IE (Internet Explorer) is unable to download files after Domain Profile set-up or IE re-installation

Client called today, guess what.. it's just after migration day, and all eyes - and fingers - are upon us.

Background

Workgroup of computers, 10 of them, mix between notebooks and PCs, all running Windows 7, but mix of 32 and 64bits.

We installed a Windows Server 2012 with Essentials services in the domain, and since we do not want to re-do the users profile, we relied on User Profile Wizard (ver 3.7) to migrate individual user computers from the local user account to the domain user account. As usual, we locked the local user account password with our intended local admin password, and perform the necessary migration.

Migration was successful, and users are now connected to the new domain, all files and settings remains. User is happy, and it's all so fast - much like a successful migration day...or so it seems...

Next day, we faced a myriad of problems, and the main issue, is Internet Explorer and Dropbox related.

For DropBox, the issue has to do with registry and permissions, and the appdata info needs to be cleared. I won't go into that since there are tons of info.
But for reference, here is a link from SpiceWorks that depict the exact issue I faced.

Internet Explorer and the woes of download failure

Up next is the issue with Internet Explorer not-downloading... I believe this issue and fix can be applied to any issues related to profile related IE problems where the symptoms shows that nothing can be downloaded by IE. Firefox and Chrome works, just not IE. And as much as we don't use IE like 99% of the time, we still need it to function as it's supposed to!

We proceed to test and go through these steps that I've collected via the net that eventually lead to solve the problem.

Check Symptoms: Test the Size change of Temporary Internet Files

the first litmus test is to go to Internet Explorer Properties, go to General, Browsing History > Settings:
 
You should face an issue with the size. Try changing it to 50, and apply-save the changes... close IE and re-open.

If you encountered issues here, your problem is very severe and be prepared to spend some more time troubleshooting if my fixes below doesn't work.

If no issues encountered, proceed with the next step.

First fix - location change of Temporary Internet Files

Sometimes the issue is related to the temporary internet files location permission. There were times during the migration where the appdata folder structure permissions doesn't get altered accordingly, as such, created problems with regards to the writing of temporary internet data to the folder.

Changing the location to a location like c:\temp folder that you newly create will ensure that:
1) you have full access to the folder
2) eliminate any folder corruption issues that you suspect.

After the change, you'd be required to log-off and re-log in to the user profile. 
After the login, kindly test the download of files again from Internet Explorer. 
If it doesn't work, move along to the next few steps.

Second fix - follow the registry fixes

There were a few commotion in the IT-Pros community when the users faced problems with IE-10 downgrade to IE-9... More details (here)...

In summary, I am going to borrow some of the steps:

1. Login as the affected user
2. Run regedit
3. Navigate to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\InternetSettings\5.0
4. Delete (or rename) the following keys: Cache, LowCache
5. Open IE – IE will automatically create new Cache and LowCache keys
6. Navigate to Internet Options > General > Browsing History > Settings and try amend the size of download temp folder 50mb
7. Close and restart IE 

there is no need to restart PC, but IE needs to be restarted.
test the downloading of files after IE is restarted, and if it still fails...
let's go to the final step which should summarize our troubleshooting

Third fix - running IE as an Admin

Right click, run IE as an administrator... and then head to the settings where temporary internet files are located.

Set the size of download folder to (if it was 50mb, change it to 100mb). Basically, just change it to another settings.

Apply the changes and restart IE.

You'd be glad that it works after the settings!

In summary...

It's no easy task to be a sysadmin!
My migration wasn't that smooth, but oh-well, I am depending on a lot of resources made by people whom I have not met, who speaks different languages, and are just good-hearted enough to share... I am just glad that I have this community in the web.

Applying a suitable encryption tool for systems

My client recently got upgraded and requires to be audited to ensure that it meet certain standard before further business activity can be conducted with their biggest client in the finance sector.

As their IT provider and solutions architect, I was called to the meeting and one thing that alarmed them was the lack of personal mobile device security that was not implemented for the users.

In particular - mobile and laptop encryption.

I did some reading and searches, believed that encryption will reduce the overall speed of the system, thus my fear of inefficiency and as such, never gone into encrypting the entire disk on the systems.

After reading through several posts on the solutions available, I realized that it's not that scary, and I decided to venture into the world of encrypting my laptops - at least for work!

Google-ing around the internet finds me a long-standing encryption software - TrueCrypt...which at this point at 2014-November, is dead... As such, I had to go through this post, and read through all the reports and comments all the way to the bottom.

Since I need to standardize between MAC and Windows Encryption, I decided to rest on VeraCrypt at the moment.

As of it's install at this point in time, it's currently set at version 1.00e

I did contemplate: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bitlocker-truecrypt-encryption,2587.html

But after seeing so many people commenting/lamenting on Microsoft's bit-locker issues with releasing and revealing keys to NSA (not that it matters to me from where I am based...), I decided to give it a miss. Moreover, I needed a generic platform that can run on both MAC and WIN.

First try is on my existing Windows 7 Pro SP-1 32-bit, 4-GB of memory, on i3-370 CPU.
A 500-GB HDD - 300GB System partition (to be encrypted), and only 150GB used.
I am using AES encryption, with the standard keys configuration...

So-far so good, I have to wait 26-hrs for the work to complete. As such, I will be leaving my system over-night for this work to complete.

I shall update again if I encounter any issues.