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showing posts tagged with 'windows'
Analyze wireless networks with inSSIDer
edited by on March 19th 2010, at 18:37
inSSIDer is a free tool to analyze wireless networks. While this tool may not be as extended as professional ones, it has a few nice features that make this thing a must-have. Add to it that it's entirely free, and you've got yourself a nice tool for troubleshooting wireless networks.

inSSIDer can be used to inspect wireless network and troubleshoot access points. It goes as far as viewing received signal (in dBm) over time, track channels in use, etc. There's also additional GPS support (NMEA v2.3) to locate access points, including support to export it to KML for viewing in Google Earth. The tool uses the native Wi-Fi API and uses a current wireless network card, without actually claiming  ...
 
Installing Windows XP alongside Vista or 7
edited by on February 13th 2010, at 15:25
If you come across a problem where you can't do anything but install a Windows XP alongside a Vista or Windows 7, don't despair, as it is quite easily done.

First you have to repartition your HD. If you have a second HD you're not using, you can ignore this step. If not, you probably have to resize one of the present partitions. But in order to get the maximum out of the resizing, make sure the partition you're about to resize, is defragmented properly. Note that you cannot resize FAT32 partitions (but who uses that nowadays, anyway).
The resizing can be done through Disk Management. Select the system or another partition, right-click and select Shrink volume. Windows   ...
 
Terminal Server 2008 setup fails with 0x8004005 in SBS 2008 domain
edited by on February 3rd 2010, at 11:10
When installing the Terminal Services role on a 2008 member server in a SBS 2008 domain, you may run into the following error:

Quote
Attempt to configure Terminal Server failed with the error code 0x8004005.
Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.

The problem surfaces when the 2008 member server was added to the domain, it was misplaced in the SBSComputers OU, rather than the SBSServers OU. As a result, a certain client group policy, which is linked with the SBSComputers OU, interferes with the installation of Terminal Services.

To solve this problem, follow these steps:

Uninstall the Terminal Services role (entirely, including all sub roles).

In Active Di  ...
 
Remote Desktop Manager 5.7.1 released
edited by on February 2nd 2010, at 14:30
Devolutions has come up with a new release of their Remote Desktop Manager: a software tool allowing management of all your remote connections (like VNC, RDP, SSH) and so much more. Its latest version is a vast improvement over their previous stable releases, and is a must-have tool for all ICT employees out there with a lot of remote connections to manage (such as myself).

It comes in two flavours:

The Standard Edition is freeware and houses the majority of the features. It allows the storage to various datasources, including MS Access (containing shared access if you will).

The Enterprise Edition is not free, but has some advanced features, such as password saving to a shared datasource  ...
 
Incoming PPTP VPN passthrough on OpenWRT
edited by on February 1st 2010, at 16:46
To set up a Windows PPTP VPN server behind your OpenWRT enabled router, you need to forward the necessary ports and protocols, and install the proper modules.

Finding information about how to do this was a lengthy process. I never actually found the necessary info (although I noticed there are quite a few people which are rather clueless about networking; makes me wonder why they're bothering with OpenWRT in the first place, it's not the easiest firmware out there).
But I've managed to compile the bits and pieces of various sources into a coherent mass. It's not a guide in the literal sense, but will tell you want you need, assuming you do know your way around OpenWRT.

The setup was tested  ...
 
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  ...
 
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-  ...
 
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, ...).

 
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  ...
 
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  ...
 
Locking down Firefox
edited by on September 24th 2009, at 18:02

Found this article, showing you how to lock down Firefox.

This is quite useful when deploying Firefox on, for instance, a Terminal Server.

 
Keep-alive issues when proxying IIS with Apache2
edited by on September 8th 2009, at 18:26
We had a bit of trouble with an Apache2 server, configured as a front-end proxy for a IIS running various different sites. The idea for this has grown because of the fact that our client had only one public IP address at the time, but had to run multiple sites. Rather than running the sites in IIS on different ports, we setup the Apache2 to proxy requests to the IIS back-end, so the sites were accessible by means of sub-urls.
E.g.:

http://myserver/mysubdomain1/ -> http://internal-ip:my-port/

For this, we used mod_proxy, and the ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse.

Lately, our client complained of regular errors when surfing the sites. Apache2 would give HTTP error 502 (Bad gateway) on the page  ...
 
Defragmentation with UltraDefrag
edited by on August 28th 2009, at 11:51

If you're looking for a better defrag, check out UltraDefrag:

http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/

Some highlights of the software (as told on their site):

  • Boot Time Defragmentation allows for defragmenting upon boot (like an antivirus), useful for system files, like the registry, the pagefile, ...
  • Option to shutdown the computer once defrag has completed.
  • Aside of defragging, there's also compacting, which rearranges data to the beginning of the disk, increasing performance and stability;
  • Single file and folder defragmentation, in case you only need to defrag an application or files that have just been placed on disk.
 
showing posts tagged with 'windows'
 
 
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