Category Archives: Solved Problems

Problems and solutions. Good stuff.

Weakening Windows Server 2012

Sometimes, when I’m just screwing around with some software, Windows security just gets in my way. Here are the things I wanted gone this time, and where to find them: Strong password enforcement and password aging: Administrative tools => Local Security Policy (secpol.msc) => Account Policies => Password Policy Ctrl+alt+del to login: Administrative tools => […]

Using a Windows 8 upgrade key for a clean install

I recently faced reinstalling a Windows 8 machine, without knowing the key used for deployment on it was an upgrade key. Not wanting to wipe the drive (again), dig up a Windows 7 key, then installing Windows 8 again, I googled and found this advice at Lifehacker, which worked brilliantly: If you do a clean […]

Handler “PageHandlerFactory-Integrated” has a bad module “ManagedPipelineHandler” in its module list

This error seems to pop up every now and again when I configure a new IIS server, even if I do remember to check the ASP option during the initial role selection. Here’s how to resolve it (run as admin) on a 64-bit system: %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -i ..and on a 32-bit system: %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.21006\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Enabling read_committed_snapshot on an existing MSSQL database

In short, for the database named “internal”: SELECT is_read_committed_snapshot_on,snapshot_isolation_state FROM sys.databases WHERE name=’internal’ ALTER DATABASE [internal] SET allow_snapshot_isolation ON ALTER DATABASE [internal] SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE ALTER DATABASE [internal] SET read_committed_snapshot ON ALTER DATABASE [internal] SET MULTI_USER SELECT is_read_committed_snapshot_on,snapshot_isolation_state FROM sys.databases WHERE name=’internal’

Removing VMware Player or workstation when the Hyper-V role is active

Blatantly stolen from Jussi Palo’s post here, and archived here. All credit to the original author. Challenge Time to go all in with Windows 8 and migrate development environments to Hyper-V. When you’re migrating from VMware to Hyper-V, and you happen to install Hyper-V before uninstalling VMware Workstation or Player, you will get warning that […]

Make exim4 on Debian respect .forward and /etc/aliases when using a smarthost

When configured to send all mail through a smarthost, exim4 on Debian will not respect your /etc/aliases file, nor will it care about your users’ ~/.forward files. This is due to the numbering, and consequently the sorting, of the files in /etc/exim4/conf.d/router/. If you look at 200_exim4-config_primary, you’ll see it handles smarthost routing in smarthost […]