Ghost in the Machine – Delete Files with Long Path Names Not quite Twilight Zone material, but do you want to see something really scary?  While Robocopy is a valuable tool for us system admins for copying or transferring files and performing backups, we have to be careful about how we use [...]

Tips to Secure Your Smart Home Spending my days working in the technology field, I am privileged to support many users with their technology needs in their businesses. The other day I read an article regarding IoT and security which got me thinking about all the smart devices (part of IoT) in [...]

When Datto Screenshot Verification Fails - Flux Capacitor Error In the movie, Back to the Future, Marty McFly accidentally gets sent from the present day (1985) back to the year 1955.  Frightening at first, then perplexing, then understanding the problem, and finally how do I fix this?  That’s the cycle of thoughts and emotions [...]

Managed Services IT -vs- An In-House IT Pro For small to mid-sized businesses, it can be a struggle to balance the need for vital operating functions against tight budgets. How does that pertain to IT and what are your options? Let's take a look. IT specifically is such a specialized discipline, that [...]

We recently migrated a client from an SBS 2008 environment to a Server 2016 Hyper-V environment.  As we waded through the migration, we found that the server had a number of issues in addition to several non-standard configurations implemented by a former MSP provider.  I began to dismantle the services on the SBS server [...]

If your doctor told you that unless you made some changes you would not make it past six months, how would you prepare, or what changes would you make?  Would you follow his advice if it meant you could keep having birthdays?   Well, there’s a good chance you need to make some [...]

So recently I endeavored to repair a Windows 10 PC.  There were some unresolved issues for which there was no solid answer, and the best resolution path was to perform a reset or refresh of the OS.  I decided to do something a little less intrusive and performed a System Restore to a week [...]

So, you’ve decided to roll-out Office 2016 to your users, and you want to know what gotchas you have to be wary of.  Or like one of our clients, you’ve deployed to a user or two in advance, to take advantage of new features the user may need, and found out something’s missing.  That [...]

So it’s 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon, and you have a print server with a bad drive in the RAID array.  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and with it, a long weekend.  A chance to work on that project at home that you’ve been putting off, or maybe just some overdue family time planned.  You don’t want [...]

One issue that has frustrated me a number of times is having a computer lose network connectivity and the connection status is listed as Public, rather than Private.  Normally, if the location type is wrong, you can click on it, and change it.  But at times, it gets stuck on Public and is not [...]