Often it is useful to create a listing of when accounts in a Microsoft Active Directory organizational unit (OU) are set to expire. For example, if you plan to lower the time between forced password changes, it is good to know which accounts may be affected by the change. You can open the outputted file from our sample VBScript in Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc and sort and recalculate dates based on the new maximum password age. Read further for the example code and output format...

We now have a tool that lets you find what company owns a registered media access control address (MAC address). This could be useful in identifying the manufactuer of a networked device based on its organizationally unique identifier (OUI).

We hope you find the MAC Address Lookup Tool useful!

During a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (standard or express) upgrade from a previous version or while updating SQL Server to a newer service pack (SP), you may receive the following error:

Error ID: 15116

SQL Server Setup has encountered the following problem: [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]Password validation failed. The password does not meet Windows policy requirements because it is too short.. To continue, correct the problem, and then run SQL Server Setup again.

Variations may appear depending on your configuration, including:

• The password does not meet Windows policy requirements because it is too long.
• The password does not meet Windows policy requirements because it is not complex enough.
• The password does not meet the requirements of the password filter DLL.

This will appear during the install process, but you may also have failed installs through Windows Update and not realize that this is the cause. The origin of the error is that your Domain or computer has a password policy set that a password that is hardcoded into a SQL script used during the upgrade fails to meet. Yes, it's an issue that Microsoft should have forseen. Yes, it's also an issue that Microsoft should have created a KB article for. Yes, The Grim Admin will fill in the holes...

After updating VMware Tools to version 4.0.0, build 164009 on a Windows Server virtual machine hosting Microsoft Exchange, the following error may appear multiple times in the event log:

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:      DCOM
Event Category:    None
Event ID:          10016
User:              NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM
Description:
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Launch permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {9DA0E106-86CE-11D1-8699-00C04FB98036} to the user NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM SID (S-1-5-18).  This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

The solution is fairly straightforward...

hwbot.org, based out of Belgium, has an interesting idea: not only do they gather technical specs on a large number of computer hardware components and let you benchmark your system against others', but they make it into a 24/7 competition. Even more, hwbot has recently released into beta an "overclocking competition engine." Dubbed HWBot Competition Engine (HCE), the service allows you to host hardware competitions with stage ranks, hardware rules, customized scoring, special awards, and even prizes.

Full details can be found in HCWBOT's public announcement here.

This submission comes directly from an e-mail that was sent out to a number of technology and education professionals through a listserv posting. There are a number of mailing lists out there that I feel are great resources to have at the educational technology field members' disposal that help to feed on others' ideas and experience in using IT to benefit the quality of education in schools. These people often have many years experience and offer great insight, so when postings come around that are clearly missing basic sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, etc. and especially the ability to convey thoughts and ideas in a meaningful way, I am really taken aback. The following submission, as an example, was so poorly written it made my head hurt. And that's how I knew I had to file it away under 'Havening Problems.' Read on and let the hilarity ensue...