Blog Entries

Error 789 - L2TP VPN Connection From Windows 7 To Mac OS X - Lion

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

Quickly Find BlackBerry Device Information

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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.

Check Computer Date And Time

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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.

Unknown Devices - Missing Drivers For An HP Laptop 6710b

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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& [...]

Create An Image Of Your Computer To Run In Microsoft Virtual PC

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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)

T [...]

Missing Base System Device Driver For HP 6910p Laptop

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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.j [...]

Remotely Disable Standby Power Option On XP Computer

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Sat, 07 May 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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 di [...]

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Installation Fails With Error Code c0000034

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

Schedule Backups In Exchange Server 2010 With wbadmin

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0100

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: -allCrit [...]

How To Customize RBL Rejection Response In Exchange 2010

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0100

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-I [...]

Enable Active Directory Recyle Bin - Windows Server 2008 R2

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Replace MeshNetworks and loc with what is appropriate in your environment.

From within the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell:

Enable-ADOptionalFeature –Identity ‘CN=Recycle Bin Feature,CN=Optional Features,CN=Directory Service,CN=Windows NT,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=MeshNetworks,DC=loc’ –Scope ForestOrConfigurationSet –Target ‘MeshNetworks.loc’

The advantage with enabling the Active Directory Recycle Bin is that you can restore objects [...]

How To Check The Version & Roll Up Of A Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Open up the Exchange Management Shell and run this command: GCM exsetup |%{$_.Fileversioninfo}

The last three versions are:

Exchange Server 2010 with no Service Pack and Update Roll Up 4 will display version 14.00.0702.001

Exchange Server 2010 with Service Pack 1 will display version 14.01.0218.015

Exchange Server 2010 with Service Pack 1 and Update Roll Up 1 will display version 14.01.0255.002

Email me if you are having any problems with [...]

Make Free Phone / Video Calls With Google Voice

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Make free phone / video calls within Canada and the United States using your GMail account and Google Voice.

See this blog for more details:

http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/

To make a call, just click the Call phone link in Gmail and enter any number.

You need to have working speakers and a microphone. Optionally you would need a video camera for the Video Calling portion.

As of August 28th, this is not available for Google Apps, but its only a matt [...]

Update Java Runtime Using Group Policy

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

To update computers in an Active Directory domain using Group Policy to the latest version of Java, download the offline version of Java Runtime. Start the installation, but do not click on next. There will be a folder called “jre1.6.0_xx” where xx is the version in the Sun folder in the Application Data folder. You can copy over the contents of the folder to a network share and publish using Group Policy the msi file located there. It needs the cab file to be located in the same folder. [...]

Scan Your Browser And Plugins For Security Holes

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Quickly scan your browser for security holes and missing updates. http://browsercheck.qualys.com Works with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome.

Determine The Type Of RAM You Have

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

If you need to check what type of RAM you have in your computer or laptop because you want to upgrade, an easy way to determine this is to use Crucial's web site tool. http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner

Missing Driver for HP ProLiant ML 150 G6

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

After install Windows Server 2008 R2, you many have an unknown device showing up in Device Manager. To correct this, download and install the The HP ProLiant 100-Series Management Controller for Windows driver.

Missing Driver For SM Bus Controller - HP dc5750 Desktop

robertmiranda@meshnetworks.ca — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0100

When trying to do a clean install of Windows XP on a HP dc5750 workstation your device manager may be showing SM Bus Controller as an unknown device. Go to: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html and enter in dc5750 as your product. After choosing Windows XP as the Operating System, scroll down to the Chipset section and download the ATI Chipset Driver for Microsoft Windows XP Driver (sp33927.exe). Double click on sp33927.exe to extract it to a folder on your C drive (C:\SWSetup\s [...]

IIS Components Required To Install Symantec Endpoint Protection Version 11

anna@itecwebdesign.com — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Symantec's Knowledge Base Article:

Installing Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 for the first time document does not list out all the IIS components needed to install Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager on Windows 2008 / 2008 R2 Server Operating System.

Make sure to install all these components first:
ASP.NET
.NET Extensibility
CGI
ISAPI Filters
ISAPI Extensions
IIS 6 Management Console
IIS Metabase Compatibility
IIS 6 Scripting Tools
IIS 6 WMI Compatibility

Troubleshoot Blue Screen Of Death Problems With BlueScreenView

anna@itecwebdesign.com — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Great utility that allows you to open up crash mini dumps to troubleshoot blue screen's of death.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html