I’ve bumped into this problem several times, and seem to forget the answer, so this is as much to remind me as for anyone else…

If you’re trying to manage the Windows XP firewall and the controls are grayed out, and you see the message “For your security, some settings are controlled by Group Policy”, the answer could be as simple as “you installed Windows Live OneCare”.

When you install Windows Live OneCare, it takes over the firewall settings.? To manually make changes, go to Start – Windows Live OneCare (or just click on the OneCare icon in the tray), then click the “Change settings” quick link.? From there you’ll have access to your firewall settings.

From NetworkWorld:? a list of the 20 most useful Microsoft sites for IT professionals.? You’ll probably find at least one useful site that you didn’t know about–I found several!

Neat trick from WikiHow.

I love the quick startup after hibernation. I’ve been using it for years. But since upgrading my Latitude D610’s RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB recently, I often get the error “Insufficient system resources exist to complete the API” when trying to hibernate.

I should have Google’d it right away instead of suffering with it for a while. A quick search led to KB909095, with a fix for the problem. Too bad it’s not always that easy…

This from my friend Mark:

If you ever have need to extract files from a .MSI file, you can copy the file to a temp directory and from a CMD prompt type msiexec /a <msi_file_to_extract_files_from.msi> and it will run an administrative install of the MSI where you can direct the contents to go. Very handy…

David Allen speaks about the GTD strategy at Google.? Might be a good refresher if you’re trying to use the method…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo7vUdKTlhk[/youtube]