Windows 2003 server shutdown prompt

I have some Windows 2003 server virtual machines, I was tired by them keep asking me for a reason when I reboot them, I decide to disable this “shutdown event tracker”. However, you shouldn’t turn it off in production environment, since it is an important audit log.

1) Open “Group Police Object Editor”: Click “start”-> “Run...” enter “gpedit.msc”, click “ok”.

2) Expand “Computer Configuration” -> “Administrative Templates” -> “System”

3) Double click “Display Shutdown Event Tracker”, and disable it.

Now you can quickly shutdown or reboot your windows 2003 server.

Create a big size empty file

I was working with a MFT (Managed File Transfer) system recently. I need a big size file to test the transfer rate, and it would be good to create a file with specific sizes. After google it, I found a useful command in WinXp: fsutil – file system utility. The format of creating a specific size file is: fsutil file createnew .

Open a command line window: Click “start”-> “Run...” enter “cmd”, click “ok”.

I need a 3GB file, 3GB=3*1024 MB =3072*1024 KB =3145728 * 1024 BYTE=3221225472 BYTE

So the command is: fsutil file createnew test3g.txt 3221225472

Now you get a 3GB file in the current directory. The only thing I concern is, if you compress this file, it is only 200 Bytes, some transfer protocol may compress the file before the transfer, so it may affect the transfer rate. However, it is still a good practice.

Outlook 2003: Email attachment appears in the main body

After our Email server upgrade to Exchange 2007, I suddenly found my email attachment show up in the main body as an icon when I use outlook 2003. It used to appear in the attachment line under the subject line. It annoys me a little bit, yep, I agree, this format is useful in some cases, but I don't like it, I prefer the attachment is in its place and not mess up the layout. I look at the email, and find the Email format has been changed to "Rich Text", I remember it was "HTML". The setting should be in somewhere.

Yeap, I find it. Click menu "tools"->"options", click "Mail Format", in "Message format" section, select "HTML", apply it. now everything goes back.