Category Archives: Technology

Live Mesh Update

Posted on Sunday 31 July 2011 by richardsiddaway

Couple of points worth noting if you are going to use Live Mesh (1) File paths longer than 269 characters (folder paths > 248) won’t sync  – shorten the path to fix (2) PST files won’t sync – even if … Continue reading →

Posted in Technology, Windows 7 | Leave a comment

Live Mesh

Posted on Saturday 30 July 2011 by richardsiddaway

One problem I’ve had for a while is how to keep my script library synchronised across a number of machines.  I have a laptop I use for my development work at home and I have two netbooks – at least … Continue reading →

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Dell duo tablet

Posted on Thursday 21 July 2011 by richardsiddaway

Having bought the Dell Duo a few weeks ago I’ve been giving its tires a good kick. The duo is a combination netbook and tablet. It opens and works like a conventional netbook but the screen flips round and so … Continue reading →

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Windows SysInternals Administrators Reference

Posted on Wednesday 13 July 2011 by richardsiddaway

Windows SysInternals Administrators Reference Title: Windows SysInternals Administrators Reference Publisher: Microsoft Press ISBN: 978-0-7356-5672-7 The SysInternals tool set – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx  – should be one of a Windows administrator’s best friends. You may not need them every day but when you do … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Technology, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Leave a comment

root\wmi–set monitor brightness

Posted on Thursday 23 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

Oddly the methods for changing the brightness aren’t on the WmiMonitorBrightness we get a separate class with the methods. This function can be used to set the brightness function set-monitorBrightness {[CmdletBinding()]param ([ValidateRange(5,20)][int]$timeout=5, [ValidateRange(0,100)][int]$brightness) $monitors = Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\wmi -Class WmiMonitorBrightnessMethods foreach … Continue reading →

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root\wmi – Monitor brightness

Posted on Thursday 23 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

The monitor brightness can be discovered like this function get-monitorBrightness { $monitors = Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\wmi -Class WmiMonitorBrightness foreach ($monitor in $monitors){  $brightness = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{        CurrentLevel = $monitor.CurrentBrightness        MaxLevel = $($monitor.Level | sort | select -Last … Continue reading →

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Testing the 4K boundary

Posted on Thursday 23 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

Advanced Format disks have started shipping –see http://managedux.com/2011/04/26/using-vbscript-to-check-partitions-for-advanced-format-4k-512e-sector-alignment/ These disks use a 4096 byte sector instead of 512. To get the best performance from these disks the partitions have to be aligned to a 4K boundary. This happens automatically in … Continue reading →

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Windows Update: 5 drivers

Posted on Saturday 18 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

The previous posts just looked at installing software updates.  We can also get driver updates through Windows updates. A simple modification to the get-updates function sets this up. function get-drivers {[CmdletBinding()] param ( [switch]$hidden ) PROCESS{ $session = New-Object -ComObject … Continue reading →

Posted in IT Security, PowerShell V2, Technology | Leave a comment

Tablets

Posted on Friday 17 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

Like many people in IT I have noticed the explosion in tablet type devices. I have looked at the straight tablet devices such as the iPad & Xoom and decided that at this time they don’t do what I need.  … Continue reading →

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root\wmi – WmiMonitorColorCharacteristics

Posted on Thursday 16 June 2011 by richardsiddaway

The rather long winded name of this class might put you off but it does show something useful Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\wmi -Class WmiMonitorColorCharacteristics produces these results (dropping the system properties) Active           : TrueBlue             : System.Management.ManagementBaseObjectDefaultWhite     : System.Management.ManagementBaseObjectGreen            : System.Management.ManagementBaseObjectInstanceName     : … Continue reading →

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