Bad Request - Request Too Long when downloading Skype for Business Preview

If you are getting the error

Bad Request - Request Too Long

HTTP Error 400. The size of the request headers is too long.

when downloading Skype for Business Preview (Office 2016,) use Internet Explorer instead.

Outlook 2013 IMAP Inbox Empty with Telenor Webmail (online.no)

When connecting Outlook to IMAP from Telenor (online.no) the Inbox was empty; only Sent items were available.

This is because Telenor have all the folders under the Inbox. You can see this by right clicking on the Inbox and choosing IMAP Folders. You will then see, Inbox, Inbox.Drafts, Inbox.Sent and so on

To fix this you need to set the Root folder path setting to Inbox

Open Outlook then click on File, Account Settings, then Account Settings again.
Click on your (Telenor) IMAP account and click Change
Click More Settings ... then Advanced
Under Folders it should say Root folder path:
Type Inbox
Click OK and continue to exit out of the dialogue boxes

The Inbox should now synchronise as normal.

Mouse sticking on monitor edges

This will stop the mouse pointer from sticking at the monitor edges, when moving slowly between two monitors. This seems to be happening on Windows 8.1 Update 1, and Windows Technical Preview.

Run regedit
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Look for the value MouseMonitorEscapeSpeed
If it doesn't exsist, create a new DWORD value for it

Set the value to 1

Now go to  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell

Create a new Key called EdgeUI

Create a new DWORD called  MouseMonitorEscapeSpeed and set the value to 1

Now restart your computer.

This is a per-user setting, so if there are multiple users on a computer, you will need to edit this setting for every user.

Changing to ACHI from RAID (Dell T5500)

Replacing 3x SAS disk RAID on a Perc6 controller, with a single SSD connected to the motherboard SATA ports, I needed to perform the following steps; otherwise I would get a BSOD on booting.

Run regedit
Edit the following keys so that the value is 0 instead of 3

(Windows 7)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\Start

(Windows 8)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Start

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV\Start

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Start 

Reboot, then change the BIOS settings in the from RAID to RAID/ACHI Autodetect
Make sure the SATA ports are enabled in the BIOS

Apply the BIOS settings, then reboot.

Test SQL OLE Connection String

A quick way to test or generate an OLE SQL connection string for your application

For example, troubleshooting the following UniFLOW database connection string

Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=<some_User>;Password=<some_password>;Initial Catalog=<Database>;Data Source=<SQL_Server>;Use Procedure for Prepare=1;Auto Translate=True;Packet Size=4096

Log on to the server running the application

Right click on the desktop and choose New -> Text document
Rename the document SQLTest.udl - the UDL extenstion is the important part

Double click the new file and a Data Link Properties wizard should pop up

You can now enter the details of the database server and test the connection

Clicking OK will save the connection string into the SQLTest.udl file. Just open it with Notepad to see the connection string.

Remove OEM Modern UI (Metro) Apps from Windows 8.1

Use these PowerShell commands to remove any OEM Modern Apps. In this example, anything not published by Microsoft is removed. It's best to do this while in the first account you create, before joining a domain

You need to run these from an administrative PowerShell session.

Use this code first to see what will be removed:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where Publisher -notmatch "Microsoft"
This will show currently installed apps, and who has them installed 

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | where PackageName -notmatch "Microsoft"
This will show apps that are part of the image Windows was deployed with

In both instances, the Sony Vaio listed McAfee Virus Control, the Intel App store, Skype and some Vaio apps.

Then to remove:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where Publisher -notmatch "Microsoft" | Remove-AppxPackage

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | where PackageName -notmatch "Microsoft" | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage - online

Getting Make and Model from WMIC for WDT/MDT

When setting up your driver folders, their names need to follow the WMIC make and model. Here are the commands to get this information.

From an elevated command prompt:

For computer model
wmic computersystem get model

 For computer make/manufacturer
wmic computersystem get manufacturer