Mitch Tulloch's Blog

Five tips for Windows administrators

Here are a few useful Windows tips:

• The reason the default power plan setting for Windows Server 2008 is Balanced instead of High Performance is because you can typically save up to 10% electrical power this way, which can easily be 50W or more for a high-performance server. By contrast, the typical performance hit you experience using the Balanced power plan on a server is only 1 or 2 percent. So don't change this setting to try and boost your performance unless you are experiencing application instability under irregular server loads.
• If you migrate from XP to Vista and find that some of your logon scripts no longer work due to User Account Control, try using Group Policy Preferences to replace your legacy logon scripts—see this white paper for more information.
• For admins who still use batch scripting instead of PowerShell or WMI/VBScript: The Windows NT Command Shell is a cool guide for beginners who want to learn more about batch scripting.
• IE7Pro is the best add on for Microsoft Internet Explorer.  It makes life so much easier when surfing the net as it provides ad blocking, Flash blocking, inline search, greasemonkey-like scripts, mouse gestures, and so on.
• Here's a way to disable the chip in the credit cards that have an embedded RFID chip. See here and also here. Have a safe holiday season. --Mitch Got comments concerning this tip? Want to share a tip of your own with ITworld readers? Email me

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