I'm using the Windows 8 built-in Windows Defender, so I was a little surprised it wasn't being kept up to date automatically. I hit the Update button for Windows Defender and it seemed to take … [Read more...]

Upon accessing a UNC path to a server, you may get the error: Access to the resource '[UNC path]' has been disallowed. Typically the person will be trying to access the server share by entering the \servershare path into the address bar of an explorer window. This may be habit or convenience but it could also be due to a lack of options. The GPO setting enforcing this … [Read more...]

The Android app for Gmail recently received an update. It adds a bit more color than the previous version by using avatars (or generic substitutes) of the sender to take up some of the app's limited real estate. Also part of the update, the developers decided to hide the Delete button by default. My frustration at its departure was growing a little bit each day until today when … [Read more...]

I am using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to install Windows 7 on computers quickly and consistently. I was interested in adding a little polish and branding the finished product. The only real stumbling block I ran into was setting a default wallpaper on Windows 7. The usual tricks of editing the Default user profile or that profile's NTUser.dat file (HKey_Current_User hive) did … [Read more...]