I have a customer in Port Perry that just bought a new Mac Mini Server running Lion and wanted to use the built in VPN service to allow a Windows 7 Laptop to connect.

Upon configuration of the VPN service, the Windows 7 laptop would get the following error on connection:

Error: 789 "The L2TP connection attempt failed because the security layer encountered a processing error during initial negotiations with the remote computer"

The problem was resolved by ensuring that both the "IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules" service and the "IPsec Policy Agent" service is configured to start automatically at start-up.

Press and hold down the alt, shift and H keys.

This will bring up the Help Me! screen which will display the following information about you BlackBerry:

Platform version, PIN, IMEI, Uptime, Battery Level and Free File Space.

I got a call from a customer in Mississauga that his mapped drives were no longer working for one particular computer.

He was getting the error message "The specified network password is not correct".

After verifying that the user name and password were correct and that the server share was working for other computers in his office, I noticed that the date and time on his computer was off by 2 weeks. After correcting that, the mapped drive worked.

Recently had a customer of mine located in Whitby who was trying to re-install Windows XP Professional on his HP 6710b notebook.

After the install of the operating system and some of the drivers from HP's website, in Device Manager there were 3 Unknown Devices.

The following Device Instance Id's were missing their drivers.

To correct, just install the corresponding software.

ACPI\HPQ004\3&B1BFB68&0 - install HP 3D Driver Guard

ACPI\HPQ006\2&DABA3FF&0 - install HP Quick Launch Buttons

ACPI\IFX0102\4&2FFE84EA&0 - install HP Protect Tools Security Software

A customer of mine located in Ajax needed to access his Windows XP desktop and work from his Windows 7 laptop.

He didn't want to use 2 computers and didn't want to have to migrate all of his software running on the XP computer over to his notebook.

Suggestion was to using Windows XP Mode on his laptop to access his XP computer.

This was accomplished by making an image of his computer that could be run on his laptop using Windows XP Mode (Microsoft Virtual PC)

To do this download the utility Disk2vhd to create an image of your current computer that can later be used by Microsoft Virtual PC or run on Windows 7 using XP mode.

The image of your hard drive will be created with a VHD file extension.

Download it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

A customer of mine located in Oshawa wanted his HP Notebook upgraded from Vista to Windows 7.

After I did the installation of Windows 7, one device came up as Missing Base System Device in Device Manager.

To fix this, go to the HP website, support and drivers, enter your laptop model 6910p.

Choose your operating system and download the Ricoh Media Card Reader driver, sp45112.exe and install.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=ob-76430-1&swEnvOID=4053&swLang=13&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=3

I had a customer located in Vaughan call me up to say that his computer keep going into standby mode.

When I called back, he had stepped out to lunch and so I needed a way to see what the power settings were on his computer and to make changes to them remotely.

First query the remote computer to see what the current power settings are:

psexec.exe \\computer_name powercfg /query

Note the name of the current power scheme.

Set the Standby option to 0 to disable.

psexec.exe \\computer_name powercfg /change "Home/Office Desk" /standby-timeout-ac 0

Email me if you are having any problems with this command.

Robert Miranda

Reboot your computer choose the option "Launch Startup Repair."

Choose the option "View Advanced Options For System Recovery And Support."

Choose the "Command Prompt: option. Start notepad - C:\Windows\system32\notepad.exe

Open the file C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml (make a backup copy just in case)

Search for the following text: 0000000000000000.cdf-ms Most likely you will see this entry 3 times.

Delete the all of the text staring from the first up to the point you see destination="\SystemRoot\WinSxS\FileMaps\_0000000000000000.cdf-ms"/>

This should be about 3 lines of text.

Save the file and restart the computer.

Email me if you are having any problems with this fix.

Robert Miranda

http://www.RichmondHillComputers.ca

If you try to schedule backups on Windows Server 2008 R2 for your Exchange 2010 Server, the only option from the GUI is to schedule it everyday and to overwrite the last backup.

To backup the server and Exchange data and not have it overwritten, use the command line version of the Windows Server Backup, wbadmin.

You can create a batch file with the following command and use task scheduler to run it.

wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:\\server\share -include:d: -allCritical -vssFull -quiet

These options will backup the System State and important files on C: (-allCritical), the d: drive (or where ever you store the Exchange databases), plus it will use the Volume Shadow Copy service.

When it has completed, if you choose the option to restore, you can see the Exchange databases listed.

Email me if you are having any problems with the command.

Robert Miranda

To use the Exchange Management Shell to configure IP Block List Providers, run this command:

Add-IPBlockListProvider -Name NewIpBlockListProvider -LookupDomain RBL.Domain.com -AnyMatch $True -RejectionResponse "Originating IP address matched to RBL.Domain.com's IP Block List provider service"

What do the variables mean:

{0}: IP address of the sending mail server

{1}: Rule name of the connection filter

{2}: The RBL provider

Example:

Add-IPBlockListProvider -Name zen.spamhaus.org -LookupDomain zen.spamhaus.org -AnyMatch $True -RejectionResponse "{1} has blocked your IP address ({0}) using the list '{2}'. Please see http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip={0} for further information."

Email me if you are having any problems with the command.

Robert Miranda

http://www.NewmarketComputers.ca