DPM will not recognize SQL recovery model changes after you configure the protection group

I had a protection group taking backups of SQL server databases for a while, I decided later to change the recovery model of some DBs from simple to full to get them synchronized every 15 minutes as configured in the protection group.
After changing the recovery groups I noticed that DPM was still not synchronizing these dbs.
I stopped their protection without deleting the replicas, removed from the group then added them back.
Now they are getting synchronized.

Broken IE9 installation via windows update W2K8R2

Today windows update broke after an appratenly incomplete Internet Explorer 9 installation.

I just installed the updates and rebooted normally, did not get any errors, IE was indeed upgraded to 9 and working fine, however windows update still thinks that it is not installed and keeps offering it again but when I try to install, it fails.

Increase disk space of a Hyper-V virtual machine

Your virtual machine is running out of space and you need to increase the available space in the same disk drive not add another one.

You can easily do that in a couple of steps: 1) expand the virtual hard disk itself. 2) grow the file system of your partition to utilize the new added space.

Optimize DPM Tape Usage by enabling Data Co-Location

In DPM 2010 if you have multiple protection groups you can share tapes among them allowing recovery points from different protection groups to be written on the same tape.

Run the following command in DPM Management Shell to enable Data Co-Location:

Test SQL Connectivity Without Management Studio

If you need to test SQL connectivity from a web to the database server and not just ICMP or TCP without having to install the SQL Client Tools, you can use the ODBC control panel applet to setup a data source using the connection parameters you want to test

The performance counter name string value in the registry is incorrectly formatted

Event Type: Error
Event Source: LoadPerf
Event ID: 3001

Description:
The performance counter name string value in the registry is incorrectly formatted. The bogus string is 445, the bogus index value is the first DWORD in Data section while the last valid index values are the second and third DWORD in Data section.


Performance counter string tables have become corrupt, rebuild them with this command:

lodctr /r

DPM 2010 might be wasting storage pool space if you don't calculate data size of protected members you add

I was configuring some backups when I noticed that the available storage was decreasing rapidly and I don't have that much data yet
I went back to the check the disk allocation for the new members I created and I found that DPM has allocated several gigabytes to backup some hundred megabytes and retain just a few days.