seanism DOT com Random thoughts from the world of seanism

19Apr/120

Jing vs. Snagit

I recently needed to get a screenshot tool and saw the makers of Snagit had a free tool called Jing. After some research I found a comparison between the two.

reference: http://www.techsmith.com/jing-snagit.html

12Apr/120

Changing the network adapter binding order

If you're like me you have a wired and wireless connection at work.  When your accessing your server or other network resources you want to make sure your PC uses your wired connection over your wireless connection without having to manually disable the wireless adapter.  You can set the order in which the network connections are accessed in Windows XP, Vista or 7.

In Windows Vista or 7

  1. Click the Start button then Control Panel
  2. Click View network status and tasks
  3. Click Change adapter settings in the left side bar
  4. Press the Alt key to show the file menu and click Advanced then Advanced settings...
  5. Order your network adapters by using the arrows on the right...
6Apr/120

Dealing with 20 GB or greater PST files in Outlook

Lately I've had a few users who's PST has gotten corrupt and been unaccessible at the 19GB mark.  After doing some research I discovered the default unicode PST size limit in Outlook 2003 and 2007 is 20GB.

By default, .pst files are in the Unicode format in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003. Additionally, the overall size of the .pst files has a limit that is more than the 2-GB limit that is imposed by the ANSI .pst files. By default, the limit for a Unicode .pst file in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003 is configured to be 20 GB.

To resolve this I run scanPST.exe located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12 in Windows 7 or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 in Windows XP if you have Office 2007.  Once that completes you'll have a functioning PST.  You can open it in Outlook but it will become corrupt after you start using it again so this isn't an option.
The best way to deal with a large PST is to split it into multiple smaller PST files and access them as needed.  A great free tool for this is MailScavator.

First choose your Outlook profile then choose which PSTs you want to work with.

Third you choose where you want the PSTs saved.  Fourth you choose the size and how you want to split them.

You can filter what emails you work with by selecting Dates, addresses sent by, received by, or certain text in the message.

Lastly you can logging and choose whether or not you want to move, copy, or scan.  I typically move as the original PST is worthless at it's current size.  Now click Start and let it works its magic.

23Nov/110

Connecting Windows 7 to a Windows XP share

If you are having trouble connecting a Windows 7 machine to a Windows XP share try enabling Network security: LAN Manager authentication level - Send LM & NTLM responses.

  1. Open the run dialog and type gpedit.msc and press enter.
  2. Open Computer Configuration
  3. Open Windows Settings
  4. Open Security Settings
  5. Open Local Policies
  6. Open Security Options
  7. Find Network security: LAN Manager authentication level and change it to Send LM & NTLM responses
For more info on the settings see the Microsoft TechNet article.
11Nov/110

Windows 7 prompting for credentials when accessing SharePoint documents

Sympton
You are prompted to enter your credentials, even though the user account that you are using has sufficient permission to access this site.

For example, when you open a Microsoft Office file from a Microsoft Office SharePoint site by using 2007 Microsoft Office on a Windows 7-based client computer that has no proxy configured, you are prompted for authentication.

Solution
you have to create a registry entry. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
  2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters
  3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
  4. Type AuthForwardServerList, and then press ENTER.
  5. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
  6. In the Value data box, type the URL of the server that hosts the Web share, and then click OK.Note You can also type a list of URLs in the Value data box. For more information, see the "Sample URL list" section in this article.
  7. Exit Registry Editor.
  8. Restart the WebDAV service.
  9. Open an elevated command prompt and type in net stop WebClient && net start WebClient
  10. Reconnect to your SharePoint site.
source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280
28Sep/110

Windows 7 firewall network location

If you have a computer that is connected to a domain and is plugged into the domain network but doesn't have the domain profile active in the firewall settings of Windows 7 check to make sure you have your domain DNS server set as your primary DNS.

I had a client have an external DNS set for "faster internet" but it was causing errors on the machine because the PDC couldn't communicate with it correctly.

18Aug/111

MotoHelper 2.0.24 Consuming free space

A client of mine's laptop ran out of free space.  I did a scan and noticed the file MotoHelper.log was using it all.   After deleting the file it began to consume all the free space again after a few days.  I uninstalled the MotoHelper software and all is well.  I couldn've tried updating it but the client did not need the software.

The file path is...
C:\Program Files\Motorola\MotoHelper\MotoHelper.log

18May/110

ESET Online Scanner

Recently a client of mine got some spyware.  I cleaned it up with Malware Bytes as I usually do but she was still experiencing popups in Internet Explorer.  I reset IE and ran additional scans but the PC kept getting popups.  I downloaded and ran ESET's Online Scanner and it caught all the spyware Malware Bytes missed.

ESET Online Scanner

8Feb/110

Migrate a Repository Subfolder to Another Repository

If you have a subfolder that you'd like to migrate from one repository to another SVN has some built in tools that allow you to do that.

  1. Open a command prompt and point it to the directory SVN is installed.  For Windows that is C:\Program Files\VisualSVN Server\bin.  The default Repository directory is C:\Repositories.
  2. Type: svnadmin dump "path to Repository" > repoDumpFile.dmp
  3. You'll then to filter out everything but the sub directory you want to migrate.
    Type: svndumpfilter include "Path to Subfolder" < repoDumpFile.dmp > Filtered-repoDumpFile.dmp
  4. The above command will include all revisions even those not relevant to the subfolder you are migrating.  If you'd like to remove the non relevant revisions and/or re number them you can use the below command instead of the above.
    Type: svndumpfilter include "Path to Subfolder" --drop-empty-revs --renumber-revs < repoDumpFile.dmp > Filtered-repoDumpFile.dmp
  5. Let's create the new Repository.
    Type: svnadmin create "Path to Repositories\New Repository Name"
  6. Now we import the file.
    Type: svnadmin load --ignore-uuid "Path to Repositories\New Repository Name" < Filtered-repoDumpFile.dmp

References: http://svnbook.red-bean.com

3Feb/110

Quickbooks 2009 & Mapped Drives

A client of mine is using Quickbooks 2009 and has been having issues with accessing Quickbook files hosted on the Quickbooks database server.  All firewall ports are open, the database server is running and the Quickbooks Connection Diagnostic Tool says everything passes.  They access the files from a mapped drive to the server.  It's never ran or performed as well as I think it should on a gigabit network with fairly new machines.

After doing some research I tried accessing the Quickbooks files over a UNC path rather then a mapped drive.  The performance difference was night and day.  The files opened nearly instantly and it ran as if the QBW files were locally stored.

From Intuit's website...
Note: In prior versions of QuickBooks, Intuit recommended that a mapped network drive be used to access QuickBooks company files. With QuickBooks 2006, the UNC path, or direct path to the company file will work better than a mapped drive.

References: Network Diagnostic Tool, Should I use a mapped drive?