If you have a document repository of sorts, it may pay to disable short filenames (legacy leftover from Win95 days).

To check if enabled:

fsutil.exe behavior query disable8dot3

To disable:

fsutil.exe behavior set disable8dot3 1

This will not remove existing short filenames but the system will no longer generate them.  This also works on XP.

 

Using RDP client on XP SP2 with windows servers (2008, all varieties) was causing a strange grid like pattern.  Installing update KB952155 to the RDP client fixed it.  You can tell if your client is the proper version as the RDP client connection GUI will change to not have a password field on the connection tab after this update is applied.

Evidently, this effect is a side affect after installing KB958470 (MS09-044)

Did you know the shutdown command has a GUI?  It was news to me.  Now I don't have to remember the command line switches.

 shutdown.exe -i

KB 309173: To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option.

If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. This can affect the performance of the search functionality. To do this:

1.	Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2.	Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3.	Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4.	On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5.	In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6.	On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7.	Close the Indexing Service console.

On my development notebook, Apache would sometimes not fully server up pages (Coldfusion in this case). Sometimes you could view the source and see that it almost sent all the data but it was incomplete. The server logs all showed 200 status codes but my browser was not getting the full file. This happend with IE6, FF2, FF3. It wasn't a browser issue AFAIK since adding

Win32DisableAcceptEx

to my httpd.conf fixed it for me.

I recently upgraded my TortiseSVN to 1.5.  This usually requires a reboot for the changes to be worked into the explorer shell.  Some say you can use task manager to kill explorer.exe and, while that works, here is the way to restart explorer SAFELY thus saving a reboot:

 XP/2003: click on Start and select Shut Down. The Windows shut down dialog will appear. Next, while holding down the Control, Shift, and Alt keys click the Cancel button on the shut down dialog window. You can tell because you will loose your Start menu, task bar, system tray and desktop icons. Now, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Windows task manager. Click File and select New Task (Run…). You want to start explorer.exe so type in explorer.exe to relaunch Windows Explorer.

Vista: click on Start and hold down the Control and Shift and right-click on a blank space in the Start menu. Choose Exit Explorer. Open the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), navigate to File->Run, enter "explorer.exe" to restart it. I've yet to test this on Windows server 2008 but I would think it would. I've tested this and as expected, this works on on Windows 2008 server too - it make sense since they are both considered 'Windows 6'

Remote Desktop users: since you can't use Ctrl-Alt-Del use Ctrl-Alt-End instead.