Chris May

When it comes to Apple and quality software, stuff like this is just par for the course:

 

The other day I was helping a client of mine who was having some problems getting a user setup as the local administrator on a laptop.

When I went to add the user, the "From this location:" option only showed the local computer name, not the domain.

The computer WAS on the domain, so what was going on?

Well it turned out that a new router had been put in on that subnet, and the DHCP on the router had started handing out IP addreses.  Those IPs didn't have the DC as the DNS server, which is something that is needed in order to allow computers to figure out where company.local is really located.

After changing the DNS server to be the DC and not the router, everything worked as expected.

To not get prompted to download the Windows Desktop Search component, do the
following:

   1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
   2. Click Other, and then click Advanced Options.
   3. Under General settings, clear the Show prompts to enable Instant
Search check box.

I have been getting this error in the event log of one of my clients servers:

Access to performance data was denied to UserName as attempted from C:\WINNT\System32\WinMgmt.exe

I first tried this:

Open the "Computer Management" app
Expand the "Services and Applications" section
Right-click the "WMI Control" entry & select "Properties"
Go to the "Security" tab
Expand the "Root" node and then select the "WMI" node
Click the "Security" button
Add the account & give it access

That didn't work, so I found another suggestion:

1. Run regedt32
2. Select the key SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib
3. From the menu select 'Security/Permissions'
4. Add the Internet Guest Account granting only 'read' permission

In case that doesn't work, here are some more articles on the subject

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/226494

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1000&eventno=1700&source=Perflib&phase=1

 

This article discusses the turmoil of a multi-year software project, and attempts to answer the question: Why is writing software hard?

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/02/03/leonard/

FreeNAS allows you to quickly convert an old PC into a NAS hosting machine for extra storage.

"Karen's Replicator" was suggested by some site as being a good free backup utility.

I am constantly looking for something that will do a better job backing up files.  I wish there were something out there that really did it all, and didn't cost a ton of money.

I'll have to give this a try.

I don't know anyone having the same problems I am with Outlook 2007, so it could be just my machine, but Outlook 2007 is really ticking me off.

I can deal with a program crashing every now and then, but Oulook does 2 things.

1) Simply stops getting my email from the Exchange server.  I usually notice this when I say... Jeez, I haven't had an email in the last 3 hours?  That can't be right.  So I check my status and it either thinks I'm Disconnected (and reconnecting doesn't have any effect) or it is locked in a "Trying to establish a connection....".  

But wait there's more....

So I close down Outlook and relaunch it, only it never appears.  Sometimes I notice that it didn't show up, but most times I am already on to the next thing and don't realize it until minutes later when I am looking for my email and wondering... "Didn't I already launch it (again)?".

2) Outlook doesn't close down properly, and these processes seem to keep new ones from working correctly.  So I go to task manager and there will be like 3-6 outlook.exe processes running.  One of them will have like 50-60MB of RAM, and the others will only have 3MB.  I have to kill them all before I can start a new process and launch outlook successfully.

Really really annoying, esp when you miss important emails... or emails you really need to have sent are found sitting in your outbox for hours.

LifeHacker is linking to a software tool they say will convert any video format to any other video format.

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/downloads/download-of-the-day-any-video-converter-windows-218253.php

http://www.any-dvd-converter.com/

Here is another list of some great freeware products, free browsers, anti-virus, anti-spyware etc.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm#9

The HTTP spec specifies that you can not have more than 2 transfers when using HTTP 1.1, or more than 4 transfers in HTTP 1.0.

So what this means is that you can't download a bunch of files from the same server at the same time.

More info on this problem can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/183110.

You can configure WinInet to exceed this limit by creating and setting the following registry entries:

Note By changing these settings, you cause WinInet to go against the HTTP protocol specification recommendation. You should only do this if absolutely necessary and then you should avoid doing standard Web browsing while these settings are in effect:

These settings are made for a particular user and will have no affect on other users who log on to the computer.

In Internet Explorer 5, it is possible to change the connection limit programmatically by calling the InternetSetOption function on NULL handle with the following flags (note that it will change connection limit for the whole process):

Note If the process has established a connection to a server, if you change the connection limit by calling InternetSetOption, the function does not have any effect to subsequent connections on the same server. This occurs even if a previous connection is disconnected prior to the call to InternetSetOption. Connection limit does affect all other servers.

Keywords: IE Downloads, Concurrent Downloads, 2 downloads

Slashdot recently posted a question from a user asking what the best free anti virus options are.

The response can be seen here:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/22/1310211

 

I am getting a little sick of this.

Starting with a few days ago I started getting a lot of these errors.  Mostly in IE, but also in VS.Net.

Looking at the details of the error I see it is coming from mytilus.dll, which is a DLL used by VirusScan 8.  I have patch 11, which I guess is up to date.  I will be keeping an eye on it.

I never ever ever want to click on the "Help and Support" button in the WinXP start menu, but I frequently do when trying to click on something else (usually "Run...").

I found this info on http://www.winxptutor.com/hidehlp.htm

To remove the Help and Support link from XP Start Menu, try this:

• Right-click Taskbar, choose Properties
• In the Start Menu tab, click Customize
• Select the Advanced tab
• Uncheck Help and Support option.
• Click OK, OK and close the dialog

For Windows Classic Start menu, you may need to modify the registry directly:

• Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe
• Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

• In the right-pane, create a new REG_DWORD value named NoStartMenuHelp
• Double-click NoStartMenuHelp and set it's value to 1
• Close Regedit.

This is a pretty good list of freeware utilities for all kinds of applications:

http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-freeware-utilities/index.html

 

Slashdot is running an Ask /. article on alternatives to Citrix.

At Walsh, we run a lot of applications over Citrix, mostly apps that really aren't meant to be run remotely, to allow remote users to run them against databases that are stored in our main offices.

MSi is interested in a solution such as this as well but for more daily operations than specific application access.

This deal from Microsoft is pretty sweet.

I might need to get this.

This is a pretty sweet looking firmware that someone wrote for Archos MP3 players. I'm not sure if it will work on my box, but I will have to look into it.

Update: I wish I hadn't put this on there.  It's been more of a pain then it's worth.

Here is an article that discusses how to write a telnet application that can reboot your server remotely... a must for windows computers :).

Microsoft pisses me off. This is such as pain in the ass.

To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option.

If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. This can affect the performance of the search functionality. To do this:

1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console.

This tool helps to get around the dumb-ass WinXP burning features to allow you to burn an ISO image to a CD.

Just run the following:

regsvr32 urlmon.dll

I was trying to figure this out last night and stumbled upon it today.

Cntl + Alt + End will bring up the the Cntl Alt Delete menu when you are in Remote Desktop.

Spam - Oh How I Hate Thee

Here is another little trick that I have been making good use of...

1. Go to %SystemDrive%\documents and settings\%username%\sendto
2. Right-click in the right hand panel and select New > Shortcut
3. Create a new shortcut to Notepad.exe in the sendto folder.

Now you can send any file to notepad for easy viewing without any time waiting for a program (like VS.NET) to launch.

Works great for XML, HTML, script, and other text files that have a different extension.

Here is a little registry hack that I wrote. It will let you search important sites (at least important to me), from the IE address bar.

Sites include Google, Google Groups, MSDN, Dictionary.com, and WhatIs.com.

After you run the .reg file, you can have quick access to these sites by simply entering text into the Address box, such as "g tennis". "g" stands for google, so typing in "g tennis" will open a page with google.com searching on the term "tennis". Google Groups = gg, MSDN="msdn", Dictionary.com = "d", Whatis.com = "whatis".

You can add more usi