JustinStacey.x

In windows 98 you can reinstall the system on top of itself without any I'll effects, I am sure. It is one of the things I love about windows 98

Dear god, any more of this and I swear I am not going to be responsible for smashed up computers. I just tried to force Outlook to throw up a password prompt by changing mine and my colleague's passwords temporarily. It didn't work. Outlook just doesn't want to know and keeps blindly logging on. I am going to go berserk if this isn't fixed by Monday, can anyone please help me? I really don't fancy deleting and rebuilding my Domain account, I don't need any more sh*t to deal with right now

I found a thread here on the Internet with a user who is having *exactly* the same problem as myself. http://www.technologyquestions.com/technol...ail-myself.html Judging by the fact that no-one replied to that topic, I am going to assume people here are scratching their heads as much as I am. BUT... after reading that post, I am going to try and make Outlook throw up a password prompt as I have a feeling now it is logging in as my colleague.

Ok folks, I don't know what the hell I have done, but I need it fixed, and soon. Environment: Windows 2003 Exchange Server and Domain Controller with Exchange 2003 Windows 2003 Terminal Server with Outlook 2003 Windows Vista Machine (me) with Outlook 2003 connected to Exchange A few other XP machines Normally in my Outlook I have three mailboxes; my own, my colleague's, and an account for support emails. This has all worked perfectly in my computer and the Terminal Server for months, with no problems whatsoever. This morning I needed to create another account for support emails so I did so and tried to add it into my outlook as I did for the others, now giving me four inboxes. This is when the weird sh*t started happening. I tried to expand the folder list of the new account 'CSPA' and I was given a rather descriptive message that I 'couldn't open the folder'. Yes, I know that, but why?! Of course I checked the permissions and everything was fine. After some faffing around with Outlook profiles on both the TS and my machine I managed to get the new 'CSPA' account to display its folders. Only, this threw off my colleague's emails, so now I couldn't view his. I basically had to choose whether I wanted the 'CSPA' account or my colleagues... so I decided to stuff it, have 'CSPA' and the other support email forwarding onto my address, remove them both from my Outlook and just have my mailbox and my colleague's. Tested the forwarding, and all was merry. Then it gets even weirder. I tried sending an email as I normally would, to one of my colleagues. I thought it had worked, until I realised an email had come through to another colleagues inbox that message delivery failed. Wtf? I wasn't trying to send TO *or* FROM this colleague who'd received the message delivery failed email in their inbox. So I decide to scrap everything on the Terminal Server and my PC and start the Outlook profiles from scratch. Now, whenever I try to send an email on either, I get a message that... "you do not have the permission to send the message on behalf of the specified user" - which actually pops up as a physical dialogue box when I click 'send'. This is when I leave the 'from' field blank so basically, I can't send messages as myself. The weirdest thing is, if I enter the name of the person who was receiving my 'message delivery failed' emails as the sender, I CAN SEND EMAILS. What the heck is going on here? I have gone over permissions, delegation, send on behalf permissions and active directory settings with a fine toothcomb, and I can not find *any* evidence to suggest why this isn't working. I'm the only one with this problem and it's rather concerning me. Luckily its the weekend so sending mail now isn't that important, and I can access our TS and DC from home, so I would love to have this wrapped up by Monday. Basically, in a nutshell, I cannot send emails as myself in Outlook 2003. Help?!?!

Our cat usually just sits on the keyboard and makes my computer go 'beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeep!' Anyway, back on topic, I've decided to compile a short and sharp list of apps and tweaks that I've used to help bolster my security. Any third party apps are mainly thrown in there just to help audit the situation, and not actually do anything. On a Windows XP SP3 installation... Disable the following services: Remote Registry Messenger - disabled by default DNS Client Task Scheduler (leaves TCP Ports 135-139 wide open, used for DCOM exploits) Telnet - disabled by default There are many others that can be disabled to a varying degree of your preferences - but the above are mainly the ones I can see that will affect sceurity. Then there are things that can be done in the command prompt, using net user. Give the Guest account and Administrator account a password by typing net user administrator andyourpasswordhere. Press return, wait for confirmation, and do the same for guest. Then if it isn't already, disable Guest through control userpasswords2. No more abusing of the network with that one. It is also a good idea to do the net config server /hidden:yes trick, which hides your machine from the local computer browser (network neighborhood). This isn't really a security increase per-se, as it only 'hides' your machine from the network, it doesn't change the fact that it is still there and if unsecured can be just as vulnerable. Disabling and adding a password to the Guest account will substantially bolster security, but if you want to stamp out all chances of anyone being able to browse your hard drive using UNC commands (this becomes a problem when using, say, an unsecured wireless network in a coffee shop where anyone can join and try to hack into computers) then disable the following two options in your Local Area Network, and Wireless Network Connection: Client for Microsoft Networks File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks by removing the checkmark from the box and clicking OK. Now, even if someone manages to grab your IP, they won't be able to: Spam your computer with Messenger alerts, Browse its hard drive contents But, the chances of them even getting your IP are limited given the trick mentioned earlier to hide yourself from the computer browser. There are a few final utilities I reccommend to double check how we are doing for security, all from grc.com XPDite DCOMbobulator Unplug n' Pray Mousetrap Shoot The Messenger And I think that's it. Bear in mind, a lot of the major Windows holes that affected SP1 have either been removed in SP2 and 3, or patched by the tips mentioned above. Make sure Windows Firewall is on, and run a ShieldsUp!! test also from grc.com to verify your computer is essentially invisible from the Internet. You can now be confident that the system is hardened to attack. Just in case I contract any sh1t from the Internet, I have installed Spybot Search and Destroy (without any of the realtime components) and malwarebytes, since it's just such an awesome program. But, I repeat, I haven't run with any realtime protection for around 2 years now and have not suffered. I also check the system with hijackthis and there is nothing bad there. There are, of course, tweaks beyond these that will further harden a system to attack but for most home users and even many business users the scope of this article is enough, and will stop the majority of badness from even getting in - or being able to find your computer in the first place - without compromising usability. Beyond this we delve into Group Policies and suchlike that could begin to hamper the usability of the system, something which home users do not want, and I certainly don't want.

Well, my current home system has three partitions on a 160GB drive. The system partition at the beginning, a 16GB partition, FAT32. The file partition in the middle, around 130GB, NTFS. The swap partition at the end, 4GB, FAT32. I am not really bothered whether or not the file partition is FAT32 or NTFS, it is forced to NTFS because of its size, but since it is not a system partition it won't get interfered with. If it did, I have backups. The system partition is the most important obviously and being in FAT32 software can't screw around with the ACLs. Since all the software I run is only that which I trust, I conclude there is little chance of my system being messed with. Given I have taken many steps to secure myself on the network as mentioned above, even stealthing myself from the computer browser, I would be happy to ask someone on the local network to try and 'hack in' to my computer - I would place bets that they wouldn't be able to do it. I think I fiddled with group policy as well and told the computer to lock any user out after trying to log in 3 times. Of course, one of the best ways to secure the computer against tampering is to lock it when you're done. Those **** cats and keyboards...

This is normal. RDPing into a machine is not the same as remotely controlling it using Teamviewer, or VNC for instance.

For reasons I won't disclose here, I am interested in making my XP machine shutdown to the 'it is now safe to turn off your computer' prompt. Now, of course, it is ACPI compatible, but by using a group policy set to disable the automatic poweroff of the machine and the use of tsshutdn, i have managed to partly achieve what I want. The machine shuts off to a blank black screen with my cursor on it. But it does not display the 'it is now safe to turn off your computer' like this: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/s...te/winxppro.png So i tried looking at ntoskrnl in resource hacker, and the first bitmap is a blank black canvas. Ok I thought, I'll import that image into it, save it, disable WFP, and reimport ntoskrnl. I did that, verified that WFP didn't kick me in the butt, but still the computer shuts down to only the black screen. Why? I want it to display the bitmap above. thanks. edit: the weirdest thing is, i tried this with two Virtual machines and it worked, I didn't even need to edit the ntoskrnl. Is my hardware or software configuration stopping the logo from displaying? perhaps its because I use another monitor alongside the laptop monitor, as the main monitor?

A lot of what I am about to say will probably be shunned, but that's because the vast majority of people out there greatly misunderstand security and the first thing many will say is 'ZOMG, you needz to installz antivirus!!!!11' Well, let's get a few things clear -- a secure system is one which is only able to carry out its intended purpose, nothing more, nothing less. Principle of least privilege is one of the most basic and easy to grasp concepts of computer security and is also one of the most important. Simply put, any extra ability a computer system has beyond its intended purpose is unecessary and gives potential for exploitation. Therefore all extra functionality beyond the scope of the task should be eliminated. My views of how to implement security have changed somewhat over the last few years, partly due to what I have learned and partly due to the fact that the way computers are being breached is changing. There is a school of thought which says 'install Windows on an NTFS volume, lock it down to the ground with permissions and you'll be sorted'. The other school of thought is to install on a permission-free volume such as FAT32 and have no permissions at all. Why you ask? Well, it's simple. Permissions are a 'double edged sword' and can be used against us just as easily as to defend us. All it takes is for one poorly configured ACL to potentially allow a piece of malware (or even a person) to get in and then lock the owner of the system right out. We are seeing this more and more with malware these days, locking us out of our OWN systems, using a mechanism that is designed to actually keep the bad guys away. The main problem with permissions is the users: Most people (even IT people) don't give a rats a** about permissions and leave most of them at the default values. If the system is installed on a volume which can not work with permissions, this flaw is eliminated right away. Another problem with NTFS volumes is Alternate Data Streams (ADS), a feature which can also be abused maliciously, and that is also not present on a FAT32 volume. But without permissions, how can we keep malware at bay? Well, most malware comes from the Internet, so security starts with the web browser. Again, there are two main schools of thought on this... the first being to simply ditch Internet Explorer and take the 'security through obscurity' route, the second being to strengthen IE and/or your choice of browser. Internet Zones in IE is a clumsy and flawed concept but for the most part it does work. IE 7 and 8 greatly improve the security of the browser and system particularly in Vista where it is isolated from the system and can not arbitrarily interact with it. Somewhat similar to the permissions/no permissions argument, the vast majority of the work here is done (or not done) by the end user. If the end user does not give a monkeys about what they visit on the Internet, they WILL end up with a spyware infested system. This is why antivirus companies make so much money - Antivirus products actually do very little if anything to increase the security of any given system - some would argue they in fact decrease the security by running services at system level and hooking the kernel - but people buy them on the false premise that they will 'be protected'. I don't run any Antivirus software or a third party firewall on my home system and haven't now for nearly 2 years - and there's not been a drop of malware in sight. More ways to secure Windows include simple things like shutting off file and printer sharing for Microsoft networks, the Microsoft network client, disabling and adding a password to the guest account (plugs a massive network permissions flaw) and also protecting the administrator account. Running as a Limited User in Windows NT/2000/XP without doing some serious tweaking is not as effective against attack as many believe, and serves to cause more of a headache than anything else. Vista is in fact the first OS to properly implement a principle of least privelage environment as standard and do it in only a 'semi annoying' way - UAC. If you use a wireless network it should also be protected by a network key - but then again, if file and printer sharing and the microsoft network client is disabled, no-one will be able to access your system using UNC commands anyway, they'll just be free to steal your internet. Make sure things like telnet, remote registry and the messenger service are disabled, and turn on the Windows Firewall, or use IPSEC if on Windows 2000. Using a strong password for any and all of your user accounts is also vital.

Just because someone uses Firefox or Flock (or whatever) as their primary browser on the system does not mean that they are exempt from IE exploits. If IE is simply present on any Windows system then you are susceptible to any of its exploits regardless. With regards to the permissions being screwed up, that is an unfortunate disadvantage of a filesystem capable of permissions. If permissions aren't set very strictly in the first place, then any piece of software can run riot and set its own permissions as it pleases. FAT32 doesn't have this disadvantage. It is for this reason that I have lately begun to favour permissionless systems. Where there are permissions, there are flaws...

I'd rather just use Linux to be honest. You may be able to remove IE, but the only way to get rid of Windows... is to get rid of Windows!

Use Miranda IM... it supports 95, I am pretty sure it will support NT4, and is faster than MSN messenger.

Not in my experience. - Windows XP SP2 outpaced Windows Vista SP1 and Windows 7 beta by leaps and bounds... - Windows 7 "Not Much Faster" Than VistaAs to which Windows version do I love? I don't love any of them. Windows 98 was the least bloated but reliability sucked. I would pick Win2K as my favorite but I'm using XP due to some bugs. Haha same.

It looks a little weird at first but I'm using two screens. One is the netbook (the left) and the CRT on the right. The positioning of the monitors is almost exactly proportionate to their actual positions. I just recently rebuilt this system so there isn't much on it, hopefully I can keep it that way. Unfortunately something went a bit wrong during installation and some bits of Windows just refuse to work; task scheduler, defragger and a few others, which is why I have defraggler. Even Internet Explorer didn't work at first. I hate iTunes with a passion but unfortunately I need it for my iPod touch. And sadly, I am neither one of those pretty boys in the picture

Then you have to remember that not everyone takes their Windows 9x system on the Internet.

tbh the best way to keep your registry clean and avoid problems with Windows slowing down gradually over time is to think carefully about what you install. Once you've installed a program (even just little ones; you'd be surprised how much space they take up) and then get rid of them again, you can never quite remove all traces of it unless you spend hours digging through the registry and removing every single key related to it. Some people exxagerate the rate at which Windows begins to slow down and say that after 6 months it becomes unusable bla bla bla. Personally I find that after initial driver installation, software installs and tailoring of your settings, and after a few days of 'burn in' period, the system won't slow down much after that. If it does; you're doing something wrong. Despite what people will say I have also found Macs to be surprisingly similar. Linux seems to be the only OS which pretty much doesn't slow down at all.

that's the thing. i tried that, and it seemed to make no difference at all to whether or not the iPod works. I've been reading from Google though the amount of hassle that people have with ad-hoc networks and the iPod touch just saying 'ustfu', I'll probably just get a router when I can. Still, why it seems to fail so catastrophically is what I'd love to learn.

Personally I despise Windows 7, and think it is nothing more than a clever marketing move by Microsoft. If you actually look at the OS, it isn't hard to tell that it's simply heavily plagiarising Mac OS X, even more than Vista did. It's basically the same as Vista but because people have got it into their heads that Vista 'sucks', suddenly this new OS is perceived (wrongly) to be the best thing since sliced bread - which is exactly what Microsoft wants. They've just redressed Vista, gave it a new name and are using clever psychology tactics to buy back all of those that lost faith after Vista. It's exactly what happened in the mojave project (people didn't know it was Vista, so they had an unbiased view) except this is actually the real thing. It seems like I am the only one who can actually see this... it's quite disturbing.

Thanks for your comments. Yeah, after installing XP on that with the 7200 RPM hard drive it made me realise how slow Vista was on that and what I'd been missing. Still, I could play Quake III on it... Speaking of Quake III, it detects the C7 processor as a Pentium III, so I agree with the comments regarding its performance - yes, it is horribly slow. This also helps to show XP's age now, given it runs pretty well it. I did a benchmark with Dr. Hardware and it reckoned my Via C7 was roughly as fast as a PIII 800. (I have the 1.2GHz version) The only other thing is, something kinda went a bit wrong in the XP installation (I think the CD is scratched or something) so a file or two didn't register, and my installation is a little... handicapped. Sigh, I don't really care, my stuff works fine so I'll keep it at that. The only reason I am saying that I think netbooks are hype is because for a tall person like me, such small screens and high resolutions ultimately equals back pain (1280x768 on the mini notes 8.9 inch is beyond ridiculous) - the ergonomics of the machine pretty much dictates that, because one has to hunch over to see what is on the screen. With the iPod touch I can hold it as close to as my face as I want, now I just need to get the sodding thing working on wifi... The design of the HP Mini note is absolutely horrible as well. It looks nice, but it gets way too hot - which can't be good for the components. And since the battery is rubbish, I have resigned to sitting the netbook on top of an old monitor stand (so it can get a good airflow) right next to a CRT monitor with external mouse and keyboard, and just using it as a PC. In fact, I haven't even put the internal keyboard back on since I replaced the HD, seems to help with the cooling a bit. The reason I have become very skeptical about netbooks is that I feel they are trying to take over the embedded mobile device market (like HTCs and iPhones, which do a perfectly good job) while also trying to take over the laptop market. The result is computers with far too much software on them for their own good, cheap, slow components that ultimately just cause a recipe for problems. Funnily enough, now I have XP on the mini note, I actually can use it like a desktop. Yeah my work PC is great. One of the guys here in the office built it. Apart from a PSU that buggered up (I since replaced with an Antec one I think) it's really great.

If you could somehow unpack the image to an \i386 folder then you will be able to run winnt.exe from DOS. How new is that computer? Given the optical drive is knackered and so is the OS it might be time to milk that warranty for what it's worth. It is a Dell afterall.

I've just had a thought, perhaps the fact that I am using WEP encryption is not helping this? I tried using WPA first and the iPod asks for a USERNAME as well as a password?! Having no idea what that username would be I did try my computer's username and password, no joy. So I rolled back to WEP which I know is a lot weaker but it only asked for a password on the iPod. Maybe I just need to remove any encryption altogether? Personally I'm not happy with doing this, I live in a fairly well populated area and I don't want anyone to just be able to join my ad-hoc network, browse my files (I know how insecure Windows is, I've passworded and disabled guest account - is this enough?) and generally be a nuisance. EDIT: I've been doing some reading, and LOADS of people seem to have this issue, on ad-hoc networks, and even some on proper routers. Seems like networking on iPod touch isn't as seemless as Apple would like us to think? Apparently the DHCP being assigned all wrong addresses is due to a wrong input of the wireless password? How stupid, why doesn't it just say it was the wrong key?! I'm starting to think I should just ditch this idea and spend the dough on a real router...

This is why in our office there is a general unspoken, but well known, rule that servers are left well alone - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. What isn't patched can be secured by other means.

go to the start menu and in the search field type 'taskmgr' Right click the task manager executable that appears and select 'Run as Administrator...' hit OK on the UAC prompt if applicable and that should do it for you.

Ok so I have an iPod touch, a piece of crap netbook which I hate (unfortunately it's my everyday machine) and a 3g wireless USB. We have no wireless router in here so I thought why not setup an ad-hoc network with the 3g and the netbooks wireless and then I can surf on my iTouch without having to be near the god darned netbook which after this week I am just about ready to throw out the window. Of course, the first time I try to configure the ad-hoc network using this guide, it took me 3 hours just to get it to work first time. http://geekandmoney.com/2009/03/3g-interne...-on-windows-xp/ Then when I got it to work, it only did until the next time I shut off the iPod touch. Then when I put it back on, it doesn't work on the wifi again and I have to spend ages fiddling around, turning things off and on, changing from DHCP -which appears to be assigning all the wrong addresses- to manual assignment and back again, basically just constantly fiddling with things until it somehow miraculously works. Then of course, it does it again, and yet again I find myself having to mindlessly try and make it work again. I just don't know what to do, what I am doing wrong, or what. Basically the network is like this: 3G Wireless -> Netbook with Wireless -> iPod touch Obviously the netbook is acting as the router right now but seems to be doing a dire job of it. The 3g card uses DHCP - I can't change this. The connection is shared using 'Wireless network connection' which has the ip addresses 192.168.0.1 subnet 255.255.255.0 I have tried setting the ip addresses on iPod touch manually like so: ip address: 192.168.0.2 (have also tried 192.168.0.5, 192.168.0.10 etc) subnet: 255.255.255.0 dns: 192.168.0.1 router: 192.168.0.1 all of these addresses make sense and seem correct, given those are the values that they are assigned when the iPod is in DHCP mode and is working. I'm pretty sure it isn't the iPods fault for various reasons, such as it working correctly on a 'proper' wireless router. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how or when it starts working again, except after a lot of fiddling and frustration. But it always stops after the iPod has been switched off and on again, even when on static IPs, so it's not as if the lease is being renewed. I just can't see where the problem is. The 3G is working fine (hence me typing this) and all the routing/DNS/DHCP is/should be done by the netbook, on the wireless connection, which is shared to use the 3G and broadcast its connection to the iPod which should then just pick it up and use the netbook basically as a wireless router. Is this a concept which just doesn't work in real world situations, am I doing something wrong, or is something faulting? According to the guide I posted this should be a 'it just works' kinda process... and it's not Please if some of you can shed some light... even if it's just to say I'm chasing a dead end.

Here's how I'd do it. Use Active Directory to find out each person's username. (this assumes you know who works in your organisation...) Then look on the server for that person's username in the 'security' log in the eventviewer, for when their machine logged onto the domain. The logs should tell you the IP address they currently have in the DHCP lease. You can then get onto the machine by going \\ipaddress\c$ If this wasn't what you were looking for, apologies. I used that process recently to get onto someone's computer after receiving a report of suspicious internet activity. I needed to investigate it unknown to them so I had to find out how to get onto the machine without them knowing, using just what I had on the server. The above method starting with AD finally gets you there.