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Slow XP boot after installation of .NET v4
edited by on September 21st 2010, at 15:35
With the push of .NET Framework v4 through Windows Update, I've noticed a problem with Windows XP clients. They all suddenly started to boot up slowly, i.e. it takes an abnormal long time before the network stack is started.

Logical deduction and analysis of the problem lead me to check which services were taking a long time to start, as this could be an indication of cause. After rebooting, then immediately digging into Services (services.msc) shows a service trying to start, called Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_X86.
As the users of the affected computers are not using any .NET 4 applications, and having no clue what the service does, I tried disabling it. To my honest surprise,  ...
 
Outlook 2007 constantly asking for password
edited by on September 20th 2010, at 16:51

If Outlook 2007 is constantly asking to enter your password, even though you've enabled Remember password, try the following:

  1. Close Outlook.
  2. Navigate to: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect (Vista/7), or %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Protect (XP).
  3. In that folder should be another folder named after a SID. Rename or delete the folder.
  4. Some people have reported a reboot is required before starting Outlook again. To be on the safe side, do this. After the reboot, start Outlook again. It should be fixed.
 
Microsoft announces Internet Explorer 9 beta
edited by on September 16th 2010, at 11:14

Microsoft has announced the release of the beta-version of the new Internet Explorer 9.

One of the highlights would be a better compliance with industry standards (HTML5, CSS3, etc.). Does this mean that the horrid problem of browser incompatibility (especially between IE and all other browsers) will finally be resolved? I sure hope so...

 
Installing Exchange 2007 SP2 on SBS 2008
edited by on September 15th 2010, at 11:31
Installing Exchange 2007 Service pack 2 on a Windows 2008 SBS generates an error, as detailed here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973862.

To resolve, you can either follow the instructions outlined in the KB, or you can download the installation tool, especially designed for SBS 2008.

First, download these: Exchange 2007 SP2 (64-bit edition):
- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4C4BD2A3-5E50-42B0-8BBB-2CC9AFE3216A

Exchange 2007 SP2 installation tool for SBS 2008:
- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=FFD2FE61-9278-489E-9B96-3816394C9CB6



Run the first file to extract its contents to a folder of your c  ...
 
Shrink database of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11
edited by on September 15th 2010, at 10:24
Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 (short: SEP11) has a database in which it stocks everything from client properties, virus definitions and more. At the installation, you could either select to use an external data source, or its internal database format. When the database is in service for a while, it can grow very large, depending on the number of clients you've got. But it is possible to shrink (= compact) it, which, in certain cases, could save you several hundreds of MB.

Notice
The problem of a overly large database was addressed in Maintenance Release 2, where the compact operation is done automatically. If you're not running MR2, you will have to perform the steps below, but if you hav  ...
 
Retrieve Microsoft product keys from your system
edited by on September 13th 2010, at 10:13
It all happened to us at least once: losing a Microsoft product key, either by carelesness, the cleaning corporation, or a sudden fireball in your drawer. It's not so much a problem if your system is still operational, but what to do when you have to reinstall your computer? One can't just buy expensive licenses all over again, now can we?

Fortunately, there are tools out there that allow the retrieval of product keys, as long as they are installed. ProduKey, created by Nirsoft is one such program. It quickly retrieves product keys from a working system for Windows, Office, SQL server and other Microsoft products.

Direct download link: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/produkey.zip.
  ...
 
Batch processing with The GIMP
edited by on August 26th 2010, at 12:53
While batch processing was already possible using the rather complex Script-Fu, there's now a plug-in for GIMP allowing simple batch processing through a dialog.

DBP David's Batch Processor allows for automatic operations on a collection of image files. Operations such as colour correcting, resizing, cropping, sharpening, and even renaming can be performed with ease, saving them to a different location in a different image format. All operations (except loading and saving) are optional so you can use this for simple image format conversion as well.

DBP can be found here: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html.
It is mainly designed for linux version of The GIMP but pre  ...
 
nano syntax highlight for Shorewall config files
edited by on August 24th 2010, at 16:31

This package provides files to enable syntax highlighting in nano when editing shorewall configuration files, making it easier to maintain these kinds of files.

 
Disable Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage
edited by on August 24th 2010, at 09:55
Ran across a problem today where a legit Office 2003 got flagged as being not legitimate, displaying a nag screen each time an Office application got started. The Office Genuine Advantage update (short: OGA) is an update installed with Microsoft Update, similar to the Windows Genuine Advantage update (short: OWA). While Microsoft flags the update as not uninstallable, there are ways to get rid of the update anyway.

Uninstalling the update is your best bet, and can be done from a (elevated) command prompt.

Be sure all Office applications are closed.

Open a Command prompt (cmd.exe).

Type in: msiexec /X {B2544A03-10D0-4E5E-BA69-0362FFC20D18}
This will invoke Windows Installer w  ...
 
Regenerating SSH host keys
edited by on August 19th 2010, at 16:19

If for some reason you lost your SSH server keys, sshd will fail to start with error:

Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key

You can recreate your host keys with these commands:

ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key

After recreating the keys, you will probably have to let your clients know as with the change of keys, they'll probably get warnings about it (Linux SSH will not even connect until you kick out the old keys).

 
Outlook sends out RTF mails despite HTML or plaintext setting
edited by on August 19th 2010, at 16:00
Had a nasty run-in with Outlook 2007 the other day: despite the internet message format being set to HTML, recipients not using Outlook would still receive mail with attachments as RTF with an unreadable winmail.dat file attached to it.



and



Clueless, I started poking around and finally resorted to Google to find out what was going on. Apparently, there is a separate setting per e-mail address in your contacts list, stating what format that recipient should be able to receive. By default, it is set to Let Outlook decide which basically tells to use the default in Outlook options (thus, being HTML).
However, this is also the choice of Always use RTF, which basically forces Outlook   ...
 
Screencast with Microsoft Expression Encoder
edited by on August 17th 2010, at 13:10

Microsoft has a free edition of Microsoft Expression, which has the basic functionality of creating screencasts. This way you can create screencasts, and encode them to WMV (or to Silverlight). The free edition is limited to 10 minutes per clip, but this should be adequate for simple short clips.

Microsoft Expression Encoder can be downloaded from the Expression website: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/; scroll to the bottom to find it.

 
Upgrade your (recent) Office 2007 to 2010 for free
edited by on August 6th 2010, at 14:30
Microsoft has introduced the technological guarantee, stating that if you have recently purchased a license of Office 2007, you are eligible for a free upgrade to Office 2010. Depending on which version of Office 2007 you purchased, you may upgrade to the 2010 counterpart, or possibly a higher one (e.g. Small Business 2007 upgrades to Professional 2010, neat!).

To be eligible, you need to have purchased, installed and activated Office 2007 between March 5, 2010 and September 30, 2010.
When you qualify, surf to http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/tech-guarantee/ and fill out the form. You can choose to get the electronic download, or order a DVD for an additional fee. The license upgrade it  ...
 
Slow or no video after installing LogMeIn
edited by on August 4th 2010, at 09:57

If you have an nVidia video card and are experiencing slow video performance or no video output at all, after installing LogMeIn, you should download and install the latest drivers from nVidia.

This solves a conflict between the LogMeIn mirror driver and older versions of the nVidia display driver.

 
Get rid of ads in Windows Live Messenger
edited by on August 3rd 2010, at 13:40

It never was easier to get rid of those pesky ads in Windows Live Messenger. Simply download A-patch: http://apatch.org/.

 
Wine for Mac OSX
edited by on March 24th 2010, at 14:51

Wine now also has precompiled binaries available. Together with WineBottler (an application to prepare and pack Windows applications for redistribution with Wine), it is available here: http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/.

Wine is an application which allows to run Windows application on linux, BSD or Mac OSX. Rather than full emulation, it acts as a compatibility layer between the application and the OS.
Wine is not entirely foolproof just yet; there is still much to be done, but with each passing release, more and more applications are getting supported.

 
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  ...
 
Direct download links to Adobe products through FTP
edited by on February 2nd 2010, at 17:53

Adobe has an FTP site available where you can directly download installers and updates of their products, without going through the site, license agreements and download managers.

Adobe Acrobat Reader & Adobe Reader

For PDF reading, the direct links are:

Links to other products will follow. Keep an eye on this post on the site.

 
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  ...
 
Review of Fraps v2.7.2
edited by on April 29th 2007, at 19:47
Fraps is a program for Windows which allows one to take screenshots and record video from DirectDraw, Direct3D and OpenGL applications. It can also display the current framerate in 3D games, whenever, wherever.

I got to know Fraps when a friend of mine was looking for in-game videos to use in her video presentation for school. Another friend recommended Fraps.

That's the phrase to describe it.
Fraps is small and simple. It hasn't got any special advanced features. Only the basic things are included, which I find it to my liking: you don't need to study a 500-page manual before you can use Fraps; it's practically plug-n-play - in this case: install-n-play.

First of, there's the FPS counter  ...
 
 
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