We’ve been running Windows 7 on several systems recently.  It’s a great OS and a well needed upgrade.  We’ve experienced a recurring issue however.  After a while IE8 would simply stop opening – You’d click the icon and it’d try a bit but fail.  Eventually we discovered you could right click and open as administrator – This would work but exposed the system to additional security issues and took extra work.  When I realized this it occured to me that perhaps some sort of addon was failing without administrative rights – I launched IE8 as admin – Went into internet options advanced tab and performed a full reset.  Once complete I was once again able to launch IE8 as a normal user.  I hadn’t installed much for plugins so it would seem that it’s either the skype addon, google gears, java, or flash.

I have a client who recently moved to active directory.  They found out however that they had two stations with XP home edition.  They opted to upgrade them to xp pro but did not want a fresh installation.  After some struggling I discovered that XP Home did not allow a repair install “upgrade” to XP Pro Volume license edition.  After a bit of digging I adapted a set of instructions found here to get the job done.

First these instruction assume the system boots.   Boot into windows and launch regedit.

Navigate to:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptionsLook for *ControlSet00x  where x is the highest number

1. Delete the ProductSuite registry key.
2. Then, create a new DWORD value and named it as Brand.
3. Set the “Brand” value data as 0.
4. Reboot the system.
5. On boot up after the BIOS screen, press F8 to display Windows XP Startup Menu.
6. Choose Last Known Good Configuration and hit Enter.

Once the system boots into windows right click on my computer and choose properties – verify the system reports itself as Windows XP Professional under the General tab.

Now reboot to your Windows XP Pro volume license CD and the option to perform a repair install should now be available. (It’s necessary to do the repair install because even though the prior step causes the system to report as XP pro it is missing most of the critical components that make pro . . . pro.)

This last weekend my wife and I had the opportunity to attend a Family Life conference on parenting – It was a great conference and I highly reccomend them.  While there the speaker mentioned a book by Ron Blue entitled “Master Your Money” which offers a biblical approach to finances.  I started reading it immediatly and it offers a very easy to read and sensible approach to growing wealth and living within your means.

For those interested the book can be found here.

The book offered a complete financial analysis walkthrough in spreadsheet form but as much as I tried I could not find a digital copy of these spreadsheets anywhere.  I wanted to be able to revisit them often and didn’t want to write in the book or try to mess with photocopies.  As a result I decided to make my own spreadsheet based on the ones in the book.  If you’d like to give it a try you can grab it here.

On an Apple Computer Microsoft XP SP3 Installer displays the error:

There is not enough disk space on C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$ to install Service Pack 3 Setup requires an additional 4 megabytes of free space or if you also want to archive the files for uninstallation,Setup requires 4 additional megabytes of free space. Free additional space on your hard disk and then try again

This is Caused by the EFI system used in modern Apple computer systems – EFI is unsupported by Windows XP – a simple registry fix corrects the issues.

Begin by Clicking Start then Run – Type “regedit” and press enter.

Navigate to:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup

On the right side, Right-click and select New – String value

Set the Name to “BootDir” and set its value to “C:\”

Reboot and retry the SP3 Installation.

Several of us at the office have been trying out the new Windows 7 – It’s been a positive experience so far and quite a bit faster than Vista.  One problem popped up on all the machines – When we tried to configure Outlook 2007 to connect to our hosted exchange server (using the prf file so we knew it was configured right) it would continuously prompt for the password.

This appears to be the result of the way hosted exchange systems require the use of a full email as the username to differentiate between client domains.  Windows 7 doesn’t care for this and the connection fails.  It may take a bit of doing but if you find your domain name and username from your provider and enter it as follows:

Domain\Username

You’ll find it functions perfectly.  The domain is not the domain name from your email it is something else – In our case I had to hit our server configuration and used the settings for configuring mobile activesync on my windows mobile device.  Our provider happens to use a special username to differentiate it’s users.  Once we found that we were happily reading emails again.

I’m on the new Netflix Silverlight Beta and it’s been great, better quality, works on my mac, all around a better setup. Today when I loaded a Netflix Watch Instantly movie I recieved “ErrorCode 8051 151″ Unable to watch at this time.  I thought perhaps a glitch or some server maintenance however every movie I tried resulted in the same error.

Our Xbox and my wifes computer could stream them just fine so it was something computer specific.  I tried uninstalling recent applications, clearing cache, trying another browser, and reinstalling silverlight with no luck.

Finally after a lengthy call with netflix support we found a very simple solution.

Load a movie in the netflix player normally. Once the silverlight player is active right click on the windows and choose “silverlight configuration”. Next select the “Application Storage” tab and click “Delete All”. Try your movie again and all should be well.

Today I encountered an unusual problem on a client system, they had been installing windows updates when the computer ran low on memory resources and crashed.  Following the crash they had lost all internet connectvity.  After some troubleshooting I determined it to be a DNS problem.  We could Ping DNS servers but not resolve domain names.  Changing DNS servers did not help nor did repairing the TCP/IP stack and a dozen other things I tried.  SFC /scannow did not turn up even a single invalid system file and windows was up to date with the exception of SP3.  I came to the conclusion it had to be a corrupt system file or something of the sort and in a last ditch effort installed SP3 knowing that Service Packs replace and reconfigure a large part of the system.  Sure enough once the system rebooted connectivity was restored.  So, while I do not have the problem pinned down I did see several others encountering this issue online – My best advice is to reinstall the latest service pack.  If any of you uncover more information on this issue please leave it in the comments.

Early on in my IT Career while working a temporary job as a pc tech I had the fortunate opportunity to take a Microsoft Certification course on TCP/IP.  A coworker of mine had to cancel and as such I recieved this training which was quite expensive at no cost.  I’ve always enjoyed learning and at the time thought it was a cool opportunity but since then have realized how much a simple foundation in networking, TCP/IP, and DNS is a critical part of being a quality technician, engineer, or administrator.   Tonight I came across the Guide: TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows which appears to be a fantastic instructional on networking and TCP/IP.  Check it out and if your new to this enter into it knowing that IP and subnettting is a boring thing but having a solid understanding of it and routing will give you a new understanding of the networks your employed to care for.

Today I setup my first IPhone on an Exchange Server with Mobile Activesync.  The Exchange setup was nothing special – I enabled HTTPS over RPC using a great article over at Petri.co.il – A Great website to checkout if you haven’t been there.  Next I completed the steps Found on this Apple Information Page for preparing for the IPhone – Again nothing special.  I was then able to test my Exchange setup and send the end user the setup information.  The connection tested fine in outlook but not on the IPhone.  I thought perhaps the IPhone did not have the Equifax certificate needed for the RapidSSL certificate used on the server and after a bit of research found out that correcting this is as easy as emailing the certificate to the phone.

First visit your exchange server using Internet Explorer.  Click the lock next to the address bar (if IE7) and select View Certificates.  Then click install certificate and walk through the wizard.

Next open Internet Options and click “Certificates” on the Content Tab.

Look Under “Other People” for the certificate and After selecting it click “Export”.  Name the certificate something relevant and accept all other defaults.

Once you have your certificate Email it to your Iphone.  This may require you setup a temporary IMAP or POP account with Gmail or elsewhere.  Once you have you email in hand simply open the attachment on the phone and you’ll be prompted to install it.  Once installed setup your Exchange sync as normal.

VMware has released a Security Advisory (VMSA-0008-0015) indicating it has updated the ESXi and ESX 3.5 packages to address a vulnerability in “openwsman”. This vulnerability is due to several buffer overflow conditions in the handling of HTTP basic authentication headers. Exploitation of this vulnerability may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the host running ESXi or ESX.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review VMware Security Advisory VMSA-0008-0015 and apply any necessary updates to help mitigate the risks.

http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#vmware_releases_security_advisory_vmsa