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Archive for the ‘Tips-Tools’ Category

I had this same problem. I reset my phone one day and lost the Skype beta app I had. Fortunately when I logged into the Market it was in my list of downloads and let me download and install it again. I was fortunate to get it back but I never did see it in the market after that. 

Click on image to download Skype Beta for Android OS

Intro

Spam, or more accurately Unsolicited Commercial Email, is still on the rise, with some estimates measuring it at 90% of all email traffic. It’s a nuisance for users, a storage nightmare for admins, and often a vector for phishing attacks and malware. Using a defense in depth approach, this article provides steps an email administrator can take to protect their network from spam.

Step one-user training

Users should be educated on how their actions can lead to or reduce the amount of spam destined for their inbox. Using corporate email for personal use, subscribing to mailing lists, registering their email address for promotions and giveaways, and forwarding chain mails are all vectors that can lead to spam. Consider disabling html support to prevent downloads that can confirm an address is valid, as well as to reduce the risk of email based malware.

Step two-web content

Spammers frequently scan websites looking for embedded email addresses in contact information. Raise awareness with your web developers and establish a policy that all email addresses in web pages should be masked using JavaScript or other encoding that allows a person to click or read the address, but makes it more difficult for a spider to harvest it. Use contact forms when possible instead of displaying email addresses.

Step three-tighten up your SMTP gateway

Disabling the verify command (VRFY) on your SMTP gateway makes it that much harder for spammers to check for valid email addresses. If supported, implement a delay before your server responds to a request with its banner. Legitimate email servers will wait for the 220 response before trying to send email, while many programs/scripts used by spammers will not. Your server can then drop email from this misbehaving sender. If your SMTP gateway supports Quit detection, configure it to drop email that it receives from a host that don’t close the session properly. Legitimate email servers end a session with the QUIT command, but many programs/scripts used by spammers don’t.

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This site http://www.ninite.com has a list of common software and utilities that are very useful. Basically like the site says you pick your favorite software and it will create one installer with the software you chose. You then download and install of the utilities and software you need in one shot. I had to share this on my blog. Check it out.

May of 2009 I posted a blog on how to Setup Exchange 07 using a Dynamic IP (click here to read it). In this article I suggested a paid email relay service. At the time I was not able find a free email relay but now I have found a free email relay service. This service is www.mxguarddog.com.

It is not only email relay but a SPAM filter as well. I stumbled upon this looking for a free SPAM filter service for one of my clients. The nice thing about this relay service is they will forward to a different port. So the relay will accept mail on port 25 and relay it to your email server on whatever port you choose. This is helpful for anyone that has an ISP that blocks incoming traffic on port 25.

The way MX Guard Dog keeps this service free is by exchanging licenses for links on websites. They give you licenses depending on the amount of traffic the website you put the link on gets. For example I signed up for the service when I found it and put a link on my blog. They gave me 40 licenses for this. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

I have run into the issue of not being able to find the Scanpst.exe file where it should be. I even had show hidden files olders and show system files turned on. I did a search and still could not find it. This file typically would be in one of two locations:

• First: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\
• Second: C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\

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We recently had a client that required Google Chrome for a web based app. Google Chrome is easy to download and install. Pretty straight forward and easy enough right? Wrong. Google Chrome installs in

• Win Vista/7 - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\
• Win Xp - C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\

by default. You would think Google would install it to Program Files by default like other applications but it does not.

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Do you need to track equipment, software, and IP addresses in your IT department? These are a given. The issue is many IT budgets have been cut. Well I have had the same issue. There is a solution. If you have SharePoint 2007 you can use it to manage and track all of these things. If your company has not or does not plan to purchase SharePoint 07 dont worry. You can get Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 for free and you can manage track all of the above with it.

Download Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

I have made som custom lists that I use everyday in SharePoint to help out in my IT department. I am attaching them to this post to share with others admins out there. You can off course modify these once you have them added to your own SharePoint. These lists are:

• Equipment Tracker: Use this list template for tracking equipment in an IT department.
• Software Tracker: Use this list template for tracking software in an IT department.
• IP Tracker: Use this list template for tracking IP addresses in an IT department.

Click to download my SharePoint IT Kit

These list templates are provided “As Is”. I assume no responsibility with use of them. If you find these lists helpful please sign up and leave a comment letting us know how they have helped you.

I ran across a tool Microsoft has for testing remote Exchange connectivity such as: Outlook Anywhere, ActiveSync, Autodiscover and more. Here is the URL: https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com

Recently I had a virtual machine that would not obtain an IP from DHCP. I noticed the DHCP client service was disabled in windows services. I would enable it, start it and it would start just fine. I would then reboot the VM. The DHCP client service would be disabled again. I had a feeling there was a GPO that was disabling that service. I wanted to check this without going through the domain policy, the local policy and any other group policies that could be causing this. I used a tool in windows called Group Policy Results Tool. You can use this tool to find out how Group Policy settings are affecting both the the computer and the logged-on user.

To track down the GPO setting faster this is what I did:

• Open a command prompt on the client machine
• Type: cd\ (to go to the root of C:)
• Type: gpresult /v >gposettings.txt (This gave me a verbose report of all group polocies applied on the client machine)
• Go to the C: drive and open gposettings.txt in notepad
• I did a search for DHCP in this text file

This brought me to any GPO settings that had anything to do with DHCP. This helped me identify which group policy was pushing down the setting that was disabling the DHCP client service. It was in the Default Domain Policy. This is the path to system services:  Computer configuration\Windows settings\Security settings\System services

If you have a similar issue you can use the above method and Group Policy Results Tool to track down the cause of it.

More information on using the Group Policy Results Tool:

• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/gpresults.mspx
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321709

Have you ever had devices that where stuck on your system and you needed to remove them. For example someone removed a physical network card from the system without uninstalling it first from the OS. This can be a problem if that network card had a static IP assigned to it. Once you add a new network card using the same static IP that was assigned to the previous network card it will give you an error.

If this were to happen normally you would go to device manager and simply uninstall the device. Well what if they don’t display? That means they are hidden. It is a good thing there is a way to un-hide them so you can uninstall them.

I have created a batch file that contains this:

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