Earlier tonight while working on a Windows 7 Ultimate server I needed to reboot the computer to complete some changes made on the server but the Restart/Shutdown capabilities are removed from the start menu for security reasons. Luckily you can still easily reboot Windows 7 remotely when connected via Remote Desktop using the instructions below.
I always keep remote desktop enabled at home. The reason for this is that any time my wife is having a pc issue, instead of trying to talk her through it on the phone, I just remote in and fix it. I Recently tried to do this, and to my dismay I found that my internet provider has blocked port 3389. Here is a quick post on how to change the default port in windows.
While testing something earlier I needed to create a symbolic link on my laptop which is running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I first was going to use cygwin to create the symbolic link with ln however cygwin complained about it which is noted below in more detail. After receiving the error from cygwin I decided to look at the possible Windows commands and located mklink which is described in more detail below and will easily allow you to create symbolic links on a Windows 7 computer.
Another task I recently completed for a client of mine was to modify the background image for Polycom SoundPoint SIP phones connecting to the companies VoIP network externally. Depending on the model of the Polycom SoundPoint you can modify the background image that displays on the LCD panel using a URL. In this case the phone type was a Polycom SoundPoint 550 and he phones connecting via an external network were not displaying the background image that was set for phones on the internal network. Below is information on where you can find where the background image is set and an example configuration file that explains what could be changed to have different phones locate the background image on the Polycom SoundPoint SIP phones also known as the home display.
While working on various things in a Asterisk VoIP deployment earlier I needed to override the DHCP NTP settings for a specific phone because this particular user was remote. The configuration file for their phone was actually using a different outbound proxy and SIP registration server address so they could operate remotely. One of the issues pointed out to me was the fact that the phone’s time was never correct and after some basic investigation I was able to locate the issue which is described below as well as how to override the DHCP NTP address settings via the Polycom SountPoint CFG (configuration) files.