Superfetch causes 100% disk usage on Windows 8 machines

I was working on a Samsung laptop with Windows 8.1 where the machine's performance was subpar and I found that Task Manager shows disk usage was 100% (CPU and memory usage were normal).  When I opened resource monitor, I didn't see any programs using any more disk than normal.  Mostly from this page:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2045646/windows-100-disk-usage.html

I decided to disable superfetch, which worked for me.  Disk usage dropped to single digits and would rise to 100% if/when the superfetech service was re-enabled.

using rsop.msc to check group policies applied to a domain machine

In troubleshooting another problem, I came across a suggestion to run rsop.msc on the client machine.  Rsop.msc displays all the group policies that are applied to a domain machine.  In my case, it helped me track down a group policy that was forcing machines on the domain to never go to sleep.  I guess that policy makes sense with desktops, but a particular user did not want this behavior on his laptop.

Anyway, rsop.msc made this much easier and is a tool I'll keep in mind.

Outlook for iPhones

On 1/29/15, Microsoft released a new iphone and Android app for email.  This app is listed as Microsoft Outlook (and should be the first choice when you search for "Outlook" in the app store) The Outlook app isn't that different from the native iphone mail app , but overall, I've learned to like the new Outlook app better.  The main selling points for me - 1) focused inbox (where the most important messages are listed together separate from most other stuff you get) and 2) one swipe delete (where it took a swipe and a press to delete in the native mail app for iphone), 3) a consolidated inbox (my Exchange, Yahoo, and gmail inboxes are all together instead of three separate inboxes).

I've created instructions for installing the new Outlook app and the setup of an Exchange account here:

www.t-solve.com/clients/instructions/iphone-outlook-app

Manual setup of Office365 (on Exchange 2013)

If for some reason autodiscover isn't working or you can't put autodiscover in place, here are manual instructions for setting up Outlook for Office365 (when using Exchange 2013):

http://blogs.perficient.com/microsoft/2014/01/manually-configuring-outlook-for-office-365-exchange-2013/

Paychex Preview Payroll to do list

Preview Payroll for Paychex needs a couple things to be in place.

You need to use Internet Explorer.

If using IE 11, you need to make sure that paychex.com and *.paychex.com are listed in compatibility mode.

You should make sure that https://paychex.com is listed in trusted sites.

You need the latest version of the Citrix receiver from here:
http://www.citrix.com/go/receiver.html

You may also need the latest version of Java and *may* need to add paychex.com as an exception in control panel -> Java on the security tab.

Virtual Network Queuing causes poor performance on Dell servers

In troubleshooting some poor network card behavior on my Dell PowerEdge T420 running Windows Server 2012 with three virtual machines on it, I came across these articles that describe problems with virtual network queues enabled on Broadcom NICs.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2902166/EN-US?wa=wsignin1.0

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/Windows_Server_2008/Q_27985670.html

I upgraded to the latest drivers and disabled the virtual machine queues.  My sample size was small and problems intermittent, so it's hard to say if I resolved the issues, but it's worth noting.

Enabling advanced features in Fortigate firmware 5.0

You can enable some hidden/advanced features in Fortigate OS 5.0 via System -> Config -> Features and turn on Advanced Routing,

In my case, I was looking for "dead gateway detection" so I could switch to my secondary ISP when my primary ISP failed, but the option wasn't there in Router -> Static -> Settings.  Once Advanced Routing was turned on, I had the option for dead gateway detection.