Rick's Blog

I often run into situations where I need to remove all the partitions from a USB stick or a hard drive. This is some reminders for myself on how to do that on both Windows and Macintosh. [More]

I have a new Windows 2019 Server box in the lab, and when I promoted it to a Domain Controller, after the promotion the network adapter was reporting "not connected to the Internet", even though clearly the box was connected to the Internet. I found this Microsoft TechNet post that had the answer for me... [More]

Instructions on how to enable the Dark theme in Microsoft SQL Management Studio (SSMS) 18 and higher. [More]

A quick example of how to use the SUMIF function in Microsoft Excel. [More]

I run a lab Windows 2019 Server that frequently gets rebooted and shutdown. Every time I log in, I get greeted by the Shutdown Reason screen. Obviously for a lab server, it doesn't matter too much. To disable this dialog, I had to add a registry key and value... [More]

Windows 10 is a fantastic operating system. Microsoft has done a really good job at bringing speed and stability to its platform. However, Windows 10 is a bit "cluttered" in my mind. I prefer the simpler times (don't we all at this point?) and the relatively clean interface introduced by Windows 95 and used by Windows NT 4.0. [More]

I was fiddling with a lab computer today installing Windows 2019 Server Standard and configuring it [More]

A good security policy for Active Directory is to have users change their passwords at regular intervals (ie: 90 days). That, combined with password requirements (ie: minimum length, complexity, etc) provides users with a secure environment. As a user, you can find out when your AD password is going to expire... [More]

Sometimes if you're using OneDrive for Business, you can get two quick links in your explorer window - one is named "OneDrive" and the other is "OneDrive - Business" or something similar. They will both take you to your OneDrive library, so the duplicate can be removed. [More]

Outlook is a terrific email/calendar/contact application - there are many others out there, but personally I haven't found one I like better (yet!). However, once in a while I have multiple windows open in Outlook - for example I'll have one window for my Inbox open, another for my Calendar and even sometimes one for my Contacts. Sometimes these windows get "stuck" and even though you close them all, when you re-open Outlook the next day, all the windows open instead of just one. Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this issue... [More]