Show hidden devices in Device Manager (Hyper-V network adapter)

When I tried to configure the adapter, the following error occurred: “The IP address <ip address> you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter…”

So, in order to uninstall the old network adapter do the following:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2. At a command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:
   • set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
3. Type the following command a command prompt, and then press ENTER:
   • start devmgmt.msc
4. Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager.NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Manager before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
5. When you finish troubleshooting, close Device Manager.
6. Type exit at the command prompt.Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.

There is a KB article about this. Although the article applies to Windows XP only, the solution worked very well on Windows Server 2003.

Email Dossier - A great way to test email addresses

An awesome website to test email addresses, the MX records and a test SMTP conversation for them is:

http://centralops.net/co/EmailDossier.aspx

Here is a screenshot of the type of information it produces:

Exchange 2010 Deploy Assist

If you are looking to migrate to Exchange 2010 from 2003 or 2007, or prehaps perform a new Exchange 2010 installation there is a cool tool Microsoft has just released called Deploy Assist.

The Deployment Assist tool asks you a series of questions about your environment. Based on these questions it will then provide you with step by step instructions on how to perform the migration or fresh installation of exchange 2010. This is very handy as it tackles all kinds of network environments.

To use this tool go to the following link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/exdeploy2010

How to find out which domain controller i'm talking to?

To find out which domain controller your PC is talking to, use the following command:

nltest /dsgetdc:domainname.local or "set l" less informative but quicker and uses built in command

This is very handy when testing your active directory sites and services topology to ensure it is setup correctly. If you want to understand the process in which a client computer locates its domain controller