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Diagnostics via netlogon.log

We had a user with an account that kept being locked out from the domain. Our policy is to lock accounts on the fifth failed attempt and this would happen within seconds of resetting the lockout status. Finding which machine is the source of this lockout can be a pain without good use of the logging available in Windows.

Obsolete nuget in project.

Sometimes a Visual Studio project will report the error "The schema version of '[Some Component]' is incompatible with version N.N.NNNNN.NNN of NuGet. Please upgrade NuGet to the latest version." The message is not talking about your Visual Studio version of NuGet! Instead, within the .nuget subfolder of your project there is an obsolete version of nuget.exe.

The fix is easy... drop to the command line, change to \your\project\path\.nuget and run nuget.exe update -self

Rebuild your project and the errors will vanish.

Windows 8/8.1/2012 and .NET 3.5 installer problems.

If the standard methods for installing the .NET 3.5 platform are reporting errors (that they can't access the installation source files and they can't be downloaded from Windows Update either) then there are three updates that probably are blocking the installer. These are KB2966826, KB2966827 and KB2966828. Removing these updates and then using the standard methods should succeed. You may then reapply the updates (and the new ones that .NET will require) to secure the machine.

Clearing ClickOnce App Cache

ClickOnce was frequently used for custom WinForms apps that were deployed within small to medium business environments. The ease with which the installer can be created combined with auto updating being a base feature made it attractive. However, it can fail to work with alarming frequency. When that happens, there is a simple command that will improve the chances of a reinstall succeeding:

Using pscp (PuTTY SCP) to transfer files easiliy.

Moving files has become easier due to the popularity of file sync systems such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive and so on. However, sometimes you need to move a file that you don't want to sync to all of the connected machines on such an account, or it is simply too large to fit the plan you are using.

Setting up FTP servers is overkill for the very rare cases I need this point to point transfer. Instead I use PuTTY on Windows clients and SSH on the Linux host.

The mystery of the flush right menu.

I'm running Windows 8.1 on my development machine and I made the mistake of connecting to it *once* with Splashtop. Doing so turned on all of the "Touch Enabled" parts of the UI (which I can't use day to day, because the machine isn't touch enabled). The strangest of the side effects is that the menus suddenly were flush right instead of the normal US English flush left.

HyperV and the fight between local and group policies. (Random RDP disconnects no more!)

This is probably the simplest solution to a confoundingly hard to pinpoint problem yet. We had some HyperV virtual machines that are managed via RDP (which is very common). For some reason the sessions would disconnect at random seeming intervals. Sometimes almost immediately, sometimes after fifteen minutes or even longer.

Many searches of the Internet and Microsoft documentation came up with nothing of real value until we stumbled across the registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal\fDenyTSConnections which was set to 1.

Windows network testing with NTttcp

Although NTttcp[1] has been around for many years, it is overlooked despite being updated to work with modern equipment (such as 10Gbps connections). Establishing your networks baseline parameters is important when diagnosing network problems: reports of a slow network are subjective and can depend on many factors.

Use in the basic testing sense is easy. Two machines will be involved, the target, which is launched from the command line as (note that you should allow ntttcp through your filewall before running)

Duplicate file detection.

Over time any computer will end up with multiple copies of the same file. After adopting Dropbox to backup files between multiple computers and share files with others, it became clear that more and more duplicates were accumulating in that system, which is wasteful of the space allocated.

Windows 8, another Windows Vista.

Reports are rolling in that the expected 7% downturn in PC sales has turned into double that: 14% lost year or year sales. (1) The finger for the extra 7% loss is being pointed squarely at Microsoft's Windows 8.

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