Great Heath Check report management pack

At SystemCenterCentral you can get the "SCC HealthCheck Reports v.2" Management Pack.
This MP contains 27 great reports regarding the health of the system.

Go get this MP - but be sure to follow the instructions for installation.

Nice PING tool for OpsMgr 2007

We have all created a ping tool, to be used inside of OpsMgr2007, but OpsLogix have created one with a nice GUI interface, to configure directly from the Monitoring pane in the OpsMrg console.

Download free from opslogix.com

Changing the Windows 7 login screen

In Windows 7 it is possible -fairly easy - to change the login screen.

1. Start Regedit

2. Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

3. Double click on the entry OEMBackground, and change the value from 0 to 1
(If the key does not exist, add a new DWORD value with the name OEMBackground)

4. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the following path: %windir%\system32\oobe

5. Create a new folder named info, and open it.

6. Create a new folder within info and name it backgrounds

7. Rename your desired wallpaper as backgroundDefault.jpg and place it inside the folder backgrounds (images must be less than 245KB in size)

Installing ACS reports

After installing ACS, the reports have to be manually installed on the report server.

Follow these simple steps:

1. Log on to the Management Server with an account that is a member of the OpsMgr administrators group

2. Open explorer and navigate to the ReportModels folder in your Operations Manager install files

3. Copy the folder "acs" to a locally drive, i.e. d:\acs

4. Open a Command prompt and navigate to the folder d:\acs

5. Run the command:
UploadAuditReports ReportingServerName http://ReportingServerName>/ReportServer d:\acs
note: you may see some warning errors as below on uploading the reports, these are expected and can be ignored

6. Open Internet Explorer and enter the following address to view the SQL Reporting Services Home page. http://ReportingServerName/Reports

7. Click Audit Reports in the body of the page and then click Show Details in the upper right part of the page.

8. Click the Db Audit data source.
In the Connect Using section, select Windows Integrated Security (if not already checked) and click Apply.

Windows 7 - God Mode

This is a simple hack that gives you ALL Control Panel and System Settings in ONE place.

Create a new folder on your Windows Desktop.
Name the folder: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The icon will change: 

Now - open the folder and see for yourself...

Technical background:
The strange extension is a registered classid which is recognized by Windows Explorer. This class-id represents a explorer-panel COM object like the 'Control Panel'. Therefore Explorer switches from filesystem view to the COM objects and the component displays whatever it wants in the explorer panel.