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LifeHacker - Best Free Apps for Windows Mobile

LifeHacker has just posted a nice list of free applications for Windows Mobile, like my Treo 700w. Don’t skip the discussion thread; there are lots of folks mentioning applications I hadn’t heard of.

http://lifehacker.com/5041023/the-best-free-apps-for-your-windows-mobile-device

PS. I love Windows Mobile, but I think it’s the worst phone I’ve ever used. I have about one bar — and you know how a “bar” is a standard measure — of reception when I leave Burlington. I had a meeting Saturday evening, and I forgot an important paper. My spouse tried to call me when she found it, but I couldn’t get a call through until I was in Winooski. Grrrr!

Posted 25 August 2008 † Geoff § Treo § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Viewing Deleted objects in Active Directory

Working through the AD preparation for an application install, and I’m logged into the emtpy root domain as a schema admin. Running the setup application, I get an error indicating that I don’t have rights to

    Organization Preparation         ……………………. FAILED
     You do not have permissions to read the security descriptor on CN=Deleted O
bjects,CN=Configuration,DC=ad,DC=uvm,DC=edu.

I need to confirm I can read the security descriptors for this object. Found a KB Article:

Viewing deleted objects in Active Directory

Before I dig deep with that, I also found this forum thread, suggesting that running the setup command in a console connection rather than RDP might help. I’m going to give that a try first.

Nice; that’s all it took. Onward and upward…

Posted 19 August 2008 † Geoff § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Office 2007 MIME Types

Here’s an MSDN blog post which enumerates the MIME types for Office Applications, and in particular the Office 2007 Open XML formats. These are needed for correct delivery of these files via a web server.

Took a little searching to find it, so I thought I’d share. :-)

http://blogs.msdn.com/vsofficedeveloper/pages/Office-2007-Open-XML-MIME-Types.aspx

Posted 19 August 2008 † Geoff § Admin § Office ‡ Comments (0) °

CLI configuration of network interfaces

I like GUIs, but I also like getting things done via the command line. I was hunting around to see if there was a way to change the MTU setting for my NICs without having to edit the registry, and I found that the netsh interfaces context exposes this attribute:

netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces
netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface “Local Area Connection” mtu=1500 store=persistent

I used this to change the MTU for my Wifi and Ethernet interfaces from 1300 — Cisco’s preferred setting from Win9x days — back to the Windows default. And now the performance problem I was having yesterday has been resolved. :-)

[ via http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winvista/t1158155937]

Posted 10 July 2008 † Geoff § Admin § Hacks § Networking § Tools § Vista ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , ,

VPN trouble in Waterman Café

I connected to Cat’s PAWS in the Waterman Café, and then ran the VPN client. I logged in and got connected. I received a GMail notification of an incoming message, and then started my mail client. Outlook couldn’t connect to imap.uvm.edu. I tried Thunderbird, which couldn’t connect either. Then I realized that none of my network apps were working.

I grabbed a screenshot of the VPN Status window, showing that I was connected. While I was saving that, I received notification from the VPN that my connection had been terminated. Grabbed a screenshot of that, too. Back to my office.

Forwarded the screenshots and the description above to Network Services. Maybe the logs will shed some light…

Posted 02 July 2008 † Geoff § Networking ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

File hash verification utility

Every now and then, I want to make sure that a file I’m downloading — especially from a mirror site — hasn’t been currupted in transit, or more likely poisoned with malware. I was downloading the ImgBurn utility from a mirror site today, and something made me think I should be careful.

The main site lists md5 and sha1 hashes, so I looked for a tool to calculate the hash of the file I had downloaded. I found the “File Checksum Integrity Verifier” tool — KB841290. It can derive md5, sha1, or both for one or more files.

I was surprised to find that the file I had downloaded from SpeedLabs mirror did not match:

//
// File Checksum Integrity Verifier version 2.05.
//
c4647eb75a2340af0f57a8bc3fb3d4e5a63f5172 setupimgburn_2.4.1.0.exe

I downloaded the file again from ImgBurn directly, and the hash matched. If I have a moment, I will try the mirror again, just in case it was a corrupt transfer. Maybe I’ll even run it in a VM, just to see what I get infected with.

Three cheers for geek intuition!

[UPDATE 2008-07-02] While skimming through Windows PowerShell Cookbook, I noted recipe 17.10, “Program: Get the MD5 or SHA1 Hash of a File.” Coolness!

Posted 19 June 2008 † Geoff § Admin § Hacks § Tools ‡ Comments (0) °

SP1 activation issue solved

Although we have not yet approved Vista SP1 for distribution via WSUS, I have worked with the beta and recently installed the release version via Windows Update. After the install, though, I was seeing errors when my system tried to renew its activations against our KMS.

When I ran slmgr -dli, it reported that my version of Vista was Enterprise Edition but also Retail Channel. I posted a message on the MS Vista installation and Setup forum, and a helpful Mr. Gorter suggested I change the product key, as documented in the Volume Activation 2.0 Deployment Guide.

I updated the product key and successfully activated against the KMS. I will be keeping an eye out for the next opportunity to install SP1 to check the product key before and after install.

Posted 28 April 2008 † Geoff § Admin § Vista ‡ Comments (0) °

Outlook 2003 and UVM IMAP

Today, I had a request for some help configuring Outlook 2003 to work with UVM’s IMAP services. Before I started using WordPress for my website, I had written an “unofficial guide” on this exact topic, which I have now pulled back online. I’m not going to rewrite the thing in WordPress, though, so readers will have to deal with bland static pages. Enjoy.

Please note: Microsoft Outlook is not among the recommended email clients supported by ETS. However, I use it regularly to access my UVM email (along with Pine and Thunderbird), and I offer the following instructions to help folks who really want to use Outlook 2003 here at UVM. —Geoff

Using Microsoft Outlook 2003 with UVM’s central email system

In reviewing the guide, I see that I went into a lot of detail about my usual customizations and settings, like adding a Purge button to the toolbar. Nice.

See also: Using Outlook 2007 at UVM

Posted 28 March 2008 † Geoff § Office ‡ Comments (0) °

Install IIS and relocate InetPub

I decided that I wanted to locate the IIS data directory on a different drive. After some searching, I found a couple KB articles that helped me get it done:

KB259671 - How to Change the Default Installation Paths for FTP and the Web

KB309506 - How To Perform an Unattended Installation of IIS 6.0

These helped me put together my unattended answer file:

[Components]
BITSServerExtensionsISAPI = OFF
BITSServerExtensionsManager = OFF
iis_common = ON
iis_doc = ON
iis_ftp = OFF
fp_extensions = OFF
iis_inetmgr = ON
iis_nntp = OFF
iis_smtp = OFF
iis_www = ON
TSWebClient = OFF

[InternetServer]
PathFTPRoot=D:\Inetpub\Ftproot
PathWWWRoot=D:\Inetpub\Wwwroot

KB222444 - How to add or remove Windows Components by using Sysocmgr.exe

Then I just ran 

sysocmgr /i:%windir%\inf\sysoc.inf /u:c:\install\iis.txt

per the instructions in 222444.

Worked like a champ.

Posted 08 February 2008 † Geoff § Admin § Hacks ‡ Comments (0) °

Clearing Offline Files Cache in Vista

There’s a rather arcane process to reset the offline files cache on a Windows XP system. However, the offline files caching engine was reworked in Windows Vista. After a few google searches, I located some useful blog entries that referenced a KB article and described a process involving setting a registry key and rebooting:

“add the FormatDatabase registry entry to the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Csc\Parameters
Then, set the FormatDatabase registry entry to 1.
The restart your computer”

I had to create the Parameters subkey. I created DWORD value and restarted the system without a network connection. Indeed, my local cache of my redirected My Documents folder was gone.

Another link:
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2006/12/12/moving-the-offline-files-cache-in-windows-vista.aspx

–Geoff

Posted 18 January 2008 † Geoff § Admin § Vista ‡ Comments (0) °