If you’re planning reinstall of your Windows Vista\XP\Server 2000\2003\2008 you’ll need to locate your copy of your product installation key.
An easy way is to use Product Key Viewer utility to find forgotten Windows Office or SQL Product Keys.
Unusually Operating System is installed on C drive and whenever you install new program it goes to C:\Program Files\program name
I is because the default suggested installation path is C:\Program Files.
It can cause a problem when C drive is been wrong partitioned and the size of C drive is small
You can use registry to change the default application installation path to for example install in D:\Programs,
To set different default installation path, follow the steps bellow:
$dcname = <DomainDNSName>
$newSite = "NewSite Name"
$context = New-Object
System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.DirectoryContext(‘DirectoryServer’, $dcname)
$dc =
[System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.DomainController]::getDomainController ($context)
$dc.MoveToAnotherSite($newSite)
Where DomainDNSName – Enter your DNS domain name
To clear user local profile via registry :
Note:The following method works on all of these operation systems:Windows 2000/XP/2003/2008 and Windows 7.
Creator Owner => Full Control on “Subfolders and Files Only”
Security group of users needing to put data on share => List Folder/Read Data, Create Folders/Append Data on “This Folder Only”
System => Full Control, on “This Folder, Subfolders and Files”
Note: To enforce group policy: Navigate to Start>Run type gpupdate /force and hit Enter
If you Windows Desktop icon is disappeared , there is a quick way to restore it.
Follow the steps bellow:
| [Shell] Command=2 IconFile=explorer.exe,3 [Taskbar] Command=ToggleDesktop |
Note: If you can’t place it you Quick Launch bar may be locked.
To unlock it :Right click on it , and remove selection from “Lock The Task Bar”
Note: You can find the service name in Control Panel, Services. Or by running services.msc command To Open Command Prompt : type in run cmd
Starting from Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 the “mstsc /console” switch was been replaced by “mstsc /admin” In both Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, the Remote Desktop Program has been updated to version 6.1 (6.0.6001)
Since there is no longer the ability to connect to Session 0, the /console switch is no longer required. But, what if I want to connect to Session 0 on a Windows Server 2003/XP or previously machine making the most of RDP 6.1?
Let’s see how we can do it.
If you use “mstsc /v:servername /console” in a script file then the /console will be ignored (with no warning) and you will be connected to a normal session that is not the server console.
If you specify the /console switch in the RDC GUI connection dialog then it will tell you “an unknown parameter was specified in the computer name field”.
If you want to connect to the old console session in Windows 2008 and Vista SP1 use the “mstsc /admin” switch
Another workaround is to replace the mstsc.exe file with one from older system (Windows XP ) for example.
mstsc /admin savedsession.rdp
It enables remote users to print from a Terminal Services session to the local connected printers without the need to install drivers on the Terminal Server.
User will see the full printer properties of the local printer in the session and have access to all printer functionality. The Easy Print universal driver acts as a proxy and redirects all User Prints to local device
To use the Terminal Services Easy Print feature in Terminal Services on Windows Server 2008, remote clients must run RDP (RDC) 6.1 client and have.NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 installed. Both included with Windows Server 2008 and will be available for download for Windows Vista.
For full guide on how to use Terminal Services 2008 Easy print feature follow MS tech net article here