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On the 6th of August, I mentioned to people that there were going to be hidden messages in my Blogs. Various people have asked me for a clue. If you use your HEAD, this sentence has a clue.

The mickyj.com blog has come of age. It is now being linked in on other websites. Take a look at Partnerpoint

	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 12 January 2007 Trend Micro Scan mail real-time (SMEX) will not run. The Service will not start, the web interface will not update and the tool tells me the engine is old and need updating. This turned out to simply be a missing pattern file. I have seen the same issue with IMSS and Interscan. The services will not load and it does not tell you why (Not in a meaningful way anyway). The pattern file (20 MB) is simply missing. I copied the one over from IMSS and started the service fine. All fixed. I could not find this on the Trend Knowledge base so I had to blog here just for you :) I was asked today about XML Character encodings for RSS feeds. Here they are. &amp; = & (ampersand, U+0026) &lt; = < (left angle bracket, less-than sign, U+003C) &gt; = > (right angle bracket, greater-than sign, U+003E) &quot; = " (quotation mark, U+0022) &apos; = ' (apostrophe, U+0027)
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 11 January 2007 Bill Gates officially announces Home Server I did a survey on this idea about 12 months ago. It was an infant then, that we could not talk about, but now it is here. Check it out at these links. Press information Interview on 9 Stop Digital Amnesia Interview on 10 Download the word document Here
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 10 January 2007 Just how do I get into XP safe mode to remove this Trojan ? Another common question. The best way is as follows Restart your computer After hearing your computer beep once during startup, but before the Windows icon appears, tap the F8 key continually; (This is usually just after the BIOS specification screen has been shown or your manufacturers logo has vanished). Instead of Windows loading as normal, the Advanced Options Menu should appear; Select the first option, to run Windows in Safe Mode, then press Enter. Now logon and run your removal tool.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 9 January 2007 How to Show Hidden files per OS This is something I need to show people all the time: Windows 95 Open My Computer. Select the View menu and click Options. Select the View Tab. Select the Show all files Radio Button. Windows 98 Open My Computer. Select the View menu and click Folder Options. Select the View Tab. In the Hidden files section select Show all files. Windows ME Open My Computer. Select the Tools menu and click Folder Options. Select the View Tab. Under the Hidden files and folders heading select Show hidden files and folders. Uncheck the Hide protected operating system files (recommended) option. Click Yes to confirm. Click OK. Click Start, Programs and Accessories and open Windows Explorer. Select a hard drive from the left hand side of the Windows Explorer window. Select View the Entire contents of this drive Windows 2000 Open My Computer. Select the Tools menu and click Folder Options. Select the View Tab. Under the Hidden files and folders heading select Show hidden files and folders. Uncheck the Hide protected operating system files (recommended) option. Click Yes to confirm. Windows XP Click Start. Open My Computer. Select the Tools menu and click Folder Options. Select the View Tab. Under the Hidden files and folders heading select Show hidden files and folders. Uncheck the Hide protected operating system files (recommended) option. Click Yes to confirm. Click OK
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 8 January 2007 CEICW fails with Network error. The Network configuration stops with a red cross and you are prompted to press ok to finish the installation and configuration or Cancel to stop the wizard. Exchange does not receive email and the global recipient policy does not seem to work. When you telnet into port 25, it will not accept emails to he internet domain nor the local domain names. This error seems to have no precedence on the internet. No one seems to have reported this previously. Locating and opening "ICWLOG.TXT" shows the following errors Error 0x1 returned from call to RegisterMSBOExchangeBP(). Error 0x80070002 returned from call to Configuring the time service(). Error 0x80070002 returned from call to CNetCommit::Common(). Error 0x80070002 returned from call to CNetCommit::Commit(). Trying to start the Windows Time service gives us I see in the event log: Event Type: Error Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7023 Date: 8/01/2007 Time: 3:56:36 PM User: N/A Computer: server Description: The Windows Time service terminated with the following error: The system cannot find the file specified. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Some indications refer to reinstalling the operating system as Windows Time is a part of the core operating system. It is a part of SVChost with backup DLL files. This is not an option here and seemed a little extreme but no one has actually reported this exact error before. The event log helped me point further back in time in the logs. I found a Disk error where the system failed to copy from the CD due to a CRC error and then I found that the file w32time.dll did not copy from the CD during the install. I had to install a new copy of w32time.dll and re register it. The CEICW connection wizard now runs like a treat ! I had to blog this as no one seems to have reported this ever before.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 7 January 2007 Setup IP printer with SCO I recently had to hookup an IP printer (A copier) to a SCO box. It is the same process for Ricoh, Canon etc but this was a Toshiba. Setting up a Toshiba Estudio 165 for SCO UNIX turned out to be very simple. The whole queue creation process could be completed in 10 minutes. Especially if RLP and TCP/IP are already installed. Setting up the printer preferences for each additional user takes 2-3 minutes per person (for someone who is good with vi, the SCO text file editor). It appears to be a simple edit of the printers for that user in their ".profile" preference file. Remote printing with SCO 5 is done using RLP and TCP/IP. Both must be installed and running (Done) Create an entry in the /etc/hosts file or DNS pointing to the printer. "vi hosts" added "192.168.31.99 toshiba" in this case To Install RLP log in as root and at the command prompt type: mkdev rlp The remote printing configuration utility was already installed (saving me time in this case) run "rlpconf" which setup the printer. (This utility does not do exactly what we need it to do but it does take care of a lot of things that would take us a while to do manually) At the first prompt, enter the name you wanted the system to call the printer. "estudio-165" press at the next prompt tell the system it is a remote printer : r At the next prompt, enter the host name of the printer, Toshiba verify this information is correct, type y At this prompt select "no" we do not support Extended RLP type : n do not set the printer to be the system default, n The program finishes setting up the printer and goes back to the beginning of the setup to install a new printer, type : q (Quit). change directory into /etc/printcap edit the /etc/printcap file with vi. The /etc/printcap entry ends up looking like this after editing: "estudio-165:\ :lp=:rm=toshiba:rp=print:sd=/usr/spool/lpd/estudio-165" (print is the queue, toshiba is the machine and estudio-165 the UNIX queue spool) make sure the lpd is running (ps -e |grep lpd) to do a test print,"lp -d estudio-165 printcap". you can go into "scoadmin" and check that the new queue appears correctly. All done.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 6 January 2007 Dang Spyware I was online looking up information about small children and airline flights. I have a long flight coming up and was going to try and take my daughter. Whilst doing the research, I was reading some medical advice when I noticed the PC was downloading something and the website only half drew up. Then I noticed it. I had a firewall, antivirus and antispyware but here I was, infected by a Trojan. It disabled the Task manager, killed SVChost and changed my desktop image. An icon in the task bar appeared with a bubble popup warning me that I had Spyware and needed to download a tool to remove it. The desktop was suddenly linked to desktop.html and this created a black screen with a message in white telling you: Your system is infected with Spyware. Windows recommends you to use a Spyware removal tool to prevent loss of important data and increase system performance. Using this PC before having it cleaned from Spyware threats is highly discouraged. Periodically this displays fake warning messages in the Windows taskbar. Windows has detected Spyware infection! It is recommended to use special antispyware tools to prevent data loss. Windows will now download and install the most up-to-date antispyware for you. Click here to protect your computer from Spyware! Because SVChost stopped, I could no longer cut and paste and all my services stopped. I had no network connection any more and everything fell apart. I used Spybot to remove SmitFraud and Spysheiff and it was gone, except the desktop was still locked. I used some scripts from Kelly's Korner Very highly recommended to reset the desktop properties to default but I still could not change the desktop images. It was locked. The background image and Browse section of the display properties were locked. I then manually tired the registry changes: Run "Regedit". Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\policies If you see a folder (key) "ActiveDesktop" select it. If not, make a new key and label it "ActiveDesktop". If you see "NoChangingWallPaper", double-click the DWORD value and set it to "0". Otherwise, you need to create a new DWORD value of "NoChangingWallPaper" and set it to "0". Try changing your wallpaper. If this fix doesn't solve the problem, you may also need to make the above registry changes at location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies . It was still locked. I had to run Smitrem to fully remove all traces of the Malware before I could start changing the wallpaper again. after all that , Fixed !
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 5 January 2007 Broadband speed test If you are like me, you want what you pay for. With Internet, you will never get the speed you paid for due to all sorts of overheads. If you want to test out your Broadband and the Free Cnet tester does not seem to tell the truth, Try downloading a file from Sptel. Take note of your Transfer rate. That rate gives you an indication of your speed in KB per second. This is kilobytes. Multiply this by 1024 to get Bytes, then multiply that answer by 8 to get Bits. Now divide the answer by 1024 to get kb (kilobit). My connection gives me 56 KB/Sec. This is 448 kb/sec. I pay for a 512 link so this is not to bad with the line noise and other overheads. Some more explanations are available Here. Here is a quick table for you. Broadband Data-Transfer Rates Typical Service Level kilobits per second (kbps) Kilobytes per second (KB/sec) Estimated Ideal Throughput   "28.8K" Analog Modem 28.8-kbps 3.6-KB/sec 2.8-KB/sec   "33.6K" Analog Modem 33.6-kbps 4.2-KB/sec 3.3-KB/sec   "56K" Analog Modem 53.3-kbps 6.6-KB/sec 5.2-KB/sec   1-channel ISDN 56-kbps 7-KB/sec 5.4-KB/sec   1-channel ISDN 64-kbps 8-KB/sec 6.2-KB/sec   2-channel ISDN 115.2-kbps 14.4-KB/sec 11.2-KB/sec   2-channel ISDN / IDSL 128-kbps 16-KB/sec 12.5-KB/sec   Fractional T-1 256-kbps 32-KB/sec 25-KB/sec   384 S-DSL 384-kbps 48-KB/sec 37.5-KB/sec   Satellite 400-kbps 50-KB/sec 39-KB/sec   Fractional T-1 512-kbps 64-KB/sec 50-KB/sec   Cable / DSL 768-kbps 96-KB/sec 75-KB/sec   1-Mbps / Cable / DSL 1,000-kbps 125-KB/sec 98-KB/sec   T-1 / Cable / DSL 1,544-kbps 193-KB/sec 151-KB/sec In my case, ((56 KB transfer rate x 1024)bytes x 8) /1024 = 448 kbps
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 4 January 2007 Can not access RWW- IE error 500 Trying to access RWW, I colleague of mine was getting a companyweb error "500 - the network logon failed". I took a peek into the IIS tool and noticed that the View Certificate button on the Directory Security tab for the default website did not work. I reapplied the certificate created by the CEICW and it was all fixed. Interesting, rerunning the CEICW did not fix this. I would be curious to know if anyone else finds this issue.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 3 January 2007 Quick step, 2 step dance to get a MCE machine onto a domain. I don't and can't recommend this. This is a process being widely commented around as the small Banana Hack for MCE. It is a quick way to join an MCE device to a domain. Boot into Windows using a WinPE CD/DVD Start Registry Editor, click on HKEY_Local_Machine Click on File, Load Hive Select c:\Windows\System32\Config\System file Give it a name: MCE Browse to HKEY_Local_Machine\MCE\WPA\MedCtrUpg Change IsLegacyMCE to 1 (ONE) Browse to HKEY_Local_Machine\MCE Click File, Unload Hive Reboot the PC
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 2 January 2007 2007 Microsoft MVP awards issued ! The annual changing and renewing of the guard is over. We have two new MVP's in SBS land (world wide) allot of old faces and I am back ! For 4 Years in a row Microsoft have been gracious enough to hand me the award. Thanks to all that had faith in me. I am back !!!
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 1 January 2007 Happy New year! My 2007 gift to you (By way of Microsoft) - Installing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on a Server Running Windows Small Business Server 2003
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 26 December 2006 How To Recover an Accidentally Deleted NTFS or FAT32 Dynamic Volume Ever done this ? I have used Getbackdata and a few other tools to get what I need resurrected. There is a Microsoft solution. If you have not done anything else to the PC, You basically recreate the same partition, do not format it and run the tool called Dskprobe.exe. More information can be found Here
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 24 December 2006 Sick of popup blockers ? For those who know what they are doing and need to turn off a few blockers (google, MSN, Yahoo toolbars to name but a few) check out these links http://www.education.purdue.edu/edit/webstuff/popup_blocker/welcome.htm http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/prof_dev/PopUpBlockers.pdf
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 23 December 2006 I can sure pick em Yes, I love my tools page. It gets me out of trouble every time. I have anti virus, Spyware, Adware, Malware and Trojan killers all available at my demand. I was recently just updating it when I realized how much other people love my tools. It has a very high hit rate with the general visitor and now with larger companies whose only wishes are to acquire the smaller fish in the sea. I was surprised to see just how many of my tools have changed names and download sites. There is CWS shredder, Intermute, Ewido, Sysinternals, Wininternals and many more. I just hope the tools get better.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 22 December 2006 Can not download .exe files from IIS ? I have the need to setup an IIS webpage that simply allows browse access to some files. They are .exe files. I have configured it to use SSL (https) and a self signed certificate and configured Logon security. The logon works, the browse list works. Downloading .exe files. does not. This can happen if you run URLscan or if you upgraded to Windows Small Business Server 2003 from Small Business Server 2000, and the Internet Information Services (IIS) Lockdown Wizard and URLScan security tool are installed, then by default executable (.exe) files cannot be requested through the IIS default Web site. When you click an .exe file, you receive a "404 File Not Found" error. To resolve this problem, I could either remove the URLScan security tool from the IIS default Web site or modify the configuration of the tool to allow .exe files. (I do not have URLScan installed or an URLscan.ini file so I am still looking for a work around). An updated version of the URLScan security tool for Windows Small Business Server 2003 will be available on the Windows Small Business Server Web site
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 21 December 2006 Telstra's ADSL2+ has arrived !!! This is great for competition, ISP's who wholesale from Telstra and us, who love fast downloads. Don't expect it to be cheap (I have already seen my plan through Dodo internet). Whilst ADSL 2+ will only go into compatible exchanges and will only be for those that live close by, this is a positive step. Ahhhhhhh Broadband. The great equalizer.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 20 December 2006 Weird Creative Labs Sound card error I have a client with a SB X-Fi which is a really cool card. It has been working. We found an error with the Console and updated the drivers. Now the Consoles do not work at all, the SB test gives us audio but there are no windows sounds. After a reinstall of the drivers, there is no console or volume control support. In Control panel under the sound applet, it is all grayed out. Running the Creative Diagnostics produced : Windows Multimedia Tests Fail Wave out device: SB X-Fi Audio Wave and Midi. After playing with WMI and trying to install the Mixer, I still got "No audio device". I was poking through the Services applet for another issue when I found the Windows Audio service. It was disabled. Re enabling this fixed the issue. I have no idea why the errors could not have told me this was the problem or how the error occurred. this is something to watch out for :)
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 12 December 2006 Very Cool, reusable paper Toshiba announced re writable paper. As most items printed from Printers and photocopiers are transient and then recycled, it makes sense to incorporate re usable paper in these devices. The paper (actually thermo-sensitive sheet-plastic) currently requires a special printer which relies on a heat-sensitive pigment in the ink. If heated above 180 degrees centigrade it goes black, but if held at between 130C and 170C it turns white again. "The technology is not new," quoted from Mike Keane, who heads Toshiba TEC Europe's industrial printer group which is handling the re-writable printer here. But he said it is the first time that it has been applied in this form. "You can take a printed sheet out, put it straight back in and reprint on it - the printer erases before printing," he said. But he added, "It will never be for letters and so on. You have to be sure you can recycle the material." He said that in Japan, the plastic paper is already being used in closed-loop processes, such as pick-lists in a warehouse or build instructions on a production line, where a printed sheet is only needed for a short time and is then redundant, and where the printer's 300dpi resolution is adequate. Toshiba have said that, as well as the rewritable process reducing paper consumption and shredding, manufacturing and recycling the plastic sheets generates much less CO2 than manufacturing and recycling paper. Of course, copier paper is used for lots of purposes that don't need long-term permanence, as the recycling bin in any office will show. Erasable paper could be much better than an electronic book for things such as newspapers, too - it is lighter and easier to read, and it requires nothing more than ambient light. However, today's technology is clearly a long, long way from that goal. And this is not Toshiba's first re-usable print process. Three years ago it introduced an erasable toner called e-blue that can be used with ordinary paper in standard laser printers. Once a piece of printed paper is finished with, it can be erased and re-used up to five times. Looks like we have some new exciting technology coming along with Toshiba SED TV's and more.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 13 December 2006 Adnug presentation - Developing with SBS 2003 R2 Thank you to all that turned up to my event. The presentation was well received and I believe people honestly learnt something. It was great to meet with SQL MVP Rob for the first time. South Australia's fifth MVP !! Well done Rob. We also saw Info path and parts integrated with Visual Studio cutesy of Dave Glover (MSOFT). A good night was had by all.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 6 December 2006 Ever wanted to remove device drivers from Windows when the device is no longer present ? There is a registry key to edit to help with this or, try this... Click on Start -> Run Type CMD and click ok or hit enter In the command prompt, type the following: type SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1 hit enter type start devmgmt.msc hit enter again The Device Manager will open. Select View –> Show hidden devices Now you can see hidden and un connected devices. You can see the Microsoft instructions about the hidden or ghosted devices here The alternative method: [Start]-> [Run] Type in Regedit Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES Modify/Create the Value Name [DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES] according to the Value Data listed below. Value Data: [1 = Show Devices / 0 = Hide Devices] Exit Registry and Reboot Hidden Message: Superb Lyrebird (and Sir David Attenborough): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1LxBkQM578 Some explanation, so you don't think it's a fake: http://tinyurl.com/npnov
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 5 December 2006 Ok, so you can not open Outlook as you are missing the OST file after roaming your profile Open the mail icon in Control panel and remove the Exchange offline mode and reapply after finally getting Outlook to Open. Easy ! Ok, so now you can not enter control panel and have no Outlook icon to right click due to system polices ? Open the Active Directory and increase your permissions ! This is all to hard or you can not log into the server ? How can I easily get around this ? Make a new text file called outlook.ost and tell outlook to use it. Then outlook opens, and recreates the OST file. How cool !! Saves the hassle of unlocking the policies to get to the email profile !
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 4 December 2006 In my Exchange based mail system, Outlook 2003 has no delegates tab in tools/options. I also Can not share folders. Make sure your Default delivery location is into Exchange. Also, select Tools > Options > Other tab > Addin Manager and make sure there are checkboxes next to the 2 Exchange addins (One being delegates).
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 3 December 2006 What causes Error 0x8ddd0018 ??? This error "may" occur when the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is disabled. I have no idea why it would be, but I have seen this several times. In pre-XP Service Pack 2 installations this service is set to Automatic Start up type. On some networks, when Windows XP Service Pack 2 is installed, it appears that in some instances the service can be disabled and this can generate the Windows Update error code 0x8ddd0018 So what is BITS ? It Transfers files in the background using idle network bandwidth. If the service is stopped, features such as Windows Update, and MSN Explorer will be unable to automatically download programs and other information. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it may fail to transfer files if they do not have a fail safe mechanism to transfer files directly through IE in case BITS has been disabled. To try and resolve the Windows Update error code 0x8ddd0018, make sure that BITS and the Automatic Updates service are started and set to Automatic.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 2 December 2006 SBS 2003 R2 Error message in ISA Server 2004: "MMC encountered an error with the snap-in...." when you are configuring properties of objects. This is a know error and fixed with a simple hotfix. Refer Microsoft.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 1 December 2006 Cheers to an unsung hero To Mr David Thor Johnson of the ADV Technical Support Engineering team in the Backup Exec team at the Symantec Corporation, Cheers!. you are an absolute legend. I have a client with Veritas 8, we upgraded to 9 and then 10d. Then 10d failed. David spend many hours on the phone with me, over VOIP from the USA to Australia. He called me when he said he would. He made time, even as his timezone was about to go to sleep. He did a deep dive with me into the file system and the system registry. Into keys I never knew existed. He knows his stuff. I can only pray, if I ever have a problem with Backup exec, this guy is on my team !!! Note to Symantec, you finally have one great technical staff member !!! (Don't take offence) feel free to send me his support survey because he is getting top marks. Now some tips for the wary, Don't ever let the Backup Exec Trial expire!, Always place your Backup unit on SCSI ID 2 or higher !
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 30 November 2006 An oldie but a goodie If you have just created a user on your exchange server, you need to send the mailbox an email and check it with OWA or Outlook. he mailbox does not exist until something is in it ! (I just though this was worth mentioning even though it should now be a widely understood fact).
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 29 November 2006 Server support - HP Wow, I had a server fail from HP. Unbelievable. Looks like the back plane went. I love their 4 hr response warranty. The client was up and running with a new part within the day. Well done HP Adelaide !
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 28 November 2006 Microsoft Ready Summit It was great to meet some of my readers at this event. It was also great to catch up with a few Microsoft Managers and presenters. Thanks for chatting and I hope I answered all your questions. To those lucky few who got a copy of the SBS pro book, read it thoroughly and pass the book on ! Thanks
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 12 November 2006 Adventures in MCE 2005. I thought it was about time I built an MCE machine. I knew about them but I had not built one so I could not really say I knew it well. I downloaded MCE 2005 from MSDN (2 disks). This is where my fun started. I installed a fresh copy of MCE (Looks like a themed XP home) and then started accumulating all the items I needed to make it work. (During this install, it asked for the Windows XP professional disk. It really wanted disk 2). I put it on a Celeron 2.6, 512 MB ram, onboard sound, onboard 64 MB Intel video and a USB DVT-Nano from Dvico. I later bought a $40 pair of Logitech speakers and Dlink 54g WiFi PCI card from local electronics firm Dick Smiths. I was using an 80 Gb hard drive (Which I filled in 3 days so I will get a bigger drive next time). I also had a single layer DVD burner spare. I updated all drivers, firmware etc. Then I discovered the rollercoaster of software I needed to make this work (200 MB). Thanks goes out to the community for the hints and tricks. there is so much info out there, and I needed allot of it. WinDVD 6.0 (Check in for the orange screen fix) for DVD decoding Dotnetfx.exe> (Specifically 1.1 and later - Service Pack 1) MCE 2005 update / rollup 2 NDP1.1sp1-KB867460-X86.exe WindowsXPMediaCenter2005-KB900325-usa.exe WindowsXPMediaCenter2005-KB919803-ENU.exe And to give me that edge I installed wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe I did not need Direct X 9. It was already installed. After installing all of this, I started MCE. The first issues was "Your Video Card Or Drivers Are Not Compatible". From here, MCE opened but looked fairly bad. Items did not scroll, everything was jerky. It was not a pleasant experience. Whilst I had installed my Dvico Fusion HDTV - Nano MCE plug ins, it would not work and I could not play back video. This was a waste of time. I read the articles on the internet and found a work around but all it did was hide the error. Things still did not work. I increased the ram dedicated to video, no difference. I tried many suggestions. Post 1 Post 2 Post 3 Then I gave up an downloaded "MCE_Approved_Components_for_MOSB.xls" and referred This site. I had come to the conclusion, I needed a better video card. Tony to the rescue. Tony from Work had a spare 256 MB ATI Radeon card. I plugged this in and everything changed. The images were crisp, everything scrolled and video worked. It increased my experience 200%. Even on a projector, this rocked. I ordered my Microsoft MCE 2005 keyboard, my MCE remote and IR sensor. I installed the latest service packs to get the ehome controllers to work. Suddenly I have the MCE I always wanted. I loaded up songs, photos and video. I played until it was dawn the following day. Suddenly my MCE had come alive and I wanted more. I started playing with plug ins. I made the machine more like a traditional DVD player (and installed Tetris - LoL). Then I wanted more games. I installed a mame emulator, the Weather, a MCE browser, plugins for my iRiver H10, New tickers and more. Media Center tools link 1 Media Center tools link 2 Media Center tools link 3 Media Center tools link 4 I installed Yougle 0.6.2, TweakMCE, MCEWeather and various youtube viewers. Then I found my DVD's were coming out orange on playback. This was a problem with Windvd6. This problem was easily fixed by using Regedit. At key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\MCE\VideoDec\Dxva I changed the registry key from a 1 to 0 . That fixed the color problem. Now I wanted to play with the channels and EPG. Ok, here is an issue. Each time I tested and played, I ended up with the channels accumulating. Each previous detect I did, added to the new channels that I found. I ended up with repeated channels numbering 300. This is not a good idea and a warning to other newbie's. I found very little information for the EPG here in South Australia (Adelaide). SA has a different time zone and the other states are discussed more online. Even South Africa has it's own EPG problems and online groups forming. Whilst the legalities of the copyrighted material in EPG are of concern, I wanted to test it out and get the real flavor of MCE. When you seek channels, it becomes obvious that the letter D means digital, the first number is the equivalent to the Analogue broadcast number and the following digits are the minor numbers and frequencies allocated to the various channels. e.g. Channel D10 is channel 10. Channel D15 is the fifth frequency allocation of D10, which is Ten digital 3. As EPG does not work in Australia or South Africa. There are some paid for options out there but I was only testing this. The south Africans recommend the QuickGuide tool. sa-mce.com has this tool after a free account is created. I ran through the groups and everyone recommended Epg runner. I spent days looking for this and could not find it. Eventually I became a member of www.xpmediacentre.com.au/ and started to read their forums. On their recommendation: I downloaded BladeRunnerPro35 (A plug in runner or grabber). I ran this and got a xmltv.xml error. Doh ! I forgot to actually get a guide somewhere. I downloaded OzTivoExtreme, installed this to the C:\windows\ehome\bladerunner folder and set up an account with TWiki . I then followed the instructions at TVguide . I set my preferences at TvGuide for 31 - Adl, ABC-SA, Nine-SA, SBS-SA, Seven-SA and Ten-SA. The first 5 times I tried this I made the mistake of choosing ABC2 as well. This seems to be corrupt. It then threw out the whole guide. As mentioned in the online setup link I provided, use 0000 as your area code (This assumes you have already setup your TV signal and told it you are in Australia). I did find after this process, my tuner data was scrambled. When you finish the guide setup and it does a signal search (Do not skip this step) it seems to take allot longer and sometimes finds no signals. I am unsure why this happens but I persevered and now I have a working epg I can update fortnightly. I have now hidden the "bad" channels (Duplicates) and assigned guides to channels. I did find the guide for C31 (Local community TV station in Adelaide 31-ADL) but could not receive it on my amplified rabbits ears. I was able to seek services in SA and found the following channels. No Channel Number Frequency Guide Download (ozTiVo) 1 SBS - EPG (Guide) D31 564 N/A 2 SBS - SA 564 SBS-SA 3 SBS - SA HD D30 177 ? 4 SBS - 1 D3 564 SBS-SA 5 SBS - 2 D33 564 SBS-SA 6 SBS - Radio 1 D38 564 N/A 7 SBS - Radio 2 D39 564 N/A 8 ABC - SA D2 226 ABC-SA 9 ABC - HDTV D20 226 ABC-SA 10 ABC - TV Adelaide D22 226 ABC-SA 11 ABC2 D21 276 (Do not download) 12 ABC - Dig Radio D200 226 N/A 13 ABC - Dig Jazz D201 226 N/A 14 7 - guide D77 177 N/A 15 7 - Digital D7 177 Seven - SA 16 Seven SA D? 177 Seven - SA 17 7 HD- Digital D0 177 ? 18 7 - Digital 1 D71 177 Seven - SA 19 7 - Digital 2 D72 177 Seven - SA 20 7 - Digital 3 D73 177 Seven - SA 21 nine - Digital D9 191 Nine - SA 22 nine HD D90 191 Nine - SA 23 Ten HD D12 219 Ten - SA 24 Ten Guide D100 219 N/A 25 Ten digital 1 D13 219 Ten - SA 26 Ten digital 2 D14 219 Ten - SA 27 Ten digital 3 D15 219 Ten - SA 28 Ten Digital D1 219 Ten - SA Now I am off to do the "Banana" bend in MCE so it can join my domain.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 9 November 2006 Vista is coming, ready or not Vista was Released to Manufacturing on Wednesday the 8th of November (US); so hang on it is going to be a wild ride. The little silver disks are being made as I speak, boxes being formed and manuals being printed. It is on track to be available for it's published release date. Now, I will settle back to my Vista RC2 machine with Office Beta 2007 and try and learn it before you all ask me questions !
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 8 November 2006 IE7 auto updates Be careful on servers ! IE7 is listed as one of the optional updates. Whilst IE7 appears stable and I highly recommend it, it might break things and the server is the last place I would put it.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 4 November 2006 Can not add SharePoint to Network places Adding SharePoint "Companyweb" to your company places is the easiest way to do a mass import of documents or images. So what do you do when it does not work ? (Network places - add network place - type in http://companyweb and then are told you can't do this). You need the Webfolder update. You can download Webfldrs-KB892211-ENU.exe from Microsoft. After you install this, all will be well with your Network places again.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 2 November 2006 Connectcomputer wizard in SBS 2003 fails. I have just completed a network migration where the http://servername/connect computer wizard starts, asks you your details, who is to use the machine etc right up until the next step and then presents you with "an error occurred during network configuration". that is the end of the wizard. I tried to search groups.google.com and the internet for an answer. It took two days to solve. I tried everything from manually trying to join the domain (produced an error: Access denied) to fault finding DNS. I tried connecting via IP and FQDN and got the right errors as per Microsoft Articles but still got nowhere. We tried running NewSid from Sysinternals (As I thought it might be a machine account issue) and tried dumping the workstation back to various names and workgroups. Still no go. The DHCP lease was fine, the networking looked ok. Just some background info, the new domain, had the same name as the old domain. I suspect the computers gained a Sid and account with the old server, the Sid remained in the registry after they were disjoined but the start if the Sid, dictated by the server, did not match the new server so it denied access to the server. Due to this, I tried "Ipconfig /flushdns" and cleared some manual entries from the hosts file. I then went and tried to do all kinds of things to the SID. After days of searching, I found someone with a similar fault and would you believe it, I am now fixed. It took so long to find the solution that I thought I would link to it from here. Firstly, Other peoples ideas The following needs to be done with each client machine (for my specific issue): 1. Unjoin the domain into a WORKGROUP with three character name (abc) 2. Change the name of the computer to a three character name (def) 3. Delete or rename the following directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Small Business Server\Clients 4. Add each client again with it's NEW name via the Add Client Computer Wizard 5. Uninstall any virus applications. 6. Run "GPEDIT.MSC" and navigate to Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options. 7. Enable the two options reading "Microsoft Network Client: Digitally sign communications (if server agrees)" and "Microsoft Network Client: Send unencrypted password to third party SMB servers" if not already enabled. 8. Run "MSCONFIG" and select the "Services" tab. Check the box that reads "Hide All Microsoft Services" and disable what is left. Reboot the system. 9.Set the IP configuration to static (if using DHCP). 10. Successfully join the new domain ensuring to use the username format "Domain\administrator" (eg microsoft\administrator) for the authority permitting the joining of the domain. 11. Once I was on the domain, I then removed it again and then connected again using the connectcomputer wizard (so that all the other great SBS things work) and all is good. 12. reset your IP config to DHCP and re-enable the services. You will see from the final solution discussion , not many people have reported this issue.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 30 October 2006 What rot ? Today was an interesting day. I had a server RAID card fail, lost drives and had to rebuild a Raid 5 with a downed member. So what was the highlight of the day ? Something I never thought I would see. CDR Rot. I had put a disk supplied by a client into their machine. It spun and spun and spun. I could not access it. I took it out and inspected it further. It had little pinpoints of rainbows. CD rot. This is the first time I have actually seen this. It would be cool if it were not so destructive.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 23 October 2006 Dang missed the SBS Users group meeting in Adelaide Sorry guys, I attended, talked about the new book, and ran. My daughter decided today to eat a series of Toshiba Tecra laptop screws from a unit I was working on. The X-Ray looked very cool. She will be fine thank goodness. For those interested, the book, is called Pro Windows Small Business Server 2003. You can read more about it at the publishers website The Australian Distributor is Woodslane in Australia (In S.A. this means buying it from Borders or Dymocks) for $70 If you have people elsewhere who you recommend the book to, they can look it up in Google to find a local book sales outlet. You can download a sample chapter (Ch. 06 - Windows SharePoint Services) Enjoy !
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 22 October 2006 Jota is over for 2006 :) Yes, another year has passed in the Jota Scout calendar. This year was big as we moved from desktops to laptops. Next year we should have VOIP and Broadband !. The army this year was a nice touch. Thanks to Sam and Tony for helping. Thanks to Copyworld for the laptops and Chariot for the internet.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 21 October 2006 The premiere of Dryzone, Never say wet again ! Yes the movie I am the executive producer for has made it to the Cinema. We had 176 people and I had to give a speech ! (Thank goodness I am now used to this kind of thing). My wife kindly reminds me, I am now in Books, Magazines, Radio interviews, TV interviews, Film producing, Websites, DVD credits, Newspaper articles, Webcasts, blogs, Microsoft articles and do presentations. She thinks it is time to chuck it in and pay attention to something new. Her :)
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 16 October 2006 Windows XP issues warnings during synchronization of offline files, even though these file types have been excluded? Don't you just hate the list of PST and MDB files that will not synchronize ? You can exclude them with group policy. What if this does not work ? Here is your answer Desc: When you use group policy to assign offline files and exclude certain file extensions, your Windows XP clients receive: Warnings occurred while Windows was synchronizing your data. Results: Offline files. Unable to make file name available offline. Files of this type cannot be made available offline. NOTE: Synchronization completes normally. The only way to disable these annoying warnings: Copy / Paste the following to a KeepProgressLevel.reg file: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Syncmgr] "KeepProgressLevel"=dword:00000001 Merge the KeepProgressLevel.reg file with your registry. NOTE: The KeepProgressLevel Value Name can have the following data values: 1 - Pause on errors. 2 - Pause on warnings. 3 - Pause on errors and warnings. 4 - Pause and display INFO.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 15 October 2006 Unhide devices in device manager Hidden devices can be a problem. Especially ghosted Network cards. I have blogged about this previously. To unhide these items do the following in the registry (Normal warnings apply when editing the registry) Edit Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment Add a value - String Value (REG_SZ) Value Name: DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES Modify/Create the Value Name [DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES] according to the Value Data listed below. Value Data: [1 = Show Devices / 0 = Hide Devices] Exit Registry and Reboot This entry is dedicated to Roger who on a weekend, right now, is onsite struggling with a downed server. good luck mate.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 14 October 2006 Somebody has filmed a presentation I did about various projects and posted it on the internet. Check out: video.yahoo.com or video.google.com
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 13 October 2006 Now this is cool but freaky I have an older Pentium 4 1.8 ghz at home. It has a strange problem with the USB2 add on for Windows XP. When I install SP2, it dies a cruel death. I need the system up and running as I have installed so much to it, it is crucial. I tried a recovery using the CD, it locks up. My only choice was to find a way to remove SP2. There is a way using the recovery console. It is cool but freaky to watch. Errors fly past as it uninstalls but believe it or not, after a reboot, my system is back. Refer http://support.microsoft.com/KB/875350 Ok, so you can not get into Add/Remove, Can't boot ? Try this: 1. Insert the Windows XP CD in the CD drive, and then restart your computer. Note When you receive the following message, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD: Press any key to boot from CD Note Your computer BIOS must be configured to boot from the CD drive. 2. When you receive the Welcome to Setup message, press R to start the Recovery Console. Note Multiple options will appear on the screen. 3. Select the Windows XP installation in question. Note You must select a number before you press ENTER, or the computer will restart. Typically, only the 1: C:\Windows selection is available. 4. Type in the local administrator password. (Note You will not be able to continue if you do not have the administrator password.) 5. At the command prompt, type cd $ntservicepackuninstall$\spuninst, and then press ENTER. Note After you complete this step, you cannot stop the removal process (Here is where it gets freaky). 6. At the command prompt, type batch spuninst.txt, and then press ENTER. Note The Spuninstal.txt file appears. As the file scrolls down, you will see errors and files being copied. This is normal. 7. After Windows XP SP2 is removed, type exit, and then press ENTER. 8. Restart your computer in Safe Mode. Note After you restart, the system may lock up with a black screen. (Your mouse will work.) In this case, restart again by turning the computer off and then back on. The second restart will let you to log on. 9. When your computer restarts, Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) does not run, and the Windows icons and the Start button are unavailable. a. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to start Task Manager. b. Click File, and then click New Task (Run...). c. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK. d. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet \Services\RpcSs e. On the right side of the viewing pane, right-click ObjectName, click Modify, type LocalSystem in the Value data box, and then click OK. f. Restart your computer 10. Now you can boot up and use Add/Remove to remove SP2 (Or buy a new PC). Ok, so how do you add the recovery console to the boot menu without having to use the CD each time ? 1. When in Windows, insert the Windows CD into the CD-ROM drive. 2. Run d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons where d is the drive letter for the CD-ROM drive. 3. Finish the install and you are done. For more details take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 12 October 2006 Die Norton's, Die. Ok, you have Norton antivirus and it will just not uninstall ? Symantec to the rescue. Use this Norton Removal Tool
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 11 October 2006 Everyone has OWA but the administrator! Now here are some very useful tips. Log On Using the Full URL to the Mailbox Using http://mail.xyz.com.au/exchange, users do not need to know the full URL to their mailbox to log on. Users logon and when prompted by the browser, enter their user name and password. Exchange uses the user name and password information to look up the full URL to the user's mailbox in Active Directory. Exchange then routes the user to the correct mailbox. When troubleshooting, always use the full URL to the mailbox, such as http://xyz/exchange/. When you use this full URL, Exchange does not perform the Active Directory lookup necessary with the shorter URL. If Logging On Using the Full URL Fixes the Problem If you can access the mailbox using the full URL, but cannot access the mailbox by logging on with the shorter URL, the access problem is likely related to authentication. In my case, I needed to edit the domain used in basic authentication in the Exchange Virtual Directory in IIS. More information is available at the TechNet site
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 10 October 2006 Hatred between kins. Ok, I have two SQL servers and they need to talk (Replicate). These two servers are connected via a DSL WAN and .... are both on SBS. SBS cannot form trusts etc so how can I make these two databases replicate ? Microsoft think of everything. Take a look at HOW TO: Replicate Between Computers Running SQL Server in Non-Trusted Domains or Across the Internet
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 9 October 2006 Unknown Exchange Activesync error Ok, you have a PDA running PocketPC or Smartphone. You are impressed SBS 2003 and Exchange with Activesync can synchronize over GPRS etc without to much effort but what do you do if you get an error and can't see what it means ? Here is the coolest list of errors and meanings I have seen in ages. Take a look at the Pocket PC FAQ (Activesync errors). If you are using Telstra and need to reboot your PDA and loose all your settings, here is the best site for setting up Telstra for GPRS/WAP/Internet/MMS Here are some examples: WAP over CSD Bearer configuration Type: CSD User name: Password: Phone number: +61418707649 IP address: automatic DNS address: automatic Connection type: ISDN Authentication: Plain text WAP configuration Homepage: http://wap.telstra.com/wap Proxy IP Address: 10.1.1.150 Proxy Port: 9203 User name: Password: Internet over CSD It appears that the underlying IP connection used for WAP over CSD is connected to the Internet and thus Telstra are effectively being an ISP for GSM customers. The service settings are the same as the WAP over CSD bearer, however a DNS server needs to be manually assigned. I use the Telstra DNS server 139.130.4.4. Bearer configuration Type: CSD User name: Password: Phone number: +61418707649 IP address: automatic DNS address: 139.130.4.4 Connection type: ISDN Authentication: Plain text WAP over GPRS Not available on Telstra prepaid services. Bearer configuration Type: GPRS User name: Password: Access point: telstra.wap.mnc001.mcc505.gprs IP address: automatic DNS address: automatic Authentication: normal WAP configuration Homepage: Proxy IP Address: 10.1.1.150 Proxy Port: 9203 User name: Password: Internet over GPRS Not available on Telstra prepaid services. Bearer configuration Type: GPRS User name : Password : Access point: Telstra.mms.mnc001.mcc505.gprs IP address : automatic DNS address : automatic Authentication : Normal MMS over GPRS Bearer configuration Type: GPRS User name: Password: Access point: Telstra.mms.mnc001.mcc505.gprs IP address : automatic DNS address: automatic Authentication : Normal WAP configuration Proxy IP Address: 10.1.1.155 Proxy Port: 9201 User name: Password: MMS configuration Service centre address: mmsc.telstra.com:8002 Hidden Message: After a laugh? http://www.mcltech.ca/images/Letterman.Gates.wmv
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 8 October 2006 Unexpected server reboots We had a server that would flash up a blue screen randomly and then the server would reboot. The main problem with this was that there were no logs in the event log and it was totally random. We then found that there was no Dump file on the operating system drive. We had nothing to work from. As this was a HP server, we booted from the SmartStart CD and ran the diagnostics. It found issues with the network. We also noted an issue with the switch. It felt like the network card in the servers was being overworked or suffering from a denial of service attack. We put in new Intel server network cards and replaced the switch. The issue still occurred, just less often. HP gave the server hardware a clean bill of health so now it was back to the software. We moved the paging file back to C: (you need 200 MB minimum on C: for a dump file to be created). We service packed the server as instructed by HP and upgraded firmware. We also found the STOP code. (STOP 0x000000D1) Hp suggested "STOP 0x000000D1" error message when Windows Server 2003 is under a heavy network load "STOP: 0x000000D1" error occurs after Windows Server 2003 stops unexpectedly You receive a "STOP 0x000000D1" error message in Windows Server 2003 or in Windows 2000 Server On further advice we also checked the motherboard for bad capacitors (A suggestion from the news group) We had recently added a new UPS and secondary redundant power supply (These were removed) We also tried disabling Trend Micro services (We had recently upgraded scanmail) and some other services. We finally, pulled the error apart and discovered it occurred with an Item on IRQ2 which also cascades to IRQ9, during a read attempt. this can happen if the hardware assigns an IP to a card but the software does not know this and can assign another IRQ during boot. We pulled out all PCI cards and checked the Edge connectors. (The Microsoft Knowledge base contains articles for finding this info from the error of form Stop: 0x000000D1 (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4)) We reset the settings to create a mini dump and not reboot after a stop error. We found the mini dump file. To reconfigure Dump settings, look here, to read a dump file, download the reader here. I had some wonderful help from Susan Bradley, Andy goodman, David B. Nickason, Jeff Loucks, Henry Craven, Marina Roos, Merv Porter and many more (The list goes on and on, The SBS - MVP's are a very helpful bunch of friends). From the Mini dump we then found the fault. A file called "CSTDI50.sys". This was a network diagnostics tool form Colasoft. We removed this and everything is now working fine again. Thanks to all those that helped.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 7 October 2006 More Horrible Support We have a client with an unnamed law product. It will not update. It refuses to see the internet. The support team at the company did not help us at all. We had to research the issue by relating it to other products and all sorts of tests and firewall logs. The fault with this product update is very similar to the Windows Update feature in SBS 2004 under SBS 2003. It needs some special rules. This issue caught me so off guard I thought I would blog about it as you might find a need to use this Intel elsewhere. To get the product to work we needed to get Secure Nat to function with anonymous user under ISA 2000. The process involved creating a client address set by IP address and allow access to the program. The client settings allow xxxxx.exe through on port 80. The client settings have a cache bypass in for *.product.com.au Under network configuration/routing, a destination set and rule was created to not cache the site. The root server HTTP redirector filter was enabled, I turned off authentication. We removed local workstation proxy settings and the ISA client. We checked local PC gateway and dns From here everything worked. As this is not even close to the support teams instructions we have come to the conclusion they do not know Microsoft ISA. If you have a similar issue and need a non caching secureNat configuration, you now have a blog of what we did to make this happen.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 6 October 2006 Canon Support We just had a horrible experience with a clients support company for their photocopier. The unit was not scanning files to the SBS 2003 server. We all know about the SMB signing etc that needs to be played with but this was not the only issue here. The Copier company simply said the Digital Signing was messing things up but would not explain how or why. They offered no further help. As it turns out, We had to turn on NetBIOS over TCP/Ip and allow Lanman 2 broadcasts on the network card driver. This was nothing like the suggestions from Canon. This was even though we informed Canon that a Ricoh was working fine with scan to file. So in future, if you can not scan to file, try looking at NetBIOS etc. This is after the SMB signaling solution has been used. If you are not familiar with the SMB fix: 1. From Administrative Tools open Domain Controller Security Policy 2. Select \Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options folder. 3. In the details pane, double-click Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always), and then click Disabled to prevent SMB packet signing from being required. 4. Click OK. 5. In the details pane, double-click Microsoft network Client: Digitally sign communications (always), and then click Disabled to prevent SMB packet signing from being required. 6. Click OK.
	Send feedback about this particular blog Read Feedback from others 5 October 2006 Trojan Malware takes a bite out of BlackBerry Security researcher, Jesse D'Aguanno, has developed what he bills as the first Trojan horse Malware for Research in Motion's (RIM's) BlackBerry email device. Are the Microsoft Pocket Pc's and Smartphones being the only items targeted ... no ! As anything gets more use and more popular, people spend their careers trying to break them. It only takes time. Someone could even attack Palm (goodness knows why). Take a look here. Hidden Message: After a laugh? http://www.mcltech.ca/images/Letterman.Gates.wmv

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