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Change SmartHost outgoing port in Exchange 2007
edited by on January 28th 2010, at 17:28
I've written an article before on how to change the outgoing SMTP port for SmartHost in Exchange 2003. Now, I have to do this again for Exchange 2007 as they've changed this procedure.

When you're unable to send e-mail directly to the internet (using MX), you probably have to set up a SmartHost to relay the e-mail for you. This is basically your ISP's SMTP server, but can be another server as well.
In certain cases, the default SMTP port (port 25) cannot be used to connect to the SmartHost, so you have to change this to something else. Gmail for instance, uses port 587 for SMTP. Other 3rd party mail services use this (or another port) as well to circumvent spam protection initiated by a lot  ...
 
Obtain MAC address of the wireless access point connected to
edited by on January 27th 2010, at 11:28
In Windows, it is possible to obtain the MAC address of the wireless access point you're connected to. This is handy when you have multiple access points with the same ESSID (i.e. "roaming") and want to know which one you're connected to. This is done with the netsh CLI tool, available since Windows XP.

To do this, start a command prompt, and type in:

netsh wlan show interfaces

This shows all wireless interfaces on your system. When your wireless is active and connected to an AP, you get output similar to this:

Name : Wireless Network Connection Description : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN GUID : f5ad6606-3b9d-41b  ...
 
Take screenshots on Mac OSX
edited by on January 19th 2010, at 21:16
Taking screenshots in Mac OSX uses Preview.
Inside Preview, you can use the menu to capture screens, but that's not very handy when you're working in other programs.

Luckily, there are some global shortcuts available that implement every way of capturing. As I always forget what they are, and I'm sure others forget this all the time as well, here's a short list.

Cmd + Shift + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and save in on the desktop as PNG. Cmd + Shift + Control + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and place it on the clipboard (instead of saved to the desktop). Cmd + Shift + 4 Captures a portion of the desktop  ...
 
Configure Exchange Server Auto-Discovery
edited by on January 18th 2010, at 13:30
When you are running an Exchange server, and have your users access the server from outside the company network, you usually have to open up access to OWA. This enables users to access their mail, contacts and appointments by using an internet browser. Occassionally, someone also has a ActiveSync enabled phone that they would like to use. This protocol also uses OWA for syncing data. And very rarely, there's also a guy (usually the CEO) who simply wants to use its Outlook to connect - this is possible through web as well using RPC-over-HTTP(S), but that's information for another blog post (on another day in the far far future...) .

One of the hassles when configuring this, is the fact that   ...
 
Updating your Blackberry OS
edited by on January 15th 2010, at 12:00
Once in a while, it may become necessary to update the Blackberry OS to a newer version. I've noticed with the service providers in Belgium that they are usually some versions behind. If whenever you need to run an application that requires a more sane (recent) version of the BB OS, you get stuck because you cannot install and/or run it.

Now you may wonder what the problem is?
Indeed, one can download the latest version from the Blackberry site, but doing so may actually break your setup, as there are quite a few things to consider:

Does your device support the new OS?

Does your service provider support the new OS?

If you are running BES, is it new enough to support the new OS?

Luckily,  ...
 
Blackberry Enterprise sync mysteriously stops working
edited by on January 14th 2010, at 16:07
Had a problem with a client of ours, running Blackberry Enterprise Manager. One of the devices, a Blackberry 8820, stopped receiving any sync messages. Internet on the device kept working, and the internet e-mail account worked as well, but all communication between the BES and the device failed.

The first thing I did was to completely wipe the device, as I assumed there was a problem with the pairing between the server and the thing. But when I tried to reactivate it, it indefinitely hung on the first phase:

Quote
user@domain activating

As I was troubleshooting using the support site of Blackberry (where they explain the steps that occur when activating), I noticed that the activation e-  ...
 
The truth about...
edited by on January 12th 2010, at 23:46
 
Delivery trouble
edited by on January 8th 2010, at 11:49

Still no luck with my new computer. With the holidays (or so I'd like to believe), I still haven't received the memory, videocard, and disks. Guess I'll have to be training my patience some more.
But it's not all hopeless: the BD/DVD-combo drive did arrive last week, so at least I'll be able to build in that. Joy!

 
SpamAssassin and 2010
edited by on January 6th 2010, at 10:18
Versions 3.2 of SpamAssassin have (until very recently) a bug in their rules which would mark mails dated 2010 (this year) as being spam.

The reason for this is that a rule exists which would add an additional score of 3.2 to mails with a date set to 2010, because when the rule was created, the date would be in the very far future. Of course, this is no longer the case.

The bug was already discovered in 2008, and resolved in the SpamAssassin repositories, but was not backported to 3.2 until 2010-01-01, when the issue was discovered by Mike Cardwell, a developer in the UK.

Users with this problem can easily resolve it by updating the rules:

sa-update

This changes the regexp so it exclude  ...
 
Building blocks
edited by on December 24th 2009, at 21:38

A quick update on the build of the computer. So far, not all components have arrived yet, but the ones that were present already allowed me to start building the system.

 

The case, motherboard, CPU, PSU have arrived and are built in. See the attached screens for a shot on these, and take a look at the attachment list to see descriptions with each pictures.

A few important things are still missing: RAM, video card and disks. Oh yeah, and the BD-drive.

 
Colibri, the Quicksilver alternative for Windows
edited by on December 21st 2009, at 16:37

Colibri, the Quicksilver alternative for Windows...

http://colibri.leetspeak.org/

 
DSRM password on an SBS 2008
edited by on December 20th 2009, at 20:54
When you have a working SBS 2008 server, and don't know the password to get into Directory Services Restore Mode, you might want to reset it to something you do know.
You will need this when for instance, the AD gets screwed up, or, in case of SBS, you get locked out (even though you're an Administrator).

Related posts

The Horror of SBS 2008: part 1

Resetting domain password on a SBS 2008

With the installation of the SBS, the DSRM password will be the same as the password you enter for the Administrator account. So, if the password hasn't changed, or you still remember it, try that one first.

You can change the DSRM password by using ntdsutil.

Open up a command prompt, and start ntdsut  ...
 
Resetting domain password on a SBS 2008
edited by on December 17th 2009, at 22:40
If you ever happen to get locked out of a SBS 2008 system, with no way to get back in as Administrator (it's easier than you might think), use the instructions in this blog should get you back up and running.
Note that you will have to have physical access to the server, or else it will be very challenging to solve the problem.
The content of this has been tested for real on an SBS 2008 which had this problem. Check out the bottom of the page for the sources I used to compile this post.

For a background story, read this post.

In order to get in the server, we need some way of an account and password. As the SBS is a domain controller, you can't simply use the local Administrator account...  ...
 
The Horror of SBS 2008: part 1
edited by on December 17th 2009, at 22:39
Microsoft has invented Windows Small Business Server for small to medium businesses. This, in itself, is not a bad idea. It allows small businesses to enjoy the capabilities and functions of a Windows Server with Exchange and more, for a fraction of the price it would be when buying standard editions of the components.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's idea is that small businesses probably don't have IT outsourcing, so they wizard everything up, and basically add a whole bunch of constraints and this-is-how-you-should-do-it's. Although Microsoft isn't all that wrong about this policy, they forgot about the number one rule: less is more.

With SBS 2003, there were already quite a few specially cra  ...
 
Sync databases with Outlook/Exchange
edited by on December 16th 2009, at 14:58

I came across this application when I was looking into software that does just that:

http://www.geniusconnect.com/geniusconnect.asp

It enables synchronization of Outlook/Exchange folders with a relational database; anything with an ODBC driver is supported (MS-SQL, MySQL, ...).

 
Next-gen gaming
edited by on December 15th 2009, at 21:08
Going forward with plans for a new gaming computer, I've ordered the components. I didn't really have a specific budget in mind, other than the fact that I'm going for quality and performance, rather than selecting components based on their price.

Case: the case is an Antec Twelve Hundred gaming case. I always wanted to select a gaming case for the next one, but a nine hundred would have been just fine. The only reason why it's a twelve hundred is because of a wrong delivery a few months back, where the Antec PSU being delivered was an EC one (thus only fits in a select few cases of Antec).
The PSU is an Antec EC-850W, which is enough for now.

Motherboard: will be an Asus Rampage II Extrem  ...
 
8800GTX broken
edited by on December 14th 2009, at 23:26

Crap! Looks like my 8800GTX video card is broken. That's a serious bummer.

The card does some very serious funny things: as soon as going in-game, the card doesn't really freeze up, but has some sort of memory corruption problem, which remains throughout reboots.

Very coincidentally, I just ordered new hardware for my new gaming computer. The only thing not being replaced was the video card, because I thought it would be better to just wait a while until the next generation of cards from nVidia were available.
Apparently, Fate has decided otherwise.

 
Using TWAIN with Word 2007 in Vista/7
edited by on October 30th 2009, at 13:26
Since Office 2007 (and Vista), TWAIN has been kicked out in favour of WIA. As a result, it is no longer possible to use your favourite and robust TWAIN based scanner with Office 2007.
Most scanners come with the necessary software, and thus, you can circumvent the issue by using their software. However, there are various scanners - notably, office network scanners, like those on copiers, do not have such a tool. They have their driver's internal system which is callable in other software (like Office-applications). In the event that the driver is only supporting TWAIN interface for image acquisition, they do not show up in Vista's scanner list, and therefore, they cannot be used by Office 20  ...
 
MacOSX: unlocking locked files
edited by on October 28th 2009, at 15:50
Ran into an issue where I could not unlock files that were copied from a network location to local disk. The files were marked as being locked, but I was unable to unlock them (through Finder), even though I had all proper rights. Additionally, chmod as root (= user with the highest privileges) did not work either.

The solution to my issue was to manually override the locked flag of those files, from within a Terminal.

sudo chflags -R nouchg my-problem-file-or-dir

Additionally, I found that it sometimes is easier to completely reset/clear an ACL, and start over, rather than trying to fix the ACL. This can also be done in a Terminal.

sudo chmod -R -N my-problem-file-or-dir

This completel  ...
 
BSOD in a VirtualBox guest when it has been moved
edited by on October 5th 2009, at 21:49
When running a Windows XP or 2003 in VirtualBox, under certain circumstances, the guest may generate a BSOD when booting. The message of the BSOD is a:

DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS

It is accompagnied by a referral to processr.sys, intelppm.sys or p3.sys, depending on the CPU used to install the machine.

The reason for this BSOD is a problem with these drivers, trying to perform an unsupported operation inside the virtual machine (like updating microcode or changing the power state of the CPU).
The issue usually surfaces when the guest machine is moved to a different system with different CPU time.

To resolve the issue, the processor drivers have to be disabled. T  ...
 
showing posts tagged with 'computer'
 
 
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