IE9 Meet Your New Browser Welcome Page Tab Opens When IE9 Starts

IE9 Meet Your New Browser Welcome Page Tab Opens When IE9 Starts

This is a very interesting post. It involved IE9 and the Meet your new browser welcome page. It has been written with a solution by the author for windows 2008 R2 server but the same solution can be applied to windows 7.

Prevent Internet explorer Welcome Tab from Opening

IE9, although it looks very similar to IE8, is a different browser in many respects and in particular in regards to security. One of the differences hat can catch a terminal server admin (RDS windows 2008) a surprise is that cookies are disabled by default with IE9. Admins will now, one way to circumvent this problem would be to setup the default user profile before the suers begin logging in for the first time. One hey login, their local or roaming profile is created and used after that. Once the user profiles have been created, the solution for solving the cookie problem can be solved using a logon script.

Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 Welcome Page Tab

The meet your new browser welcome tab can also be very annoying and for less savvy computers users, cause them to call in for tech support.
One of the ways to solve the meet your new browser welcome page and also make the IE( setup question asking the user to select express setting or customer settings is to use local group policy editor on the server.

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HP NC373i: The network link is down

This error would appear in the system log of the server almost everyday in the morning - HP NC373i: The network link is down . Never during the day such as late afternoon or evening. The error would occur early in the am hours juts before and at times when employees juts start reporting to work. Event id4, source l2nd.

The driver version was not updated yet. The possible solution is checking and disabling power save mode for the NIC. The server was running windows 2003 server standard edition on an HP Proliant series server hardware platform. The next step will be to update the driver version. There have been TCP offload problems with some drivers. The version installed on this server was fairy new but an update was available.

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Supporting Technology with Technology.: Enable 24 bit color in RDP for XP or 2003 Server

Supporting Technology with Technology.: Enable 24 bit color in RDP for XP or 2003 Server

The option to connect to XP systems or windows 2003 servers with a color depth higher than 16 bits is available to be selected as an option before connecting to the remote computer. However, the RDP connection is never made at a color depth higher that 16 bits to neither a windows 2003 server or an XP desktop. There is a way to connect with true color 24 bit using rdp to XP or windows 2003 server.

A pre-defined default limit on the remote XP or windows 2003 server limits the color depth of RDP connections to 16 bit maximum on XP or windows 2003 server but can be changed to 24 bit true color by using group policy o nthe rmote computer or for all computers in a windows domain by linking a GPO to an OU or domain. How to configure the "server side" of remote desktop to accept connections at 24-bit true color.

Windows 7, Vista, and server 2008 already allow higher that 24 bit color by default.

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Adding dsa.msc on Windows 2008 Server

How to add dsa.msc to windows 2008 server

If you wanted to access active directory users and computers from a member 2003 server it was as easy as clicking start run then entering dsa.msc in the box and click open. That little useful feature is not added into a default 2008 server installation it needs to be added during the initial installation of the server or afterwards by adding a feature. The image in this post shows what options to select to add the dsa.msc command back into your member server. For people who use this a lot it's quite worth the several minutes to install. Adding the feature does not require a reboot.

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Dell SAS 6iR Plug-in card, PCI Express x8, 2 CH, PC, Unix

Dell SAS6/iR Integrated SAS Controller Card Storage controller (RAID)- Serial ATA-300 / SAS- 300 MBps - Plug-in card, PCI Express x8, 2 CH, PC, Unix .

This RAID controller card from Dell only supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. It support 2 hot swap drives and has a combined 12Gbps throughput from 4 channels at 3Gbps. It's not a bad controller card for entry level servers and workstations but one of it's limitations is that it does not support RAID 5 or RAID 10 (RAID 0 + 1). I discovered this unfortunately when trying to configured RAID 10 (RAID 0 +1) in a PowerEdge r610 server.

Dell Storage Controllers


Dell Storage Controllers

Desktop and server remote access support software

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Configure RDP Port Forwarding on a Cisco ASA 5505

Cisco ASA5505

For those of you searching the Internet to try and find a good or simple example of how port forwarding is done on a Cisco ASA 5500 series firewall (in this example, it is a Cisco ASA 5505 version 7.2) This post contains a working example of a port forwarding configuration on a Cisco ASA 5505 that's allowing RDP, TCP port 3389, through the firewall to from the Internet to the LAN side to a server. For new users to the ASA, how to configure a port forwarding rule on a Cisco ASA 5505 can be a more easily accomplished if the working configuration of a working ASA5505 is viewed. For many of the more seasoned users of the Cisco security appliance, port forwarding is very easy and need not be searching for answers.

Since the RDP protocol and the services running on windows XP and Vista client machines are derivatives of Microsoft's Terminal Server, the proceedure for setting up a port forward configuration for Microsoft terminal server is the same. The Cisco ASA5505 is not concerned what you are connecting to behind it, it's just concerned that its own configuration allows the right data and connection to go through.

Below is a GUI shot of a working RDP (Terminal Server) port forward configuration running on a Cisco ASA 5500 series firewall. The TCP port number 3398 is forwarded from the outside interface that's part of VLAN2 to the inside interface that's part of the VLAN1.

!
interface Vlan1 nameif
inside security-level 100
ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
!
interface Vlan2 nameif
outside security-level 0
ip address dhcp setroute

Using the example below, just swap out the ip addresses shown in the static NAT translation for port forwarding RDP (terminal Server) with your own and you have a connection from the Internet to the LAN.

If you prefer command line, it's three lines of code at the command line that will do a simple port forwarding for RDP on the Cisco ASA.

Here they are:

access-list outside_access_in extended permit tcp any interface outside eq 3389
static (inside,outside) tcp interface 3389 192.168.1.10 3389 netmask 255.255.255.255
access-group outside_access_in in interface outside

Obviously, if you are looking to use the lines of code shown in the example above, change the 192.168.1.10 ip address shown above to be the address of the computer or server your forwarding RDP (terminal server) port to connect to. You can essentially use this example for terminal server RDP or for any other forwarding requirement you may have like ftp, http,smtp, etc.

Link to this post:

http://remotesupportsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/10/configure-rdp-port-forwarding-on-cisco.html

Link to this blog:

http://remotesupportsoftware.blogspot.com

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Service Pack 3 Doesn't Install IE7

The fact that SP3 for XP doesn't install IE7 was a very good decision made by Microsoft. There are still too many applications that rely on IE7 and would break if installed with an update.

XPSP3 is just over 300 MB. This is a nice sized download and contains all previous hotfixes after SP2.

List of fixes:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946480/

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