Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant

Daniel Oxley is an Infrastucture Consultant working for Microsoft Consulting Services in Madrid, Spain. He specialises, amongst other things, in large-scale deployments of Microsoft Windows using technologies such as BDD2007 and the Microsoft Deployment

GPS, but without GPS

Most modern laptops still don't have GPS receivers built into them. My HTC Snap Windows Mobile 6.5...

Author: doxley Date: 04/30/2010

Virtual PC Just Became More Accessible

If you have tried to use XP Mode in Windows 7 in the past, then you may have seen the below error...

Author: doxley Date: 03/25/2010

Smartcard Needing Drivers In Order To Be Smart

My company laptop dual-boots between Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This is for the...

Author: doxley Date: 02/18/2010

Family IT Nirvana

Working in I.T. also means fixing the computers of family members, friends and neighbours. Trying to...

Author: doxley Date: 01/25/2010

Incorrectly speculating about my friend 0xc000000f

Back in April I blogged about how to get around the 0xc000000f error when trying to install programs...

Author: doxley Date: 01/18/2010

Wasted Space, Begone!

A few months ago I won an 8Gb Zune in an internal Microsoft competition. I really like the device...

Author: doxley Date: 01/14/2010

Slimming Down Office Documents

Being a consultant means that I always have to write bucket-loads of documentation, and the...

Author: doxley Date: 11/30/2009

Converting Windows Error Codes To Something More Friendly

I can never remember how to do this, so I always end up looking it up.  Therefore, I am posting...

Author: doxley Date: 11/05/2009

Ooops, that’s not right…

I have been asked twice this week if this is possible and if so how to do it, so I guess either the...

Author: doxley Date: 10/29/2009

Anti-Virus Software, That's Free!

I am probably the last Microsoft blogger to actually get round to writing something about this… but...

Author: doxley Date: 10/20/2009

Best Practices for Windows 7 Migrations Using Microsoft Application Virtualization

There is a webcast this month that should be of interest to anyone interested in using application...

Author: doxley Date: 10/16/2009

Putting iexplore.exe on a diet

I have gotten very used, very quickly, to the excellent tabbed browsing feature that was introduced...

Author: doxley Date: 10/14/2009

Benchmarking Windows 7

A very common request that clients make when starting a Windows deployment project is that we must...

Author: doxley Date: 10/06/2009

Application Compatibility List for Windows 7

A very common misconception that I am hearing regarding Windows 7 is that Microsoft has removed all...

Author: doxley Date: 09/21/2009

Creating Your Own Search Provider in Internet Explorer

For me, this is possibly one of the most overlooked, but invaluable, features of Internet Explorer 7...

Author: doxley Date: 09/02/2009

Laptop Hunters and Apple

I have to confess that I never got to see any of the advertisements that Microsoft has been running...

Author: doxley Date: 08/12/2009

Quicker Access to Windows 7 Virtual PC settings

To edit the settings of a virtual computer using Virtual PC in Windows 7 requires the opening of the...

Author: doxley Date: 08/09/2009

Saving The World, Printer Ink First

Saving something seems to to be the big thing in I.T. at moment, which is never a bad thing. The...

Author: doxley Date: 08/05/2009

PowerShell Script ExecutionPolicy

Seeing as PowerShell is included by default in Windows 7, and also because you get the PowerShell...

Author: doxley Date: 08/05/2009

He-Man on YouTube

This has absolutely nothing to do with IT, nor Microsoft, but I thought I’d post it anyway seeing as...

Author: doxley Date: 06/26/2009

Application Installs, be gone!

As a follow up to my earlier post about modularising my computer, I wanted to add a couple of points...

Author: doxley Date: 06/17/2009

Green IT (with a difference)

My rotund brother (not Mr Anti-Microsoft, another one) works in IT at a bank in the City of London...

Author: doxley Date: 06/09/2009

IKEA-fying my computer

I have had this blog post in the pipeline for a while now, but I have been waiting until all the...

Author: doxley Date: 06/08/2009

Yes, I am still alive...!

I know posts here have been sparse recently but I haven't neglected the blog, honest! Firstly, I was...

Author: doxley Date: 05/19/2009

Safely setting autologon for Windows

When configuring Microsoft Windows to auto-logon, most people just modify the following keys in the...

Author: doxley Date: 04/22/2009

Getting inside information about Hyper-V

A new book has gone to press recently covering Hyper-V.  The “Insider’s Guide to Microsoft's...

Author: doxley Date: 04/21/2009

Windows Server 2008 doesn’t have to ignore the MBSA if you don’t want it to

The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyser (MBSA) is an excellent free tool by Microsoft that provides...

Author: doxley Date: 04/20/2009

Office 2003 being put to bed

Just a quick reminder to everyone that mainstream support for Microsoft Office 2003 ended on April...

Author: doxley Date: 04/16/2009

VBS Functions

The lack of a decent GUI for VBS development has always been a problem for most people.  The...

Author: doxley Date: 04/13/2009

Faster Creation of Virtual Machines

I recently noticed a blog post on TechNet about a new tool that was released on CodePlex. ...

Author: doxley Date: 04/08/2009

Yet Another Core Configurator

In the true spirit of Linux, it seems that everybody is re-inventing the wheel – because they...

Author: doxley Date: 04/06/2009

Network Issues prevent certain Installations (otherwise known as 0xc000000f)

I have recently been setting up a Hyper-V laboratory for a Windows 7 project.  I had all the...

Author: doxley Date: 04/02/2009

Kicking the tyres

Want to try out Windows Server 2008? Or perhaps Exchange Server 2007? You can download complete...

Author: doxley Date: 03/30/2009

Free Gears of War 2 Maps

As I have mentioned before, a good friend of mine got me addicted (much to the chagrin of my wife)...

Author: doxley Date: 03/09/2009

Telefonica España vs XBOX LIVE

A good friend of mine has gotten me addicted to the XBOX 360.  He had been on and on at me to...

Author: doxley Date: 02/23/2009

Pink computing

Last weekend I bought my wife one of those handbag sized netbook computers, an Acer Aspire 1 – 150,...

Author: doxley Date: 02/18/2009

Not quite a perfect install of Win2K8 R2

The beta releases of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (WIN2K8R2) have really been the hot...

Author: doxley Date: 02/10/2009

Just fix it for me please…

Articles on the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) sometimes contain pretty straightforward solutions,...

Author: doxley Date: 01/13/2009

Restarting the Microsoft File Transfer Manager

Unless you have been hiding under a rock this week you’ll no doubt be aware that the beta versions...

Author: doxley Date: 01/08/2009

Translating TechNet instantly

Here’s a little something I discovered the other day which I have found to be super useful. As...

Author: doxley Date: 12/18/2008

Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008

I came across the following document the other day that contains plenty of useful tuning parameters...

Author: doxley Date: 12/15/2008

Project Highlander

Having better ‘green credentials’ than your competitor seems to be the in thing at the moment....

Author: doxley Date: 12/01/2008

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista (SP2) has been a hot topic recently.  While Microsoft has not...

Author: doxley Date: 11/27/2008

Self-writing code

If you do a lot of scripting for Windows, then you probably use VBScript (VBS) to do it. With...

Author: doxley Date: 11/18/2008

A bigger Sky

Out of the blue the SkyDrive team have announced that they are extended the storage limit that we'll...

Author: doxley Date: 11/14/2008

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