kingsc

So interesting thing..... I was wiresharking my network to try to capture some particular data when I noticed something very strange... There's UDP broadcasts coming from only one laptop, I know this because of the 255.255.255.255 destination used, however I'm very new to the networking world and to Wireshark. So.. the source is always the same, which is the IP address of the laptop (Which happens to be our COO's, lol), except the port changes, whatever's happening it seems to increment the port by 1 on each broadcast. In the "info" section of wireshark, the destination port is always the same, 34447. The source port however, changes to wierd things like "myblast", "minilock", "ibm-mgr", etc. I remotely connected to his registry and checked some very basic general stuff, and checked his system32 folder for any newly modified or obviously bogus files. Came up with nada. Is this traffic normal? His laptop is the only one doing it. How can I get to the root of this?

Honestly, I 'rarely' use Adobe Acrobat. A user asked something that I didn't have an answer for and couldn't find quickly. The user, I guess, forgot their "password" for their signature file. What's the best way to resolve this? The sig file was self-created supposedly, not handed out by any Authority.

That's what I'm thinking. Because I have Office SP2 and I have no issues. Only one add-in is included in our image(IIRC), and that's for a program called SendOuts. I've contacted the guy on our side who administers that and he says he's contacted the company and they are unaware of any incompatibility issues.... the other problem with the hosed view is only with people having SP2 and the add-in. Even if the add-in is disabled it doesn't resolve the issue though. It's actually a very minor issue and quick fix, but the problem comes back upon re-starting Outlook. It messes with the view settings removing several "Fields", and thus causing the "hosed" view in Outlook.

Ahhhhh! That makes perfect sense! Silly me, thanks. I'm new to the networking side of the house so it's very interesting to me learning how all these different things operate, it's like it's own hidden little world hehe. Yeah I've only used Wireshark once in a class so far and it was just and introduction but I here Wireshark is an awesome app to use. Thanks!!!

So.... streaming video/audio is usually done with UDP because it's a connectionless, fire-and-forget protocol... however I watch videos on YouTube, do a netstat, and there's not one UDP connection active. Then again, I don't see any connection pointing to(by host name anyway) YouTube, UDP or TCP? Anyone know why?

As an update, I decided to test Dell's eSmart system. If you would like I'll update this post with my findings.

Ah good to know thank you. Yeah the rollover is just a reversal of pins on one side and the other; diff from a crossover. I was wondering if I could avoid using a serial cable just out of curiosity. Thanks for the info.

Hi all, So I'm relatively new to networking. I was reading a Net+ study guide and read that by reversing the pins on the ends of a ethernet cable you can create a crossover cable used for Cisco devices. Can you use this by itself to hyperterminal into a Cisco 1800 router? I created the cable and verified the pinout is correct with a cable tester but I'm a little confused on how to setup the HT connection. From what I've read I should select "Direct to COM1", which directs that it's not a dialup connection but a local one, but I don't have that option; there is no "Direct to COM1". Am I going about this completely wrong? I can still connect via a console cable and DB9 adapter but was curious if I didn't have to use this and could just use the modified ethernet cable, thanks.

Thanks for all of the input. Well I can tell you I'm trying to use SpiceWorks and it's -ok- but I have over 200 assets, that's just workstations/laptops spread over a domain of 15 remote offices and a central HQ in San Diego. SpiceWorks I'm finding out either I don't know how to use it properly or it's not really meant to handle that much data. All I really personally care about is software asset management. I need to know who has what microsoft products installed, and how often they use them. LANDesk looks cool, but the price tag is horrendous. With SpiceWorks, I'm currently getting a list of all microsoft products installed which I then export to an excel file and subtotal it. Problem I've noticed recently is that I'll get an alert that 1 computer has "uninstalled 37 programs" which definitely isn't the case. That's just a few of the false alerts I get. SpiceWorks seems to get combobulated with the AD and I constantly have to delete assets and re-scan because they will be identified incorrectly(I figure this out by the IP address and associated host name). In a smaller organization SpiceWorks may be the way to go since it's free... but I'm in a team of 4 and I handle ALOT. I don't have time to be toying around all day. I need an effective solution.

Thank you for the info. How many users are you dealing with? What version of Outlook and Exchange Server are you using? Are you using any add-ons in Outlook?

The re-setting up of someone's email has happened again. And yet again, they have the service pack installed. No one has any input? No one else is experiencing any issues?

Hi all, been a while. We're starting to experience some strange issues. One of which I know is related to SP2, at least partly. Another, I'm not sure. I had a user who, in Outlook 2007, her view would somehow get modified to only show the size and date in the current view section. Upop resetting default values, it fixed her problem. However, upon restarting Outlook, the problem would return. After some digging, I looked in event viewer and Office SP2 was installed on the same day she started having the problem. I uninstalled SP2 for Office and the problem was fixed. Reinstalled and it came back. I've uninstalled and left it off to monitor results. The other issue, which we've had happen with 2 or 3 different people now is their .ost gets rebuilt for no reason. The one person I checked does have SP2 installed. Now there are some additional factors here: 1. The person with the first problem had a mailbox size of over 6gigs. It's been that way for a while now though and the problem didn't start till SP2 was installed, but maybe the combination of the two could be at fault? 2. There is an Outlook Add-in installed for a program used by the sales group to keep notes. However, I've disabled all add-ins for the person with the first problem, no effect. No effect starting in safe mode either. 3. I have SP2 but no problems so far. However, I maintain my mailbox and don't have the previously mentioned Add-in. Anyone else experiencing issues with this SP?

So I'm looking at several products: * LanDESK * ZenWorks from Novell * Altiris from Symantec * ESmart from Dell All of these have varying prices of course, and they all seem to roughly do the same thing. So I'm going strictly by price, which ZenWorks seems to be the cheapest. Does anyone have 'real' experience with Asset Management and can give a new guy to the field some insight? What asset management software do you use? Do you like it? Do you wish you had went with something else? Any input would be appreciated.

Well... keeping it to the simple things first... how long are you waiting during this "freeze" maybe it's just thinking REALLY hard for a little while hehe. Otherwise, I'd try to find the mass storage drivers for your SATA HDD, and then press F6 at the appropiate place and point setup to those drivers. Unfortunately, you'll need an external floppy drive and to have those drivers on a floppy...... terrible. EDIT - Just reread your post and the bios not seeing a hard drive would be my first concern.... can you maybe get into recovery console and do a FIXMBR? Or a FIXBOOT? hmmmmm may not resolve your problem though.... even if you did get it up... I'd be really wary because you'll probably end up replacing that drive shortly.... Are you sure the HDD is installed properly? Did you do it yourself? Did it come in a chassis and maybe you installed the drive upside-down? How old is the drive?

At least till Windows 7 comes out, and hopefully they do a good job with it. Inside a VM, running on one processor with 1GB of RAM it looks very nice and runs very very well. I hope it's going to be like Vista's flashiness with XP's smoothness. Love it so far in testing.

Exactly, I'd make life easier on yourself and go with 32-bit unless you are a power-user (AutoCAD, etc), or a dork. ;P It may seem cool at first, but it'll get old hunting down drivers and hoping the software you buy is compatible with it. For example for the longest time Webroot SpySweeper wasn't compatible with it, however I just googled it and it now is. Like I said though, make your life easier. I have XP Pro 32 bit with 4GB installed, Showing as 3.3GB... with a dual core processor and my computer's blazing fast. It's the one I use for work and I regularly have an access 07 database up, Outlook 07, VMs of XP Pro(Virus testing), Windows 7, and server 2003 up, as well as Internet Explorer 8 for help desk and remote support app. In addition to all of this that is up all the time, I can do all the work I need to do for my job with absolutely no slowdown.

What do you mean by UDMAx and PIOx? I haven't heard these terms.... but that doesn't mean much. I assume you're talking about DMA vs PIO mode. There's a way to set this to DMA(Which I think is faster IIRC) without having to repartition...

I wouldn't install Windows XP 64 bit for general use. I'd stick with XP or XP Pro 32. Should work for you just fine.

Right, nothing major happens. I've made some progress. I'll fill you in later..... too tired right now!!!

Also, not sure if it's already in the process for removing conficker, but do a reset on your IE, if it's v7/8 and check your hosts file.

Ok, using a webcam recording, I was able to capture that 1-second BSOD screen during the boot, that I mentioned in my last post, before the PC restarts itself. It is a STOP error, 0x0000007B. It tells me that it could be a disk problem, whether as a hardware failure or a virus. I have downloaded the XP setup/boot floppies, but Microsoft stops the setup floppies at the XP SP2 version, not SP3. Of course, the system that crashed is SP3. So the big question now is... will using the SP2 setup floppies' CHKDSK /F (and-or CHKDSK /R) be a problem if my OS is at SP3? If not, there's really no way I have time to find a way to 'slipstream' XP3 components into those SP2 floppies. It is still uncertain whether this was a overheating or viral problem. I really need to get this notebook back up and running again as it will be needed for an event in the next week or so. I am starting to lose patience. I think HP did not design this notebook very well. The CPU can get very hot (Mobile Pentium 4) and the memory sticks (DDR) sit right above the DVD drive, making that drive hot and unstable. The only way I've been able to keep it more stable is using Notebook Hardware Control, supplemented with a notebook pad cooler, heh. Whatever the case, the personal contents of this drive are crucial as I have amassed a lot on it (I don't have USB storage at the moment), so I hope whatever repair I try to do will not mess up the rest of the drive (that is what I fear the most). I will be reformatting and reinstalling another drive while I try to fix this one (and then hopefully rescue my personal stuff off it). I would think chkdsk is chkdsk and should be fine to run however you can do it. You can also try running SFC /scannow and crossing your fingers if you can boot into the system in one form or another.

How so? Elaborate, please... it may help others. Maybe DEP wouldn't allow the drivers to run in a compressed state because it identified it as a malicious or potentially damaging process?

There is no reason that I'm aware of, with my 3 years working in the field, that you can't downgrade a computer to XP. You'll just need to hunt down drivers. I recommend Unknown Devices as a good program to hunt them down with. However, as stated earlier, it may be more then you can handle.

Ahhhh this is what I'm thinking but question is... how do you accomplish this? I mean, I know how to change the default location of my docs for a user, but how do you set this up for the default user? What entry in ntuser.dat? I'll have to research that. Would this create any issues though? THe user would lose their customizations? No... desktop is in my docs.... That idea might work.

Well for now I decided to leave it not being 'perfectly' clean and just transferring all profiles to D:, so no unnattended is involved. So far it works very well; there is only a couple 'minor' glitches that I have a good idea how to fix. The benefit of this is: When a computer writes a disc, it writes from the outside in. The outside is the fastest part. So keeping the c partition, the system partition, on the outside, and let all the junk users put on the disk kept to the inside, hopefully will improve performance. Also, instead of going through the hassle of backing up user data and what not, keep all their data on the D: partition. Just re-image the system partition and viola, good to go. It now concerns me however when I'm thinking of how a profile interacts with the system partition. Right now, it just occured to me, I may want to revisit creating a default user profile, modifying location of documents via right-clicking the start menu and setting THAT to a folder on the D partition...... that may work better as it should store solely the data they've put in their documents..... But then... after re-imaging, their customizations would dissapear...... I just don't know... lol EDIT - And if I do the default user edit thing that won't work.... then all new users would save their my docs to the same folder... unless you use %username%? But then.... would it automatically create the folder for each user, like in Active Directory? Yes, I'm working on this as we speak LOL. EDIT #2 - So.... learned that each time I re-image the system partition and log into the domain... it creates an additional profile following the normal scheme (sking, sking.domain, sking.domain001).... this is workable.. but not clean. Maybe because I'm regenerating SIDs due to the image being sysprep'd before hand? Maybe if I didn't regenerate SIDs it wouldn't do that? Or I need to somehow reference windows to refer to D:\Documents and Settings\%username% to check for profile names.