For whatever reason, you may find that you need to bypass the Windows Server Udpate Services site in your organization to update your Vista machine. If you don't have ready access to Active Directory or your GPOs, there is a regkey you can flip that will allow your system to contact MS direct for your updates.

Here is the step by step:

1) Open your registry editor
2) Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
3) Change the key UseWUServer from 1 to 0
4) Restart the Windows Update service
5) Voila! Update away...

Had a question about setting limits for incoming and outgoing email size when sending to or recieving from the internet. This topic is a bit confusing, because there are default limit overrides in a users object in Active Directory Users & Computers. These overrides only apply to INTERNAL mail though. Since all Internet mail has to pass through the SMTP connector, the global settings applied to that connector take precendence. Microsoft has a great KB article that summarizes the settings for limits on email size. Is there a workaround?

So I have been tasked with moving an old NT4 server off some legacy hardware into our virtual infrastructure. Required some digging around to sort out what tools I can and can't use, so I thought I would summarize them here for you.