tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75035260146839668902024-03-06T14:04:09.253-05:00David's BlogThoughts, opinions, and experiences in my journey to learn.DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-63092798172181531052017-05-20T18:41:00.000-04:002017-05-20T18:41:21.990-04:00Detecting Machines Vulnerable to Eternal Blue (WannaCry)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May 20, 2017</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Background</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the recent WannaCry Ransomware scare, we needed a reliable way to scan our customer's networks to show which Windows machines are still vulnerable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you may know, the WannaCry Ransomware spreads by taking advantage of a stolen/leaked NSA cyber-weapon known as Eternal Blue. EternalBlue takes advantage of a flaw in the Windows implementation of SMBv1. We’ve already had reports that other variants of WannaCry are appearing, and they too are taking advantage of the Eternal Blue SMB vulnerability. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the notable variants is called BlueDoom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First of all, I cannot take credit for the concept of this scanning method, nor the Nmap script used to perform this vulnerability scan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This article was helpful to me:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.secarma.co.uk/wannacry-worlds-first-global-ransomware-attack/">https://www.secarma.co.uk/wannacry-worlds-first-global-ransomware-attack/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After trying multiple types of Nmap scripts, I can say this was one that actually worked:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cldrn/nmap-nse-scripts/master/scripts/smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse">https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cldrn/nmap-nse-scripts/master/scripts/smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Using this method, we found a variety of vulnerable machines including Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2012 R2. The most interesting device we found was an X-Ray Film printer that uses Microsoft Windows 2000 as its operating system. Before the scan, we had no idea the printer ran on any Windows OS.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>How to Scan</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Download the latest version of Nmap here (We like ZenMap):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://nmap.org/zenmap/">https://nmap.org/zenmap/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given the connection limit of Windows workstation operating systems, we recommend that you do your scans from a Windows Server OS.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Save the Nmap script found here:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cldrn/nmap-nse-scripts/master/scripts/smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse">https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cldrn/nmap-nse-scripts/master/scripts/smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse</a></span><br />
<div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To a text file named: </span><b>smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then copy the </span><b>smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> file to this folder: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>C:\Program Files (x86)\Nmap\scripts</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Execute your Nmap scans from a CMD prompt.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Example of scanning a single Host IP and seeing the results on the screen:</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nmap -p 445 -script=./smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse 192.168.10.14</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Example of scanning an entire subnet and piping the results to a text file:</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nmap -p 445 -script=./smb-vuln-ms17-010.nse 192.168.10.1-255 >>c:\temp\wannacry.txt</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We recommend using Notepad++ to view the file, but whichever text editor you use, search for the word "Vulnerable" to see if the scan discovered any vulnerable machines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-3784360845343505582015-10-18T17:18:00.000-04:002015-10-18T21:02:55.350-04:00Controlling Services when using Veeam Pre and Post Scripts<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Housekeeping note: Yesterday I posted a similar article, but after learning the behavior of Pre-Freeze scripts, had to rewrite the article. The previous article has been deleted. </span><b><br /></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Background</b><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We had a
particular Veeam Backup & Replication Job that began taking an
inordinately long time to complete and during the job the guest VM's CPU
usage would skyrocket. Upon closer inspection we found that the actual
backup time wasn't that long, it was in deleting the snapshot that was
the problem. As you may know if you use Veeam, when a job begins, Veeam
will instruct the VMware Host to perform a snapshot of the virtual
machine. When the Veeam backup completes, it then instructs the VMware
Host to delete the snapshot. It was the process of deleting the
snapshot that was taking so long (or to be more precise committing all
of the changes since the snapshot was first taken).<br /><br />The problematic virtual machine in this case is Windows Server 2012 running an application called <a href="http://www.eventsentry.com/" target="_blank">EventSentry </a>which
uses a Postgres SQL Database. This issue could theoretically occur
with any application running on a virtual machine that does a lot of
Disk I/O during a process that creates a VMware snapshot. Simply put,
the more disk changes that occur while the snapshot is in place, the
longer it will take to delete the snapshot (commit the changes).<br /><br />After
some experimenting we found that if you would first stop the
EventSentry Database service (which stops the Postgres SQL database),
then the Veeam Backup jobs would complete much more quickly and the CPU
on the guest VM being backed up remained stable. In fact, jobs that
would take 2.5 Hours to complete before, would only take less than an
hour with the application's database stopped. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Possible Solutions</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">OK.
So this should be simple. Just figure out a way to stop the
EventSentry Database Service before the Veeam job starts, and then
restart the service once the job completes. Well, in my case it was not
quite so simple to figure out, which is why I'm writing this Blog post
about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Veeam offers a means to run scripts before and after
for either the entire Job or for a specific host within the job. </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The scripts you run before and after a job are referred to as Pre-Job and Post-Job Scripts. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The scripts you run for a specific guest VM are referred to as Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw scripts.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's
actually VMware Tools that provides the Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw scripts function.
Veeam just copies the scripts you choose to run on the virtual guest host
then uses the function within the VMware Tools installed on that guest VM to actually run them. <br /><br />So, we created a simple script that contained the command <span style="color: blue;">NET STOP "EventSentry Database"</span>
and configured that to be the Pre-Freeze script. But when the Veeam
job would run we would get an error in Veeam that said "Exit Code: 5".
Not very helpful.<br /><br />Veeam offers great documentation on how to use these Pre-Freeze scripts but no help at all for troubleshooting:<br /><a href="http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/hyperv/backup_job_vss_scripts_hv.html">http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/hyperv/backup_job_vss_scripts_hv.html</a><br /><br />From
the beginning we suspected it was some type of permissions issue. We
assumed however that VMware Tools was executing the scripts using the
local System account. Turns out, it executes the scripts using the same
credentials you provided the Veeam Backup job to do the "Guest
Processing". Makes sense once you know this.<br /><br />From the
problematic virtual machine, if we opened a Command Prompt (not as
Administrator) we found that we could not even manually stop the service
using the command <span style="color: blue;">NET STOP "EventSentry Database"</span>.
Windows would give an error: "System error 5 has occurred. Access is
denied." So that's where the Exit Code 5 came from in the Veeam error
message.<br /><br />This user account context that we tried the command from
also happens to be a Domain Admin, so why can we not stop and restart
this service? It turns out that with this particular service
(EventSentry Database), only the local administrators and the local System
account had permissions to do this.<br /><br /><b>The Permissions Fix</b><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After some
Googling found that you can edit the security permissions of a service
using the SC.exe command, but a much faster and friendlier method was to
use a utility called <i>Service Security Editor</i> which we found here: <a href="http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/ServiceSecurityEditor/">http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/ServiceSecurityEditor/</a><br /><br />Using
this very-easy-to-use tool we were able to quickly select the
EventSentry Database service and could then see the current permissions
as well as add the domain username we needed to give it rights to stop
and start this particular service. Thank you Core Technologies
Consulting, LLC. This saved me tremendous time and it also helped to be
able visually see the security permissions on other services as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><b>Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts Didn't Help</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After all of that work, we discovered that this was not helping us for our particular situation. We assumed that a Pre-Freeze would run before the VMware snapshot (which it does) and the Post-Freeze would run after the snapshot was deleted (it does not). The Post-Freeze script runs immediately after the snapshot is created. Therefore when the job would run it would stop the EventSentry Service, take a VMware Snapshot, then restart the service. The snapshot happens so fast we initially thought the script wasn't working.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Now we understand that Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw are meant to help you with applications that are not Microsoft VSS-aware (Volume Shadow Copy). This allows you to stop the process only during snapshot creations so that you have a clean snapshot image. Apps that are VSS-aware do not need these scripts since VMware Tools uses VSS to quiesce apps such as Microsoft SQL databases during snapshot creation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Pre-Job and Post-Job Scripts</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Since the above was NOT doing what we needed we had to revert to using Veeam's Pre-Job and Post-Job scripts. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The frustrating part (to me) about this option is that if you are backing up multiple VMs with one job, the service being stopped will remain offline while all of the other VMs are being backed up. Thus you have to create a single Veeam job for the specific VM you wish to stop the services for.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">OK, so we follow their instructions here: <a href="http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/vsphere/backup_job_advanced_advanced_vm.html">http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/vsphere/backup_job_advanced_advanced_vm.html</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Once again I assumed incorrectly how this process works. I assumed it would behave much like the Pre-Freeze script in that Veeam would copy your script to the guest and execute it using the user context defined in the Guest Processing. Not at all correct.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Instead, Pre-Job and Post-Job scripts run on the Veeam Server and not the guest. This means that if you wish to stop a service on the guest you cannot use the NET STOP command. Instead you have to use either the <a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742107%28v=ws.10%29.aspx" target="_blank">SC.exe</a> command or a utility such as <a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897542" target="_blank">PSservice.exe</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This also means you will may need to convey the username and password in your script. In our case, the Veeam Server is logged in as the same user (domain admin) that we previously used the <i>Service Security Editor</i> to grant permission to so that it can stop/start the service. Thus using Windows pass-through authentication we didn't have to specify credentials. Personally, I wish Veeam would offer a means to execute job scripts using credentials you store within Veeam, just as they do with other facets of Veeam.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In our case, we used this command in the Pre-Job Script</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> sc.exe \\nameofguestVM stop eventsentrydatabase</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We used this command in the Post-Job Script</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">sc.exe \\nameofguestVM start eventsentrydatabase</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Finally! This accomplished what we were after.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><b>In Summary</b> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When you need to stop/start a Windows Service during a Veeam Backup job, the first thing is to determine do you just need to quiesce a non-VSS-aware application only during the creation of the Snapshot? If so, use the Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw method.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you need the service stopped during the entire job, use the Pre-Job and Post-Job method.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Either way, understand the username context the method will be using. Although
this may not be true with every Windows service, you may have to use a utility such as
<i>Service Security Editor</i> to grant that user the rights to stop and start
that service.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pre-Freeze scripts use the credentials you defined in the "Guest Processing" section of the job and they run from the guest VM being backed up. Pre-Job scripts use the credentials that the Veeam Service is running and they run from the Veeam server and NOT the guest VM.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As always, hoping this helps someone else in the future.</span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-36923187733738830062014-07-15T21:07:00.003-04:002014-07-15T23:26:09.724-04:00Set Default Printer for All UsersOne of our customers has been complaining that as different people logon to a particular Windows 7 computer, they always have to manually set the default printer. The default printer is always different for each person that logs in and the choice Windows chooses is inconsistent.<br />
<br />
You could use Group Policy to specify the default printer, but this seemed like overkill considering we are only having this issue on one computer. In searching the forums, I found a reference to this website: <a href="http://www.robvanderwoude.com/2kprintcontrol.php">http://www.robvanderwoude.com/2kprintcontrol.php</a><br />
<br />
This led me to learn about the <b>PRINTUI.exe</b> command. At a CMD prompt, if you type printui and {ENTER} you will see a list of available command line options.<br />
<br />
In our case, we clicked START, Devices and Printers, right-clicked on the printer that we wanted to set as the default printer, and chose "Printer Properties". Then copied the name of the printer exactly as it appears at the top of the General tab to the clipboard to use in the next step.<br />
<br />
We then created a <b>SetDefaultPrinter.cmd</b> file and placed it in the All Users Startup folder:<br />
<b>C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup</b><br />
<br />
The contents of the SetDefaultPrinter.cmd contains just one line:<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">printui.exe /y /n "HP LaserJet P3011/P3015 PCL6"</span></span></div>
<br />
The "y" tells it to set the default printer and "n" is the name of the printer you want.<br />
<br />
Now, no matter who logs into that PC, this command will automatically run and correctly set the default printer.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-67403184518707905972013-10-10T02:19:00.000-04:002014-07-15T23:32:37.778-04:00Using Your Face Tags for Your Contacts Instead of TheirsEver since I learned how to use Picasa to comb through my photos and gather the faces of people I know (using facial recognition) and then quickly assigning the best one of those thumbnails of their face as their picture in my Contacts, I've been on a long campaign to get all of my Contacts to have their picture.<br />
<br />
Having close to a thousand contacts, this was/is quite a project. However, well worth the effort because seeing their face in my Outlook Contacts, Outlook Emails, Meeting Notices, or on my Android phone or iOS devices is not only cool, it's a time saver.<br />
<br />
Recently, I became the proud owner of a new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phone. After getting all of the apps installed and my contacts and calendars synchronized, I suddenly realized that for my friends that also have a Google+ account, their photos they picked as their Google+ photo was now the photo used in "my" contacts.<br />
<br />
If you're someone that hadn't previously invested the time to create contact photos, this might be a magical blessing. But for me, this was not desirable at all.<br />
<br />
For example, I had selected a photo of a co-worker for his entry in my contacts:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNpy8KTw0Qz5f0mab5CPtCBTaA9gZl6leEgQlE7bUJFToBQu72maL3H5EjOMNmPnnzlLOcI5Ok4-o9pd9oVwHPtw3DowMLwhUjIZ7cB052bA3YRceV7cWWSMvmpz-beU1US0CCAVoG1Kki/s1600/Mike1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNpy8KTw0Qz5f0mab5CPtCBTaA9gZl6leEgQlE7bUJFToBQu72maL3H5EjOMNmPnnzlLOcI5Ok4-o9pd9oVwHPtw3DowMLwhUjIZ7cB052bA3YRceV7cWWSMvmpz-beU1US0CCAVoG1Kki/s1600/Mike1.png" /></a></div>
<br />
But on my new phone his Contact photo looked like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK2OlKCsG9Ovu2tEEYLoa1gcRwm4xmFD17F6IyDUZob6dmltq8KUtVh6raEGnjFHQZYdH4C8_UYJMb6kDphU6S6yFbtpSMbCHJX5fL2e-g6VUmupFLssHqrtMVU2ZuvpYccWmaa5jyj5nS/s1600/Mike2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK2OlKCsG9Ovu2tEEYLoa1gcRwm4xmFD17F6IyDUZob6dmltq8KUtVh6raEGnjFHQZYdH4C8_UYJMb6kDphU6S6yFbtpSMbCHJX5fL2e-g6VUmupFLssHqrtMVU2ZuvpYccWmaa5jyj5nS/s1600/Mike2.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Because that is the photo he chose to use on his Google+ account.<br />
<br />
Went back to Picasa on my computer to try and fix this. Even there, his default contact photo had changed to his Google+ photo. Although it could be changed in Picasa, and the new photo selected for him did indeed show in my Gmail Contacts, his Google+ photo was still the one showing on my phone.<br />
<br />
Ultimately discovered that the fix for this behavior is contained in the Google+ app on my Android phone. <br />
<br />
Follow these steps:<br />
<ul>
<li>Open Google+ app</li>
<li>Go to Settings (within the app)</li>
<li>Under the Account Settings heading, click on your Google account name and email address</li>
<li>Click on Contacts</li>
<li>Un-check "Keep contacts up to date" </li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
With this un-checked, the photos I had previously chosen for my contacts reappeared. This may also explain some weirdness I've had surrounding phone numbers in my contacts, in that on some contacts I've had additional phone numbers for them appear, sometimes duplicate phone numbers.<br />
<br />
This may or may not be an issue for iPhone users. When you install the Google+ app on the iOS device and login to Google+ you are asked if you want Google+ to access your Contacts. If you allow it, then it could be an issue (or a blessing, depending upon your perspective).<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-89305197763764574532013-09-27T08:54:00.000-04:002013-10-02T10:26:12.826-04:00More Issues with Google Toolbar on Firefox 24.0Those of you that follow my blog know that I am addicted to the Google Toolbar and have struggled to keep it going in Firefox despite the fact that Google no longer supports it in Firefox.<br />
<br />
See my previous posts on this topic:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2012/03/google-toolbar-on-firefox-11.html" target="_blank">Google Toolbar on Firefox 11</a></li>
<li><a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2012/06/google-toolbar-on-firefox-13.html" target="_blank">Google Toolbar on Firefox 13</a></li>
</ul>
Now, with Firefox version 24.0 we have yet another issue. With the Google Toolbar Add-On extension installed and enabled, you can no longer open a new tab in Firefox. You can open a second instance of Firefox, but when you click on the New Tab button (the + sign) or press Ctl-T nothing happens. Oddly, if you disable the Google Toolbar for Firefox extension, then suddenly all of your new tabs you previously requested suddenly appear.<br />
<br />
The only work-around found so far is to press the CTRL key as you click a link or right-click a link and choose, "Open Link in New Tab". Once the new Tab is open, then use that tab for what you need. Another possibility is to downgrade to Firefox version 23.<br />
<br />
Another tip. Type about:blank in the address bar, hit enter, which gives you a blank page, and then save that in the Bookmarks Toolbar, now you have a quicker way to right-click on a link to give you a new Tab to work with.<br />
<br />
<b>Update (10/2/2013)</b><br />
Many thanks to John Tombs who alerted me to a fix (workaround) to this issue.<br />
<br />
In a post on this forum: <a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/967747#answer-485381">https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/967747#answer-485381</a> a user called WhopperCock said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Type <span style="color: blue;">about:config</span> into your browser, then type <span style="color: blue;">browser.newtab.preload</span> into the long search bar that appears, then set the Value to <span style="color: red;">False</span>, restart browser and it should be working fine just like it did for me."</blockquote>
This worked perfectly for me. Hope it will help others as well. And thank you WhopperCock, whomever you are, for posting the fix.<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-36857485120388193922013-09-11T09:58:00.000-04:002013-09-11T09:58:25.275-04:00Desktop Icons MissingA user reported that all of their Windows Desktop icons and shortcuts were missing on their Windows XP Service Pack 3 computer. It was immediately assumed they had been bit with Malware, and they had. Ran several scans with various packages to clean up this PC, but still the Desktop Icons were missing.<br />
<br />
Then discovered that restoring these Desktop Icons and Desktop Shortcuts was super easy because hiding them, as it turns out, is an "option" in Windows.<br />
<br />
So it was simply a matter of <b>right-clicking on the Desktop</b>, choosing <b>Arrange Icons By</b>, and clicking <b>Show Desktop Icons</b>.<br />
<br />
It's unclear if the malware turned off the icons or if the user did it by accident.<br />
<br />
Thanks to this MS article for helping solve this:<br />
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330170">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330170</a><br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-46196717076812221062013-09-08T13:50:00.000-04:002013-09-08T13:55:11.057-04:00Unable to re-join a computer to a Windows DomainLast week a co-worker had an interesting (this means frustrating) problem. The hard drive in a Windows XP SP3 desktop computer was bad. He replaced it and then restored the backup image using Symantec System Recovery.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately it wouldn't let him login to the Active Directory domain after the restore. We have run into this before and in the past we simply login to the PC as a local administrator, un-join the computer from the domain and then re-join it to the domain.<br />
<br />
This time, however, when he un-joined from the domain, it didn't really do it. The computer was still listed in Active Directory. So he manually deleted it from Active Directory.<br />
<br />
When he went to re-join the computer to the domain, he kept getting this message:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><i><span id="intelliTxt">"Multiple connections to a server or shared
resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not
allowed. Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared
resource and try again."</span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span id="intelliTxt">We repeatedly used this command to see if there were any active connections:</span><br />
<pre class="default prettyprint prettyprinted"><span style="color: blue;"><b><code><span class="pln">net </span><span class="kwd">use</span></code></b></span></pre>
<br />
<span id="intelliTxt">And then this command to delete all connections (even though there were none listed):</span><br />
<pre class="default prettyprint prettyprinted"><span style="color: blue;"><b><code><span class="pln">net </span><span class="kwd">use</span><span class="pln"> </span><span class="pun">*</span><span class="pln"> </span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="kwd">delete</span></code></b></span></pre>
<br />
<span id="intelliTxt">We ultimately figured out the issue was previously mapped network printers were in the list and this was preventing us from re-joining the domain. We not only had to delete these network printers from the Printers list, but also had to walk the Windows Registry and delete all references to these printers. Once done, we rebooted the PC and then successfully re-joined the Windows Active Directory Domain.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-60597910155213575992013-08-20T12:18:00.000-04:002013-08-20T12:18:13.187-04:00Windows XP - update agent failed 0x8007041dLast night I spent a significant amount of time working on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 machine. The symptom was that when you went to do a Windows Update or Microsoft Update you would ultimately get an error code: <span style="color: red;"><b>0x8007041d</b></span><br />
<br />
I ultimately learned that error code 0x8007041d means that the Automatic Update service cannot start. In fact, to save time, I ultimately just kept trying to start the "Automatic Update" service after each thing I tried, and once it finally started, I knew it was fixed and then Windows Update worked normally.<br />
<br />
I tried a multitude of things and I wanted to list them all here, because each of the steps seem to have varying degrees of success for others in correcting this issue.<br />
<br />
You do not have to do these in any particular order, it is just the order in which I did it until I found the ultimate cure. <br />
<br />
[STEP 1]<br />
<br />
<br />
Try the Microsoft Fix It:<br />
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058</a><br />
<br />
[STEP 2]<br />
<br />
Download the Windows Update Agent installer to the root of your C: drive.<br />
<a href="http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/7.4.7600.226/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe">http://download.windowsupdate.com/WindowsUpdate/redist/standalone/7.4.7600.226/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe</a><br />
<br />
Then run this command from a command prompt:<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe /wuforce</span><br />
<br />
In my case, the above resulted in the same error code of 0x8007041d.<br />
<br />
[STEP 3]<br />
<br />
Create a batch file and run these commands to re-register DLL files:<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">regsvr32.exe qmgrprxy.dll /u<br />regsvr32.exe qmgr.dll /u<br />regsvr32 wuaueng.dll /u<br />regsvr32 wuapi.dll /u<br />regsvr32 wups.dll /u<br />regsvr32 wups2.dll /u<br />regsvr32 wuweb.dll /u<br />regsvr32.exe qmgrprxy.dll<br />regsvr32.exe qmgr.dll<br />regsvr32 wuaueng.dll<br />regsvr32 wuapi.dll<br />regsvr32 wups.dll<br />regsvr32 wups2.dll<br />regsvr32 wuweb.dll</span><br />
<br />
[STEP 4]<br />
<br />
Delete a folder called <b>wups.dll </b>which is found here:<br />
C:\WINDOWS\system32\SoftwareDistribution\Setup\ServiceStartup\<br />
(It will be re-created when you attempt to run Windows Update again)<br />
<br />
[STEP 5 - My Ultimate Fix] <br />
This next command will require the Windows CD. In my case, I copied the contents of the i386 folder from a Windows XP SP3 CD to the root of the C: drive. Then when prompted, point to the C:\i386\ folder.<br />
<br />
Run this command:<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">%SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %SystemRoot%\inf\au.inf</span><br />
<br />
Hoping one of these will help someone else. This was a very aggravating problem for me.<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-37481798115194680822013-02-10T12:16:00.000-05:002013-02-10T12:16:27.840-05:00Clicking an Evernote Link in Outlook causes a Security Notice<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I love <a href="http://evernote.com/" target="_blank">Evernote</a>.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> It has made me and my team extremely productive. Especially now that we are using <a href="http://evernote.com/business/" target="_blank">Evernote Business</a>. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We often email each other links to particular Notes. But in Outlook 2010 (and Outlook 2007) it is very annoying when you click on an Evernote hyperlink within the email as you will get this Microsoft Outlook Security Notice:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin2y1EG2Iu0l_FdAqJCGWAeLOxf9L50tx6ufJplveuQQHaZCnhbcUJERYyOXExv8e7mrvTYaxDeDIEBemOxh7ELLH_3uuWdeUgSA1VeQ7MKZKWhoT1XnvFhzOq0aaH9xxcT0UiC44CN802/s1600/OLsecuritynotice.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin2y1EG2Iu0l_FdAqJCGWAeLOxf9L50tx6ufJplveuQQHaZCnhbcUJERYyOXExv8e7mrvTYaxDeDIEBemOxh7ELLH_3uuWdeUgSA1VeQ7MKZKWhoT1XnvFhzOq0aaH9xxcT0UiC44CN802/s400/OLsecuritynotice.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I began looking for a way to stop this. I did find how you could <a href="http://www.slipstick.com/how-to-outlook/disable-unsafe-hyperlink-warning-opening-attachments/" target="_blank">disable the Security Notices altogether</a>, but I just wanted to stop it for Evernote links.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I found part of my answer in a Microsoft Knowledgebase article:</span></span><br />
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925757"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925757</span></span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In that article look for the section titled "<b>How to enable or disable hyperlink warnings per protocol</b>".</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It says to look for a registry key called:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\xx.0\Common\Security\Trusted Protocols\All Applications</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My Windows 7 machine running Office 2010 only had this:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So I had to create the rest by right-clicking each leg of the tree and adding a new key. Note that on the last entry <u>there is a colon after evernote</u>. </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Office\14.0\Common\Security\Trusted Protocols\All Applications\<span style="color: red;">evernote:</span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6UQu-4_66edGvmwtdMGLVH6__Q1l_ejy_H2ca_X7eCCuEFDIIeBbAj3CQJXudpvCaDbkRKnazi8iPJwEZitwr3_j58SdsFwZOhBEzp6gwZmuzYxDD1mVg_D38yG4duvs5cnVtJwwe-NZ/s1600/EVregistry.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6UQu-4_66edGvmwtdMGLVH6__Q1l_ejy_H2ca_X7eCCuEFDIIeBbAj3CQJXudpvCaDbkRKnazi8iPJwEZitwr3_j58SdsFwZOhBEzp6gwZmuzYxDD1mVg_D38yG4duvs5cnVtJwwe-NZ/s1600/EVregistry.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once these registry changes were made, it immediately began to work. Now when I click an Evernote hyperlink in Outlook it opens Evernote to the correct note without that nagging message. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As always, I'm hoping this will help someone else.</span></span><br />
DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-23564471940379831122013-01-27T23:52:00.000-05:002013-01-27T23:52:14.329-05:00Getting Pictures out of Go SMS Pro<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I'm writing this in hopes that it will help someone else. I have an Android phone (HTC Evo 4G LTE) and I love using <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jb.gosms" target="_blank">Go SMS Pro</a> as my default SMS Text Messaging app.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My girlfriend's daughter recently had a beautiful baby girl and has been sending me lots of great photos via SMS that she takes on her iPhone. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As they come in I faithfully save each one, but it saves the pictures to: /mnt/sdcard/GOSMS/Downloads</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Unfortunately when I connect my phone to my PC and use Google's <a href="http://picasa.google.com/" target="_blank">Picasa </a>to transfer the pictures, it doesn't find them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tonight I discovered a very nice (and free) app called <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alensw.PicFolder" target="_blank">QuickPic</a>. It is far better than the stock Android Gallery app. It scans your entire phone (and SD card if you have one) and displays all of the pictures on your phone. I even found pictures I didn't know I had.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">After a few minutes I quickly figured out how to use QuickPic to move all photos from the GoSMS Downloads folder to the folder where I have set the Android camera to store its photos (the camera roll if you will) /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd/DCIM/100MEDIA</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">You also can "copy" pictures from one folder to another, not just move them. Another feature I really like about QuickPic is that for each picture you can choose details and quickly see where the picture is stored on your phone, the size, the resolution, and the date-time stamp.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I will be using QuickPic instead of the built-in Gallery app from here on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-31823544985896351492012-07-19T17:06:00.000-04:002012-07-19T17:21:54.128-04:00VMware vSphere Client - Error 503<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-W8FT-Zfzz9fARCimplZPeTwUH_tta-OeQ6OTzOeprx_xSgZr32klBARMWpBdTNFRtyPzVl43Q1UdhBEb9JZxIr_YXQchzf4YylJF6WZboX3e4oX4tAQxoZKocf8Sp_aoBEsjYNix1am/s1600/errormsg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
I posted about this same error message <a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2012/02/unable-to-login-with-vsphere-client.html" target="_blank">sometime back</a> but now I have discovered an easier and faster way to resolve it. Not fix it permanently, mind you, but at least make it so you can connect to your vSphere server using the VMware vSphere Client.<br />
<br />
<b>The Problem</b><br />
When you are trying to logon to your vSphere 5 server using the VMware vSphere Client you get an error that says, "<b><span style="color: red;">The remote server returned an error: (503) Server Unavailable</span></b>".<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-W8FT-Zfzz9fARCimplZPeTwUH_tta-OeQ6OTzOeprx_xSgZr32klBARMWpBdTNFRtyPzVl43Q1UdhBEb9JZxIr_YXQchzf4YylJF6WZboX3e4oX4tAQxoZKocf8Sp_aoBEsjYNix1am/s1600/errormsg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="536" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-W8FT-Zfzz9fARCimplZPeTwUH_tta-OeQ6OTzOeprx_xSgZr32klBARMWpBdTNFRtyPzVl43Q1UdhBEb9JZxIr_YXQchzf4YylJF6WZboX3e4oX4tAQxoZKocf8Sp_aoBEsjYNix1am/s640/errormsg.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>The Solution</b><br />
Assuming you have enabled SSH on your vSphere server you can open a <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/%7Esgtatham/putty/download.html" target="_blank">Putty</a> session on port 22. After you have connected and logged in as root, issue the command called <b style="color: blue;">dcui</b> and this will launch a console session that looks just like you were standing at the server.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWE5D3qKmZmyiiie87GFsDNJ8cvA0KEzYm3484gpTUFSa3xUgStq7X98dDsLzVVgtSjqcVvKNuJHKxxeuz5B7t0NAVio5Zy6b92VRG7ES_zAaIxvtl5pfznpkriW9t4eRmbopkmcy20NOc/s1600/Putty.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWE5D3qKmZmyiiie87GFsDNJ8cvA0KEzYm3484gpTUFSa3xUgStq7X98dDsLzVVgtSjqcVvKNuJHKxxeuz5B7t0NAVio5Zy6b92VRG7ES_zAaIxvtl5pfznpkriW9t4eRmbopkmcy20NOc/s640/Putty.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Click F2 and login as root</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9AkdX2M4XO_E6Br89vAlR0rILsxbsEHdWLToFub-VEaIir1GCMEgiDTn2dVoLlUcMF5QUbCm_LjAR5FkMuby8jIttDuqDzQVxcJIXM3pj5g2P_y17mokFCkr0pHZm83J_gdLd0OVadxoK/s1600/Screen1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9AkdX2M4XO_E6Br89vAlR0rILsxbsEHdWLToFub-VEaIir1GCMEgiDTn2dVoLlUcMF5QUbCm_LjAR5FkMuby8jIttDuqDzQVxcJIXM3pj5g2P_y17mokFCkr0pHZm83J_gdLd0OVadxoK/s640/Screen1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Choose Troubleshooting Options from the menu</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWqJyWNt7hpMNjbi8jCgSanNxsf3zlqQvunkihBx39IDjUpTDkQzOh3vhITHXfiiMFJh34N_3xkSYsodzjxkxeYwiR_D7-jFbsH3fI4xQ5epfR9hJPdk0YXi7m4C7gOlDm3tXl_KbUWXL3/s1600/Screen2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWqJyWNt7hpMNjbi8jCgSanNxsf3zlqQvunkihBx39IDjUpTDkQzOh3vhITHXfiiMFJh34N_3xkSYsodzjxkxeYwiR_D7-jFbsH3fI4xQ5epfR9hJPdk0YXi7m4C7gOlDm3tXl_KbUWXL3/s640/Screen2.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Choose Restart Management Agents from the menu</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvoYnBoJ5LT03PpTyLLSsXFhvy_-AKX0YZsAlVXNhObF61W7FQAqbl4asLhDtdIzDvaWotUe4P1GtBeaYFopaJJcgSJa2kewTLPJ6coCa8gUFassthj4jgBdVdO8N_r2duUCW10-w6Cre9/s1600/Screen3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvoYnBoJ5LT03PpTyLLSsXFhvy_-AKX0YZsAlVXNhObF61W7FQAqbl4asLhDtdIzDvaWotUe4P1GtBeaYFopaJJcgSJa2kewTLPJ6coCa8gUFassthj4jgBdVdO8N_r2duUCW10-w6Cre9/s640/Screen3.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Press F11 to confirm your choice</div>
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZuCS4e-Nvc8MkTt34798WAzkshxY-iHP1NAV_636BSOV09FP7gp1bgODLoqCzPyuqedb4n9T1vrtWcZrOWsu3Zei-uO3w_F0eSqMbZAB0m24SGG9G0OfHVfAzxj7sS0WHP6NBrKoDiNFM/s1600/Screen4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZuCS4e-Nvc8MkTt34798WAzkshxY-iHP1NAV_636BSOV09FP7gp1bgODLoqCzPyuqedb4n9T1vrtWcZrOWsu3Zei-uO3w_F0eSqMbZAB0m24SGG9G0OfHVfAzxj7sS0WHP6NBrKoDiNFM/s640/Screen4.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Once the services are restarted you should now be able to login using the vSphere Client. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWGfcRQD3oJj2g80srxAIMT6iopwxgSn7DI1IwkIUFEdngfYGGPyiPgnT3KaHffno4zo2oVWItoPSITQO95pusIuGeGFKvLOtAdC8nM0hx7X452JRf-x8JUOxjpjyte9IKmZIJh6A9FUsH/s1600/Screen5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWGfcRQD3oJj2g80srxAIMT6iopwxgSn7DI1IwkIUFEdngfYGGPyiPgnT3KaHffno4zo2oVWItoPSITQO95pusIuGeGFKvLOtAdC8nM0hx7X452JRf-x8JUOxjpjyte9IKmZIJh6A9FUsH/s640/Screen5.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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There have been times when I've had to restart the Management Agents multiple times before I could finally get the vSphere Client to work. I was hoping this would be resolved with VMware vSphere 5 Update 1, but unfortunately it has not. And this is only occurring for me on one vSphere server whereas we have five others that are behaving fine.</div>
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<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-56254344300444193272012-06-21T23:17:00.000-04:002013-09-27T08:58:54.608-04:00Google Toolbar on Firefox 13<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It's a shame I have to keep playing this cat-and-mouse game to keep my beloved Google Toolbar working in Firefox.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Google, if you're listening, please reconsider this decision and revive the Google Toolbar for Firefox. You provide it for Internet Explorer, what gives?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">To understand the context of this post you need to read my previous post:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2012/03/google-toolbar-on-firefox-11.html" target="_blank">Google Toolbar on Firefox 11 (and beyond)</a></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">There I describe how you could edit a configuration file, to make the Google Toolbar work again when upgrading to Firefox 11. This trick also worked for Firefox 12. But then when Firefox 13 came along, I once again lost the Google Toolbar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">You have to first follow the steps in the previous post, but then while you have the <b>install.rdf</b> file open and you changed the <i><b style="color: red;"><i:maxversion></i:maxversion></b> em:maxVersion</i> line to something such as 20.0.* - now to accommodate Firefox 13 you must also look for the line a little farther down that starts with <i>em:updateURL</i><b style="color: red;"><i:updateurl></i:updateurl></b> and make a change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Change this line from this:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgug_KMjyqhUdB2MYA6RHBm6XId7xxnK6sUk84MsT-a08VSwcak32Z66xBqxLIaIIO_PE_jqrmj_xnmpvINLGrA6Appi3nRDIHt-1k2HLIT6xDuVf8teC4anuYfeQgYQwnj2jv1NFcK1sPM/s1600/GTbefore.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="29" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgug_KMjyqhUdB2MYA6RHBm6XId7xxnK6sUk84MsT-a08VSwcak32Z66xBqxLIaIIO_PE_jqrmj_xnmpvINLGrA6Appi3nRDIHt-1k2HLIT6xDuVf8teC4anuYfeQgYQwnj2jv1NFcK1sPM/s640/GTbefore.png" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">To this:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5ktcF-kiyfxVjGO3jW7SAPqQ7UaGq-8vFu5RmTpRki-uMYF-9waqJZWoApo7VIRV58dlGkSAxm8nphyAaGC44ZPGjmzfnWNQa4mnS-TO_rv459GNs1lUayXBQp85TDa-3rAcHKw3D_d6/s1600/GTafter.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5ktcF-kiyfxVjGO3jW7SAPqQ7UaGq-8vFu5RmTpRki-uMYF-9waqJZWoApo7VIRV58dlGkSAxm8nphyAaGC44ZPGjmzfnWNQa4mnS-TO_rv459GNs1lUayXBQp85TDa-3rAcHKw3D_d6/s1600/GTafter.png" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It worked for me, hoping this helps others as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Update 9/27/2013 - Please see my post <a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2013/09/more-issues-with-google-toolbar-on.html" target="_blank">More Issues with Google Toolbar on Firefox 24.0</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span> </span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-22717439912638103662012-04-19T22:24:00.002-04:002012-04-19T22:24:47.889-04:00Microsoft Exchange - Mail Store will not mountLet me start this post by saying I am a complete NOOB when it comes to Microsoft Exchange. I should also say I <strike>hate</strike> strongly dislike MS Exchange. From an Administrative side it is so unintuitive. I am spoiled rotten by the <a href="http://www.altn.com/Products/MDaemon-Email-Server-Windows/" target="_blank">MDaemon</a> Mail Server; so much easier to troubleshoot issues.<br />
<br />
One of my clients contacted me today because their email wasn't working. The server had randomly rebooted overnight and now they cannot send or receive mail and they are getting errors when connecting via Outlook.<br />
<br />
While looking through error logs and troubleshooting this issue, here are some of the messages I received:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Mail store is not available</li>
<li>exchange store is not mounted</li>
<li>database files in this store are corrupted</li>
</ul>
Guess I should also mention this is on a Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server SP2.<br />
<br />
<h3>
How do you mount the Mail Store?</h3>
OK, so how the heck do you mount the mail store? As I said, I'm new at this.<br />
<br />
Open System Manager<br />
<ul>
<li>Click on START</li>
<li>All Programs</li>
<li>Microsoft Exchange</li>
<li>System Manager</li>
</ul>
Expand the tree<br />
<ul>
<li>Go to Servers</li>
<li>The name of your server</li>
<li>First Storage Group</li>
</ul>
Right-click on the mail store(s) and choose Mount Store<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnyJj0HkOBwbLRnDKtFHQGqVXn55j7OmWQwJKCSZo7UqCnpgGXnssPhdqHZVqE_mjD_pCnHHmyyqfjxBb3oWJx_W9Gj48xVoF91h5YfmXekm7K6nyd1J5KglL1WrrHle7tg6T97egU3i2/s1600/ExchangeMailStore.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnyJj0HkOBwbLRnDKtFHQGqVXn55j7OmWQwJKCSZo7UqCnpgGXnssPhdqHZVqE_mjD_pCnHHmyyqfjxBb3oWJx_W9Gj48xVoF91h5YfmXekm7K6nyd1J5KglL1WrrHle7tg6T97egU3i2/s400/ExchangeMailStore.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
It will not mount - says it is corrupted</h3>
In my case both the Mailbox Store and the Public Folder Store were off-line and when I tried to mount them I would get an obscure error. Turns out both of these stores were corrupted.<br />
<br />
I was finally able to fix it with the following command lines. First of all open a CMD prompt and CD to this directory: <b style="color: blue;">C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin</b><br />
<br />
Then execute this command:<br />
<span class="userInput" style="color: blue;">eseutil /p
"<var>C</var>:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb"</span> - This is the Mailbox Store<br />
<br />
and then execute this command:<br />
<span class="userInput" style="color: blue;">eseutil /p
"<var>C</var>:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\pub1.edb"</span> - This is the Public Folder Store<br />
<br />
After using the above commands I was able to mount the mail stores from the System Manager (above). I also read several people saying, Oh be careful with the /p (recovery) as it could cause issues. Instead try the /r (repair) option; but in my case the /r did no good at all.<br />
<br />
Please also refer to these two documents:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182903">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182903</a></li>
<li><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327156">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327156</a></li>
</ul>
As always, hoping this helps someone else. It'll probably be me, because I'll probably forget.<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-31583883284711103902012-04-11T01:23:00.001-04:002012-04-11T01:23:39.146-04:00Office 2007 Excel Graph Data Missing on Print JobsA customer of mine had an issue with printing a monthly report from Excel that contains charts and graphs. The data on the graph did not show on the print out, but it did show correctly when doing a Print Preview.<br />
<br />
In their case, one of the pages contained four graphs on the page. The odd thing is that when you print the worksheet two of the four graphs had data and the other two didn't. This behavior also happened when printing to several different models of printers and even when printing to Adobe PDF.<br />
<br />
The other oddity is that this same spreadsheet worked correctly for some of my users, while it didn't for others.<br />
<br />
In the end I discovered this issue was isolated to those that had Microsoft Office 2007. Those running Office 2003 were not affected. Further I found this is caused by a Microsoft Patch that was issued in December 2011. Removing this patch (<b><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2596596" target="_blank">KB2596596</a></b>) corrected our issue.<br />
<br />
This is what the graph looked like when it printed incorrectly:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDSc5DvZOFuVoNz_RJUrIL9E0QhhDCvK22eesf85008H6brYpVq8QoUalfsoTiN7s5Qb9GXnqahfmB6riIlSQYY5zZoCdnIguqfUZdp-FVgJkPqdMcubHQ544ymM42WFLf7Dozm0yujjR/s1600/graph_wrong.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirDSc5DvZOFuVoNz_RJUrIL9E0QhhDCvK22eesf85008H6brYpVq8QoUalfsoTiN7s5Qb9GXnqahfmB6riIlSQYY5zZoCdnIguqfUZdp-FVgJkPqdMcubHQ544ymM42WFLf7Dozm0yujjR/s320/graph_wrong.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
This is how the graph is supposed to look:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqQMyhKZxmj1nf7WZjy8ubrts90c75LR1fWgzNX7SoawCtTO-o58w8DtRwXRBhTgJKhSlcBcMDHOa5NXO4JntBf09-r6KDydo8Pnatt0uCt4IXtWcWEyayKZ3VNjg9AQFP6lWbqE-sB4a/s1600/graph_right.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqQMyhKZxmj1nf7WZjy8ubrts90c75LR1fWgzNX7SoawCtTO-o58w8DtRwXRBhTgJKhSlcBcMDHOa5NXO4JntBf09-r6KDydo8Pnatt0uCt4IXtWcWEyayKZ3VNjg9AQFP6lWbqE-sB4a/s320/graph_right.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Again, just remove the patch called KB2596596 (see highlighted below)<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYdh719iduZ0FQG9VeeTyMsmqKCXHF3ydedVzeJPtOygU1hA57E15gpcM0MGJ2AL6p6chbDCRtt_EE4aoA-3X7xZdf4_S89IK-v0u3RKqNjfAUrPtQRKkbkhHaorP4IMVTrxJ6Cvq2XTOO/s1600/Office2007_Basic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYdh719iduZ0FQG9VeeTyMsmqKCXHF3ydedVzeJPtOygU1hA57E15gpcM0MGJ2AL6p6chbDCRtt_EE4aoA-3X7xZdf4_S89IK-v0u3RKqNjfAUrPtQRKkbkhHaorP4IMVTrxJ6Cvq2XTOO/s640/Office2007_Basic.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Note: Some of the machines were running MS Office 2007 Basic Edition and some were running MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition. Same patch for both.<br />
<br />
As always I'm hoping this will help someone else fighting this issue.<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-40327595944869629732012-03-29T02:25:00.000-04:002013-09-27T08:59:36.702-04:00Google Toolbar on Firefox 11<i>I should have titled this post <b>Google Toolbar on Firefox 11 and Beyond</b>. This trick works on Firefox 12 too and hopefully future versions. This has been a popular post so I wanted to make it clear this isn't just for Firefox 11.</i><br />
<br />
I have been an avid fan of the Google Toolbar ever since it was created. It has always frustrated and befuddled me that Google never created one for Google Chrome. And now I'm confused and aggravated (this is putting it as nicely as I can) that Google has decided to discontinue support for it in Firefox. <br />
<br />
On my Desktop PC I have had Firefox and the Google Toolbar working happily together and Firefox has been continually updating to new versions and all is still good. But when I got a new laptop I installed Firefox 11 and that's when I found that Google no longer offers the Toolbar for Firefox. Argh!<br />
<br />
But wait, why does it still work on my desktop? After a lot of trial and error I have figured out how to get the Google Toolbar working with Firefox 11 on my new laptop and I wanted to share how to do this.<br />
<br />
<b>Uninstall Firefox</b><br />
<br />
From Control Panel, uninstall Firefox. I suggest you DO NOT remove personal data<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzM3_I-AZT7bOcbh6GEbtLH46RWU52NWBJfKdGWQatAym_uSMqfZzlX99ScXn9gbrt1qLJreCq10y4QlDPzGdblzlKVs3QvuODxDmLnhNSc2MTLivN6_OdGtGQMI8CfPSt-FFKx5xWrdvX/s1600/ffuninstall.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzM3_I-AZT7bOcbh6GEbtLH46RWU52NWBJfKdGWQatAym_uSMqfZzlX99ScXn9gbrt1qLJreCq10y4QlDPzGdblzlKVs3QvuODxDmLnhNSc2MTLivN6_OdGtGQMI8CfPSt-FFKx5xWrdvX/s400/ffuninstall.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>Install Firefox 4</b><br />
Download and install Firefox version 4 from FileHippo<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.filehippo.com/download_firefox/9506/">http://www.filehippo.com/download_firefox/9506/</a></span><br />
<br />
<b>Install Google Toolbar</b><br />
Then install the Google Toolbar for Firefox from FileHippo<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_toolbar_firefox/">http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_toolbar_firefox/</a></span><br />
<br />
<b>Edit the install.rdf File</b><br />
Now before you upgrade to Firefox 11 we have to do a little surgery. In Windows Explorer go to this directory:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\jtn2a7fp.default\extensions\{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c}\</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">NOTE: The above is on Windows 7, and the exact directory names may be different on your PC</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">In the above directory look for a file called: </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>install.rdf</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Using Notepad (or Notepad++) edit the install.rdf file. Look for the line that looks like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfElWCbc0pbVHMOQsxpSWNVmgAYzGOxrXU5BVPpTe7yuWBRG4Vjpx8sIzFA4ITNU6D4uqsbrW3JITIoVhdY6E8Ym08nuLMWvtvE3oIY5dg6FZtrV7M0gtxCFZX4KSd2oOl4Pe-fUPiULv/s1600/before.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfElWCbc0pbVHMOQsxpSWNVmgAYzGOxrXU5BVPpTe7yuWBRG4Vjpx8sIzFA4ITNU6D4uqsbrW3JITIoVhdY6E8Ym08nuLMWvtvE3oIY5dg6FZtrV7M0gtxCFZX4KSd2oOl4Pe-fUPiULv/s640/before.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">and change it to this:</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdyUCl8O7Vc4_zl9kbWu3NAn-T7ltivpNLlKijwaIyvn2hlq7OWGPfN7AM-VKW35oS1uuanrfRns6qTySOe95WUaG-NK2vAdFpwOdCxojhhfPDYgpL1cL4rEGP_gHId0CN9OdUas7z0Ls/s1600/after.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdyUCl8O7Vc4_zl9kbWu3NAn-T7ltivpNLlKijwaIyvn2hlq7OWGPfN7AM-VKW35oS1uuanrfRns6qTySOe95WUaG-NK2vAdFpwOdCxojhhfPDYgpL1cL4rEGP_gHId0CN9OdUas7z0Ls/s640/after.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">(<b style="color: red;">Note:</b> As you will see in the comments below, change it to a higher value like 20.0.* so that you can make it work in Firefox 12 and beyond.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Save the file.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Upgrade Firefox</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">From within Firefox click on Help and About Firefox</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJJ_XlNPUHvFPQJqy63y08mVNYMf93hlZvvc_g6craq379ci2IAsyi-Bb0NTuWppvyGEDxtlO6Xtxf-iqermndXDChkoDeaDlvdpXQd5OKIvwGSOqglf18ymC8NRE1rvDWuq_CLV2pK8Jo/s1600/ffabout.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJJ_XlNPUHvFPQJqy63y08mVNYMf93hlZvvc_g6craq379ci2IAsyi-Bb0NTuWppvyGEDxtlO6Xtxf-iqermndXDChkoDeaDlvdpXQd5OKIvwGSOqglf18ymC8NRE1rvDWuq_CLV2pK8Jo/s400/ffabout.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">You should see the button to apply an Update. This will take you to the latest version, which as of this writing is version 11.0.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I also wanted to mention this: Those that used to get around it by using the </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">Add-on Compatibility Reporter (</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/</a>), this apparently stopped working as of Firefox version 10.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;"><b><i>Enjoy!</i></b></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Update 6/21/2012</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The saga continues. Read how I was able to make it work with Firefox 13: </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2012/06/google-toolbar-on-firefox-13.html" target="_blank">Google Toolbar on Firefox 13</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Update 9/27/2013 - Please see my post <a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2013/09/more-issues-with-google-toolbar-on.html" target="_blank">More Issues with Google Toolbar on Firefox 24.0</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-86704214514136891002012-03-18T14:03:00.000-04:002012-03-18T14:03:30.943-04:00Manually Remove Ask.com ToolbarI'm sure many of my fellow IT Admins are getting extremely annoyed with the Ask.com search toolbar showing up on user's browsers. This thing is being bundled with installers for other products, such as Java updates. We IT people know what to watch for, but when user's take the updates, they just click Next without paying attention.<br />
<br />
In many cases, you can go to Add-Remove Programs and quickly find Ask.com listed and do an uninstall. In other cases you have to study the list of programs very closely and you'll see a reference to Ask.com in one of the Titles, and you can just uninstall that.<br />
<br />
But in other cases, some unscrupulous vendors hide it so well that they don't even list an Uninstall for it.<br />
<br />
Here is how I was able to completely get rid of it in one case.<br />
<br />
I first did a registry search for Ask.com and ultimately found an entry this reference:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>C:\Program Files\Ask.com\</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />
I then tried to delete the folder C:\Program Files\Ask.com\ but it wouldn't let me.<br />
<br />
After looking around inside the folder I found <b>Updater.exe</b><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2d5rhWm7I1NPI-oiwT3CifUmp2WUueIfEIsiNLpjWII2ASbW-npA4oGLS4GcaWLqtfNBNgoJVH5GB5vbthmYZofHZXgJviWmPUFxRRHhii-EdYvltYEZ-35wcFCha9GVVhnKbxe0vGMk4/s1600/ask1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2d5rhWm7I1NPI-oiwT3CifUmp2WUueIfEIsiNLpjWII2ASbW-npA4oGLS4GcaWLqtfNBNgoJVH5GB5vbthmYZofHZXgJviWmPUFxRRHhii-EdYvltYEZ-35wcFCha9GVVhnKbxe0vGMk4/s400/ask1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJhe0mqUVES8qMZrG8Tk7hojUefplwx_VpE4aQxw9IV4lrP94nhZFTIjupX5TKKYhUaISqfyxNmMfd9F8a9mso2QiU-aWWMPcuqi1Jq7atmgBBUOemZXvc1eTNpu7pKahyctNKOMso9Vn/s1600/ask2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJhe0mqUVES8qMZrG8Tk7hojUefplwx_VpE4aQxw9IV4lrP94nhZFTIjupX5TKKYhUaISqfyxNmMfd9F8a9mso2QiU-aWWMPcuqi1Jq7atmgBBUOemZXvc1eTNpu7pKahyctNKOMso9Vn/s400/ask2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Then I looked in Task Manager and found this <b>Updater.exe</b> process was running, so I killed it. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5NXyEsGQCOVCW2j9kq119Cr_ZLk-B3RxW8K38vkqzJI_LEFIcnE0Mr8at1JCg-B9JU_gSwZDHiU8xfgc4Yr24hVs5NbtedVeWG4SWPdzMCAQUlYRHniHhBU1HIUgNKnAFXXEQACh84aDX/s1600/ask3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5NXyEsGQCOVCW2j9kq119Cr_ZLk-B3RxW8K38vkqzJI_LEFIcnE0Mr8at1JCg-B9JU_gSwZDHiU8xfgc4Yr24hVs5NbtedVeWG4SWPdzMCAQUlYRHniHhBU1HIUgNKnAFXXEQACh84aDX/s320/ask3.png" width="281" /></a></div>
<br />
Then I could delete the contents of the <b>C:\Program Files\Ask.com\ </b>folder.<br />
<br />
This gets rid of the Ask.com Toolbar, but I suggest you use your favorite Registry Cleanup tool, such as <a href="http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner" target="_blank">CCleaner</a>, to get rid of all of the references to it in the Windows Registry.<br />
<br />
I know this is all about money. Vendors looking to make a quick buck take money from Ask.com to bundle their toolbar, but this kind of thing just makes me loose respect for all of the vendors involved. This is akin to malware in my opinion.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-67557247064199752132012-03-15T23:32:00.001-04:002012-03-15T23:32:43.764-04:00Ripping DVDs to iPadA friend of mine recently asked me, "<i><b><span style="color: blue;">How do I copy my DVDs to my iPad?</span></b></i>". She is about to take a long trip with her young child and thought perhaps taking some movies on the iPad would help during the long flight.<br />
<br />
This seemed like a reasonable request and to be honest I've also been curious how to do this as well. Apple's iTunes and Windows Media Player make it a breeze to copy your audio CD's that you own to the computer but as I quickly learned, DVDs are a whole other animal.<br />
<br />
There are probably hundreds of ways to do this, and this isn't meant to be a definitive guide, but rather to step you through a process that worked for me. I'm not an expert on this topic. Heck I can barely spell CODEC. So please don't ask me how to rip your particular DVD to your particular device. Odds are I won't know.<br />
<br />
<b>Ingredients</b><br />
You will need the following items:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/" target="_blank">VLC Media Player</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://handbrake.fr/" target="_blank">HandBrake</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.makemkv.com/" target="_blank">MakeMKV</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
VLC, in my opinion, is the best Media Player on the planet. I like it because it's lightweight and seems to play any audio or video format I've ever thrown at it.<br />
<br />
At present I am running VLC version 1.1.11 and they recently released 2.0. HandBrake (I'm running version 0.9.6), is the software that helps you convert your media from one format to another and seems to rely on VLC to help decode the copy-protection on most DVDs. But I'm reading in the forums that VLC 2.0 breaks HandBrake. This seems to primarily affect Apple Mac computers; not sure about Windows PCs. But for our purposes, we'll just be using VLC to playback our media, and use HandBrake to convert from one file format to another as well as from one screen size to another.<br />
<br />
MakeMKV is where the magic really happens. It is able to decode many of the copy-protection schemes used on many DVDS and convert it to a format called MKV. Ever heard of it? Me neither. MKV is the <b>Matroska Multimedia Container</b>. I could direct you to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska" target="_blank">Wikipedia article</a> (which is a good read), but instead let me suggest this explanation from the people who make MakeMKV: <a href="http://www.makemkv.com/aboutmkv/">http://www.makemkv.com/aboutmkv/</a><br />
<br />
One thing that excites me about the MKV format is that it seems to be becoming adopted by more and more software and hardware media players, and it is an open standard and not proprietary. From what I've read, even the pay version of the Tivo Desktop supports MKV. So I may finally have a reason to buy Tivo Desktop. I don't have a DVD player anymore (except for the computer) and being able to watch my DVD collection on the Tivo is very appealing to me.<br />
<br />
<b>Problems using just VLC and HandBrake</b><br />
Before we get started I wanted to mention this. I did first try using just VLC and HandBrake, as that combination seemed to work for so many in the past. It was because it didn't work that lead me down the path I did and forced me to learn more than I cared to know about this subject. I wanted to mention it here because it might help someone else.<br />
<br />
First off, HandBrake would not even detect some of my DVDs until I first played a little bit of it using the VLC Media Player. This seems to have something to do with VLC setting some Regional Settings that HandBrake on its own cannot detect from my computer's DVD drive.<br />
<br />
My other issue is that after I tried to rip the content from the DVD using HandBrake, below is the kind of result I ended up with:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMZKYyUCx2pDugpY97eJomVPhY6iPYXLtUTUY2ksFZlYTUCYIIYazsB-mFhalswtx72sq5XAPi-isEndoIxyR-Z09gMznXhvKMhA4FT2Q6Ru05cvayh8mz0A1uUpcGNB0GjmWXbUYE9qX/s1600/VLC+bad+decode.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMZKYyUCx2pDugpY97eJomVPhY6iPYXLtUTUY2ksFZlYTUCYIIYazsB-mFhalswtx72sq5XAPi-isEndoIxyR-Z09gMznXhvKMhA4FT2Q6Ru05cvayh8mz0A1uUpcGNB0GjmWXbUYE9qX/s400/VLC+bad+decode.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Try Googling the symptom above. How do you begin to describe it? As it turns out this is because of the DRM (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management" target="_blank">Digital Rights Management</a>) copy-protection in use on the DVD. In other words, HandBrake could not decode it. I thought I was either doing something wrong or had the settings wrong. I wasted a lot of time before I figured out it was DRM.<br />
<br />
<b>Overview of the Process</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Insert DVD</li>
<li>Use MakeMKV and let it decode your DVD and learn the Titles and Chapters it contains and then convert the contents to MKV files on your hard drive.</li>
<li>Play a few of the MKV files to verify they work and decide what you want to keep or discard.</li>
<li>Use HandBrake to convert the MKV file(s) to an MP4 format with a size suitable for your iPad.</li>
<li>Add the movie to your iTunes Library</li>
<li>Add cover art in iTunes</li>
<li>Sync to your iPad</li>
</ul>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Using MakeMKV</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Insert your DVD and open MakeMKV. Click on the graphic as pictured below.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAzTXM2k0W-_Bs6OkW-jMJF6CtnfzqGZysJF58Pc2dNhjpazVfncOltMaBfDMTZotisr-oGo5fwNs34NPt2mbj9kdICyf9rzd_vCAStqUcyOn7Av6z9bykdgrguWO-SYS3wxECRkgWioS/s1600/MakeMKV_start.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghAzTXM2k0W-_Bs6OkW-jMJF6CtnfzqGZysJF58Pc2dNhjpazVfncOltMaBfDMTZotisr-oGo5fwNs34NPt2mbj9kdICyf9rzd_vCAStqUcyOn7Av6z9bykdgrguWO-SYS3wxECRkgWioS/s400/MakeMKV_start.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This step usually just takes a couple of minutes but I had one DVD that took 30 minutes. This step is identifying the Titles and Chapters and appears to also be trying to figure out the encryption scheme.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When it is complete you are offered a screen like the one below. You could take the time and just select the Titles, Chapters, or Audio tracks that you want, but since there is no preview, I suggest converting it all to the MKV format. You can delete what you do not want later.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5IoV8Umbei3slVHWJqSxSs4a6QstD7tkBPHO7qkXJpYPYr27XjdgFmzAmB4zHFOQtmMkVhk9qrkkzKND7QAY-2FkcDQ-y56zglsTXl1UTao-mD7UMCTBpQ10alZAz-DBrW8EfvB-RvzQ/s1600/MakeMKV_Titles.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5IoV8Umbei3slVHWJqSxSs4a6QstD7tkBPHO7qkXJpYPYr27XjdgFmzAmB4zHFOQtmMkVhk9qrkkzKND7QAY-2FkcDQ-y56zglsTXl1UTao-mD7UMCTBpQ10alZAz-DBrW8EfvB-RvzQ/s640/MakeMKV_Titles.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As you can see in the picture above, choose the Drive and Folder where you want to store the MKV files. These will be quite large so choose a drive with plenty of space. Then click the <b>MakeMKV </b>button to begin the process. So far, every DVD I've done, this step takes about 15 minutes or less. And this step isn't very CPU intensive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Let's talk a bit about Titles and Chapters for those that may not know. Some DVDs contain additional content besides the main movie. This could be trailers for other movies, for example. Typically each trailer as well as the main movie is considered a Title. Then within a Title it is broken up into Chapters.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So after your MakeMKV conversion, open the folder you chose to see the results. You will see an MKV file for each Title that was on your DVD. The largest file size is likely the main movie, and the one you'll want to convert in the next step with HandBrake.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf83qZf8IFlyK26Pd4S7ROEc4IRGzzvGuvsk2qSHpkWThK-aN84pIKTuHperVzg7i3QSwUA1cWJ8s4DUgDCPHvge3MNBP6b6yalFwOyUIsavSiEcOuWvfqhWGVpLY7GlKCiJ7PiW7Qfuxn/s1600/MKV+files.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="88" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf83qZf8IFlyK26Pd4S7ROEc4IRGzzvGuvsk2qSHpkWThK-aN84pIKTuHperVzg7i3QSwUA1cWJ8s4DUgDCPHvge3MNBP6b6yalFwOyUIsavSiEcOuWvfqhWGVpLY7GlKCiJ7PiW7Qfuxn/s640/MKV+files.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In my case, I don't want the Movie Trailers, so I just deleted the two smaller files.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Although it is not a required step, I highly recommend you play at least a portion of your movie file with VLC just to confirm it converted correctly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Also, you can now remove your DVD disc from the drive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Using HandBrake</b></div>
<div>
Open HandBrake and from the <b>Source </b>pull-down button choose <b>Folder</b>, then point to the folder that contains your MKV file.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLN8Ht0P4wJo255kqaN4eoRNgjG8eDFjeRHiNw33Jvyj0aOZdn4IoMvdmCWjbZ8maMMXcSUVbMYYQcq0Eob90Xkh4-B6FTq3VbzY2oO4dmAiNVJdIIRRpu_Appm6NNg8RNDyf9ByATZZRP/s1600/Handbrake_Source.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLN8Ht0P4wJo255kqaN4eoRNgjG8eDFjeRHiNw33Jvyj0aOZdn4IoMvdmCWjbZ8maMMXcSUVbMYYQcq0Eob90Xkh4-B6FTq3VbzY2oO4dmAiNVJdIIRRpu_Appm6NNg8RNDyf9ByATZZRP/s320/Handbrake_Source.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You will see HandBrake parse the folder and show you your Title and Chapters.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdQ05CtVEZLuGt88eAsdeSADv2s0tW8IA7RSGzFOXXd3KIl8jfy0LhmrdJXY4HL3Jgl6-wiE8iXEdE8moF9Ktw8rarqNovckj5Cx0A41FkyhpO3NIjhh1wCRVH2nRpbAc09YaG-UVVBFD9/s1600/HandBrake_Titles.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdQ05CtVEZLuGt88eAsdeSADv2s0tW8IA7RSGzFOXXd3KIl8jfy0LhmrdJXY4HL3Jgl6-wiE8iXEdE8moF9Ktw8rarqNovckj5Cx0A41FkyhpO3NIjhh1wCRVH2nRpbAc09YaG-UVVBFD9/s640/HandBrake_Titles.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now you will want to choose the Destination; what folder and file name you want this new file to be placed. On the right-side of the screen choose <b>iPad </b>and HandBrake will select options for you that are appropriate to scale to fit the iPad screen. By default HandBrake chooses the file extension of .M4V but I usually change it to .MP4 (my personal preference). Either is fine.</div>
<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5wOTnfJIJ6bt-QKdHcb4neKJ6rKSgx3ki7pUmMFcmlX7MR9I3gCtR6LrnuF1jrF_qXtEBS4eNk4RflD7kjjYd7hmvgCox15NE07KeDAygKhw5EbU1zveqeggoWJKLmy3KgRHoBv2G2iBM/s1600/HandBrake_Final+Selections.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5wOTnfJIJ6bt-QKdHcb4neKJ6rKSgx3ki7pUmMFcmlX7MR9I3gCtR6LrnuF1jrF_qXtEBS4eNk4RflD7kjjYd7hmvgCox15NE07KeDAygKhw5EbU1zveqeggoWJKLmy3KgRHoBv2G2iBM/s640/HandBrake_Final+Selections.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I highly recommend you use the <b>Preview </b>button at the top. The conversion process takes awhile and I'd hate to see you waste time by ending up with an unusable file. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When you are ready, press the <b>Start </b>button at the top and go get some coffee. This conversion process is very CPU intensive and will take some time. This is where I'm so thankful to have such a fast machine. For example, on my Intel Core I7 machine with 16GB of memory it took 50 minutes to convert a movie that is 1 Hour and 52 minutes long. And this is with all 8 CPU cores running full blast.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSji3n3ys79Ig38OslKi4loOh3qtDIHbH4LglZAb2VCR5DxD3_tEuqfnoM7rbes_5IMSYjKVPGC8mYAdZT0ExFAIeI5T_D89R6ephTQUNYcSBiMkaE0vQjSJgcD26ONpLQe40YPU0j2ei/s1600/WindowsTaskMgr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="483" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSji3n3ys79Ig38OslKi4loOh3qtDIHbH4LglZAb2VCR5DxD3_tEuqfnoM7rbes_5IMSYjKVPGC8mYAdZT0ExFAIeI5T_D89R6ephTQUNYcSBiMkaE0vQjSJgcD26ONpLQe40YPU0j2ei/s640/WindowsTaskMgr.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After your movie has been converted to MP4 format, I recommend you play a little of it using VLC. Again, just to make sure it converted correctly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Add the movie to iTunes Library</b></div>
<div>
Open iTunes and then drag-and-drop your MP4 file (.mp4 or .m4v file extension).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwPIyckOMTf2nqgqew5j2zW20LVxoyIsprY31HswXS-CTSILD2DWVcPqkqNP4hgFmSTO5Pyywlobx6LCl3ugG0Sthucx-3gIlKt7078ZjCQs42vATbTA3f1m7c7VE7wQ6-h_5Gv9nWpvOe/s1600/iTunesLibrary.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwPIyckOMTf2nqgqew5j2zW20LVxoyIsprY31HswXS-CTSILD2DWVcPqkqNP4hgFmSTO5Pyywlobx6LCl3ugG0Sthucx-3gIlKt7078ZjCQs42vATbTA3f1m7c7VE7wQ6-h_5Gv9nWpvOe/s1600/iTunesLibrary.png" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you've never done this before you can drag to the Movies folder, but your entire Library will be highlighted as you do it. Don't worry, iTunes knows it is a movie file and will put in the Movies folder.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Add Covert Art</b></div>
<div>
If you will Google the Title of your movie, I'm confident you will find a picture of the original cover artwork of your DVD. Just save that picture file to your computer. Then click on the Movies folder in iTunes and find you're movie. Right-click on your movie and select <b>Get Info</b>. Choose the Artwork tab and choose Add. Select the picture you desire.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Syncing to your iPad</b></div>
<div>
Depending upon how you configured sync settings, your movies may not automatically transfer over to your iPad. So connect your iPad via USB to your computer. Then under devices, select your iPad on the left (1), then select Movies at the top (2), and place a check mark beside your movie Title (3).</div>
<div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUbIDyEO_LbzulAiyCkM-00tJ4N_yi9H7U8Uk0GlFYYFPls2dkLekoRhFl8w4r2f2F0drxEC2ibxIrt-nUpeeyHVxJMvao7zxVTUcX7CDOUE5ElRzrxHai2KHDb9x8U3AeTU8Uw_Fu5rtT/s1600/iTunes+Select+Movie.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUbIDyEO_LbzulAiyCkM-00tJ4N_yi9H7U8Uk0GlFYYFPls2dkLekoRhFl8w4r2f2F0drxEC2ibxIrt-nUpeeyHVxJMvao7zxVTUcX7CDOUE5ElRzrxHai2KHDb9x8U3AeTU8Uw_Fu5rtT/s640/iTunes+Select+Movie.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then click the <b>Apply</b> button at the bottom and it will sync to your iPad. Enjoy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>What to do with the files?</b></div>
<div>
Now that you're done, what do you do with the MKV and MP4 (or M4V) files? That's up to you. When you did the drag-and-drop to iTunes, it copied the file to your Library, so there isn't a need to keep the MP4 or M4V file.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I would recommend keeping the MKV file. This way you'll have it in case you want to convert it for use on another device, like your phone. In my case, I'll copy the MKV files to my laptop so I can enjoy them there. And if/when I get Tivo Desktop, I'll play the MKV versions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Final Thoughts</b></div>
<div>
I am so grateful to all of the smart people out there that create and contribute to products like VLC, HandBrake, and MakeMKV. And offer it for use at little or no cost. MakeMKV is free to try, you just have to re-install every 30-60 days. But it costs $50 (US) to register, and I plan on doing so just to show my support.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are other commercial products that claim to do this but I'm finding they are more expensive and are basically doing the same steps above. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-16077307211723868942012-03-12T13:52:00.001-04:002012-03-12T13:52:58.073-04:00Windows 7 Screen MagnifierA user just called me and reports they keep accidentally turning on the Windows 7 Screen Magnifier and they don't know how to turn it off. They also don't know how they are invoking it in the first place.<br />
<br />
Since I don't use this feature I didn't know either. I wanted to share what I've now learned.<br />
<br />
If you use the <b>Windows Key + "The Plus Sign on the Keyboard"</b> this will turn on the magnifier. As you keep pressing the <b>Windows Key + "The Plus Sign on the Keyboard"</b> it will keep increasing the magnification to wherever you have your cursor.<br />
<br />
In order to turn it off you have to press <b>Windows Key + Escape</b><br />
<br />
This seems counter-intuitive to me. Seems like the Escape key by itself would have been the correct choice. The user still doesn't know how they are invoking it, but at least we know how to turn it off.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-9483107444996993172012-03-04T22:26:00.000-05:002012-03-04T22:26:43.920-05:00I want the old TweetDeck backI am so frustrated with the new <a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com/" target="_blank">TweetDeck </a><span id="goog_871959895"></span><span id="goog_871959896"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a>. It is so lacking in features compared to the old one. I have tried to adapt to the new one but I've had enough! I want the old one back.<br />
<br />
Thanks so much to David Amador for posting the old beloved version:<br />
<a href="http://www.david-amador.com/2011/12/revert-to-the-old-tweetdeck/" target="_blank">http://www.david-amador.com/2011/12/revert-to-the-old-tweetdeck/</a><br />
<br />
I can't believe that Twitter paid so much money to buy TweetDeck only to ruin it. They paid <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/twitter-buys-tweetdeck-for-40-million/" target="_blank">$40 million dollars</a>. Can you believe that? <br />
<br />
Heck for half that amount I would have wrote one for them, and I don't even know how, but for that kind of cash, I could hire a team of programmers and we'd all retire.<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-57831823556044800042012-02-25T00:13:00.000-05:002012-02-25T00:13:35.270-05:00I don't get viruses<b>I'm an IT guy. I don't get viruses. </b><br />
Well, come watch me eat some humble pie, and I'll tell you a story of how I got bit, and how I resolved it.<br />
<br />
As is probably obvious by this blog I am an IT person. Although I am far from perfect, I haven't had a virus or malware on my personal computer(s) in years, I mean like maybe close to a decade. Since I'm in the business, I know what precautions to take, I observe links before I click them, I know how to kill tasks in the background that look a little suspicious, etc. I probably watch what is in the web browser's address bar more than I watch anything else on the page so I can make sure I'm actually on the site I'm supposed to be.<br />
<br />
Last night I got home and sat down at my computer and was about to begin a long session of upgrades for one of my clients. I had seen a reference to a new movie being released called Act of Valor. I knew my son had expressed an interest in seeing it and I wondered what it was rated. <br />
<br />
So I went to fandango.com, clicked on the movie, and then suddenly I saw a browser window open with a fake antivirus. I know these screens all to well, because I'm the one called in when one of my user's get bit. But before my eyes could even focus to begin to read the screen and before I even moved the mouse, I watched it do a very quick download and reboot my computer, and bam! I had a virus. Not just any virus, but a rootkit. I've heard about these drive-by downloads, but I'd never experienced one before.<br />
<br />
<b>Time to Rant</b><br />
I'm going to vent a little. If you want to watch, read on. Otherwise skip to the bottom to see how I removed it. I am more than a little pissed off about this. I run Windows 7 and I put up with the nagging UAC (User Access Control) prompts in the thought that this is supposed to prevent this sort of thing. I run IE9 with the smart-screen filter on. I use MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials). I keep up with patches on everything, not just Windows. And above all, I am careful. I don't surf sites that are known for serving up malware, and I don't even download torrents or questionable software. And yet... <br />
<br />
When Microsoft first introduced UAC in Vista, I thought it was a dumb idea, and boy was it annoying. Everything you clicked, the computer would essentially ask, "did you mean to click that? Are you sure?" MS toned it down in Windows 7, and as I learned more about UAC, I began to at least appreciate what Microsoft was trying to accomplish and in fact I leave UAC on for my clients even though this has introduced a wide range of complexities with Login and Logoff scripts and general maintenance that we have to perform.<br />
<br />
But why, to this day, with Windows 7 and UAC are rootkits still possible? What have I missed? Programs are supposed to not have direct access to the hardware without going through Windows, unless they are granted higher privileges, and UAC is supposed to ask you for permission to grant those higher privileges. <br />
<br />
Thank you Sony for introducing the world to rootkits (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>). This is but one of several reasons I do not buy Sony products anymore. There are other reasons, but that's for another rant. And by God Microsoft, why after all these years can you not block these damnable things? I could understand it if I booted from a CD or USB drive that the hard drive's MFT is fair game, but while I'm in Windows, surely you could devise a way to block it or at the very least alert the user before the deed is done.<br />
<br />
<b>Mixed Messages</b><br />
OK, after I got bit and the computer rebooted I was facing the Blue Screen of Death on each reboot. I was able to boot into Safe Mode and run MSCONFIG which allowed me to disable all non-Microsoft services as well as all Startup items. This then allowed me to the boot into Windows normally without the BSOD errors. But while I was in Safe Mode with Networking I opened up Microsoft Security Essentials and saw that my virus definitions were less than a day old. I did a scan and it found nothing. Then I updated the definitions and ran another scan and this time it reported that I had the <b>alureon.a MBR rootkit</b> virus. It then told me that it couldn't remove the virus and suggested that I try the new <a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline" target="_blank">Windows Defender Offline</a>. So from another computer I went and downloaded the 64-bit version of WDO (which supposedly has the latest definitions).<br />
<br />
I booted from the WDO CD and it says it couldn't find any infections. So MSE says I have a virus and the tool they suggest to remove can't find it? So I downloaded and burned the <a href="http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner" target="_blank">Kaspersky</a> Rescue CD and booted from that. But it couldn't find anything either. Then I ran <a href="http://www.malwarebytes.org/" target="_blank">Malwarebytes </a>and it at least said it found an infection. It reported that the file called <b>C:\Windows\SvcHost.exe</b> was infected and that a copy of that file was also running in memory. Malwarebytes tried to remove it but after each reboot it came back, because it is a rootkit. I had also turned off System Restore, but that didn't help either.<br />
<br />
There is a legitimate SvcHost.exe file that lives in the C:\Windows\System32\ folder, just so you don't get them confused.<br />
<br />
<b>Try This, Try That</b><br />
After poking around and trying some of my usual tricks, I said forget it, let me restore from last night's backup. I use the Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery. As I went through the restore options I noticed it didn't automatically offer to check "Restore the MBR" and I didn't choose that either. In hindsight, I wonder if that would've corrected my issue. But after about 45 minutes of waiting for the restore, I rebooted to find I still had the rootkit.<br />
<br />
I then grabbed my Windows 7 install CD and booted from that, chose the Repair option, and then the Command Prompt and issued these commands:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>bootrec /FixMbr</li>
<li>bootrec /FixBoot</li>
</ul>
<br />
This too didn't help.<br />
<br />
<b>Finally - A Fix</b><br />
As I Googled around I began to see references to TDSSKiller. I remember this tool. Kaspersky made it. In fact, I had a copy in my toolkit on my hard drive. I ran that, it found and removed the rootkit. Yeah! Thanks Kaspersky.<br />
<br />
But then I had to laugh. Why is that my copy of TDSSKiller which is dated November of 2010 found and removed something that their Rescue CD that I just downloaded didn't find? And why, with a virus that has been around for so long, couldn't Microsoft Security Essentials detect it with virus definitions that were only a day old, but could be detected by new ones? Does this mean the rootkit somehow tainted MSE? If so, that's another very serious concern.<br />
<br />
As I was doing my research for this post (after I removed my virus) I have discovered that Kaspersky has a newer version of TDSSKiller dated Feb 7, 2012 available here:<br />
<a href="http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363" target="_blank">http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363</a><br />
<br />
<b>Perplexed</b><br />
In looking back over this ordeal, what can I do different to prevent this from happening again? At the moment, I'm not sure. I feel like I am as protected as I can be without installing multiple antivirus and anti-malware programs. I have always said, running more than one antivirus program is like wearing more than one condom. It works, but it sure takes the fun out of it.<br />
<br />
I do know this. The next time one of my clients has malware, I will be a bit more empathetic, as it is entirely possible they really didn't do anything wrong by clicking something they shouldn't. Well, maybe not "all" of my users. Some just can't help themselves.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-59132405831413013622012-02-24T08:33:00.000-05:002012-03-02T09:36:39.662-05:00Android Phone Stops Syncing Contacts to GmailMy Android phone stopped automatically syncing my contacts with Gmail. Even if I went through the Settings menu and chose to do a manual sync, it would go through the motions but wouldn't update my contacts, and I also noticed that the date/time of the last sync wouldn't change.<br />
<br />
I finally found the answer. Many thanks to the user Peaser on this website:<br />
<a href="http://androidforums.com/eris-support-troubleshooting/81579-fix-google-contacts-not-syncing.html" target="_blank">http://androidforums.com/eris-support-troubleshooting/81579-fix-google-contacts-not-syncing.html</a><br />
<br />
<b>The solution:</b><br />
<br />
In your phone, go to Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, and under the All tab, choose Contacts Storage. Then push the "Clear Data" button. <br />
<br />
<b>Then resync your phone to Gmail:</b><br />
<br />
In your phone, go to Settings, Accounts & Sync. Under Managed Accounts, choose Google, and press the "Sync Now" button.<br />
<br />
<b>Followup (3/2/2012) </b><br />
I wanted to share a followup to this story. A few days later I noticed my contacts weren't syncing again. The behavior was slightly different. Previously the date/time on the last sync didn't change. This time it would update the date/time of the last sync but wouldn't actually sync the differences between my phone and Gmail.<br />
<br />
So, I did this:<br />
<ul>
<li>Settings</li>
<li>Accounts & Sync</li>
<li>Select your Google account</li>
<li>Uncheck "Sync Contacts"</li>
</ul>
<div>
---</div>
<ul>
<li>Settings</li>
<li>Applications</li>
<li>Manage Applications</li>
<li>All (The All Applications Tab)</li>
<li>Select Contact Storage (I'm told that on some phones it is listed as "Google Contacts Sync")</li>
<li>Press the Clear Data button (which purges all contacts from your phone)</li>
</ul>
<div>
---</div>
<ul>
<li>Settings</li>
<li>Accounts & Sync</li>
<li>Select your Google account</li>
<li>Check "Sync Contacts" (which should cause it to re-download your contacts from Gmail)</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-1800527385432913732012-02-20T02:46:00.000-05:002012-02-20T02:46:01.962-05:00Unable to Browse VMware DatastoresArg! I can't browse my VMware vSphere Datastores.<br />
<br />
It didn't start out that way, but let me tell you a story of how I started with one problem, only to discover another, and another, and then ultimately the fix for all of them.<br />
<br />
I was setting up backup jobs using Trilead's VM Explorer (<a href="http://www.trilead.com/">http://www.trilead.com/</a>) and it kept getting stuck on a message "<b><span style="color: red;">downloading VMX file</span></b>". When doing this from a working vSphere 5 server, this step takes half-a-second, but in my case I tried several VMs all on the same vSphere box and at one point let it set there for over an hour.<br />
<br />
Occasionally when I tried I would eventually get a <span style="color: red;"><b>503 http service unavailable</b></span> error message. I Googled both messages and found all sorts of suggestions for these problems and I tried most of them to no avail. I should add I was seeing people describing this issue with various other backup products as well, like Veeam Backup, and Quest vRanger.<br />
<br />
Then I tried using VM Explorer's File Explorer and I was able to browse the datastore and manually copy the VMX file, so I knew it wasn't locked. I could also browse the contents of my datastores using an SSH/Putty connection.<br />
<br />
But when I tried to browse the datastore using the vSphere Client, no matter which datastore I selected I got the "<span style="color: red;"><b>Searching Datastore....</b></span>" and it would never display files or folders. I Googled some more and found this too is a common issue with no concrete resolutions. I also tried using the web browser to browse the datastores by going to the vSphere's IP address, but that lead to a spinning hour glass.<br />
<br />
I tried rebooting the vSphere server several times and that didn't fix these issues. I also tried powering down all of the VMs and placed it in Maintenance Mode, but again no luck.<br />
<br />
Several weeks ago we setup a Buffalo Terastation NAS device and configured it to use the NFS protocol. I had it mounted as a datastore as well. The performance of this solution was awful and we are in the process of abandoning it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlrm7K_S01KbmU_vQTAv49AzetmFcb6M5t_7v_8K6-HKYNllCo9qhD6badtOCWgLsJZOl-i9gmD7-3gaizot8Pg8arN0253jZ0TKyBj9lV4_E7hulJB7-oDy6M8IcGidnbfP0fBHKDGBVi/s1600/NAS_NFS.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlrm7K_S01KbmU_vQTAv49AzetmFcb6M5t_7v_8K6-HKYNllCo9qhD6badtOCWgLsJZOl-i9gmD7-3gaizot8Pg8arN0253jZ0TKyBj9lV4_E7hulJB7-oDy6M8IcGidnbfP0fBHKDGBVi/s640/NAS_NFS.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
As I sat there staring at the screen wondering what else to try and wondering if I was going to have to move these Virtual Machines to another server and completely re-install the vSphere software, I decided to remove the unused NFS datastore volume since I wasn't using it anyway. Low and behold, after removing it I could suddenly browse both of the other datastores as quick as you please.<br />
<br />
And my original issue with Trilead's software, the "downloading VMX file" problem also disappeared.<br />
<br />
I would have never guessed that issues with one datastore volume would prevent you from accessing other datastores.<br />
<br />
I hope this helps some other poor soul.<br />
<br />
<br />DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-12381894113753398602012-02-17T17:31:00.000-05:002012-02-19T22:24:15.298-05:00Access the vSphere 5 Console via SSH (Putty)<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just learned the neatest trick and I just had to share it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was unable to connect to a vSphere 5 server using the VMware vSphere Client. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I needed to quickly reboot that server from remote. I did have access to the server via SSH using Putty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What I learned is that after you login via SSH just type the command: </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">dcui</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and viola! you have access to the console:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSeZB9oUPw70gqdiFjtxkUYk4szRixOU8RlTov-jLI3yDtVPByqhg9sh53GKrnazOSY9shXY7PcJdM_162t4C459y2kV4RDB0VxEIwVv1ovQ-Wm6-0S5dTn1Y2xW9kuot2H84bijNr96sE/s1600/vSphere5+Console.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSeZB9oUPw70gqdiFjtxkUYk4szRixOU8RlTov-jLI3yDtVPByqhg9sh53GKrnazOSY9shXY7PcJdM_162t4C459y2kV4RDB0VxEIwVv1ovQ-Wm6-0S5dTn1Y2xW9kuot2H84bijNr96sE/s640/vSphere5+Console.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sweet! This will be easy for me to remember, "<b><span style="color: blue;">D</span></b>avid <span style="color: blue;"><b>C</b></span>ocke's <b><span style="color: blue;">U</span></b>ser <span style="color: blue;"><b>I</b></span>nterface".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To exit the above and return to the command line console, press CTRL-C.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><i>Followup</i></b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A couple of days later I found my self in a situation where I couldn't access the server via the vSphere Client and rebooting via the above GUI console didn't work either.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What did work was this command:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>/sbin/shutdown.sh -r</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The -r of course means reboot. Without it, it will shutdown and not reboot. You have to be patient after you issue this command. In my case it took almost a minute before you actually started seeing a response.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-56505929601172647882012-02-04T12:41:00.001-05:002012-07-19T17:14:41.776-04:00Unable to login with vSphere Client<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This has happened to me on several occasions so I wanted to document this. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When you use the VMware vSphere client to login to a vSphere server (in my case a vSphere 5 server) you are unable to login and you get a dialogue box that has a title of <b>Connection Error</b>, and a message that reads:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;">The server {the server you're trying to login to} could not interpret the client's request. (The remote server returned an error: </span><span style="color: red;">(503) Server Unavailable.</span><span style="color: blue;">)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Then below that it gives an error stack message:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Call "ServiceInstance.RetrieveContent" for object "ServiceInstance" on Server "{the server you're trying to login to}"</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSbMyzISY8iDOaDI5ZFRfu6-zpFIl0wDk5RosHXBJX0L5CsCjhlKc_sq54nHim57FWiF60-mTGTshmJvNMRYV6LC8Hk9hyphenhyphenX50mt6mgxUFRpipJeD3a9w_y8ZA8tMGmsHEjTt97TSGtWAyH/s1600/ConnectionError503.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSbMyzISY8iDOaDI5ZFRfu6-zpFIl0wDk5RosHXBJX0L5CsCjhlKc_sq54nHim57FWiF60-mTGTshmJvNMRYV6LC8Hk9hyphenhyphenX50mt6mgxUFRpipJeD3a9w_y8ZA8tMGmsHEjTt97TSGtWAyH/s400/ConnectionError503.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What appears to be happening is that the SSL encryption service on the vSphere server isn't running and the client cannot talk to the vSphere server using SSL.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is frustrating is that you know the virtual machines are running, but since you cannot login with the client there is no graceful way to go into Maintenance Mode and/or to reboot the server.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The trick to fix it is to get the various services to restart including the one that handles SSL encryption.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So download Putty to a workstation, and connect to the server using SSH. This assumes you have already enabled SSH on the vSphere Server.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Once logged in with Putty issue to the following command in the terminal window:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">/sbin/services.sh restart</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You will begin to see several services restart. Once complete you should be able to login again using the vSphere client. The above command works on vSphere version 5 (ESXi 5), but I have not tested this on ESXi 4.x. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In my case this situation tends to occur when I place the server in Maintenance Mode and try to reboot it, but it doesn't reboot and you suddenly loose your connection to it with your vSphere Client and can't login again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Followup </span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">July 19, 2012 - I found a faster and easier way to deal with this issue. Please read my new post called: <a href="http://davidcocke.blogspot.com/2012/07/vmware-vsphere-client-error-503.html" target="_blank">VmWare vSphere Client Error 503</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503526014683966890.post-34231695982078185772012-01-20T09:09:00.000-05:002012-01-20T09:10:36.811-05:00IIS 7 and 32-bit ASP Apps<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A highly respected colleague of mine, Donald Milam, emailed me today about a problem he recently encountered. Knowing I'll likely run into this myself very soon I decided to post this here as a reference. Thanks, Donald for sharing this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">David,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the spirit of your blog, I wanted to share something I found:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently one of our clients
had an issue with retrieving their check images through Internet Teller. This
was after they had upgraded their IIS Webserver hosting Internet Teller to
IIS7. By default Server 2008 R2 only installs in 64 bit. IIS 7 by default
disables 32 bit ASP applications from running.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This can affect third party applications from being executed, such as check
image retrieval and Single Sign On (SSO) to external sites such as Bill Pay. To
enable this functionality follow these steps:</span></div>
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<em><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Create a
new or edit an existing Application Pool using Internet Information Services
(IIS) Manager by clicking “Application Pools” on the left hand pane. Click “Add
Application Pool” and provide it with a name such as “Classic ASP” or edit the
existing pools. Right click the new application pool and select “Advanced
Settings” and under “General” switch “Enable 32-Bit Applications” to “True”.</span></em><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Then switch
(or verify which pool your ASP site is using) over to use the new Application
Pool by right clicking on the site name and selecting “Manage
Application”/”Advanced Settings” and changing the Application Pool to the newly
created “Classic ASP”.</span></em><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span></em><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks to this website for the above solution: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.devbymonkeys.co.uk/?p=108">http://www.devbymonkeys.co.uk/?p=108</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Below is a screenshot of the settings (click to enlarge):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfo6yqD-Lby-a1fTty6kNJxlVlmHcDVFUW5IWgORRBfXyFY8wPgBgtBXxkP2h4L1aVjpQL_5enG2RnQJDxNZAK28XZjQDoew8gnDnigg7ae4lLce3rkGa6KiSkpVwqmUUsdx3rXeOoUcHi/s1600/IIS7_app_pool.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfo6yqD-Lby-a1fTty6kNJxlVlmHcDVFUW5IWgORRBfXyFY8wPgBgtBXxkP2h4L1aVjpQL_5enG2RnQJDxNZAK28XZjQDoew8gnDnigg7ae4lLce3rkGa6KiSkpVwqmUUsdx3rXeOoUcHi/s400/IIS7_app_pool.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>DavidChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16284571794794131722noreply@blogger.com0