One of the first challenges an organization faces when deciding to remove end-user administrator rights is determining what applications require such rights. Many times the approach is to remove administrator rights, see who complains and add those users back to the administrators group. Over time, large chunks of an organization still have administrator rights due to applications that are not compatible when run as a standard user. Let’s look at how this can be addressed.

There are four application types that typically require administrator rights:

• System Utilities: Some of these utilities make sense to restrict from standard users including computer management, turning Windows features on or off, or allowing remote access. Others such as the Disk Defragmenter, changing the system time, or adding language packs may be appropriate
• Installers: Most installers will not run by a standard user. There are some installer exceptions that will still...

Just a little query to to detail how many computers have the Intel 7 Series SATA AHCI controller which has Device ID 1E03. These new controllers come on our shiny new Dell Latitude E6330, but I was curious to see if anyone else in our managed estate had this controller. 

select count(*), [System Manufacturer],[Computer Model] from AexInv_Aex_HW_PCI_Bus 

join Wrksta on AexInv_Aex_HW_PCI_Bus.wrkstaID = Wrksta.Wrkstaid

join Inv_Aex_HW_Serial_Number on Inv_Aex_HW_Serial_Number._ResourceGUID = Wrksta.GUID

where [PCI BUS Component] 

like '%DEV_1E03%'

group by [System Manufacturer],[Computer Model]

This week was pretty much replication week for me.

I'll cover a few topics on this blog but today we will look at the Package Replication part and the implications it has for UNC base packages.

When a SMP is refreshing it software packages it does a few check that relate to the package source type, as they are handle differently: local, unc or http sources.

It also verifies whether the package is local or replicated from another server. In the later case, and for UNC package the refresh will no generate any snapshot nor any codebases for the server.

One of the cases this week came a partner had tested successfully the following scenario in their lab: Server A is the master SMP and replicates (via standalone replication) a set of DSL packages (thus UNC based) to Server B (and other 'slave' SMP's). Packages from Server B where able to download the DSL packages without any problems.

But as per the package snapshot and codebase...

I have struggle a bit with my preferred tool to understand where the profiling data is stored these days, as it has changed quite a bit from the initial release of the tool in version 6.0 SP3 (this dates by quite a bit now).

It started a few month ago when one of my customer had some issues. We noticed that clearing the profiler was very slow. Going at data rates of just a MiB per second.

I was trying to locate the buffer files, as the profiler versions early from 7.1 used to store the data in a zero-impact buffer file. But this was not yielding any results. I could see from the Windows folder some temp files being written but not much else.

It continued with another customer last week, and today whilst I was opening a 16GiB buffer file it all came clear. I started by cleaning up a local drive to have enough space to old the file and do a local import. After copying the full file at a rate of 375 Mbps (still it took ~10 minutes) I thought I had done most of the...