Change MTU in Windows

In rare cases you need to change (or "fine tune") your MTU.
Magic NETSH is able to solve the task.

1. netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces
(determine the label of your interface)

2. change its MTU
netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "interface_label" mtu=50 store=persistent

That's all (thanks Max Chubin for the idea)

Раскладка языка при входе в систему

Параметры реестра, отвечающие за раскладку клавиатуры при входе в систему находятся в разделе:

HKU\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload

Достаточно будет на первую позицию поместить желаемую раскладку - 00000409
(английская раскладка) или 00000419 (русская).

Вы можете внести в реестр необходимые параметры, выполнив следующие команды:

reg add "HKU\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload" /v 1 /t REG_SZ /d 00000409 /f
reg add "HKU\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload" /v 2 /t REG_SZ /d 00000419 /f

Чтобы сменить сочетание клавиш, переключающих раскладку, выполните команду:

reg add "HKU\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Toggle" /v Hotkey /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f

выделенный красным параметр можно менять (1 - ALT+SHIFT, 2 - CTRL+SHIFT). Чтобы переключение работало, необходимо наличие как минимум двух раскладок

Restore MsOffice user settings

In order to restore corrupted Ms Office 2007 user settings, remove the following key from the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

More info here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822005

CMD: How to count the number of remote users connected?

 Use command:
 query session /COUNTER

TIP: Installing SQL Server 2008 reboot required check fails

When installing SQL Server 2008 one can run into “Reboot required check failed” situation.

After seeing it few times already, I think a solution is worth mentioning.

“Why don’t you just reboot?”, you say… Well, most likely it would not help you, but try it first.
If this would not help, then try the following:

1. Start regedit.exe
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
3. Locate PendingFileRenameOperations
4. Remove any data associated with the value (you may want to export the value for later review)
5. Reboot and rerun installation, check should pass.

Update. As a respond to some comments about solution above not always work you may consider the following:

* Make sure that after you reboot entry in the registry does not reappear.
If it does, remove it again, but do not reboot, just go ahead with installation process and click “ReRun”. Most likely you would be fine now.
* You may also try and see that other ControlSet001, ControlSet002, etc do not suffer from the same problem (solution mentioned by Mike Hills below).
* There was mentioning that some installations of Visual Studio 2008 could cause check to fail as well. So if nothing from above helped, uninstall Visual Studio (comes with light version of SQL Server), install SQL Server and then reinstall Visual Studio again.

Lets see why would entry reappear… This may happen if there is a driver or application which supports “recovery” mode or plain virus is around and after reboot it is trying to finish the deployment process again. In any situation try and look closer: what app file belongs to, if there are other solutions to the problem so that original process would finish properly, etc.

MS RDP. Because of a protocol error, this session will be disconnected. Please try connecting to the remote computer again

Problem:

i had remote desktop up and running on a PC and then i got this:
"because of a protocol error detected at the client (code 0x1104), this session will be disconnected.
please try connecting to the remote computer again"

Solution:

The most common reason why this is happening is because you are using a custom VISUAL STYLE with your computer. Set the visual style back to LUNA on XP or CLASSIC and see if the error occurs again. Most likely it will not. Not all visual styles produce this error, but if you want a custom visual style on the remote computer then you will have to find a compatible visual style that works with RDP via trial and error.

Another solution would be to set the RDP client to NOT use the visual styles by unchecking the box that says THEMES (see pic below):