Nov 12 2010
Group Policy Preferences are new in Server 2008, which expands the configurable settings of a Group Policy Object. You may set up folder options, mapped drives, scheduled tasks, printers, services and Start menu settings. Take a look at Application control with Windows Group Policy Preferences.
Oct 29 2010
By David Adkins, former PC ProSchools Student and Help Desk Professional
I received a call today from a student. He was running into a problem installing Windows XP Professional on a Virtual Machine. When the Install reached the ELUA It required the user to hit F8 to accept. The Student proceeded to hit the F8 key on the laptop he was working on only to be met with disappointment that the Virtual did not accept the keystroke. Perplexed the student once again hit the F8 key. Again he was met with the same result. He was not about to let a simple thing like hitting a simple key keep him from installing the Operating System. Just to make sure he hit the F8 one last time. Nothing! The other option was to hit the escape key to return to the last screen. He hit the key and the virtual machine responded by returning to the previous screen as it was meant to. “What the Heck?” he asked himself. Why would it be that the program would recognize all my keystrokes up to that point? He wondered. Well at risk of feeling disappointed again he returned to the ELUA screen and hit the F8 key one more time. Again nothing! Well I’ll call Helpdesk at PC ProSchools for assistance.
I received the message about his problem and called him back. After he went through his frustrating experience with this process, I began to wonder my self. “Was the machine in the active window? He promptly responded to my question with “yes I made sure it was active.” This was defiantly a new problem to me, so I went to my favorite IT Tool, Google. There I found others with the same problem. Their solution was to hit the Function Key along with the F8. Once I instructed the student to try this he was very excited to report that he could now continue with the installation.
One thing I have learned from this job is that Google is hands down the best place to start with research problems.
Oct 15 2010
Virtualization was created to let you run multiple virtual computers on a one physical computer. The different virtual computers you add to the physical one can run any combination of differing operating systems along with multiple applications. The virtual computers you add all share the resources of the physical machine, so you will have limitations do to sharing processor power and RAM.
Many of you, as students at PC ProSchools, have gotten to see and use virtual computers in our labs. The ability to create your own network with multiple servers and client machines is beneficial in your training. In the real world virtual computers and networks are also being used to alleviate costs and create efficiency.
Microsoft uses Hyper-V to create and manage virtual machines and networks. Here is a link to an article that goes over some of the features of Hyper-V that are incorporated in Windows Server 2008 R2.
