Allogro™

Failed test VerifyEnterpriseReferences / msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL / FRS and DFS Replication Member Objects

Will Murray — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:49:19 +0000

The following is some research I found while troubleshooting some recent SYSVOL File Replication issues. It is not necessarily a complete solution or even the correct one for you if you are suffering from similar issues. I’ve linked to the original sources, so please review the suggestions in-context of their original situations before deciding if they might help you fix your problems. Good luck!

Running DCDIAG.EXE in a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 environment with a single domain controller resulted in a failure for the VerifyEnterpriseReferences test:

[1] Problem: Missing Expected Value Base Object: CN=DC01,OU=Domain Controllers,DC=DOMAINNAME,DC=com Base Object Description: "DC Account Object" Value Object Attribute Name: msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL Value Object Description: "SYSVOL FRS Member Object" Recommended Action: Please See Knowledge Base Article Q312862 LDAP Error 0x20 (32) - No Such Object .............................DC01 failed test VerifyEnterpriseReferences

Based on the attribute name msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL, Joson Zhou, a Microsoft employee and Moderator on the TechNet Forums, believes that KB article Q312862 may not apply to environments where the domain function level has been raised to Windows Server 2008.

The error means that the value of the attribute msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL is not correct. To verify, performing the following steps:

On the Domain Controller, open the Active Directory Users and Computers console.
In the console, select Domain Controllers, and then double-click the relevant DC object (DC01 in this example) in the right pane.
Click the Attribute Editor tab, click the Filter button, and then check the Backlinks.
After that, you should see the attribute msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL. The expected value is CN=DC01,CN=Topology,CN=Domain System Volume,CN=DFSR-GlobalSettings,Cn=system,DC=DOMAINNAME,DC=com.

Unfortunately, Mr. Zhou’s answer did not provide information on how to actually edit the value if it is “Not Set” and grayed out, and I could not find any suggestions how to do so anywhere else, either. If you discover the answer, please share it in a comment below.

On a follow-up message to the one above, Mervyn Zhang, another Microsoft Moderator, stated that “msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL is a back reference of msDFSR-ComputerReference which relates to msDFSR-MemberReference“. He therefor recommens following these instructions to Review and Update the FRS or DFS Replication Member Object (http://tinyurl.com/nr5tq9):

You can use this procedure to update the File Replication Service (FRS) or Distributed File System (DFS) Replication member object after you rename a domain controller. This object must be updated with the new domain controller name so that the domain controller can replicate SYSVOL.

For more information about this procedure, see article 316826 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=82821).

Membership in Domain Admins, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure. Review details about using the appropriate accounts and group memberships at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83477.

To update the FRS member object

On the Start menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.

On the View menu, click Advanced Features.

Expand the domain node, System, File Replication Service, and Domain System Volume (SYSVOL share). The objects below Domain System Volume (SYSVOL share) are the FSR Member objects that correspond to domain controllers in the domain. Find the object that shows the old name of the domain controller.

Right-click the FRS Member object for the old name of the domain controller, and then click Rename.

Type the new name of the domain controller.

To verify the name change, open ADSI Edit: On the Start menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click ADSI Edit.
View the fRSMemberReference attribute of the object CN=Domain System Volume (SYSVOL share),CN=NTFRS Subscriptions,CN=,OU=Domain Controllers,DC= and confirm that the value in CN= is the new name.

To update the DFS Replication member object

On the Start menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.

On the View menu, click Advanced Features.

Expand the domain node, System, DFSR-GlobalSettings, Domain System Volume, and Topology. The objects below Domain System Volume are the msDFSR-Member objects that correspond to domain controllers in the domain. Find the object that shows the old name of the domain controller.

Right-click the msDFSR-Member object for the old name of the domain controller, and then click Rename.

Type the new name of the domain controller.

To verify the name change, open ADSI Edit: On the Start menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click ADSI Edit.
View the msDFSR-MemberReference attribute of the object CN=Domain System Volume,CN=DFSR-LocalSettings,CN=,OU=Domain Controllers,DC= and confirm that the value in CN= is the new name.

Things have moved

Will Murray — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:31:04 +0000

In January 2006, we changed our company’s legal name from Acanthus Technology to Acorn IT Group and established the Allogro™ Business Networking Specialists division to serve our clients’ IT needs. We have maintained our old web site, but have not updated it in a long time.

We are in the process of shutting down the old site, and we are forwarding requests for old content to the current information at our Allogro or Acorn IT Group sites.

If you were redirected to this announcement instead of the content you were expecting, it is because that content no longer exists on any of our sites.

Please contact us if there is something with which you need assistance, and we will do our best to help you.

An easy way to keep plugins and themes updated in multiple WordPress installations

Will Murray — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:16:36 +0000

In this article: Introduction, Prerequisites, How my file system is structured, Creating the repositories, Linking to the repositories, Recap, Common problems and fixes, Maintaining your repositories, Using this technique with ZenPhoto and other CMS systems, Additional resources, Comments and feedback

Introduction

WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform and, in certain situations, a good choice for a general content management system (CMS). It is easy to end up with several parallel installations of WordPress—one for each major topic you want to discuss. Everything works great at first, but after a while, the constant barrage of updates to the main application, various plug-ins, and the themes becomes something of a management nightmare. The more blogs you operate, the more time is spent maintaining the blogging environment and the less that is available to actually blog.

If you host your WordPress blog on a Linux-based server (BSD or most any other Unix-like operating system should be able to do this equally well) and you have “shell access”, I might have a way to ease your pain. In a nutshell, you will create a central repository containing every WordPress plug-in that you use in all of your blogs. You create a separate repository containing each of your themes. Next, you create symbolic links (think of them as shortcuts; more about them in just a moment) from each installation of WordPress to your central repositories. From that point on, you only have to update your plug-ins and themes once, and the change will take effect instantly across all your sites. It’s a very slick trick!

This trick works probably works well on many other CMS systems that use plug-ins and themes; I have started using it with my ZenPhoto installations, too. In addition to helping keep things updated, it also saves disk space since you are only maintaining a single copy of the files on your server.

I will provide step-by-step instructions and some quirks for which you need to be aware. One quick word of caution: mistakes, bugs, and goofs can also instantly affect all your sites, so be very careful as you work, take your time, and always backup your files and databases before you start.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, make sure that your system meets the following requirements:

All of your WordPress installations should be hosted at the same Internet Service Provider, and they probably have to be on the same physical server (though not necessarily with some ISPs depending on how they configure things). If the server is something other than Linux or Unix-like system, they may even have to be on the same physical hard disk for this to work. Ideally, they should all be hosted under the same user account, but if not, they different accounts need to be in the same Unix security group and permissions have to be granted for the whole group, not just the owner (that’s beyond the scope of this article).
You must have shell access to your server. This means that you can access a command prompt (a screen that looks like a DOS window) after you login, and you can type commands that directly affect your server. These instructions assume that your server is a Linux system, though FreeBSD and other Unix-like systems should all work similarly. While Mac OS has similar features, I think the commands are somewhat different, so you will need to adapt these instructions if your server is a Mac. Windows is finally getting to the point that this type of linking may soon be available, but as of Server 2003, this method will not work on a Windows server.
It is also very helpful if you have some basic familiarity with your server’s shell and the structure of the file system on the server. These instructions are based on the way things are setup on my Internet Service Provider’s servers, and your ISP might do things a little differently. If you get lost or confused midway through the process, you will want to be experienced enough to figure out how to undo the things you did so far.
If you need a program to connect to your shell account, I recommend PuTTY. It’s a little overwhelming with all the options it has, but you can pretty much ignore them, enter the address to your server, and hit connect. Voilà! You should see a prompt to enter your username and password. If your ISP supports it, I recommend connecting using SSH, which provides an encrypted connection for better security (though it’s beyond the scope of this article to explain exactly how you do that).
I find that some things are easier to do using a good FTP program (I love Filezilla for this purpose), and other things have to be done using the shell. In particular, I like to create the central repositories by clicking and dragging files around in Filezilla rather than typing lots of commands in the shell.
Your server has to support symbolic links (also known as “symlinks” or “soft links”). Under most Linux/Unix-like operating systems, you use the command ln -s to create the symlinks. To test if you have this command, type ln --help from the shell; you should see the help screen for the ln command. If you get an error and did not make a typo, your system may not support symlinks.

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How my file system is structured

Before I go in-depth with instructions, I’ll briefly explain how files are arranged on my ISP’s server. Your ISP hopefully arranges things for you in a similar manner.

When I login to my command shell and use the ls command (ls is short for “list”, which brings up a list of all the files in the current directory), I see a number of directories—one for each domain that we host (allogro.com, willmurray.name, etc.). The actual content of each website is contained within its directory (i.e., the directory “allogro.com” contains all the files for the allogro.com web site and the directory “willmurray.name” contains everyting for the willmurray.name site.

If I print the working directory (pwd), I see the full path from the root of the server (the top of the file system) all the way to my account’s home. In my case, the path is: /home/acanthus. Our sites are hosted with DreamHost, a very large ISP based in Los Angeles, California (some people hate them, but we have been extremely happy with them for over 3.5 years). In this case, the first slash is the root of the file system. home/ is the place that all the hosting customers’ accounts are stored. acanthus is the “home directory” of our account. The allogro.com and willmurray.name directories reside underneath the acanthus directory.

The home directory is a special place, because it is outside of any website and not directly accessible from the web. It’s a good place to store things that should not be peeked into by curious visitors or overzealous search spiders. In fact, unless DreamHost really screwed up or I created a link into the home directory, it would be a safe place to store passwords and other fairly sensitive information. It is also an ideal place to store our shared repositories for WordPress.

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Creating the repositories

Repository directories

You will want to start by creating your repositories someplace inaccessible to casual web visitors. If you have a home directory like I described above, that’s perfect and recommended. If not, you could create a new directory and try to protect it using .htaccess and robots.txt files along with other techniques to keep people out of it (though this is not a very secure method, and it could leave your repositories subject to attack).

Using Filezilla, I created a directory named shared (the full path is /home/acanthus/shared) to hold all the files that are shared between different web sites. Under that directory, I created two more directories: wp_plugins and wp_themes (that’s /home/acanthus/shared/wp_plugins and /home/acanthus/shared/wp_themes). In each case, I set the file attributes of these directories to give the owner full permissions (rwx) and the group and public permissions to read and execute (r-x, don’t want visitors to be able to make changes). (If you prefer numerical permissions, that’s 755.)

wp_plugins will become the home to all of your WordPress plug-ins. If you use certain plug-ins in one blog, but not in others, go ahead and add the plug-in to this repository. Within WordPress you will enable only the plug-ins you want to use; any that you don’t want to use should just remain disabled. wp_themes is the same deal, except that you store your themes there (that should be self-evident, I hope).

Best practices

Be sure to disable write access to plug-in and theme files and directories unless they specifically require it. For directories, only the owner should have write access (755). For files, you also want to disable the execute permission (644). Check the documentation for each plug-in to see if it needs write access. If your plug-in breaks or has errors about being denied access, you probably need to loosen the restrictions a bit on a directory or some files for the plug-in to function. Very few themes seem to need write access (only one that I’ve ever encountered).

I highly recommend that you grab fresh copies of each plug-in and theme that you plan to use. This way you won’t copy bugs over from existing installations and you are certain to have the latest (and hopefully bug-free) version of the software available. Alternately, you can use the shell to copy (cp) or move (mv) existing directories into your new repositories (though I don’t recommend doing so, and it can leave your site broken until you complete the whole change). You could also use Filezilla to download your plug-ins and themes directories from your current WordPress installation(s) and upload them (thus creating a copy) to your new repositories. If you have heavily customized a plug-in or theme, this may be your best option.

When I upload plug-ins, I usually change the directory name to include the version number. So, if you are uploading version 1.2 of the myplugin plug-in, I’d rename the directory to myplugin.1.2. Some plug-in authors do this for you automatically, while others try to make it easy for people to upgrade by keeping the directory names the same. In a shared repository, though, this can actually cause you problems. One caveat is that some plug-in authors hard-code their directory names in their plug-ins (shame on them!), and renaming the directory breaks the plug-in. In that case, you will either have to hack the plug-in to use the updated directory name, leave the directory name unchanged, or ~~pester~~, er, petition the author to not hard code the directory name in future releases.

Why worry about version numbers that way? Well, I like to test new versions of plug-ins on a low-traffic blog before introducing them to one of the more active blogs. Remember that when you make a change in the repository, it immediately affects ALL of your blogs. So by overwriting a plug-in with a newer version, you are essentially upgrading all your blogs simultaneously. If there’s a glitch in the new plug-in, then all your blogs will be affected instead of just one. By uploading the plug-ins to different directories, you can disable and enable plug-ins on a per-blog basis. Then, once all your blogs are using the new version, you can safely delete the old version from your server to save space.

Most plug-ins also require you to disable them before you install the newer files, and then re-enable them after everything is in place. With a shared repository, that means you have to go to each blog and disable the old plug-in, then upload, and then go back to each blog to re-enable it. I prefer the flexibility of making changes one blog at a time if I want.

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Linking to the repositories

So now that you have your central repositories all setup with shiny new copies of all your plug-ins and themes, how do you use them? It’s pretty easy, even if the command you type is a little cryptic.

Note: I recommend starting and fully testing this on your lowest-activity blog first to get the hang of it and minimize downtime on your busiest blogs.

Preparing WordPress

Start by logging into WordPress and disabling all of your plug-ins (there is a link at the bottom of the page to disable all the plug-ins at once). This is important since the path to the plug-ins and even the versions might be different when we are finished than what is in use now.

Locate your repositories

After that is finished, login to your ISP’s shell prompt using PuTTY or your favorite program.

Print the working directory (pwd is the command to do this). If your ISP includes that information in the command prompt, so much the better! Otherwise, jot down the path to your home directory (the place you are when you first login). In my example, that will be /home/acanthus.

List the directory (ls is the basic command, though I find ls -lp to be a more useful view). Hopefully you will see your “shared/” directory (or whatever you named the directory that holds your repositories). Next, list your shared directory (ls -lp shared is the command I would use), and be sure that you can see your repositories within it.

Now I need to go to the wp-content directory of my WordPress installation. I would type cd allogro.com to change directories to the allogro.com site. I keep the blog under a directory named main, so next I would cd main. The wp-content is inside this directory, so I would cd wp-content. Note: I could have strung that all together into a single command (cd allogro.com/main/wp-content), but I usually prefer to go one level at a time so I don’t make mistakes.

Listing the directory (ls -lp) shows that I am, in fact, in the correct place, and there are folders named “plugins” and “themes” already here. That’s good! We need to rename those directories to get them out of the way of our new links. We do that by moving the directories to the same location with a different name (a fairly round-about way of doing it, but it works). Enter the commands mv plugins plugins.disabled and then mv themes themes.disabled. At some point in the future after everything is working, remember to come back and delete these disabled directories.

Create the symlinks

Now it is time to create the symlinks to your shared repositories. This is where you need to enter the full pathname to your folders, so start by verifying that you can see all your shared plug-ins: ls /home/acanthus/shared/wp_plugins (substitute your own path, of course). The command to create the symlink is almost identical: ln -s /home/acanthus/shared/wp_plugins plugins (again, substituting your own path).

Let me explain that carefully. ln -s is the command to create a symbolic link. Be sure to use lowercase letters, because uppercase will not work correctly. Also, be sure to include the “-s”, or the system will attempt to create a hard link instead of a symbolic link (which is not what you want), and will likely generate an error on most systems (unless you are logged in as “root” on your own server, and then you might cause yourself problems). Next, you give the full pathname to the target (the shared plug-ins repository). You technically could use relative paths (if you know how those work), but full paths seem to be more stable for plug-ins. The final part is the name of your new link. Since WordPress expects your plug-ins folder to be named plugins, that’s what we used.

If you did not get an error message, when you list the directory (ls -lp), you should see that the entry for plugins looks something like this: plugins -> /home/acanthus/shared/wp_plugins/ (with the file attributes set to give everyone full access as indicated by “lrwxrwxrwx”, but that’s not a problem since the permissions on the repository are what matter, not the ones on the symlink). This means you have successfully created a symlink to your repository folder. List the contents of that folder (ls plugins) and it should exactly match the contents of the repository, since they are actually the same folder just with a new link.

Now it’s time to link to your themes: ln -s /home/acanthus/shared/wp_themes themes (once again, substituting your own path for mine).

Configure and test WordPress

Go back to the administration area of your WordPress blog. Under presentation, you should see a list of all the themes you uploaded to the shared themes repository. If you do not see any difference, you might need to clear your browser’s cache and refresh the page. Simply select your desired theme to activate it. Even if your desired theme came up automatically, it might be a good idea to select a different theme momentarily, and the reselect your desired theme. This sometimes fixes weird problems I’ve encountered, so doing it right now rather than later makes sense. View the blog and make sure things look right.

You might have to reconfigure your widgets since you changed themes. Some widgets might not work or be available until you activate a related plug-in.

After you are sure your theme is working, go back to the plug-in administration for your blog and enable one or two plug-ins that you can use to easily verify your plug-in repository is working. If those two look good, you can enable one or two more plug-ins and then test them. Repeat until all the desired plug-ins are verified.

If after enabling a plugin you see warnings that a path could not be found, and if you renamed the plug-ins’ directories to include their version number, you might have to rename the plug-in directory back to its original name to get the plug-in to work again.

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Recap

These are the steps anytime you want to have WordPress use your shared repositories instead of a stand-alone installation. If you have followed my instructions all the way so far, then you will repeat the following steps for each of your remaining blogs. Again, I recommend working in order from the blog with the least traffic to the one with the most to minimize downtime for your visitors as you become familiar with the process.

This recap assumes that you have already created your shared repositories and just need to link to them now.

Disable all plug-ins in WordPress.
In the shell, navigate to the wp-content directory of your blog (e.g., cd willmurray.name/blog/wp-content; use your own pathname).
Rename the current plugins and themes directories (e.g., mv plugins plugins.disabled and mv themes themes.disabled).
Create the symlinks (e.g., ln -s /home/acanthus/shared/wp_plugins plugins ln -s /home/acanthus/shared/wp_themes themes; use your own pathnames)
In WordPress, activate your theme (if it’s already active, change to another one, then change back to your desired theme).
Reconfigure Widgets if necessary.
Activate one or two plug-ins at a time and test as you go

Note: After you have a plug-in working in one copy of your blog, it should work in all copies.

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Common problems and fixes

Redirect URLs generated by plug-ins to the correct subdirectory using .htaccess

Some of my blogs are at the root of the site (www.example.com/), while others are in subdirectories (www.example.com/blog or www.example.com/main). Some plug-ins assume that your site is at the root, and they do not work correctly otherwise. I have been able to fix this in most cases by adding a redirect in the root-level .htaccess file of sites where WordPress is not at the root, and redirect requests for /wp-content to the appropriate subdirectory (/blog/wp-content or /main/wp-content).

Relative paths leading outside the plugins directory cause problems

Some plug-ins use relative paths to files outside of the wp-content/plugins folder (i.e., they try to access a file in the main WordPress installation directory). Without editing the plug-in, there’s really no way to fix this problem. If you are up to hacking the plug-in, you could add a new variable at the top of your theme’s index.php file that gives the full pathname to your local plugins directory (well, it’s actually the symlink to your shared repository, but WordPress doesn’t know that or care). For example, you could add the following to your index.php
< ?php $SHARED_PLUGINS="/home/acanthus/allogro.com/main/wp-content/plugins/"; ?>
Then go though the plug-in files and add the $SHARED_PLUGINS variable in front of each reference to a relative path. Example:
/* Old code: require_once('../../wp-example.php); New code: */ require_once($SHARED_PLUGINS . '../../wp-example.php);

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Maintaining your repositories

The whole point of this exercise was to make it much easier to keep your plug-ins and themes updated across multiple sites. (Oh yeah! That’s why I just went through all of this.) Here’s how easy it is to update everything nearly instantly…

When you are in the plug-ins administration area and notice that a plug-in has an available update, go fetch it, extract it, and rename the directory to include the version number of the release. Upload the plug-in to your repository using FTP. Refresh the plug-ins administration page. You should see both the old version of the plug-in (still active) and the new version (not yet active). Disable the old version. Enable the new version. Test.

If something broke, it’s probably because the plug-in has its directory name hard-coded within it (not a good thing for several reasons). You will have to disable the plug-in in ALL your blogs, then replace the old version with the newer version as instructed by the author. Then you can enable the plugin in each blog. Not as elegant, but still only one upload to worry about.

When you are happy that everything worked, go to your other blogs whenever you want, and disable the old version and enable the new version. There’s no extra uploading to do. If you need to tweak a plug-in for any reason, you only have to do it once, and the tweak takes effect instantly on all of your blogs.

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Using this technique with ZenPhoto and other CMS systems

The basic principles are the same no matter what system you use. The only challenges are (1) how self-contained plug-ins are (if they frequently look for files outside of the plugins folder, then there is a high chance it won’t work), and (2) how spread-out the files are (the more spread out, the more symlinks you have to create and maintain).

With ZenPhoto, I wanted to add my own CSS file to the default theme. I had to symlink directly to my new CSS file (same process, except you enter the full path and filename, not just the pathname) from within the styles directory of the theme. Again, it’s the same philosophy, but a little more work. But, when I make a change in that one style sheet, the three sites that share that sheet are all updated instantly. Very cool.

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Additional resources

Articles:

“Symbolic link.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 6 Mar 2008, 18:31 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 10 Mar 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Symbolic_link&oldid=196335114>.

Content management systems:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability
ZenPhoto, a simpler web photo gallery

Software tools:

FileZilla, the free FTP client
PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client

Service providers:

DreamHost Internet service provider
Sacramento Online Services for sensible domain name and e-mail prices

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Comments and feedback

I would appreciate any feedback that you might have. If I left any steps out, or if I could have explained something more clearly, please let me know.

If you use the technique, please leave me a comment. You are also welcome to link to one of your sites that use it.

If you are a plug-in author who has updated your plug-in to work more gracefully with this technique, please let us know!

Will Murray is a blogger and network integration consultant with Allogro™ Business Networking Solutions. He has been an Internet trailblazer since 1991, and has a passion for technology, communication, and new media.

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Vista Quick Launch icon locations change after restart

Will Murray — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:52:20 +0000

Background

After every restart, the icons in my Quick Launch toolbar in Windows Vista were rearranged into alphabetical order. The toolbar itself was resized, taking up most of the Taskbar. It didn’t matter how many times I carefully moved the icons around, nor did it matter if I logged off and back on, restarted, or shut down and powered back up—I couldn’t get the icons to stay the way I want them. I don’t remember when it started, so I can’t pinpoint what changed on my system that might have caused it.

After much searching, I found various solutions to a similar problem in Windows XP. Several solutions suggested installing third-party utilities that reset your Desktop back to the way you like after each restart. I’m generally not a big fan of adding on utilities to fix problems with the operating system; I prefer to fix the OS. I finally found one solution that worked for me with Vista that fixed a problem deep inside the Windows Registry.

Read on for the details on how I fixed this annoying quirk.

Warning: If you are not familiar with the Windows Registry, it’s where the majority of your computer’s configuration and settings are stored. Always backup your system before tweaking your Registry to help avoid data loss. The solution below worked for me, but your situation could be different. You assume all risk and agree to hold my company and me harmless from any damages, direct or indirect, including lost data, time, and profits.

You may find it useful to print this article and work from the printout since you will need to logoff or restart your computer to complete this process. At the very least, you should bookmark this page (or “add it to your Favorites” depending on which browser you use) so you can find it again if you need it later.

Manually updating the Registry

Here is the way to update your Registry manually (which I prefer since I can verify that everything matches what is expected):

Go to the Start menu, select “Run…”, and type “regedit” where it asks for the program you wish to open. Note: You must have administrative rights to run RegEdit.
After RegEdit has opened, navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Software → Microsoft → Windows → CurrentVersion → Policies → Explorer
Look for an entry named “NoSaveSettings” of type “REG_DWORD” with a value of “0×00000000 (0)” or “0×00000001 (1)”.
1. If the value is “0×00000000 (0)”, then the setting is correct, and you are facing a different challenge. Close RegEdit and look for a different solution. Sorry.
2. If the value is “0×00000001 (1)”, then double-click the icon for “NoSaveSettings” and change the value data from “1″ to “0″ (whether it’s hex or decimal doesn’t matter) and click OK. Close RegEdit. Skip to step #5.
3. If the value is any other number, you can try changing the value to “0″, but I’m not sure what will happen. The value should only be a 0 or a 1. You should either write down the value for future reference (if things go wrong), or right-click the “Explorer” key, and “Export” the key to a file that you can use to put things back the way they were before you made changes.
It’s very likely that you do not have an entry named “NoSaveSettings” (I didn’t.) In that case, you will need to add one.
1. After clicking on “Explorer” in the left pane of RegEdit, go to the “Edit” menu (or right-click in an open space in the right pane) and select “New” and then “DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
2. A new entry named “New Value #1″ should appear in the right pane. Rename it to “NoSaveSettings” (note that there are no spaces in that name!).
3. Double-click the icon for “NoSaveSettings” and change the value data from “1″ to “0″ (whether it’s hex or decimal doesn’t matter) and click OK.
4. Close RegEdit. You’re almost done.
Go ahead and reorganize and resize your Quick Launch toolbar the way you want it. This will hopefully be the last time you have to do this.
Now either restart (that’s what I did) or logoff and logon. Your Quick Launch toolbar should be the way you left it.
If it’s not right, repeat step #5 and #6. If it still isn’t right, you are facing a different challenge. Look for a different solution. Sorry. If you find another solution that does work, feel free to leave the information or a link to the information in a comment below to help other people find it. Thanks!

Semi-automatically updating the Registry

If you do not like using RegEdit, you can create a registry patch file that accomplishes the same thing. This is, in fact, and export from my own Registry. All you need to do is open Notepad, copy the following text from this web page, paste it into a new Notepad document, and save the file on your Desktop as "NoSaveSettings.reg". The quote marks ARE important (otherwise Notepad tries to save the file as a text document), but the file name and location are not (these are just convenient examples). Double-click the file. It should warn you of the dangers of adding information to your Registry from unsavory sources. Click Yes (if you think this will work for you). Then proceed from Step #5 above.

—- Start copying below this line —-
[code lang="ini"]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoSaveSettings"=dword:00000000

[/code]
—- End copying above this line —-

Other resources

For a few other ideas, you can read the article at Annoyances.org that led me to this solution.

Adding Network Connections to Vista’s Start Menu

Will Murray — Sat, 26 May 2007 18:59:39 +0000

The new Microsoft motto seems to be “make everything useful at least one extra step more difficult”. This certainly has been true for all but the most commonly used features with Office 2007’s Ribbon interface. It’s also true with many of the control panels in Windows Vista.

One control panel I use regularly is “Network Connections”.

Using Vista’s GUI interface in non-Classic mode, you have to go to Start > Control Panel > View network status and tasks > Manage network connections.

In Classic View, go to Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Manage network connections.

You can also use the Search box (or the Run option if you have unhidden it) and enter ncpa.cpl.

I’m not sure which is the less appealing route—all that clicking or trying to remember a cryptic filename.

What I did to make life a little bit easier was use the search method, and when the control panel appeared at the top of the search results pane, I right-clicked it, chose “Send To”, then “Desktop (create a shortcut)”. A shortcut appeared on my Desktop, which I cut so I could paste it somewhere easier to find (like at the top of my Start menu). Depending on where you save it, Vista might require administrative rights to paste the shortcut.

Adding Folders and Programs to the ‘Send To’ Context Menu in Windows Vista

Will Murray — Sat, 12 May 2007 21:18:22 +0000

Special thanks to Andre De Costa’s Teching It Easy blog for this useful information.

I do not know why the developers at Microsoft felt the need to move already somewhat obscure and hidden features to even more obscure locations in Windows Vista. Maybe they figure that it’s helpful to techs to slow them down to stretch out their billable hours or build-in even more job security for system admins by making things more and more difficult for average users.

Under the Windows 9x family, to add programs or folders to the “Send To” context menu, you just plunked a shortcut into “C:\WINDOWS\Send To“.

This was far too easy, and the average user had no problem customizing Windows the way they wanted. When Windows 2000 (followed by XP and 2003) came along and moved user preferences to the “C:\Documents and Settings” folder, I thought that was a good idea. After all, the Windows folder gets very full, and the average user could cause him or herself problems by deleting the wrong thing. Thus, the Send To folder was moved to “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Send To“. This was still pretty easy and intuitive for anyone who actually wanted to use this handy feature.

Along comes Windows Vista. The familiar “Documents and Settings” folder structure has been replaced by a shortcut (with more shortcuts from there). Security has been tightened to the point that a user with standard user permissions probably can’t even make changes to his or her own settings without a lots of frustration (I haven’t tried, because standard user permissions are SO limited as to make Vista barely usable for anyone who has even moderate experience with Windows.).

So how does one edit the Send To menu? It should be obvious (but only if you work for Microsoft). You go to the new Search box in the Start menu, type in “shell:sendto” (without quotes) and press your ENTER key. In a moment, the Send To folder will appear, and you can edit pretty much as normal (though depending on what you try to put in there, Windows may throw up some annoying permission questions).

That is just so golly-darned intuitive, I smacked my forehead wondering how I could have been so stupid as to not come with “shell:sendto” on my own. Yeah right.

Maybe it is me, or maybe other people don’t use the Send To feature very much, because there were hardly any search engine hits for this beloved feature (of course, I did use Windows Live search, and it rarely compares to Google for finding useful information), and absolutely no results on Microsoft’s Website or knowledge base.

Thank goodness for Andre’s blog (which includes pictures) for cluing me in on this great feature.

CRITICAL – Buffer overflow in VML used by IE and Outlook

Will Murray — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:58:19 +0000

Summary

Threat Level: Critical Zero-Day Vulnerability

This threat is currently active and spreading in the wild. Most Windows-based computers, even if fully up-to-date with all the official Microsoft patches, are vulnerable right now unless certain actions are taken to protect yourself (see below).

What it does: Various websites, including advertising sites that generate advertisements appearing on trusted websites, become infected. These sites use a specific type of attack to slip through your computer’s security, leaving a big hole for your computer to be further attacked. Since some versions of Outlook and Outlook Express use Internet Explorer to display some types of e-mail, you can become infected just by displaying infected e-mails you receive.

What stops it: You can configure certain settings on your computer that will make it so the malicious software cannot run on your computer. Most of Microsoft’s workarounds may cause a few legitimate websites to incorrectly display within Internet Explorer. An unofficial workaround does not cause that problem, but it only works for people using Windows XP with Service Pack 2. An official patch is scheduled to eliminate the problem in a few weeks; an unofficial patch is available now. A good, up-to-date antivirus software package should also detect the malicious software; however, it is a good idea to check that no viruses have disabled your antivirus software before relying upon it to protect you.

Affected Software (as reported by Microsoft):

Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with SP1 for Itanium-based Systems Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition

Additional affected software (as reported by Sunbelt):

Outlook 2007 – 12.0.417.1006: Can view VML but apparently not vulnerable.
Outlook 2003 11.8010.8036 SP2: vulnerable
Outlook 2003 11.6568.6568 SP2: unknown (not tested)
Outlook 2003 11.5608.5606: not vulnerable
Outlook 2003 11.5608.8028: not vulnerable
Outlook 2002: not vulnerable
Outlook 2000: not vulnerable

Official patch/security update: None at this time. According to Microsoft:

A security update to address this vulnerability is now being finalized through testing to ensure quality and application compatibility Microsoft’s goal is to release the update on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, or sooner depending on customer needs.

How to Protect Yourself

Until Microsoft releases an official patch (scheduled for Tuesday, October 10, 2006), you really can’t “fix” this flaw in your computer. You can apply an unofficial patch (which should work until Microsoft releases theirs, but Microsoft won’t help you if the patch messes up your system), you can enact some workarounds that stop the problem before it can harm your system, or perhaps do both.

Unofficial Workaround

In addition to the workarounds from Microsoft mentioned below, SecuriTeam has discovered that Windows XP users with Service Pack 2 installed have another option (and it’s good for blocking many other types of attacks, so it seems like a good idea!). Simply enable system-wide enforcement of software-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and make sure Internet Explorer is not exempted. It’s easier to do than to pronounce.

Difficulty: Not Very Difficult

Impact: Microsoft does not list any adverse problems with enabling this feature. In fact, they state “Software-enforced DEP can help prevent malicious code from taking advantage of exception-handling mechanisms in Windows.”

The following instructions are based on one of several different ways Microsoft allows you to configure DEP. You must be logged on as an administrator to manually configure DEP on the computer. A restart is required after completing these steps.

Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl, and then click OK.
On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
On the Data Execution Prevention tab, click Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select
If Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or Outlook are listed in the box below that option, you should either remove the program(s) from the list (select the program and click the Remove button) or at least make sure the checkbox in front of each program is unchecked.
Click OK two times.
Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Once you have protected your system, visit ZERT’s vulnerability test page. NOTE: If your system is vulnerable, your browser will crash. If your browser crashes after following these instructions, carefully re-read the instructions and try again or try a different patch or workaround.

Unofficial Patches

Until Microsoft releases an official patch, an unofficial patch that is not supported by Microsoft is available from the Zeroday Emergency Response Team (“ZERT”). ZERT is a group of highly skilled software and hardware engineers with industry liasons who develop emergency patches for vulnerable systems. They release patches only when they feel the risk of waiting for the vendor (in this case Microsoft) to release an “official” patch is greater than the risk of releasing a patch that may not be quite as polished and fully tested, but blocks the problem. Additionally, there are several links to additional good information about the threat. ZERT’s site is located at: http://isotf.org/zert/

Download the ZERT patch and view the instructions.

Official Microsoft Workarounds

See Microsoft’s page under the Suggested Actions headings for updates to the following information.

Un-register Vgx.dll

Difficulty: Not Very Difficult

Impact: Applications that render VML will no longer do so once Vgx.dll has been unregistered. Generally, that should not impact your day-to-day web browsing very much unless a particular favorite site of yours uses VML; most sites do not use it much if at all.

To un-register Vgx.dll, follow these steps:

You must be logged in as the administrator or another account with administrative rights.
Click Start, click Run, type regsvr32 -u "%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll", and then click OK.
A dialog box appears to confirm that the un-registration process has succeeded. Click OK to close the dialog box.
Restart the system

To re-register Vgx.dll (this will make you vulnerable again), follow these steps:

You must be logged in as the administrator or another account with administrative rights.
Click Start, click Run, type regsvr32 "%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll", and then click OK.
A dialog box appears to confirm that the un-registration process has succeeded. Click OK to close the dialog box.
Restart the system

Modify the Access Control List on Vgx.dll to be more restrictive

Difficulty: Fairly Advanced (if you do not know what ACL’s are, skip this one)

Impact: Applications and Web sites that render VML may no longer display or function correctly. Generally, that should not impact your day-to-day web browsing very much unless a particular favorite site of yours uses VML; most sites do not use it much if at all.

To modify the Access Control List (ACL) Vgx.dll to be more restrictive, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type “cmd” (without the quotation marks), and then click OK.
Type the following command at a command prompt. Make a note of the current ACL’s that are on the file (including inheritance settings) for future reference in case you have to undo this modification:
cacls "%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll"
Type the following command at a command prompt to deny the ‘everyone’ group access to this file: echo y| cacls "%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll" /d everyone
Close Internet Explorer, and reopen it for the changes to take effect.

To undo this change, you will need to modify the ACL back to its original settings as noted in step #2 above.

Configure Internet Explorer 6 for Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 to disable Binary and Script Behaviors in the Internet and Local Intranet security zone.

Difficulty: Not Very Difficult

Impact: Disabling binary and script behaviors in the Internet and Local intranet security zones may cause some Web sites that rely on VML to not function correctly. This workaround may impact more websites than the previous two, because more than VML scripts may be disabled, which may cause more sites to not display correctly.

You can help protect against this vulnerability by changing your settings to disable binary and script behaviors in the Internet and Local intranet security zone. To do this, follow these steps:

In Internet Explorer, click Internet Options on the Tools menu.
Click the Security tab.
Click Internet, and then click Custom Level.
Under Settings, in the ActiveX controls and plug-ins section, under Binary and Script Behaviors, click Disable, and then click OK.
Click Local intranet, and then click Custom Level.
Under Settings, in the ActiveX controls and plug-ins section, under Binary and Script Behaviors, click Disable, and then click OK.
Click OK two times to return to Internet Explorer.

Read e-mail messages in plain text format to help protect yourself from the HTML e-mail attack vector

Difficulty: A Little Difficult (Requires use of RegEdit, an advanced and potentially dangerous admin tool)
Impact: E-mail messages that are viewed in plain text format will not contain pictures, specialized fonts, animations, or other rich content. Additionally, (1) the changes are applied to the preview pane and to open messages, (2) pictures become attachments so that they are not lost, and (3) because the message is still stored in Rich Text or HTML format certain aspects of the message may behave unexpectedly.

Microsoft Outlook 2002 with Office XP SP 1 or later and Microsoft Outlook Express 6 with Internet Explorer 6 SP 1 or later can enable a setting to view most messages in plain text only. Digitally signed e-mail messages and encrypted e-mail messages are not affected by the setting. For information on enabling this setting in Outlook 2002, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 307594.

Block VML Vulnerability Traffic with ISA Server

If your organization uses Microsoft ISA Server 2004 or 2006 firewall software, see Microsoft’s article “Learn How Your ISA Server Helps Block VML Vulnerability Traffic“.

Secrets Often Stay on Cell Phones and PDAs

Will Murray — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 22:04:32 +0000

It seems people swap cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs about as frequently as they change their smoke detector batteries. These miniaturized devices hold a large amount of personal data inside their tiny silicon brains. So what happens to all that data when you trade in your cellular phone for a new one? Or what if you sell it on eBay to help offset the cost of your replacement device?

If you’re like a lot of technologically challenged people, you don’t even think about purging the memory before you hand it over, and if you do think about it, you might not know how to erase the data.

If you are a bit more tech savvy, you might delve into the manual (you didn’t throw it away or lose it, did you?) or search the Web for instructions. It’s not like most devices have a big red “ERASE ME” button on them. It’s kinda tough to delete all your data. And for good reason (I’m referring to the technologically challenged button pushers that can’t resist big red buttons).

The scary thing is that after finding out how to delete the data and pushing the right menu options, the data still might not be completely gone! According to an AP story reported in the Dallas Morning News, secrets often stay on cell phones even after the data is supposedly deleted. That might be good news if you accidentally erased everything, but it would be bad news if you are a government official, a cheating spouse, or just someone who doesn’t like people snooping through their personal information.

Read the article. It’s a bit shocking, has a touch of humor, and it just might help people to “decide whether to auction their used equipment for a few hundred dollars – and risk revealing their secrets – or effectively toss their old phones under a large truck to dispose of them.”

RAID – What is it and what are the differences?

Will Murray — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:10:24 +0000

RAID is a method of storing data on multiple hard disks. Through the “magic” of the disk array, all of the individual disks appear as a single disk to the operating system. Large arrays can be split into smaller logical disks, that can be any size up to the total amount of disk space. Depending on exactly how the data is spread across the multiple disks determines the relative speed and security of the data on the disks.

Back in the old days when large (750MB) hard disks were relatively expensive (say $1200 US) and smaller disks (100MB) were relatively inexpensive (maybe $130), somebody figured out that it could be possible to link several of the inexpensive disks together to roughly equal the capacity of a single larger disk. The complete package was called a disk array, and the method of storing the data on the disks was called RAID, for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

Today, the relative price difference between an 80GB and a 160GB or even a 400GB hard drive is not so great; however, RAID is still very much a part of life with computers—especially with servers. Obviously there is more to RAID than just a cost savings. (RAID now stands for Redundant Array of Independent Devices, which indicates the drift away from price being the motivating factor in choosing a RAID solution.) In fact, by the time you factor in the additional hardware to create and manage the array, RAID usually costs more than non-RAID solutions. So why do we use it? The answers are speed and reliability.

Imagine for a moment that you were an engineer creating the first RAID system (I’d say “RAID Array”, which is the common term, but that’s redundant like saying PIN Number). You design the system so that when someone saves data to the array, it starts filling up the first disk in the array first. Then, when the person saves more data than will fit on the first disk, the system automatically stores the next data on the next disk. This process continues, until eventually you fill up the third and fourth disks. That’s the concept anyway, though the actual implementation (below) is a little different. This fast and expandable solution is known as RAID-0 (also known as disk striping with no parity; more about striping and parity in a moment) and is still used commonly today. It is the RAID solution with what is generally considered the best performance.Array controllers make use of the fact that each disk can write data to the disk at the same time another disk is busy. So the controller breaks the data up into smaller chunks (called stripes), and sends one stripe to disk 1. While disk 1 is busy storing the first stripe, the controller sends the next stripe of data to disk #2. While disks 1 and 2 are writing their data, the controller sends another stripe to disk #3 (if there is one), and so on. Eventually it runs out of disks in the array, so it starts back over with disk 1 again. Using this method, all of the disk space is available for use.

What happens if disk #2 unexpectedly fails? Since data is spread across all the disks, if even one of them becomes damaged (or the controller), the entire array becomes unusable. That’s the down side of RAID-0.

Back to the drawing board you go. What if we spend more money—twice as much to be exact— and build two arrays that contain exactly the same information? That way if one of the arrays dies, the other array will continue to run until we can replace the failed disk. This solution became known as RAID-1 (disk mirroring). Because it is basically two identical RAID-0 arrays, it offers exactly the same performance with the best fault-tolerance (i.e., it is both fast and able to protect against failures). Unfortunately, it’s also usually the most expensive RAID solution. While each half of the mirror can utilize all its disk space, half of the total storage capacity is lost due to the mirroring (an array with 360GB of total storage would only hold 180GB of usable data; the other 180GB would be a duplicate copy of the first 180GB). Note: If a single controller manages both mirrors, it is possible that both arrays could end up with identically bad data if the controller goes bad. Some people use two separate but compatible controllers to reduce this slight risk.

Okay. That sounds like a workable solution, but it’s too expensive for large arrays. You figure that the data really wouldn’t need to be duplicated if there was just some way to (a) detect errors and (b) recover from errors when they are found. Your solution is to calculate and store a checksum of all the data that’s saved. A checksum is just a fancy word for a process that detects errors that can be used to recover from them when they are found. Naturally it doesn’t do a lot of good to store the checksum alongside the actual data. If the data and the checksum were on the same disk, and if the disk went bad, then you would be no better off than with RAID-0.

RAID-2 (hamming code error correction), RAID-3 (virtual disk blocks), RAID-4 (dedicated parity disk), and RAID-5 (striped parity) are all variations on this theme of storing the data along with a checksum on multiple disks (writing with parity is the term). RAID-2 is no longer used, and RAID-3 and RAID-4 are not used except in certain uncommon situations. RAID-5 has emerged the clear winner in this parity slugfest.

RAID-5 combines the striping from RAID-0 with error checking. When the controller sends a stripe of data to disk 1, it will send a stripe of parity data to a different disk in the array. It is very smart about where it sends the data, so that if any one disk in the array fails, the entire array can keep right on running. Many arrays allow for hot swapping the failed disk while the server is running. Then, once a replacement disk is inserted, the array restores the lost data onto the new drive automatically by combing the remaining good data with the parity information. Naturally, the array becomes unrecoverable if more than one disk goes bad (which is why you want to swap out bad disks as quickly as possible) or if the controller goes bad.

RAID-5 (striping with parity) does have a bit more overhead than RAID-0 (striping without parity). All that parity takes a little time to write to disk (making RAID-5 a bit slower than RAID-0 or RAID-1) and a little extra space (generally 1 extra disk than would be required for RAID-0).

So how many disks do you need?

For RAID-0, the answer is two (any less than two, and you wouldn’t have an array—just a regular hard disk with an expensive controller that probably would complain about needing another disk). The two disks also need to be the same size. Many controllers will accept differently sized disks, but the smallest disk in the array will determine the capacity of the entire array. So, if you have an array with one 80GB disk and one 400GB disk, the maximum usable space in the array would be only 160GB (what a waste!).

For RAID-1 you need twice as many disks as you want to use for storage. For example, if you want 400 GB of usable data, you need to purchase TWO 400GB disks. Or, you might be able to purchase FOUR 200GB disks and have the array configure two disks in RAID-0 (striping without parity) and then use RAID-1 (mirroring) to duplicate the striped sets. This is actually referred to as RAID-10. RAID-10 is actually just a combination of RAID-1 and RAID-0. Depending on the controller, you should be able to create striped disks that are mirrored (RAID-0+1) or mirrors that are striped across multiple disks (RAID-1+0).

For RAID-5 you need at least 3 disks. The first two disks stripe the data, and the third disk stripes the parity. (Actually with RAID-5 the parity stripe rotates between all the disks, but it’s easier to think of it as one disk holding the parity information. Incidentally, RAID-4 uses one dedicated disk for parity just as I described.) RAID-5 is nice because after the initial investment in three disks, you can add additional disks to the array and utilize them fully (well, up to the size of the smallest disk in the array) without losing any more overhead for parity.

Just like with RAID-10, there are a few RAID-5 permutations available. RAID-50 (or RAID-5+0) consists of a series of RAID-5 groups striped in RAID-0 fashion to improve the RAID-5 performance without reducing data protection. There is also RAID-53 (or RAID-5+3) which combines striping (in RAID-0 style) with RAID-3’s virtual disk blocks (something I won’t delve into). This offers higher performance than RAID-3 but at much higher cost.

You may see the term RAID-1+5 when ordering a server. This usually indicates the first two drives in the server are configured for mirroring (RAID-1), and the remaining drives in the system (at least 3) are configured for striping with parity (RAID-5). This is common for Microsoft Windows-based servers. The operating system and other applications are stored in the mirror. Data, which usually benefits from the multiple simultaneous-writing features of striping, are stored in the RAID-5 portion of the array.

There are other RAID configurations available, but they are not widely supported at this time. Some worth noting are:

RAID-6: This type is similar to RAID-5 but includes a second parity scheme that is distributed across different drives and thus offers extremely high fault- and drive-failure tolerance.
RAID-7: This type includes a real-time embedded operating system as a controller, caching via a high-speed bus, and other characteristics of a stand-alone computer.
RAID-S: This is an alternate, proprietary method for parity RAID from EMC Symmetrix. It appears to be similar to RAID-5 with some performance enhancements as well as the enhancements that come from having a high-speed disk cache on the disk array.

Finally, another term that you frequently hear along with RAID is JBOD. Remember back to the example of the first array you designed? You created an array of disks that filled up sequentially—when disk 1 was full, things spilled over onto disk 2, and so on. That type of an array (no striping, no parity) is considered Just a Bunch Of Disks, or JBOD. They don’t make a whole lot of sense in most cases, but people still use them. They do not have the speed of striping, and naturally there’s no fault-tolerance. They are just a bunch of disks available for sequential storage of data, much like magnetic tape or an optical disk. In fact, using them as an interface between another sequential storage medium is one of the few things they do pretty well.

Throughout this article, I’ve used the term controller. The controller can either be a piece of hardware or some software running on the server. Software controllers are generally a poor option for most situations because the operating system and CPU of the computer have to process and manage all the data flowing to and from the disks. Mirroring is usually faster in this situation than striping, and adding parity to the mix bogs things down even more. Hardware controllers are much lower in price than they used to be, and should always be considered an important component in a server. Many server-class motherboards now offer RAID (at least RAID-0, RAID-1, and JBOD) support built-in. Even many higher-end desktop motherboards offer RAID support for SATA (Serial ATA) drives.

Summary
The three types of RAID you are most likely to encounter or care about are RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-5.

RAID-0 is fastest performer and the least expensive option, but it offers no protection against faults. It’s great for situations where you need a lot of speed and fault-tolerance is not very important. You might find it used for storing cached or temporary information that needs to be retrieved quickly, but is harmless if lost.

RAID-1 is just as fast as RAID-0, but because it requires twice the disks as RAID-0, it’s usually the most expensive option. If one half of the mirror has a problem, the good half takes over (temporarily becoming a RAID-0 array) until the bad half can be replaced. Regeneration of the mirror after a failure is usually pretty fast, and it may even be automatic.

RAID-5 is slower than RAID-1 because it has to write extra parity data to a disk in the array, but it only requires one extra disk total, no matter how large the array grows. Many controllers allow for hot swapping of bad disks, and like RAID-1, regeneration of the array is usually fast and automatic.

Innovative engineers have figured out ways to combine various RAID methods to improve performance or tweak other measurements, but most are based on some combination of these three methods (e.g., RAID-10 actually being RAID-0+1 or RAID-1+0).

RAID-1+5 is a little different. It uses RAID-1 (mirroring) for the first two drives in a server, and the operating system and applications are generally stored there. The remaining three or more disks use RAID-5 for storing data, since striping generally works well for storing frequently changing data.

RAID controllers are a built-in option on many server and higher-end desktop PC motherboards. If you have that option and your budget is tight, use it! Otherwise, spend the money for a better hardware RAID controller for more options and better performance. Software-based RAID is an option is most server operating systems, but performance is generally much worse than with hardware RAID, but may still be a better option than doing without RAID completely.

Some information was taken from WhatIs.com’s definition of RAID.

Surge Protector vs. UPS

Will Murray — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:07:34 +0000

A client asked: Do I need a surge protector? If the power goes out sometime, what happens w/ the computer?

A surge protector is very important for protecting computers and other electronic equipment from damaging electrical spikes and surges. Fortunately this client already had one. Read the rest of the comments I wrote to her explaining the difference and dispelling the confusion surrounding surge protection and uninterruptible power supplies:

Perhaps you were thinking of an uninterruptible power supply (”UPS”, not to be confused with the brown trucks, of course). There are essentially two types of UPSes. One keeps a battery charged, and if it detects that the power goes out, then it switches over to the battery. It usually takes a few milliseconds to switch over. That may sound very fast to a human, but when computers operate in the millisecond (or faster) range, it can seem like quite a while. The second type of UPS has an Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) that charges a battery to continually run the computer. When the power goes out, the battery stops charging, but the equipment never feels a disruption. Your computer receives a continuous supply of pristine electricity. Naturally the second type costs a bit more.

UPSes are rated in VA’s (volt-amps) and Joules. Basically with VA’s, the bigger the number the longer your equipment will run during a power outage. Joules are more commonly touted with surge protectors, but they apply to UPSes, too. Again, the bigger the number, the better the protection against spikes and surges—even nearby lightning strikes in high-end ones.

One thing you generally don’t want to do is plug a surge protector into a UPS—at least into a low-end UPS. A normal electrical current cycles smoothly like an ocean wave from high to low and back again. Output from low-end UPSes (even ones with AVRs) usually produce electrical currents shaped more like square speed bumps. Square waves do not hurt your electronics, but they can cause problems if you plug a surge protector into a square-wave output UPS.

To summarize:

[The client has] a pretty darn good surge protector, so [the client is] protected from spikes and surges.
[The client is] not protected from sags and brown-outs (minor and major dips in the power), and certainly [the client is] not protected from power failures.
Bad power (especially spikes and full-power failures) cause the majority of computer data corruption. Data being written to a disk as the power spikes can be garbled. Drives writing to a disk during an outage, though rare, can write gibberish across the surface of the disk as they spin down (it happened to a computer I used to work on).
A UPS of any type will help protect you from complete power outages. UPSes with AVR will also effectively filter out sags and brownouts because the computer is always running on the battery. Non-AVR UPSes kick in when power drops below a certain point (some brown-outs are enough; some aren’t), and there’s always a slight delay, so you ever so slightly risk some data loss (it really depends on how sensitive your particular computer is to low-voltage situations—some are touchy; some don’t seem to notice).
It is okay to plug a UPS into a surge protector, but you should never plug a surge protector into a UPS unless the UPS produces pure sine-wave output (which consumer-grade UPSes will not).
Only critical devices (computer and monitor in [the client’s] case; possibly the printer) should be plugged into the battery powered part of the UPS. Other peripherals (notably speakers, laser printers, and anything non-critical) should be plugged into the non-battery protected part of the UPS or a regular surge protector. That way, you might lose your audio (speakers powered off), but you have maximum run-time for safely shutting down your computer and monitor.
Paying a little more for a UPS which can communicate to your PC and tell it to shut down if the power goes out can be very helpful if you aren’t home when the power goes out.

Windows Shortcuts Disappear

Will Murray — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:53:46 +0000

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s really annoying. Your Windows Desktop refreshes (often after a program crashes), and all the icons on your Desktop and in the Start Menu have been reset to generic icons that all look alike. Sometimes it’s a temporary thing, and restarting the computer will fix it. Other times it takes a different tool.There are a number of nifty tools available from Microsoft’s web site called “Power Toys”. These are a bunch of little applets that tweak or enhance the way Windows works. There are things like fancier calculators, image re-sizers, and ones that are a little difficult to explain (but do really neat things). These Power Toys are version-specific (i.e., you can’t use the Windows XP Power Toys under Windows 98 for example). The WinXP version is available here.

Out of all the Power Toys that are available, TweakUI is probably the most useful tool of all. This TweakUI gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more. It comes in two versions, one for standard 32-bit processor machines (e.g., Celerons, Pentiums, etc.) and also for 64-bit Itanium processor machines. It runs under Windows XP Service Pack 1 or later, as well as Windows Server 2003.

To restore your Desktop and Start Menu icons, download the appropriate version of TweakUI, install it, and then run it. In the left-hand column at the bottom is an option to “Repair”. Click it, and you will see that “Rebuild Icons” is the selected option in the pull-down menu. Click the “Repair Now” button, and all your icons should magically reappear. It will also reset the order of your icons (which could be slightly annoying if you have carefully lined up your icons up in a particular pattern).

This handy tool can also fix problems related to a messed up Fonts folder, your Unread Mail Count, and many other things. Feel free to poke around and see what else you can tweak. Just remember that all Power Toys are unsupported by Microsoft. I’ve never had a problem with them, but if you do, Microsoft cannot bail you out (and neither can we).

So tweak at your own risk.

Make Disk Cleanup Faster

Will Murray — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:47:22 +0000

Running Windows Disk Cleanup on a regular basis is really a great idea to keep your computer running lean and efficient. The only problem is, if you are like me, I’d almost rather visit my dentist than wait for the utility to complete its scan. It turns out that about 90% of the wait is the result of just one type of scan, and that scan is essentially pointless. Here are the steps for disabling this annoying “feature” and making your Disk Cleanups as fast and efficient as they should be!

The instructions are slightly modified from a Microsoft Knowledgebase article. The article discusses what to do if Disk Cleanup stops responding completely. It turns out the “fix” works perfectly well as a preventive measure.

The instructions below only tell how to remove the scan for “compress old files”, but you could probably remove any scan which you aren’t interested in, and that should speed Disk Cleanup even more. Just make sure to backup the original registry keys so that if anything does “blow up” you should be able to restore your system to its original configuration.

Warning: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

To work around this problem, follow these steps:

Click Start, and then click Run.

Type regedit in the Open box, and then press ENTER.

Locate, and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\VolumeCaches

On the File menu, click Export, and then click Desktop, type VolumeCaches in the File name box, and then click Save.
Note: This step creates a backup of the VolumeCaches registry key. If you experience any problems after you complete the steps that are listed in this procedure, you can use this backup to restore the VolumeCaches key to its original state. To restore the key, double-click the VolumeCaches.reg file on your desktop, and then click Yes.

Expand the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\VolumeCaches

Delete the Compress old files registry key.

Quit Registry Editor.

Alphabet Soup – Chat Acronymns

Will Murray — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:24:14 +0000

FWIW there are a lot of acronyms out there, especially on AIM, YIM, MSN, and IRC. I am FAQ about what these things mean. It would be nice to tell people to RTM, but AFAIK there aren’t very many comprehensive lists available (BICBW). So, here is a list of many common acronyms I’ve seen used from time to time. HTH. IAE, if I left some favorite ones out, BMG to add them in the comments. Just keep them kid-friendly. Thx!

A/S/L … Age/Sex/Location
AFAIK … As far as I know
AFK … Away from keyboard (especially mobile users not at a computer)
AIM … AOL Instant Messenger; also verb for transferring files via AIM
ASAP … As soon as possible
ATM … At the moment
B … Back
BAK … Back at keyboard (typically used after AFK or BRB)
BBL … Be back later
BBS … Be back soon
BC … Because
BCNU … Be Seein’ You
BFF … Best Friends Forever
BFN … Bye for now
BG … Big grin
BIAB … Back in a bit
BICBW … But I could be wrong
BMG … Be my guest
BRB … Be right back
BTA … But then again
BTW … By the way

Continued on page 1: A-B / 2: C-I / 3: J-R / 4: S-Z

Outlook Express/Outlook Won’t Save Passwords

Will Murray — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:59:46 +0000

Symptoms: Every time you open Outlook Express or Outlook you are asked to re-enter your password even though the Save Password box is checked (or grayed out).

Problem: Generally this is caused by a problem in the Registry with the Protected Storage System Provider key.

Resolution: Follow the steps below to fix this problem or visit Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article 29684 for an even more detailed information.

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. There is no guarantee that problems that you cause by using Registry Editor incorrectly can be resolved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Back Up The Registry Just to be safe you should back up this registry key before making modifications.
1. Click Start, Run, and type regedit in the box, and then click OK.
2. In the left panel, click the pluses next to:
  - HKEY_CURRENT_USER
  - Software
  - Microsoft
3. Right click on Protected Storage System Provider and select Export.
4. In the File name box, type a unique name for the key.
5. In the Save In box, click a location for the file to be saved (the Desktop is recommended).
6. Click Save
Change the Permissions
1. Still in the Registry, Right click on Protected Storage System Provider and select Permissions.
2. Click the user name for the user that is currently logged on and ensure that Read and Full Control permissions are both set to “Allow”.
3. Click on the Advanced button, and select the Permissions tab.
4. Highlight the currently logged on user, and make sure that Full Control is listed in the Permissions column, and that This Key and Subkeys is listed in the Apply To column.
5. Place a check mark in the box for “Replace Permission Entries on all Child Objects with Entries Shown Here that Apply to Child Objects”.
6. Click Apply.
7. A box will appear asking if you are sure you want to do this; click Yes.
8. Click OK and then Click OK again to return to the Registry Editor.
Delete the Key
1. Click the plus sign next to Protected Storage System Provider key.
2. Right click the user sub-key folder that will look similar to:
  S-1-5-21-3723271197-400000000-0000000000-0000.
3. Click Delete and then click Yes in the Confirm Key Delete dialog box that appears.
4. Each identity may have a sub-key under the Protected Storage System Provider key. Delete all of the user sub-key folders under the Protected Storage System Provider key using the same method.
5. Close the Registry and Reboot the Computer.
Reenter Password in Outlook Express or Outlook
1. Open Outlook Express or Outlook.
2. When you are prompted to Enter password, go ahead and retype it and make sure the Save Password box is checked.

Depending on whether you are using Outlook or Outlook Express the exact method will vary. In all cases, accessing the Tools menu and selecting the choice related to Accounts will point you in the right direction. Select the user account and the option to change or modify its properties. There will be a box to be checked to save the password once it has been re-entered. It will be necessary to perform the password re-entry for each separate e-mail account. Reboot after each account change. This should complete the steps for fixing the problem of the password not being saved in Outlook Express or Outlook.

Articles at Microsoft, PC Hell, and The Elder Geek provided background information for this blog entry.

Re: Hidden partition vs. a real Windows CD

Will Murray — Tue, 23 May 2006 21:52:31 +0000

My thanks go to Brett for his comments posted on Ed Bott’s blog about Dell’s hidden restore partitions.

I originally posted this message in the comments, but it was too long and got cut off midway. Here is the complete message, including some interesting utilities and tools I found within the Ghost Recovery Console built into some new Dell Dimension 1100 computers. This article is fairly technical and probably only of interest to other techies.

Here is the information from some Dell Dimension 1100’s purchased earlier this month. According to Windows, here are the partitions:

1: 31MB FAT EISA (Diagnostic Utilities)
2: 52.71GB NTFS System (Main data partition)
3: 18.51GB NTFS Backup (Ghost Backup uses this)
4: 3.26GB FAT32 Unknown (Dell’s Recovery image)

(Don’t you love how the “80GB” HDD only has 52GB of usable space?)

According to PTEdit32:

[code]Type, Boot, Start Cyl, Hd, Sct, End Cyl, Hd, Sct, Before, Sectors

DE, 00, 0, 1, 1, 3, 254, 63, 63, 64197
07, 80, 4, 0, 1, 1023, 254, 63, 64260, 110543265
07, 00, 1023, 0, 1, 1023, 254, 63, 110607525, 38813040
DB, 00, 1023, 0, 1, 1023, 254, 63, 149420565, 6827625, 6827625
[/code]
As in Bret’s case, the utility and recovery partitions were set to invalid types (DE and DB respectively). Using PTEdit32 (which allows you to make changes from within Windows XP; very cool!), I changed the types to 04 (FAT 16 <32MB) and 0C (FAT32) respectively. After rebooting the computer, the volumes showed up as ordinary drives in Windows (drives F: and G: to be exact).

It was very easy then to see what information was inside the partitions. Pretty much exactly what you would expect: system diagnostics and recovery utilities and a bootable recovery version of Ghost.

The process was completely reversible. I just changed the types back to DE and DB, rebooted, and everything was back to normal. Obligatory WARNING Statement: I am a certified network engineer with nearly 20 years of experience; I kind of know what I’m doing when it comes to this stuff. I also didn’t have any data on the computer that would matter if it were lost. If that doesn’t describe your situation, then please be very, very, very careful if you try this yourself. One tiny mistake (or just a bit of bad luck), and your hard drive could end up ruined, along with the data that used to be on it.

Just for curiosity’s sake, I booted into the recovery system. The EULA from Symantec states:

There are technological measures in this Software that are designed to prevent unlicensed or illegal use of the Software. You agree that Symantec may use these measures to protect Syantec against software piracy. This Software may contain enforcement technology that limits the ability to install and uninstall the Software on a computer to not more than a finite number of times for a finite number of computers. …

(Any typos in the preceding are my own, as is the added emphasis.)

I realize that basically this (much longer) paragraph appears to mainly be discussing Windows Activation, but the thing that worries me (or would if I was relying on this to recover my system), is just how many times can I recover my computer before the software refuses to restore it anymore?

I have friends who as a matter of policy reformat their hard drives every few months. (Apparently they find this easier than taking proper care of their computers in the first place with antimalware software, etc., but that’s a whole other discussion.) Would they suddenly be informed that they had exceeded the “finite” number of reinstallations and could no longer recover their PCs? At least with a CD-ROM (or DVD) you can recover as often as you want without relying upon time-bombmed (well, counter bombed would probably be the more accurate analogy) technology.

One interesting feature of the recovery system is that if you go under “Utilities” you can Delete the Backup Drive. Essentially it removes the D: drive (partition 3 above) and extends the C: drive (partition 2) into the freed-up space. That’s a pretty cool feature I’m sure a lot of people would love to know about.

Another sweet feature (or set of features) is you can 1) configure and enable networking, 2) browse and mount the file systems, and 3) attach to network drives, and 4) theoretically recover lost files from a corrupted or infected disk without having to use BartPE or any other recovery tools. There’s also Norton Disk Doctor, an Antivirus scanner, and some other tools that could be useful in some situations. There’s even a Symantec Thin Client available. While I still like having a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM for recovery, I do have to admit there are some cool features hidden away here.

After all this, I now plan to keep the 31MB EISA partition as-is, since it can be sort of handy at times. But the recovery partition is more of a liability than a blessing. In part because of the whole finite number of recoveries and also since it could theoretically wipe out all the customizations that I plan to make to the system. I’m just going to remove it, along with the non-hidden backup partition, and extend the main partition into all that lovely freed-up space. I have other ways of performing backups that I’m much happier with.

Preventive Maintenance Plans Are a Very Good Idea

Will Murray — Tue, 09 May 2006 11:14:51 +0000

Preventive Maintenance Helps Safeguard Data
Most of our clients find the information stored on the hard disk is much more important than the hardware that stores the data. Taking steps to protect this information makes sense. That is what preventive maintenance is all about.
Preventive Maintenance Improves Security
Regular virus and spyware scanning is critical to keeping your data safe. Security patches and software updates are released several times each month for a variety of software. Some notify you, but others do not. All are important if you wish to stay protected. System and security logs give a wealth of information about the state of the equipment and the network. By checking the logs, we often spot potential problems early and avoid emergencies by fixing problems before they become noticeable.
Preventive Maintenance Improves Performance
Some aspects of computer systems degrade in performance over time. This has even given rise to the colorful term of “Windows rot“. Preventive maintenance helps improve the overall speed of system and network performance in these respects.
Preventive Maintenance Saves Money
You’ve heard the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It may be trite, but it’s also true. Avoiding problems saves you money in the long run, compared with laying out cash for new components or repair jobs. Emergency repair procedures can consume your IT budget at alarming rates. Most preventive maintenance procedures are quite simple, compared to troubleshooting and emergency repair procedures. This saves you much time (and stress!).

New Site Launch

Allogro.com Administrator — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Allogro is pleased to introduce its newly redesigned Web site. This new site offers all the latest features savvy Internet users have come to expect in a site (including new RSS enabled news feeds ) while maintaining a simple-to-use interface. We hope you like it!

We are using a customized version of a terrific content management system (CMS) called Joomla . It is free CMS software released under the GNU/GPL License. We would be happy to help you set us Joomla on your own Web server. If you do not have a Web server of your own, we can help you install it on many common hosting services, including our favorite one.

Exchange: OWA displays all mailboxes in a directory browsing format

Will Murray — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 04:25:28 +0000

Problem: After some unrelated changes are made to IIS 6.0, Exchange’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) acts differently. The normal login page is replaced by a login dialog box. After logging in, OWA displays all the mailboxes in a browseable directory format instead of the normal OWA content. You can select your mailbox and all folders display in the same manner. Charles Yang from Microsoft presented a solution that (mostly) worked for me in this situation.

Charles Yang wrote:

Generally speaking, this issue should be caused by the IIS default configuration for the website has been changed. Please refer to my suggestion below to see if the issue can be resolved:

1. Navigate to: | Web Sites | Default Web Site | Exchange.

2. Right-click Exchange and select “Properties”. Click the “Virtual Directory” tab.

3. At the bottom, under “Application Settings”, click the Configuration button.

4. In the Application Configuration window, under “Wildcard application maps”, click “Insert”.

5. In the Add/Edit Application Extension Mapping window, click “Browse”.

6. Browse to “Program Files\ExchSrvr\bin\davex.dll” and click the Open button.

7. In the “Executable:” text box, place quotation marks around the file path.

8. Click OK three times to exit.

(Original Source of Information: Microsoft Windows SBS Newsgroup)

As I said, this worked mostly for me. In my case, “Application Settings” under the “Virtual Directory” tab was pretty much disabled. The only option I had was to “Create” a new application. Once I did that extra step (step 2.5 if you are following the instructions above), I was able to complete the rest of the instructions. The procedure worked without a hitch after that.

This server has had quite a history of losing track of its OWA configuration in IIS, but it has never presented this issue before. The most common issue it has presented is addressed in Microsoft article Q280823. That is the issue where you pretty much only see the message “Loading…” and possibly some “broken images” where the images failed to load.

It is really weird how touchy this server is about its OWA settings. The only changes I am aware of being made to IIS lately was the installation of a new SSL certificate to the Default Web Site. Nothing was altered in OWA. Hopefully this fix will fix it permanently. Hopefully someone else will find this information useful, too!

Make Disk Cleanup Faster

Will Murray — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 01:49:11 +0000

Warning: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

To work around this problem, follow these steps:

Click Start, and then click Run.

Type regedit in the Open box, and then press ENTER.

Locate, and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\VolumeCaches

On the File menu, click Export, and then click Desktop, type VolumeCaches in the File name box, and then click Save.
Note: This step creates a backup of the VolumeCaches registry key. If you experience any problems after you complete the steps that are listed in this procedure, you can use this backup to restore the VolumeCaches key to its original state. To restore the key, double-click the VolumeCaches.reg file on your desktop, and then click Yes.

Expand the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\VolumeCaches

Delete the Compress old files registry key.

Quit Registry Editor.

Alphabet Soup – Chat Acronyms

Will Murray — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 01:29:00 +0000

A/S/L … Age/Sex/Location
AFAIK … As far as I know
AFK … Away from keyboard (especially wireless users not at a computer)
AIM … AOL Instant Messenger; also verb for transferring files via AIM
ASAP … As soon as possible
ATM … At the moment
B … Back
BAK … Back at keyboard
BBL … Be back later
BBS … Be back soon
BC … Because
BCNU … Be Seein’ You
BFN … Bye for now
BG … Big grin
BIAB … Back in a bit
BICBW … But I could be wrong
BMG … Be my guest
BRB … Be right back
BTA … But then again
BTW … By the way
CFN … Ciao for now
CID … Consider it done
CUL … See you later
CUL8R … See you later
CYA … Cover your arse
C-YA … See Ya
DQMOT … Don’t quote me on this
DYOH … Do your own homework
EOM … End of message
FAQ … Frequently asked questions
FWIW … For what it’s worth
FYI … For your information
G2G … Got to go
GIGO … Garbage in, garbage out
GL … Good luck
GMTA … Great minds think alike
GRA … Go right ahead
GW … Good work
HLVB … Hasta la vista baby
HT … Hi there
HTH … Hope this helps
IAC … In any case
IAE … In any event
ICQ … ICQ Instant Messenger
IDK … I don’t know
IIRC … If I recall correctly
IM … Instant message
IMHO … In my humble/honest opinion
IMO … In my opinion
IMPOV … In my point of view
IMS … I am sorry
IOW … In other words
IRC … Internet Relay Chat (a method of instant messaging/chatroom)
JIC … Just in case
JK … Just kidding
JTLYK … Just to let you know
K … Okay
KIS … Keep it simple
L8 … Later
L8R … Later
LOL … Laughing out loud
M$ … Microsoft
MSN … Microsoft Network (or MSN Messenger)
NBD … No big deal
NP … No problem
NRN … No response necessary
OH … Off hand
OIC … Oh I see
OMG … Oh my gosh!
OTOH … On the other hand
OTP … On the phone
PLS … Please
PLZ … Please
POC … Point of contact
POV … Point of view
ROFLMAO … Rolling on floor laughing my arse off
ROTFL … Rolling on the floor laughing
RSN … Real soon now
RTFM … Read the flippin’ manual
RTM … Read the manual
RUOK? … Are you okay?
SYS … See you soon
TAFN … That’s all for now
TBA … To be announced
TBD … To be determined/decided
TBH … To be honest
THX … Thanks
TIA … Thanks in advance
TTFN … Ta ta for now
TTYL … Talk to you later
WB … Welcome back
WFM … Works for me
WTF … What the f—?
WTG … Way to go
WTH … What the heck?
WU? … What’s up?
YIM … Yahoo Instant Messenger
YT? … You there?
YW … You’re welcome

Outlook Express/Outlook Won’t Save Passwords

Will Murray — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 03:27:38 +0000

Symptoms: Every time you open Outlook Express or Outlook you are asked to re-enter your password even though the Save Password box is checked (or grayed out).

Problem: Generally this is caused by a problem in the Registry with the Protected Storage System Provider key.

Resolution: Follow the steps below to fix this problem or visit Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article 29684 for an even more detailed information.

Back Up The Registry
Just to be safe you should back up this registry key before making modifications.
1. Click Start, Run, and type regedit in the box, and then click OK.
2. In the left panel, click the pluses next to:
  - HKEY_CURRENT_USER
  - Software
  - Microsoft
3. Right click on Protected Storage System Provider and select Export.
4. In the File name box, type a unique name for the key.
5. In the Save In box, click a location for the file to be saved (the Desktop is recommended).
6. Click Save
Change the Permissions
1. Still in the Registry, Right click on Protected Storage System Provider and select Permissions.
2. Click the user name for the user that is currently logged on and ensure that Read and Full Control permissions are both set to “Allow”.
3. Click on the Advanced button, and select the Permissions tab.
4. Highlight the currently logged on user, and make sure that Full Control is listed in the Permissions column, and that This Key and Subkeys is listed in the Apply To column.
5. Place a check mark in the box for “Replace Permission Entries on all Child Objects with Entries Shown Here that Apply to Child Objects”.
6. Click Apply.
7. A box will appear asking if you are sure you want to do this; click Yes.
8. Click OK and then Click OK again to return to the Registry Editor.
Delete the Key
1. Click the plus sign next to Protected Storage System Provider key.
2. Right click the user sub-key folder that will look similar to:
  S-1-5-21-3723271197-400000000-0000000000-0000.
3. Click Delete and then click Yes in the Confirm Key Delete dialog box that appears.
4. Each identity may have a sub-key under the Protected Storage System Provider key. Delete all of the user sub-key folders under the Protected Storage System Provider key using the same method.
5. Close the Registry and Reboot the Computer.
Reenter Password in Outlook Express or Outlook
1. Open Outlook Express or Outlook.
2. When you are prompted to Enter password, go ahead and retype it and make sure the Save Password box is checked.

Articles at Microsoft, PC Hell, and The Elder Geek provided background information for this blog entry.

Top-10 That I Miss

Will Murray — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:25:31 +0000

MSN has a feature titled “Top-10 tech we miss“, part of the celebration of CNET’s 10th anniversary. It got me thinking about the technology that I miss.

I absolutely agree with CNET that the #1 thing I miss is manned space exploration. I was born sometime after Armstrong and the others left their famous first footprints on lunar soil, so I missed the spine-tingling feeling of watching that event live on TV. But I do remember the thrill of watching the first space shuttle flight lift off on a brilliant plume of smoke and fire. In fact, the whole world watched in awe for at least the first seven or eight launches before it became a “normal” part of NASA’s function. I also remember the feeling of absolute shock as I watched the Challenger explode on the TV screen over and over again as the news replayed it.
There is something about manned space exploration that really puts things into perspective. No problem ever seems to large, and no conflict ever seems so important, when you compare it to the immensity of space. We need that reminder on a regular basis. We also need to be reminded of the amazing sense of accomplishment that we get working as an international community of peers while solving amazing new challenges.
I miss simple computers that you can understand completely. The first computer I owned (well, my parents bought it, but I was the primary user) was an Atari 1200 XL. I also regularly used Apple ][ and Apple //e computers, TRS-80 Model III and Model P-4 computers around that time. These were extremely primitive by today’s standards, with less memory for running programs than an old-fashioned 1.44MB floppy disk holds today. My 1200 XL, for example, only had 64K of RAM (that is 64,000 bytes total compared to the 1,000,000,000 bytes the computer I’m using to write this has). It was a very different world back then. In fact, my first mass storage device as a cassette tape drive. A large program might take 40 minutes to boot up, and on a 60-minute tape, that meant flipping sides after the first 30 minutes.
So why would I miss such a confining piece of machinery? Well… I guess because it never confined me. Programs in those days were designed to run in that small memory space. I remember the salesperson stating that I “would never run out of memory on this computer.” I never did. But I did learn an awful lot about that computer. In the Atari BASIC programming language, there was a way to directly read and write to the memory of the computer (PEEK and POKE were the commands). You could get the computer to do all sorts of cool things just by tweaking with the memory locations. If you were a power user, like I was, you memorized a lot of those locations so you could tweak on the fly. After a while, you pretty much knew what every part of that computer did, from the hardware inside the case to the memory locations inside its brain. It was very empowering to a kid in junior high school at that time (remember the movie War Games?

The computers now are much more complex. Except for some university grad students and some of the top-level programmers employed by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and other corporations, there is hardly anyone who really understands what goes on inside a computer any more. Most of those who do are very gainfully employed, or they are elite hackers (generally the more ethical type that hack for the love of knowledge, not the vandals and crooks that capture the attention of the news media). It leaves the rest of us feeling slightly disconnected from our machines. Some people feel outright fear and distrust because the machines are so complex. I miss the simplicity of the old days, but I love the power and capabilities of the cutting edge machines of today.
Spam-free e-mail and ad-free web browsing are something I miss greatly. Certain economic factors have changed the face of the Internet, some badly, some for the better. But it sure was nice when every person on the Internet seemed like a trustworthy friend. Of course, the original Web browsers were all text-based, and the first browser I saw that could display images (NCSA Mosaic) was pretty primitive, but information was truly free back then.
I miss dial-up Bulletin Board Services. I used to co-run a popular BBS on the Central Coast of California with over 400 active users (meaning they called in at least once a month). We had callers from as far away as Japan and England call over ordinary dial-up lines at 2400 baud speeds just to read and post messages, play text-based multi-player games, and share basic utilities. We eventually joined up with a couple of BBS networks (FidoNet and RenegadeNet), and later formed our own network of BBSes (WEST-Net, named after Will, Eli, Scott, and Travis who thought of the idea). Several other BBSes in the area joined in, as well as one way down south in the San Diego. It was great fun, and was one of the precursors to many of the popular activities people enjoy today on the Internet. Dial-up BBSes still exist, but they aren’t like they used to be.
Pac-Man, Tempest, Joust, and Space Invaders were some of my first video games. I miss those mindless fun (albeit still challenging) games. The games of today tend to either be so complex or so bloody that I lose interest very quickly. Sure, there are still some beautiful games with interesting puzzles to solve (the Myst series), board games that have been computerized (Monopoly, chess), and the perennial favorite of people everywhere waiting on hold for some tech support or in a classroom listening to a lecture (Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc.), but they just aren’t the same. Enough other people must agree, because Atari and other companies are re-releasing their old classics to play on the modern PC.
The Pets.com sock puppet and all the other cool marketing of the Dot.com Boom are missed. Remember when the Dot.com’s ruled the Super Bowl’s commercials? It was mostly marketing hype, but it was fun to watch. Too bad all that creativity apparently cost so much. Today’s commercials seem largely to be rather stale by comparison. This last Super Bowls’ commercial for the job listing company (can’t even remember the name right now — how sad) with the monkey “co-workers” was as lame as the whoopee cushion the guy sat on.
Speaking of the Dot.com Boom, I miss the era when the geeks ruled. Mostly I miss it because I was a geek back then, and it was a great time to be in the job market as a geek. Probably as a business owner attempting to hire a bunch of geeks, it would have been something I wouldn’t have liked, but I wasn’t. Now geek programmers are being sent back to the windowless basement cubicles again. I heard that HP is going to be laying a large number of workers off, mostly in IT and HR. The golden era of IT jobs seems to have lost a lot of its shine.
I miss the absence of some technology. Take the airports for instance. I miss the days before the ticket kiosks, the multiple layers of metal detection, and the ultra-processed and pre-packaged foods (if you even get any anymore) they serve. I miss the opportunity to board a plane without first removing your shoes. I miss being able to call a travel agent or the airline to book a fare, and not having to also check five travel web sites, three discount airfare broker sites, and each airline’s own private discount fare sites, all to be sure that I am getting the lowest fare. I miss that the airlines used to compensate the travel agents so I didn’t have to. I miss the feeling to being a customer of an airline instead of feeling like a piece of livestock being shipped for slaughter.
Dennison used to make a brand of floppy disks (both 5.25″ and 8″ varieties) called “Elephant Disks.” They had the slogan something like “We never forget.” It was a cool marketing gimmick with a cute logo. They were my favorite brand of floppies back then. I wonder if I dug them out of storage if they really would still be readable after all these years?
GIST.com was a terrific TV listings site. So terrific that we actually paid for a subscription when they had to go commercial. Unfortunately, they only lasted about one-month after that, and then they closed up. At least they were kind enough to refund the subscription fees they charged rather than pocketing it for themselves. As I said, they were a terrific site. I’ll squeeze in one more terrific site: sixdegrees.com. It was pretty similar to friendster.com, but it was very novel and seemed to work a bit better. Sadly, it closed up, too.

So there you have it. 10 tech things that I miss that used to be an everyday part of my life. Maybe sometime I will write a top-10 list of things that I love about technology now. That could be fun. What do you miss most? Leave some comments.

Heat and Hurricanes

Will Murray — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 05:42:00 +0000

It’s summer, and the thermometer has been stuck above 100°F (37.8°C) for 6 days, almost tying a record. There’s a certain laziness in the air. It’s just too hot to move around much! I really feel sorry for people who do roofing, lay asphalt, or work in the fields with the sun beating down on them on days like these.

People aren’t the only ones to suffer in the heat though. These past few days have been busy here, too. It seems that extended heat like this will give any equipment, especially air conditioners and other cooling systems, a real workout. Marginal components become overwhelmed and stop working. This can cause disruptions in Internet service (like it did for Comcast this morning), servers (like one of ours because air conditioning went out on Sunday), and in other electronics. Despite the lazy summer days, computer failures have been keeping us busy these past few days.

What are you doing to “summer-ize” your computer network?

When was the last time you had your PC or server professionally cleaned to remove dust build-up inside the machine? Dust, grime, smoke particles, pet hair, and carpet fuzz act like cozy little blankets to electronic components. Unfortunately, components prefer to operate in much chillier environments (say a nice 65-68°F/18-20°C that is non-condensing). The last thing they need or want is something that traps heat like a blanket. Fans and heatsinks, which are designed to disperse damaging heat are much more effective when the airflow is unobstructed by dust bunnies.

How are the wiring and airflow around your computer? Many people hook up their PCs and scrunch them into tiny rectangular holes in their desks, cramming all the wires in the best they can. There are several things wrong with this.

1. Computers need room to breathe. Generally they draw air in from the font and one side of the chassis, forcing it past the hard drives, CPU, and controller cards, and pushing the superheated air out the back. A well designed desk has a large opening in the back to allow the air to escape. Poorly designed desks only have a single opening in the front (and some even cover that with a door!), and maybe a tiny hole for a few cables to pass through in the back. Closed “boxes” like that cause the superheated air to be recirculated over and over, practically eliminating any benefit from the circulating air.

2. Cramming cables between the PC and the back wall of the desk add more complications. Electrical power cords do radiate a small amount of heat, often too subtle for us to feel on an individual cord (a cord that is quite warm to the touch should probably be replaced, since that could lead to a fire!). But cram enough of those cords together in a small space, and the heat increases. If the computer vents into that same limited space, the picture is even uglier.

3. As mentioned, an unobstructed flow of cool air entering the front and side of the chassis, passing smoothly through a dust-free interior, and venting to an open space out the back is an ideal environment for a PC. Even if a desk is well vented, too many cables behind the PC can obstruct that airflow, and routing the superheated air back toward the front of the machine.

4. Large cables inside a PC block airflow, too. As modders or extreme geeks have known for several years, their are all sorts of cool ways (literally) to trick out your computer. They usually do it for the “coolness factor” (how cool it will make them look to their friends), but some do it out of necessity. Modders often “overclock” their computers, making them run faster, and thus hotter, than a standard PC. That means they need to use special cables that allow air to flow more freely inside the case. They cost a little bit more initially, but much less than a replacement component down the road. Next time you have your computer serviced, ask about swapping bulky old cables with sleek new ones.

Do you have a plan if your air conditioning or primary cooling system goes out? Our spur-of-the-moment plan involved a tiny space cooler and a good strong fan blowing right on our small server. It helped, but by mid-afternoon, the air temperature near the back of the server was in the mid-90’s (~35°C). Yuck! (We won’t mention how we felt working in that temperature.) Businesses with a larger IT infrastructure are even more vulnerable and should have redundant systems in place for an emergency. A good data backup plan is also a very wise investment.

Emergencies are a part of life. We saw on the news the damage that hurricane Dennis just did to Cuba and the U.S., and now Emily is on her way to other parts of Mexico or Texas. Tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, broken sprinkler systems, a fire in a neighboring business, a careless cigarette, a drunk driver crashing through a wall… The list is endless, but the solution is always the same: be prepared.

It’s the Boy Scout motto and also really good advice. You can’t prepare for every possible catastrophe, so you need to plan for catastrophes in general. Backup your data, and keep a few copies in a few different places. Invest in a fireproof safe or lock box, and store critical information inside. Take out insurance on your equipment that includes replacement costs for new equipment, not just the value the old equipment would be worth today. Have emergency policies in place so that employees know what to do when things happen, so they can minimize the impact of the emergency on your business and maximize their safety and the safety of your customers.

Work with a creative IT consulting firm that can recommend multiple approaches to protecting your investments. Tape backups are one way to go, but they aren’t the only way. Be sure your IT crew isn’t locked into a single solution or an old-fashioned mindset. Allogro is just one of a number of excellent companies out there that can help you protect your data and get back to normal operations again quickly. Whomever you choose, just choose quickly and start implementing. And don’t forget to review your strategies at least once a year; things change as time moves on.

When you finish, sit back and enjoy a nice cool glass of lemonade. Relax in these lazy days of summer knowing your computers are summarized and you are prepared for whatever life might toss your way.

Apple turns 500 Million

Will Murray — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:58:26 +0000

Isn’t it funny how you can just accidentally stumble across a piece of history in the making? I visited Apple’s home page and noticed a counter listing how many songs had been downloaded, and it was counting up to 500 million. The counter was at 499,996,000 give or take, but was climbing very rapidly.

Just a few minutes later, it reached 500 million at 2:48pm PDT. I expected something more, but the counter just stopped at “500,000,000+”. I clicked through to the information page and read about all the prizes that were being given away. “Cool!” I thought. Too bad I missed out on the prizes. But at least I saw the historic moment live. Yeah, I enjoy watching the odometer on my car turn historic numbers, too (though I usually seem to look away at the wrong moment).

I went back to the home page, and a giant graphic announced the news. I guess some poor web designer at Apple was working away on this lovely Sunday afternoon.

Thanks to Dunstan Orchard’s link to Apple for sending me there.

Harry Potter and the Half-Right Wikipedia

Will Murray — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 01:39:20 +0000

Being a person who cares about what happens to Harry Potter and his friends, I wanted to find some spoilers about the latest book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HP&tHPB) before I tackled this rather lengthy piece of literature.

When the 5th book came out, a few fan sites helped prepare me emotionally for the death of a key figure in the story. I don’t like unhappy surprises or sad endings, so I wanted to check out HP&tHPB before I started reading.

First, I visited The Leaky Lounge, the discussion board for The Leaky Cauldron. I don’t know what is the matter with the e-mail system (probably overwhelmed), so I have not received my activation e-mail for my account. That limits my access, so I turned to Google.

I entered “harry potter book spoilers”, and to my disappointment, found that most of the Harry Potter sites had strict spoiler-free policies in place. How cruel is that? If I didn’t want to know spoilers, I would just stay away until I finished reading the book. I guess it is so that people in other countries (like Brazil and Israel who won’t receive the books until December ‘05) won’t have the surprises spoiled for them.

Fortunately, the Wikipedia has become a wonderful source for timely information. It has been fascinating watching the progress of the article on HP&tHPB.

When I first loaded the page (around 7AM Pacific Time), details were fairly sketchy. Only chapters 1-9 had detailed information. Over the next few hours, chapters 1-17, 26, and 30 (the final chapter) were filled in.

It was interesting watching the changes to chapter 30. Originally, someone just posted who had died (yes, once again J.K. Rowling kills off a main character. If you want to know who, go read the Wikipedia article). Later, a series of details about the memorial service appeared, but seemed somewhat questionable. A little while later, that memorial information was removed (apparently it wasn’t very accurate). A few hours later, chapter 30 was posted with a detailed description that seemed to fit the tone of the rest of the book. That entry has remained in place.

It was the real-time, dynamic nature of the Wikipedia article that was so fascinating to watch. Early on, before all the details were filled in, some stupid people submitted bogus entries (e.g., “Harry [crude sexual reference] Herminone, feels guilty, hangs himself. The end.” and “Ron decides he hates Harry, kills him, and the seventh book will be all about Ron”). All of those entries disappeared quite quickly.

One of the things that is so amazing about the Wikipedia is how anyone, anywhere can update the articles. I have often wondered in the past what prevents bad information from infecting the Wikipedia like a disease. Today proved that even when people deliberately try to post misinformation, the Wikipedia can self-correct (thanks to all the people visiting and updating it) very nicely.

The Wikipedia classified the article as a “current event” (which is something that a regular encyclopedia could never track), and warned that information would likely change very rapidly.

I just checked at 5:30 PM Pacific Time, and every chapter has information filled in now. Just 25 hours after the book was released in the U.K. and 17 hours after it was released in California, a complete synopsis (well, mostly complete anyway) is now available online.

The Internet has forever changed the way that information is distributed, and it has shortened the time it takes to share that information to less than a day — less than a few hours for the most critical details. Even though people may attempt to deliberately skew the facts or plant false information, the real story eventually gets out.

This change is a far bigger story than Harry Potter (and really more exciting in a way).

Maintaining Your PC – Part 1

Will Murray — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 05:53:26 +0000

One of our clients sent me the following e-mail request:

Can you shoot me an email … with detailed instructions (how to’s) about … weekly & monthly cleanups … (Adware, Spyware, &/or other?). I keep getting official looking advertising pop-ups [regarding] such and am a little nervous to either do something or do nothing with them. I’d appreciate it if you could help me with this.

Realizing that my response could lead to a few blog entries, I decided to kick off a series of articles tentatively called “How-To Tuesdays.”

So, here is the first article in the series: the steps that I would recommend for the average small office/home office (or “SOHO”) users to keep their computers running smoothly…

All the Time

There are a few things that really need to be in place all the time that your computer is powered on. Without these in place, you are fighting a hopeless battle against viruses, spam, and hackers.

Hardware-based firewall for a broadband DSL or cable Internet connection. These are the “bouncers” who sit at the perimeter of your network and check all the lowlife scum that passes by to see if they have proper credentials. Of course, just like in real life, fake I.D.’s (or forged headers in the computer world) can be used for entrance, and the entry-level firewalls aren’t as good at spotting potential problems as the much more expensive versions can be. Even so, any security guy is going to help keep more riff-raff out than not having one at all. The same is true with firewalls.
- A hardware-based firewall protects all types of computers installed behind it. It does not matter if your PC runs Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or anything else, including gaming systems!
- Since these firewalls are “always on”, they protect your device while it is powering up or down. Personal firewalls (next item) leave open a small window of vulnerability during that time. That is just one reason why multiple layers of protection are best.
Personal-firewalls (i.e., ones that are software-based) are another good investment, especially if you use dial-up Internet connections and don’t have a hardware-firewall.
- Windows XP Service Pack 2, Linux, and FreeBSD (and probably also Mac OS X, since it is based on FreeBSD), all have some type of built-in personal firewall that is better than no firewall.
- All the popular antivirus companies sell personal firewalls (usually available as a bundle with their antivirus software).
- In general, all firewalls scan and protect against incoming attacks (things attacking you), but good ones also safeguard outgoing information. This extra layer of protection really helps to prevent viruses from spreading, spyware from divulging sensitive information, and hampers certain kinds of hacking. If you have a choice, get one that does both.
- Firewalls do not provide complete protection from viruses, worms, trojans, or spyware. They are only the first step!
Real-time antivirus protection is the next most important thing you should have on your network. Some people consider it the most important. Either way, if you aren’t running it, you will be plagued by viruses.
- Other names associated with real-time protection include: “heuristic detection”, “bloodhound detection”, and “virus watch”. Heuristic detection means that the programs watch for “virus-like behavior” to help protect you against new, unknown viruses and worms. Not all real-time virus scanners offer this extra level of protection, but it’s a good thing to have.
- Generally antivirus software is only as good as its latest virus definitions file and scanning engine. Be sure to keep both fully up-to-date (more about that later).
Other malware scanners are very important, too. They come under a lot of different names, including: spyware scanners, adware blockers, spy catchers, and pest removers.
- Operating systems and computers are much more reliable than they used to be, so most unexpected system crashes, freeze-ups, slow-downs, and pop-up advertisements are caused by some type of malware (which can include viruses and worms, too) installed on your system.
- No single antimalware solution catches everything. You will need multiple layers of malware protection.
Protect your system settings from unexpected changes. There are a number of programs that do this, but few that do it well, because what works well for one person is frustrating for another person. It would be best to try a few different ones before settling on just one.
- Most programs in this class keep an eye on certain portions of your PC that are accessed when your computer starts up. Under Windows, these include the “Startup” folder in the Control Panel, the “Run” and “Run-Once” registry keys, the “config.sys” and “autoexec.bat” files, and a few other locations. Generally speaking, editing and cleaning up these locations is not a task for the faint of heart—you could prevent your computer from booting at all if you make a mistake. That’s where a startup monitor helps you by making things simple to understand and simple to maintain.
- Other programs that watch your system settings do so by keeping track of what is installed as it is being installed. Then, if you later want to uninstall something, all traces of the program can be removed. Like with firewalls, most current operating systems include a rudimentary form of this. Windows calls it “System Restore”, while Red Hat Linux calls it “RPM” or “Red Hat Package Management”. No matter which system you use, they all work the best if they are one of the very first things installed on your new computer so they can monitor everything else that is installed later.
- Some personal firewalls and other utilities monitor a wide variety of system modifications and warn anytime something “suspicious” happens. Personally, these seem to cause more problems than they solve. Since most users do not really understand the message, they either allow everything (so what’s the point?) or they block everything (and wonder why their software doesn’t work).
- This is an exception to the “more is better’ rule of thumb. Multiple system setting protection utilities usually are redundant and irritating. Pick one that meets your needs and your skill level, and use it exclusively.
Pop-up blockers help protect you from deceptive and/or annoying pop-up/pop-under windows while you are browsing the Web. Current versions of most web browsers now include built-in pop-up blockers. Most popular antivirus bundles include a pop-up blocker.
- Multiple pop-up blockers generally should be avoided, since one is often enough. Having two can make it twice as difficult to allow pop-ups on sites that legitimately use them (like banks, schools, etc.). The exception would be in cases where one blocker does not block all the types you regularly encounter.
- If you continue to see pop-ups after installing a pop-up blocker, it’s nearly always a sign of other malware (specifically adware or spyware) infesting your system. Certain web sites use Flash or JavaScript tricks to simulate pop-ups. I guess the advertisers don’t understand how much those tactics annoy potential customers!
Spam filters can really help ease frustration when opening your e-mail. Most solutions deal with spam at the server or by having you connect through a proxy. Microsoft Outlook 2003 comes with a built-in “junk e-mail” feature. Other solutions exist for dealing with spam before you download it to your computer.
- All the major e-mail sites (e.g., www.hotmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, www.netaddress.com, etc.) and most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) perform a limited amount of spam filtering for you, and most allow you to “train” the filters to be “smarter.”
- Spam accounts for over half of all e-mail sent over the Internet. Your e-mail account can receive spam even if you never give out the address, because spammers send to random addresses as well as known ones.
- Replying to spam—even requesting to be removed from a list—should be avoided. It tells the spammer that someone actually reads the e-mail and that the account is active. They will probably send you more spam, not less.
The preceding items were primarily for protection from external threats. What about protecting the computer from itself? There are a number of diagnostic utilities that can constantly monitor your PC’s health and performance—warning you if certain thresholds are exceeded (e.g, too hot, too little hard drive space, too many errors, etc.). While it doesn’t take the place of regular preventive maintenance, it can give you advance warning of pending failures. And, that’s almost better than insurance!

So there you have it. My top-8 list of things that every SOHO computer should not be without. For people in larger offices with networks, the list changes somewhat, but the plan is the same: protect from external threats, monitor for infections, react when a threat is discovered, and watch for problems. In networked environments, you generally have to add one more step: protect from internal threats.

Tune in next week when I tackle the question “What needs to be done on a weekly basis?”

Welcome!

Will Murray — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:43:51 +0000

Welcome to AcanthusTech’s TechnoBlog!

Acanthus Technology Design (AcanthusTech) is very pleased to present this blog for your amusement, education, and enlightenment. At least, we hope that it will provide some or all of those for you.

This blog will focus primarily on computers, networking, the Internet, telecommunications, industry trends, and the issues facing the Information Technology culture. We plan to intersperse that with cool things we find around the Internet, a little humor, and probably a bit of sarcasm from time to time.

All opinions and information located under the “AcanthusTech.NET” domain and related sub-domains (including this blog), are the personal opinions and recommendations of the various content providers and/or authors. Acanthus Technology Design, its parent company (the Acorn IT Group), its staff, clients, and vendors do not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed herein. Additionally, all advice, suggestions, or other information provided strictly AS-IS and without ANY warranty whatsoever; you accept all risk for any consequences resulting from your experiences with any content hosted herein.

All articles, comments, and other content are copyright by the original authors. All authors hereby grant AcanthusTech the non-exclusive, perpetual, and irrevocable right to use the content in any manner and in any format that AcanthusTech may choose without limitation or compensation.

For all other terms and conditions, please visit our Policies page. Submission of any article, comment, or other content signifies acceptance and agreement to all applicable AcanthusTech Policies.

Thanks for stopping by, and future entries will be much more enjoyable than all this legal crud probably is (unless you are an attorney).

Allogro™

Failed test VerifyEnterpriseReferences / msDFSR-ComputerReferenceBL / FRS and DFS Replication Member Objects

See also

Things have moved

An easy way to keep plugins and themes updated in multiple WordPress installations

Introduction

Prerequisites

How my file system is structured

Creating the repositories

Repository directories

Best practices

Linking to the repositories

Preparing WordPress

Locate your repositories

Create the symlinks

Configure and test WordPress

Recap

Common problems and fixes

Redirect URLs generated by plug-ins to the correct subdirectory using .htaccess

Relative paths leading outside the plugins directory cause problems

Maintaining your repositories

Using this technique with ZenPhoto and other CMS systems

Additional resources

Comments and feedback

Vista Quick Launch icon locations change after restart

Background

In this article

Manually updating the Registry

Semi-automatically updating the Registry

Other resources

Adding Network Connections to Vista’s Start Menu

Adding Folders and Programs to the ‘Send To’ Context Menu in Windows Vista

CRITICAL – Buffer overflow in VML used by IE and Outlook

Summary

How to Protect Yourself

Unofficial Workaround

Unofficial Patches

Official Microsoft Workarounds

Un-register Vgx.dll

Modify the Access Control List on Vgx.dll to be more restrictive

Configure Internet Explorer 6 for Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 to disable Binary and Script Behaviors in the Internet and Local Intranet security zone.

Read e-mail messages in plain text format to help protect yourself from the HTML e-mail attack vector

Block VML Vulnerability Traffic with ISA Server

Secrets Often Stay on Cell Phones and PDAs

RAID – What is it and what are the differences?

Surge Protector vs. UPS

Windows Shortcuts Disappear

Make Disk Cleanup Faster

Alphabet Soup – Chat Acronymns

Outlook Express/Outlook Won’t Save Passwords

Re: Hidden partition vs. a real Windows CD

Preventive Maintenance Plans Are a Very Good Idea

New Site Launch

Exchange: OWA displays all mailboxes in a directory browsing format

Make Disk Cleanup Faster

Alphabet Soup – Chat Acronyms

Outlook Express/Outlook Won’t Save Passwords

Top-10 That I Miss

Heat and Hurricanes

Apple turns 500 Million

Harry Potter and the Half-Right Wikipedia

Maintaining Your PC – Part 1

All the Time

Welcome!