Blank Lockscreen Image Windows 10 1709

Another strange one today. After upgrading a PC to Windows 10 1709 build 16299 we found that our lockscreen image that had been set via GPO for over 2 years, was no longer showing. It was simply showing a blank assent colour.

After some aggressive Googling i came across someone who had sussed it was to do with a registry key that many of us set many moons ago, when the first versions of Windows 10 were released.

Remove Show People button Windows 10 1709

During testing of the latest Windows 10 Update (its definitely more of an upgrade ...thanks MS) version 1709 build 16299. I found that a little icon had appeared on the bottom tight of the taskbar. Things like this really annoy me so basically its going.




You can remove it by Right Clicking the Taskbar and clicking the button Show People Button. However in a corporate network, getting users to complete to click just isn't going to happen... the lazy gits!

Configuring DKIM using Windows DNS and OpenSSL

In this post i will be explaining how to setup and configure DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). This is used along with SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records to cryptographically sign emails so that the receiving mail server's know they are coming from you and not someone pretending to be you.

Disabling Proofing Tools and related options Word 2013/ 2016 for an Exam

In this post i am going to be describing an issue that has for a long time not been well documented, by either Microsoft or anyone else. This is the updated post to reflect the changes for 2016.

We had an exam requirement for many years for computer based exams to disable the spell check, thesaurus and grammar check facility and to remove the ability to re-enable it. The requirement was to enable it for certain users only for example those within an OU.

MS in their infinite wisdom created ADMX/ADM templates that give admins the ability to disable some of the proofing tools in a GPO. However this does not disable the ability to re-enable these options from the GUI. Also in the Word 2016 ADMX templates, MS have REMOVED the option to disable Spell Check!

I wrote an article a couple of years ago and figured as i was working on it i would update it..

Moodle Upgrade Hangs on -->System

Over the last few months we have been unable to complete Moodle updates and upgrades. The problem was that when the upgrade was kicked off the upgrade would hang at the first stage. Shown in the image below.

We use all Microsoft technologies for our system. 

• NLB clustered Windows Server 2008 R2 (IIS 7.5)
• PHP 5.2.13 (FastCGI) 
• SQL 2008 Failover Cluster
• MSSQL PHP Driver (not FreeTDS)

There was no error messages at all, and the windows would stay in exactly the same position for days if you left it. To cancel press CTRL+C.