Modifying the Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset driver for Windows XP

I wrote this article after experiencing screen resolution issues with my new Toshiba notebook that uses the Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset.

I use an external ViewSonic VX2235wm monitor at home that requires a resolution of 1680 x 1050 to get the full windescreen experience with good colour and crisp text, and was disappointed when my new Toshiba Terca PTM90A did not support this, even with the latest Windows XP drivers installed.

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Citrix Load Evaluators

It has always been my opinion that the CPU Utilisation and Page Swaps rules are highly variable, and therefore do not often represent the real load of a server. CPU Utilisation can often be too erratic to provide consistent load balancing. Now days you have the CPU Optimisation feature, or a 3rd Party management app controlling this. Once you’ve base-lined your systems, then a custom evaluator with the Server User Load and Memory Usage rule is about the best to receive a consistent balance across all servers.

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Microsoft Windows 2003 Post-SP2 Hotfixes

Why should we apply hotfixes?

Some IT Administrators take the approach that if they are not experiencing the issues/symptoms referred to in the knowledge base article; they shouldn’t be deploying the hotfix. However, from experience we understand that the vendor doesn’t always document all issues addressed, so there also needs to be an understanding of previous releases of the same drivers, etc, in other hotfixes.

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SMB Tuning

 Here are 3 good articles written by Michel Roth. Fileserving in Terminal Server Environments (Part 1) Fileserving in Terminal Server Environments (Part 2) Lanmanserver and Lanmanworkstation Tuning So how do you know if you have a problem? Well on the Terminal/Citrix servers you need to monitor the outstanding Redirector/Current Commands queue. The goal of a Terminal/Citrix … Read more

Processor Scheduling

Multi-tasking Operating Systems just give the illusion that they’re doing things in parallel. In reality, the CPUs rapidly skip from task to task using various algorithms and heuristics, making one think the processes truly are running simultaneously. The choice of scheduling algorithm can be immensely important.

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End Point Analysis Scans Hanging

This issue wasn’t being seen from all remote workstations as it turned out to be dependant upon the type of Internet connection users were connecting from. For Example: A connection from a DSL line using PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) consistently failed, whilst other connections, such as PPPoA (PPP over ATM) worked flawlessly. Further testing proved that this was due to an MTU issue.

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