Sophos detecting itself as Virus Shh/Updater-B

Starting Wednesday evening we received numerous phone calls and also automatic alerts regarding Sophos antivirus detecting its own update as malware.

All the PCs running Sophos started throwing alerts generating false positives reporting SHH/Updater-B malware.  We were getting slammed with alerts by email regarding the issue. In panic we called Sophos support but I guess we were not alone as every single Sophos customer was hit with this issue and their phone lines were hijacked with these customers.  We could not get through to them.

Sophos later posted an apology and a  knowledgebase article on how to resolve this problem which can be read here.

Citrix Error: The server certificate is out of date. Connection dropped

You may receive an error "The server certificate is out of date.  Connection dropped."  If you login into your Web Interface server and check that the server certificate is still valid then you will notice that the clock on the computer (client) is set incorrectly.  When the computer first connects to the Xenapp server there are checks to make sure that the security encryption certificates are current by comparing their expiration date to system time on the computer.   This can happen if the date is set in the past or into the future.

To fix this issue, double click on the system time in the taskbar on the bottom right of your screen, click on the "change date and time settings"  then change the date and time to current date and time.

You can now try to connect again.  If it still does not connect, you may need to reboot your computer before making the connection to Xenapp server.

Adobe Acrobat X "Invalid Serial Number" error during install

Experienced an issue when installing Adobe Acrobat X for a client.  We downloaded the software from Adobe Licensing website.  During the install when we entered the Serial Number that was listed on the Licensing Website, we received an error "Invalid Serial Number".  This was Odd because both the Software and the Serial Number was downloaded from Adobe Licensing website. 
We discovered later after speaking with Adobe Customer Service that Adobe had posted wrong installer and that this was an issue.  If someone purchased a license for Adobe Acrobat X Standard, their Licensing website would post an installer for Adobe Acrobat X Pro version instead.   So anyone else experiencing this issue will need to contact customer service.   I was told that Adobe Engineers are working to resolve the problem by posting the correct version of the Installer on the Licensing Portal.

SQL 2008 R2, cannot connect to database from Client

During installation of SQL Server 2008 R2, we were not able to connect to the SQL database server from the client PC.  The error that we would receive is posted in the screenshot below.
After much research we came across this post which was very helpful.  There a few things to look for in the Management Studio and Configuration Manager on the SQL server and this post covers all of the them.  Very helpful.  Thanks to Daniel_Wazenbach.

Error Message:

Please check the post at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/walzenbach/archive/2010/04/14/how-to-enable-remote-connections-in-sql-server-2008.aspx?PageIndex=2&CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

SPF Records Help

If you need to create a SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record in your DNS and not sure how to do it, I ran into a nice wizard based tool on Microsoft's Website.   I have put the link to the tool here.   One should be familiar with DNS before working on this tool.

Hiding Administrative Tools Windows 2007 Remote Desktops

I was configuring a Windows 2008 R2 with a lockdown Remote Desktop policy so that when a user logs in does not see the Administrative Tools folder.  I searched the entire Group Policy stack and was not successful.  After Googling some more I came across this blog post which solved my issue.  Please read this blog post here.  Thanks to B4Z.CO.UK

How to fix a broken/empty Jump List on Windows 7

I have seen this problem with Office 2007 on Windows 7. One cannot pin Microsoft Office documents and their previously pinned documents disappeared.

To fix this issue follow these steps:
1. Unpin the application from the Taskbar that you are having this problem in by right clicking on the application icon and then selecting Unpin from taskbar
2. Click on Start => Run. In the run box copy and paste this path, %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations, here you will see a whole bunch of automatic-destination files. Open each file in notepad to see the content to determine which one is associated with the application that you are having an issue with. When you open this file you will see some jumbled text but you should also see some paths and file extensions which will tell you which application is the file associated with. After you find the correct file that is associated with the application that is giving you trouble, delete the file
3. Re-pin the application to the taskbar
The problem should be resolved.