Feed The Frog Please

A fully customisable frog gadget for your site. Available here along with other nice stuff.

Increase Exchange 2003 Standard Database Size

With Sp2, Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server database size had been increased to 18GB. Well nowadays a Bluray disc has 40GB of storage, even 18GB is not a big number anymore. However you may need a bigger space, as the Exchange server 2003 standard edition supports up to 75GB of data.

To increase the size of the database;

First enter "regedit" on the run box on the start menu.

Then find these subkey

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\\Private-GUID
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\\Public-GUID

The GUID at the end of the subkey is a long folder packed with numbers and letters.

Enter a new DWORD Value for both of the subkeys. In the "New Value #1" box, type "Database Size Limit in GB", click OK. Right click the DWORD , click modify and enter the amount you wish to be your max database size. Don't forget to enter an integer from 1 to 75. 75GB sounds just good.

Close the regedit screen. Open up the Run box, enter "cmd". At the command prompt type;

• net stop msexchangeis

After the service stops successfuly, type;

• net start msexchangeis

All done! You can verify your success by taking a look at the event viewer console. Under "Application" tab, look for the event with the ID 1216.

How to Clean Your Exchange Log Files

Exchange log files usually take a lot of space if you don't automate a backup to run from some time to time. If you find yourself out of space on your drive, here is the thing to do.

From Start menu, type "ntbackup" on the run box.

Backup Utility screen appears. Select the "Backup" tab and go to the "Microsoft Exchange Server" box, expand and click "Microsoft Information Store".

The following screen gives you some info and schedule options.

And here is the screen that you can watch the statistics till the end.

After a nice backup of Exchange Information Store, ntbackup simply deletes the log files, freeing the space you need.

Enabling Websense to Find Domain Objects

After setting up Websense Enterprise Server to be your faithful proxy server, you would probably want to add some domain groups and manage them.

To do that you right click on the Websense console, select "Add Directory Objects..."

"Select Objects to Add" box opens up. And you double click the "Directory" folder.

But instead of showing up the domain objects, you get an error telling you to check the "Directory Service"configuration under the "Settings" menu. If you read the help files, then you SHOULD know that you won't need to mess with the Directory Settings, as the "Windows NT Directory/Active Directory (Mixed Mode) option should be selected.

What you NEED to do is to simply give permissions to a service.

"Websense User Service" and "Websense DC Agent" needs to access the domain controllers. Therefore, right click on one of the services, select "Properties". On the "Log On" tab, select "This Account" and enter your domain admin credentials. Do this for the services mentioned above. Restart the services. All done!

How to Exclude an Address Being Filtered by Proxy Server on Internet Explorer

So you need to set up a connection to a designated address but the connection is filtered by the proxy server even tough you excluded the address or configured the server not to(In my case it was the frikkin Websense and ISA server combo). Thank Bill for adding a small box into the Internet Explorer that helps us to bypass the proxy check and go directly to the site.

3 single steps to fool your proxy server.

First open the "Internet Options" from control panel.

Then go to "connections", "LAN settings". Click "Advanced" on the following menu.

The "Exceptions" box, is the solution. What ever you enter in this box, Internet Explorer will skip redirecting requests to the proxy server.

By the way, if you want this to work properly, your gateway should be able to access the Internet on its own, eliminating the need for a proxy server distributing Internet. Or you can always enter custom route of course.

Force Wsus Server to Update Computers

Tired of waiting for the Wsus server to update the client computers? There is a simple solution for that. Comes with a trial version, WuInstall is a software that triggers available windows updates. You can search and install the new updates on demand.

Easy to use, just got to the directory where the exe resides. Add the switch "/install" to search and install the available updates.

Setting/Resetting a Password Of Your Windows User

Pretty simple. Locate "My computer" icon. Right click the icon and find "Manage".

On the "Manage" screen select "Local Users and Groups"\"Users" and find the user name that is to be configured. Right click on the user name and select "Set Password...". I always wondered what those ... symbols represent at the end of Set Password option.

The following screen indicates some important stuff which we will never read. Take a look if you want. It's a warning about how you can ruin your computer just by resetting your password. Pure crap with steam on it. Just select "Proceed" button.

Enter the new password twice and you are good to go.

Yes, that's it . What did you expected anyway? And by the way, from now on users without passwords will have to enter their password at start up screen and on the lock screen.