1. Login to the Exchange Control Panel: https://FQDN/ecp (or localhost, or IP address) internally or using the external IP or Domain externally. (Security tip: don’t use the default “administrator” account in production…I only did this for testing)

2. Go to Mail Flow and Send Connectors. Click the + (plus) button to add a new external send connector.

3.  Give it a name, such as “External Email Connector” and select Type: Internet. Click Next.

4. Select “MX record associated with recipient domain” for sending email, unless your ISP or Host requires the use of Smart Hosts. Click Next.

5. Press the + (plus) button to add a new Address Space.

6. Under Type enter SMTP and under Cost enter 1. Under FQDN enter *. This ensures you can send email to all Internet domains. If you want to restrict which domains you can send email to, create a new Address Space for each domain, putting the domain name in the FQDN field. This is a useful feature for companies that require high security and control of emails being sent out (Government, Financial, Insurance). Click Next.

7.  Click Next.

8. Press the + (plus) button to add a new Source Server (if you are running only one exchange server, this will be the current/transport server).

9. All exchange servers in the organization will be listed. Highlight the one you wish to use for transport, and click Add. Click OK.

10. Click Finish.

11. Now we need to set the FQDN for the server sending external emails. Highlight the External Email Connector you just created. Click the Edit button above.

12. Click on Scoping, scroll to the bottom and enter the FQDN of your server. This will likely be domainname.com or match your MX record (email.domainname.com). Click Save. This is an important step as it will decrease the likelihood your organization’s email being flagged as spam, by properly identifying your server to others. Exchange 2013 is now setup to send external emails properly.

Many server installations leave WordPress or other PHP script installs to default to “localhost” when connecting to MySQL. Windows 7, 2008, 2012 have an issue with resolving localhost when IPv6 is enabled. With iishacks.com, the initial response time from MySQL goes from 600ms (using localhost) down to 70ms (using 127.0.0.1).

If your issue is initial response time, but MySQL seems to function well otherwise, your connection string may be at fault. Instead of disabling IPv6, try changing “localhost” to “127.0.0.1″  in your scripts and see if the response times improve.

Taking a look at Perfmon, I found the Disk Queue to be very high – during the freezing the Max Queue was up over 3500. There is a relationship between current and average queue explained here, but a good rule of thumb is that a length of 2 per disk is reasonable. Any more than that for an extended period and there is a disk bottleneck.

How to stop the solid state drive from Freezing

Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) is the culprit, specifically LPM (Link Power Management) and DIPM (Device Initiated Power Management). Both are recommended to be enabled as they lower power consumption on SATA devices that support it, but in certain circumstances they may cause freezing, stuttering and other undesirable performance degradation.

In order to turn off LPM and DIPM, insert the text below into notepad and save the file as LPM.reg and run it or download the file and unzip. The following disables LPM/DIPM for all SATA ports on a machine. If you only want to disable for a specific port, delete the other keys below. This will work for any SSD experiencing stuttering or freezing while using Intel RST drivers only (MS Default AHCI not included). Make sure you restart after you’ve run the registry file.

After you’re done, the Intel SSD Toolbox will show a warning in the system tuner (screenshot below), this is normal. You have intentionally disabled LPM/DIPM, do not click “Tune!”.

If they are all missing, chances are they might have been deleted or somehow, either you or a program, has disabled desktop icons. See Method 1 below.

If some of your icons look funny, are missing thumbnails, or the desktop doesn’t “refresh” when you’ve placed new items on it, try Method 2 as your icon cache may be corrupted.

If your desktop icons are missing and they are all network, broken local shortcuts, or shortcuts to files on a removable USB drive, system maintenance is to blame. There are two methods to help with that:

• Method 3 is the easy way. The downside is that it disables all system maintenance. I would only recommend this as a way to test if that is indeed the correct solution to your problem.
• Method 4 is the recommended method, as it is less of a band-aid solution. It involves increasing the threshold that Windows will have before it starts cleaning up broken shortcuts.

Method 1: All Icons missing from Desktop

1. Right-Click on an empty part of the Desktop.
2. Hover over “View” and make sure “Show Desktop Icons” is checked.

Method 2: Rebuild The Icon Cache

Open notepad, paste the following code, and then save it as IconFix.bat. Go to where you saved the file and double click it. As an alternative, you can type the lines one-by-one in the command prompt (Start -> Search -> cmd -> Right-click and select “Run as Administrator”).

Method 3: Disable System Maintenance

1. Go to the Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> Under “Action Center” click on “Troubleshoot Common Computer Problems” -> Click “Change Settings” on the left side.
2. Under “Computer Maintenance” select “off” and under “Other Settings” remove both checkmarks as shown in the screenshots below.

Method 4: Modify The Scheduled Task Files

Try this when your network shortcuts or broken shortcuts disappear from your desktop. Windows 7 has a broken-shortcut threshold of 4. Some people recommend deleting the script file, but modifying it to increase the threshold to a higher number is a safer way to do it, while still allowing system maintenance to run (unlike Method 3). This method does require a bit more work, and there is a greater risk to system damage than the previous methods. There are some screenshots below to help you along with the steps.

1. Double-click on “Computer” on the Desktop, or right-click on the Start Menu and click “Open Windows Explorer.”
2. Go to: C:\Windows\diagnostics\scheduled\Maintenance.
3. Right-click on TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1 and select “Properties.”
4. Click on the “Security” tab.
5. Click on “Advanced” near the bottom.
6. The Advanced Security settings dialog will pop up. Click on the “Owner” tab.
7. The Current Owner will show TrustedInstaller. Click “Edit” near the bottom.
8. Under “Change Owner To:” select your username.
9. Click “OK” to close the dialog. Click “OK” to the warning.
10. After returning to the Advanced Security settings dialog, it will show your user as the current owner. Click “OK.”
11. Now that you are back in the Security tab, click “Edit.”
12. The Permissions dialog will pop up. You are now free to select a group or user and modify the permissions on the file. You will likely be part of the “Users” group. Select “Users” and under permissions select “Modify.”
13. Click “OK” to return to the Security tab. Click “OK” again to exit the file’s properties.
14. Right-Click on TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1 and select “Edit.”
15. On line 44, find “-gt 4))” -> Change this to “-gt 25))” to set the threshold to 25 broken icons. If you feel there may be more than 25 broken network icons on your desktop at a time, adjust accordingly.
16. If you wish to use the same method for preventing the removal of unused icons, edit the TS_UnusedDesktopIcons.ps1 file following the steps above, find “-gt 10” on line 50 and change it to a higher number.

The WinSxS folder is used to store install and uninstall files, windows packages (current and previous versions of a component) and out-of-band releases. You should not completely delete this folder. Post Windows 7 SP1, there is now a way to remove the unnecessary files from this folder using the command line (elevated/admin mode -> Click Start -> Type “cmd” in Search. Right click on “cmd” and choose “Run as Administrator”). This is great for reducing the Windows folder size for SSDs and netbooks. In my case it saved 3.5GB of space.

Before:

After: