I recently received a question from a reader:

Hi Steve,

It is very informative; however, it was almost what I was looking for. I would like to change the default OPEN location, so I was wondering if you know how that would be accomplished.

Very good question. It could be useful to have Outlook open to the folder of your choice when clicking on the attachment button - especially if you send lots of them every day.

The default option is that it opens to the documents folder:

The bummer is that after lots of research, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to change this is to change the location of your “My Documents” folder

You can change the folder location by right clicking it on your desktop, and going to properties. Or you can dig into the registry down to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Find the “Personal” value, and change it to your folder of choice. From that point on Outlook will default to that folder when you go to attach a file. The side effect of this is that it changes the location of your “My Documents” folder - so this is a trade off you will need to consider.

That is the only way I know to change it. If anyone else has a better method, please email me (support@intelliadmin.com) or drop a line in the comments.

This is a quick one - The final version of Remote Control 4.0 has been released. Current customers with an upgrade protection license should receive their email within 24 hours. If you did not, please send an email to support@intelliadmin.com and we will take care of you as soon as possible.

Here are the screenshots:
http://www.intelliadmin.com/RemoteControl4_ScreenShots.htm

And a link to the trial download:
setupex.exe

I distributed a test version of Remote Control 4.0 across our network last week, and since it was a special debug version, it created a large number of files named debuglog.dat.

I wanted an easy way to find and delete these using a batch file. I researched and was able to take parts of other scripts to build what I needed.

The first step was to identify all of the local drives on the system. I know that this is available in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\MountedDrives

Using the reg command, I can get this by calling:

reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

And using the find command I can pull out only the devices with dos drive letters:

reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^|find /i “\DosDevices\”

Still, this is not enough for our task. Here is what we get when calling the script:

Lots of binary data we do not need

We can take this output, and feed it through the “for” command, and call a function for each drive letter:

for /f “tokens=1″ %%x in (’reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^|find /i “\DosDevices\”‘) do echo %%x

Now, we get a list of the drives, minus the binary data. We can use that to call a function that will parse out the \DosDevices\

for /f %34tokens=1%34 %%x in (’reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^%7cfind /i %34\DosDevices\%34′) do call :DeleteFileSub %%x
goto endScript
:DeleteFileSub
set LocalDrive=%1
set LocalDrive=%LocalDrive:~-2%
echo %Drive%
goto endScript
:endScript

With that script, we get a complete list of local drives. Hmm…starting to look good:

Now. What next? Well, we want to search each local drive for our file, and then delete it. For safety reasons, I am only going to echo the file names - I want you to think real hard before doing this..since the wrong move and you could wipe out important files.

Again, the ‘for’ command is a great way to do this:

for /f “tokens=1 delims=*” %%z in (’dir “LocalDrive%\SomeFile.txt” /s /b’) do echo del “%%z”

Replace SomeFile.txt with the file you want to remove.

This will pull out the filename in a full directory search of the specified drive and echo it. If you want to actually delete the file you will need to remove the “echo”:

for /f “tokens=1 delims=*” %%z in (’dir “LocalDrive%\SomeFile.txt” /s /b’) do echo del “%%z”

Now, putting the whole thing together:

@echo off
for /f “tokens=1″ %%x in (’reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices^|find /i “\DosDevices\”‘) do call :deleteSub %%x
goto endSub
:deleteSUb
set LocalDrive=%1
set LocalDrive=%LocalDrive:~-2%
for /f “tokens=1 delims=*” %%z in (’dir “%Drive%\Some File.txt” /s /b’) do echo del “%%z”
goto endSub
:endSub

Text version here if you have copy-paste issues

Make sure you do lots of testing before you pull the trigger and remove the “echo” statement. I wouldn’t want you to blow away the wrong files :)

RC4 has been released (More info about 4.0 can be found here). A few of you complained about performance issues when connecting to larger screens. This is because in 4.0 we fully refresh the screen for each update. This makes the resized window look smoother. Without the full refresh there are slight rounding errors that create artifacts on the screen.

Since we want to give you the choice of performance over small artifacts we have added a checkbox that lets you turn it on or off:

We have also worked on other performance issues. Please give RC4 a spin and tell us what you find:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/setupex_beta.exe

As usual, send bug reports to support@intelliadmin.com

We are ahead of schedule, and if RC4 looks good we will release before our June 27th date.

While we are talking about betas, we are about to start testing USB Disabler Pro. It will allow you to restrict access to USB storage devices (Flash drives, External Hard Drives, Etc). It goes beyond our free product - you can set specific windows groups or users that are allowed to access drives. Even if a user is blocked, you can login as an administrator and grant permission for a specific device while blocking all others.

Sign up for the USB Disabler Pro Beta

Our first beta release will be next week.

I have been digging through my photos from Computex in Taipei, Taiwan. One of the coolest things I saw while I was there…a waterproof computer (Yes, I am a geek).

Back in 2006 I wrote about a laptop that NEC was working on. This is the first time I actually got to see something like it in person.

For the full effect, I took a video of it in action:

I think this would work great for me, since I am constantly knocking my drink on to my keyboard every time I answer the phone :)

I can’t thank everyone enough for their bug reports and suggestions. We have fixed every bug submitted, and implemented most of the feature requests.

Keep sending them to support@intelliadmin.com or write a comment in this blog entry

One of the ideas was to put the edit computer list right on the find form. Here is what it looks like:

In addition, many of you complained about the command bar at the top of the viewer window. It keeps getting in the way of stuff at the top:

Now it hides a little further into the top of the window, and you must hover over it for 1.5 seconds before it will show.

There are lots of other fixes. Here is the list:

-If you picked an action menu item, and then pressed space..it would bring the action menu back up (fixed)

-JPG now includes date and time for quick saving

For a limited time - If you purchase Remote Control 3.2 today, you will get the 4.0 upgrade for free. This will cost you less, since we will increase the price when 4.0 is released.

Now for the download links. We have an updated distribution tool:

Distribution Tool

An updated MSI file for those who want to use group policy:

Setup_beta.msi

And the beta download:

Beta Install File

One final note. The command panel will show the current build number. When testing make sure you update the server, and the client. If you are connecting to a beta 1 or older server it will say “Unknown Build Date” (Note that this info will be replaced with the remote computer name on the final release). If everything is up to beta 2, then it will show a date. Make sure you uninstall everything before you install the new beta.

I got a chance to visit the Computex computer show in Taipei, Taiwan.

I took some pics of the more interesting stuff I saw, and one of them was programmable cooling fans. These would be the cooling fans you put on the back of your computer, or inside to keep air moving. You can program them to put a message, or even run a program to display current RPMs.

Not really useful, but something you could throw into the mix when tricking out your machine.

Here is one of them showing the current RPMs

Another programmed to display a face - it is cut off because of the cycle rate difference between my camera and the fan…if you were looking at it, it would be a full face:

The big daddy was a clock that had something different on each one:

(Click to see a really big version)

Not sure where you can buy these, but the OEM website is:

http://www.fresh-tech.com.tw

I will post more pictures of other stuff I saw as I get them off my camera.

I was troubleshooting a server yesterday and a came across an easy way to clean boot into Vista, or 2008. When I say clean boot I mean that Windows starts without any 3rd party services running.

To do it, startup MSCONFIG, (Start then run…type msconfig.exe)

Once it launches, move over to the services tab:

Then move down, and hide Microsoft services (We don’t want to disable those)

After you do that, click the “Disable Services” button on the right:

Now click OK, and reboot. When Windows restarts, no 3rd party services will be running.

Once you have completed your troubleshooting you can reverse the process to turn them back on.

Note: If you purchase 3.2 right now with upgrade protection, you will receive the 4.0 version for free - this will be at a significant savings. 4.0 will be released June 27th, 2009

We are proud to announce that the IntelliAdmin Remote Control 4.0 beta is ready. This release is quite stable, and I hope you can break it or send us complaints to support@intelliadmin.com - it will help us make the product better, and in turn help you be more productive when working remotely

First, lets have some screen shots and info about what is in this release…

I know one big complaint you have: A user calls, and you need to figure out what their IP address or computer name is…in an easy, simple way. 3.2 did have this feature, but we have cleaned it up and included the computer name when the user clicks on the tray icon by the time:

Notice the “Configure” button. This will open the server settings window when pressed. Don’t want users to have this? It can easily be removed using group policy, or our distribution tool.

In the server settings we have organized options so they are easier to find. For example, in the edit/add user section the check boxes and radio buttons have been grouped:

Notice that the “Disable Alpha Capture” option has been added. Alpha capture is needed to grab the screen when applications like Office 2007 are used….but the side effect of that is the mouse flickers like crazy. I know that some of you need to use our program to watch users without them knowing…the flicker gives you away. Now that you can turn it off, it is much harder for them to tell that you are on their system.
In the client we have added a ton of options for importing computer lists. You can get computers in the “Find Computer” list via:

-Importing from XML

-Pull them from a HTTP URL

Here is a shot of the settings section:

You can add your own computers manually, along with a number of options. And each of these options can be searched in the find window

Like I was saying. All of that info can be searched in the “Find” window. Notice in my description above I wrote that the server was “This is web server 1 of 3″

Now, to find it I can just pick a substring of the description…

Anything can go into that description box…office names, phone extensions, etc…Just think…a user calls, and you can find them in an instant by their name or phone number.

The search is fast too. We have crafted it to work with a large number of records, and tested it on older machines. Our latest test was on a 7 year old XP laptop with 256 MB of ram. It could search 10,000 computer records in less than a second.

All the same information available via manual entry can be added using an active HTTP XML URL. So if you have an in-house help desk app you can use that to pull computer names and related info too.

Another feature of the Find window is that Windows Networking computer searches are now executed in the background. This means you do not have to wait every time it scans the network for computer names

Screen scaling is another nice feature. Two reasons why it can help you be more productive. The first reason is less time scrolling around. The resolutions users can have are huge, and if your screen is not as big you had to keep scrolling around before. Now you can tell the client to shrink their screen to fit your window. The second need for this is installations. I know you are always installing stuff, and many times remotely. You can start your install, and make it a small window in the corner. That way you can take care of other business while still keeping an eye on that 2 hour install.

I think I have said enough here, and I won’t delay any longer. There are more features I have not talked about…download and try for yourself.

Here is the download link:

http://ftp.intelliadmin.com/setupex_beta.exe

If you want to be notified of future beta updates, then sign up for our beta notification here

Microsoft has announced they are giving away the Windows 2008 Terminal Services book in PDF format.

I downloaded it yesterday, and it is packed with information.

A must-have if you are considering implementing, or have implemented terminal services on your network. A few top points from the book:

-Using roaming profiles with Terminal Services

-Multi Server Deployments

Get your free copy today by clicking on the link below:

Terminal Services EBook PDF