From a user forum:

To get a user console:

1. Press ALT-F1
2. Type 'unsupported' (without the quotes) THERE IS NO ECHO AS YOU TYPE!
3. If you've typed 'unsupported' correctly, you'll be in the tech support mode and you can do stuff, like enable SSH for remote login and all that jazz.

Of course, the proper way is to download the command line virtual machine, but this is quick, if a little dirty.

With the virtualization wars getting hot, MS couldn't wait to release this I have no doubt.  You can download the server core and hyper-v for free just like VMWare's Esxi.  We don't espouse a Windows-only philosophy, but for a Windows-only shop, this is the key everyone's been waiting for.  However, unlike Esxi (which is also free), there are some "gotchas" - the most important of which is the processor.  It MUST be 64-bit and ALSO must have the hardware-baked-virtualization enabled Intel VT or AMD-V (for example, see http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/core2duo.htm to see if your processor measures up).   This puts old hardware out of the picture for this, so VMWare wins if you're consolidating old hardware.  We'll be playing with this over the coming months to see what else is there and give you our f ...

It happens... you're the SQL or Network Admin for a small site/domain and the password is missing (or worse yet, you remember it, but used caps lock or some such similiar nonsense when you set it).  There are lots of these "password recovery/reset" programs out there, but here is a site with recovery for just about everything Windows (scary isn't it?)...

http://elcomsoft.com/prs.html#aopr

One time, I got a bit crazy taking pictures and reformatted the disk (with some "critical" pictures on it of course).  At the time I searched all over for a cheap file recovery program to recover these.  I found one and happily paid the $30+ price tag to get back 95% of my files.  I believe another programmer (who has more time) must have had the same thing happen, because there is now an open source file recovery app named "PhotoRec".

Since deleted data isn't really deleted - but rather the "record" of its being on the platter is erased, it is possible to read the platter bit-by-bit to reconstruct the data that is present-but-not-"assigned" to a file or structure.  That's what these programs do.  But wait - since the "master record" of the file is missing, set back and get comfy, because the program has to not only read the platter(s) bit-by-bit, but also figure out where the file start ...

We've looked for a year (off-and-on of course!) for a .NET implementation of the IMAP, POP, and SMTP protocols that left the "backend" unanswered (i.e., you "roll your own").  Well, we have finally found it with the WeOnlyDo(Software) implementation of these items!  Of course its not quite as good as all that - they are not native .NET, but ActiveX.  Still we're having a look and we'll advise on what we like and don't like about them!  Link is: http://www.weonlydo.com/index.asp?showform=ImapServer.

Also on our radar is a seemingly-nice little email server called MailEnable.  It has many features in the free version, but IMAP and Web come with the (paid) Professional and Enterprise versions.  We're going to test this one too!  www.mailenable.com

As we revamp up our own and a client's voip services, it seems incumbent to say a few words here.  A nice post on what we've found for VOIP/SIP termination can be found here: http://www.trixbox.org/forums/trixbox-forums/open-discussion/recommended-voip-providers .  As the post in-part states, we use Vitelity for its overall high-uptime service, quality Web-GUI for configuration, and reasonable rates.  Another one I keep hearing good things about is http://connect.voicepulse.com/, but their pricing structure is a bit more confusing and their PSTN termination rates are higher.

If you don't know what one is, then skip this.... If you have an inkling, but no experience with them, then this is a nice primer on the subject:  http://www.cio.com/article/128900/ABC_An_Introduction_to_Service_Level_Agreements_SLAs_

One of our least-favorite tasks is moving a database.  This is a well-documented pain for a simple reason: user logins.  Each SQL server has a unique id (SID) attached to each user so even if the user name is the same, the login may-or-may-not be linked to the DB permissions. This article has a better description and a great solution:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Log+Shipping/63028/

Often times when dealing in ASP.NET (or even classic ASP), you need to know when events fire in IIS to know how to handle them.  I have often Googled this when working on a project and there are rafts of documentation out there, but here's a quick primer:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/PageLifeCycle.aspx